"Dustings" 2-30: Product Launch Episode...Storm Phantom is here!

Speaker A: Are you ready for the best damn light of your life? Give me the hell, give me a G Stand up right now and give me the hell, give me a G Stand up right now, get ready to go. She ain't moving slow, she's taking control Pushing my pedal through the flow I'm begging for love you better hold on. Here we go.

Speaker B: Snow Jobs Nation. We are coming at you with a brand new very special dustings episode on the Snow Jobs podcast. As always, I'm Steve.

Speaker C: Talk to the juice box guy, you

Speaker B: know who's with me. The baddest of all time, one of the best singers, among the best looking you've ever seen. Hold my drink. And if we're doing dustings, you know who's also joining us? Jeremy and Jordan are both in the house. How are we boys?

Speaker C: Doing good. What up boys?

Speaker B: What's going on?

Speaker D: Yeah, everybody's looking good this morning.

Speaker B: Yeah, we had to, had to get on and do this. We got a big couple of weeks coming up, you know. Saima Sima 2026. It is uh, for lack of a better option, it is the biggest uh, week in the snow industry, uh, off season. So uh, we, we had to come on and get a dustings in. It's a very special time for our friends, uh, across the uh, across the country there in Minnesota. So uh, Jordan, how you been? What anything new and exciting?

Speaker C: Oh, there's so much, so much to talk about today guys. I, I can't wait.

Speaker B: And let's get right into it. What do we got?

Speaker C: I'm excited for the audience of Snow Jobs to be first and I will say Snow Jobs audience has had plenty of lead up and teasers and feedback on what we're going to talk about. But this will be the most comprehensive uh, review of what's about to happen uh, next week at Saima.

Speaker B: We're a vault dude. There's no leaks coming out of this ship.

Speaker D: Hey, uh, I see you looking at me, but hey, everything I've said has been, been, I've been. Guys have told me I could do it, so

Speaker C: I love it.

Speaker B: Oh, uh, it's great. Yeah, there have been uh, there have been a lot of teasers and stuff out there and uh, accidental viewings and stuff like that. Or maybe not so accidental but uh, it's all, all led up to this which is a very, very big uh, endeavor for uh, our friends at Storm. So why don't you tell uh, us what's coming, Jordan?

Speaker C: Well, I guess when you send out uh, 70 of a new top secret product all across the country it's pretty hard for that not to leak out.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker C: So yeah. So I think, you know, obviously again with the audience having heard a lot of what's going on, but also with new listeners coming all the time, um, essentially for those that don't have all the context, Storm has been operating as a distributor, ah, dealer of metal plus hydraulic wing plows all the way back to 20, uh, 16 under the VSI brand before we sold that to boss. And we've done very well with the product. We have run the product in our own fleet. Uh, we love the product. Hydraulic wing plows have made our operation substantially more efficient and it's done the same for many, many companies across the country. Um, it's not the only tool in the toolbox but it's a great tool for the toolbox for the right jobs. Over the course of the past decade we have received feedback on what people love and what they would love to see improved upon. And we've taken that feedback in over the years and essentially in our heads have been formulating what the perfect hydraulic wing plow could look like. And in the very recent past here we decided to make that feedback list a, uh, reality and develop and launch what is now going to be called the Phantom Plow.

Speaker B: Nice.

Speaker C: Very, yeah, very sneaky. It's Phantom. It's also in a Phantom black and gray color scheme. That's a whole different story.

Speaker B: I mean it was appropriately named because the biggest thing my guys noticed was the silence.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: How quiet it was.

Speaker C: Quietest plow you'll ever run.

Speaker B: Uh, it is, that is a fact. I will, I will definitely attest to that.

Speaker C: Not that that is a main selling point but I will tell you that it was unintentional. But between our edge system and the bushings we use to make everything tight tolerance on the plow, it is dead silent. Uh, and over the course of a 20 or 30 hour run, uh, you'd be surprised how nice it is to have quiet it again. Not a main selling point but, but uh, yeah, the name Phantom and Stealth Edge is what we're calling our edge system. Uh, it all changes, just kind of works.

Speaker B: Well, it definitely worked. It definitely worked. You said you had 70 of them out there last year in an R D, uh, field test, uh, field uh, test situation and Jeremy and I were, were lucky enough to, to have a couple and uh, it was pretty incredible. I gotta, you know, hats off to you guys. It's uh, you know, it's something else. When, whenever a new plow that Performs like that, hits the market, it's always cool. But when people, you know, are actually. And friends with are actually the ones responsible for, you know, creating it, like, that's really freaking cool. It was really. It was an honor to, uh, to run it. The guys, uh, the guys had a lot of fun with it.

Speaker C: Yeah. I think just kind of the theory behind the soft launch was that this entire product came to be because of feedback from our friends and customers. So what better way to actually make the product the best that it can be than to send the product out to our same friends and customers.

Speaker B: True.

Speaker C: And have them help us perfect that product? And candidly, we thought when we sent the things out, they were pretty close to perfect because we had been testing them on the Storm Academy pad. Um, but the reality is, when you get it in the hands of different operators in different climates, on, uh, different types of sites, the feedback that came in to help reshape what the final product actually was, was just absolutely massive. Um, like I said, when we sent them out, I probably even told you guys, like, these things are. These things are rock solid. Like, we've been testing them, we've been bashing them, we've been doing all this stuff. Um, and as we learned pretty quickly, like, they weren't perfect yet. Which. That was part of the point, right? Yeah, part of the point was that we knew they weren't perfect. We thought they were great, but not perfect. Now let's make those last incremental improvements to make them just that much better.

Speaker B: Yeah, you had the. You had the main 90% done. It's just minor tweaks at that point with what, you know, feedback you're getting from everybody. Which I was impressed that. I was actually very impressed that you guys were like, yeah, okay, come, uh, on, don't sugarcoat anything. Like, we want to know, like, what didn't, uh, my guy running it most of the season, I had three guys rotate through it at one point, but my guy that did the main amount of running it was Mark. And Mark doesn't hold back, but he was like, do they really want to hear the truth or do like, like, am. Ah, I sugarcoated. I'm like, no, give it. You know, you write the review how it is. And, uh, he was. I was very impressed the first time I saw it go by. Because the number one thing I noticed from operating a Metal plus for two years and probably my. One of my biggest complaints, um, not complaints, but dissatisfactions, was that you could always tell where the wings ended and the moldboard began with the phantom that was 16ft straight across. Same exact scrape. You could not literally tell where the wings ended and the moldboard began, which was super impressive.

Speaker C: Yeah. That we'll get into a little more on that, on the product features, uh, and improvement side of things. But that was a huge part of the entire feedback loop we've gotten over the last decade is like, man, I love these metal plus plows, but how can we make this issue better? And that's what we probably spent the most time and effort on. Uh, and candidly, like, I think from the soft launch, some of the best feedback we got to make that even better came out of that soft launch. Um, so I think the other thing with the soft launch guys, it's not just to perfect the product, but also

Speaker B: gives us an opportunity to try before we buy.

Speaker C: Yeah. And to give social proof that it's a good product. You know, for us to have, uh, nine different contractors, and that includes their own contracting company running the product and vouching for the product. That makes a big difference because whatever you might think about Metal plus or HLA or any other hydraulic wing plow, they've been around for a long time and they, there's, there's social proof there that they're a reliable product, that they do a good job, that they're durable. And Phantom doesn't have that fully yet because it hasn't actually been on the market for a decade plus like those other products have. So I'm not saying we can accelerate a decade of, of real life social proof, but I think that by running it, uh, running 70 of them in a very strong winter, many of the markets, these things got double or triple average snowfall, which was great. We calculated we have over 10,000 hours of runtime on this, on this plow. Um, so again, not as much as the incumbents, but I think for a new product launch, we have to be pushing Guinness Book of World Records here on how much testing and time we actually got on the product.

Speaker B: You, you sent it out for soft launch. The right winter for most of the country.

Speaker C: Totally.

Speaker B: Like we got, I believe we were last winter, hour wise, I believe we were the same amount of hours as we were the previous two winners on the, uh, the Metal plus that we had.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: So it basically you could, you could test them head to head with the same amount of hours. And uh, yeah, it was great. We had a, we had a great time with it. It did everything we asked of it. So, um, yeah, you need a great

Speaker D: R D. R D is from you're going to get from your buddies whatever. You know, everybody thinks you give them to your friends, they're going to sugarcoat stuff.

Speaker A: But

Speaker D: I mean, you knew, you knew you're going to get whatever and you told everybody just to give whatever feedback you're getting. Yeah, I mean, good or bad, we were giving it and you took it

Speaker C: all and, and, and I, I'll give, I mean, both of you guys props. You both spent a lot of time giving us feedback. I will say that, that Jeremy, uh, endured a little more of the pain than Steve had to because Jeremy got the literal first units. We shipped out like Glacier, got like number, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4 off the line. Um, and because Fargo gets snow earlier than what you do, Steve.

Speaker D: Absolutely.

Speaker C: And, uh, we had to get them up there.

Speaker B: So there was this year though, not this winter.

Speaker C: No. I know there was more bugs to work out for Jeremy than there was for you, but.

Speaker B: Yes, 100.

Speaker C: But Jeremy worked through that with us and uh, identified some pain points that we had to solve quickly. And when I say quickly, uh, it's not overnight, but we, we got it done as fast as we could and when we got the final updates made, it did what we needed it to do. And like I said, without this soft launch, I just, I wouldn't have the same degree of confidence in the product that we do now. But between diverse markets, operators, climates, types of sites, and how many hours we got, I just, we feel so confident about the product that, to back that up even a step further, um, for first year buyers, we are putting a full three year bumper to bumper warranty on these things too.

Speaker B: So really not.

Speaker C: Yeah, so not, not that I, not that I think they're going to need to use it because I think these things are overbuilt, if anything.

Speaker B: They definitely are.

Speaker C: Yeah, they're, they're beefy. And those that see them at SIMA will see what we're talking about. You can just see it when you look at it. They're beefy. But, uh, yeah, three years, bumper to bumper, no questions asked, just like everyone's used to a storm. And the way we support product, the way we've supported product that isn't even ours, uh, we're going to support our own product, uh, as well, if not even better and for longer. So I think that'll help ease any concerns people have about making the switch.

Speaker B: That's awesome. Very cool. Yeah, that's definitely, I mean that it definitely doesn't hurt, that's for sure. You know, you can, you can buy with confidence that anything wrong is going to be, uh, taken care of for three years. That's, uh, in the snow world. Is that even a thing?

Speaker C: I don't think so.

Speaker B: I thought as soon as I rolled off the lot, it was on me. Yeah, that's how it all goes.

Speaker D: It's usually how it goes. While the bolt tell. That's your problem. Yeah.

Speaker B: Jordan, you said you had 70 of these out there. Um, I didn't actually know it was that many. Did you. You've been running. Did you run them in storm snow as well? I assume you did.

Speaker C: We did, yeah. We converted. We converted most of our fleet over two Phantoms to start the winter. Um, but we did leave some of the incumbent product in as a control group just to run side by side because, you know, everything performs different in different conditions. And we wanted to look at what it looks like across that entire spectrum from 30 degrees down to negative 30 degrees. What does the scrape performance look like? What does the plow performance look like? What are the hydraulic. What does the hydraulic performance and reliability look like in those same conditions? So we, we kept some incumbent product in as a control group, and we were happy with the results, put it that way.

Speaker B: Well, that's what I was going to ask you. If you guys were using them yourselves, testing them, uh, you guys are obviously intimately familiar with them. When you got 70 of them out there in the hands of. Of other people that aren't so familiar with them, what was, like, what surprised you the most about, you know, how, how these plows performed with outsiders? Or what was the most surprising piece of feedback you got from, uh, from the 70 plows that were out there compared to what you guys thought you already knew?

Speaker C: I think, uh, to be honest, the, the edge system we developed, uh, we're calling it the Stealth Edge. It's a pretty unique edge system. It has three layers. There's a layer of steel on the front, layer of rubber in the middle, and a layer of steel on the back. And kind of the concept there's is front steel gets your initial scrape and hard pack rubber takes off the moisture, and then whatever's left behind the back steel will get. And, uh, we had only tested it in our rather dry, uh, arid Minnesota snow climate, and it, it worked great here. We also did. We were fortunate to get some early slushy, uh, concrete snow as, as Jeremy would call it. Um, and that, that's where that rubber layer really shines like we were. Especially during the daytime. We were scraping these lots to, like, nothing like black, you Know, you say black pavement and sometimes it's figurative. Like it's, it's pretty good, but there's still some white film. Like this was black.

Speaker D: Yes.

Speaker C: And the feedback. Yeah, and the feedback we got from especially our east, uh, coast and Ohio partner was, you know, warmer climates, wetter climates, um, was that they get that kind of snow more often. So for them, that Stealth Edge system is even more beneficial than what it is in our climate here. Um, because I will say, like, I don't want to claim our product is perfect. There is no perfect product. Uh, the advantage to the Stealth Edge is the moisture removal, um, the length of the service life on that edge without having to use carbide, which can scratch the pavement. Mm. Um, but when it gets really cold and there's no sunlight or no chlorides down in the pavement, you do get less optimal scrape performance than you get when it's warmer out or during the daytime. And when I say that, I still think it's the best grape I've seen it is right, right up there with an Arctic, for sure. Um, but very close, there's like, uh, I don't know, 10 to 15% difference between cold nighttime temperatures versus, uh, you know, anything above 10 degrees. It's pretty much the best optimal performance for that edge system.

Speaker B: I mean, I can speak to that if you, if you want.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, please do.

Speaker B: Because we, we actually saw that and uh, that was part of our feedback. Uh, Mark called me one night and he had been using it. We, we had, we were very lucky this year. We had a lot of storms that continued for a long duration this season. So we were plowing and plowing. We pre treat everything, but after you, after you, um, after you're running that plow and you make five or six passes, let's face it, if you're not continuing continually treating behind the plow, that pre treatment is basically nil, especially if you have below freezing temperatures. So one day we had a, ah, storm start at like 9am the plow was phenomenal. All day. Mark's calling me, telling me, dude, you could literally come in and blacktop seal behind this plow. Like it's, it's that clean a scrape and he was loving it. And then the temperature, it was, it was very cold, um, but not, not crazy cold. It was like mid-20s during the day. When it hit 7, 8 o' clock at night and the sun went down, it dropped down to like, I don't know, 10 degrees, 8 degrees somewhere in that realm. And it was still snowing very Dry powder. And he called me. He's like, something's not right. I'm doing something wrong. It's not scraping black anymore. And I. I, uh, was like, okay. So I went over there and I looked, and I'm like, I think you're being a little nitpicky now. Like, he goes, no, it's just not looking the same as it did this morning. I wanted to make sure I was doing everything right still. And it was. It just left that slightest little film of white behind. But you could still see the handicap outline. You could still see the stripes on the lot, but it just wasn't getting that black clean. You know, you could seal the parking lot after the scrape if you wanted to.

Speaker A: Scrape.

Speaker B: Uh, that's. But that was only. Again, only in that one circumstance that. That. That. That happened 10 below 10 degrees at night. No sunlight. No. No treatment down.

Speaker C: Well, and the cool thing about that is, is we get that condition almost every time it snows here in Minnesota. And so Jeremy gets in Fargo. So for us, we were. You know, we could only compare that performance to what else was on the market. Sure. And one of those is the product we've been selling for many years, and another one is Arctic. And we were really happy with that performance compared to the incumbent products. Uh, we thought it was equal or greater than, depending which product you're talking about. Uh, and then when we sent it out. Well, uh, when we got some of those warmer weather events, when I say warm weather, I mean like, 20 degrees or. And when we sent them out to Ohio and the east coast, that's what weather you guys get 90% of the time.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker D: So these.

Speaker C: So you guys are using these things, going like this edge is unfreaking Believable.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: 99% of the time. And you had that one situation your entire season where you're like, oh, hey, this is still great, but it's not as good as it was this morning.

Speaker B: Um, you're talking minuscule, like.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker B: I got to stress, we were told to be extremely nitpicky with any variation, any deviation that we saw. And you're talking if. If during the daytime, that jet black scrape was at 100 or 99, because I would put Arctic at 100. So this would be, like, 99.8. Um, but I'm talking a drop from 99 to 92, not a drop from 99 to 65. You know, you're. You're talking like, a minuscule. Like we're being extremely nitpicky. And it still scrapes better than any other wing plow I've ever used by far, in any condition.

Speaker C: Well, like you said earlier, I think it's not just the scrape. We have addressed the issue of leakage. You know, the main challenge with hydraulic wing plows is that when you have a corner that moves, there's going to be a spot where snow can leak through.

Speaker D: Sure.

Speaker C: And also typically when you have a segmental edge system, whether it's, uh, uh, you know, spring loaded or rubber blocks or whatever, there's typically gaps between the edges that leave little trails and they don't hurt anything. The salt or liquid eliminate them immediately. But it's an aesthetic thing because we have rubber integrated into our edge system and because rubber's flexible, we can tighten those tolerances between those edges and between the wing and the edges, and we don't have that leakage. So like.

Speaker B: No.

Speaker C: We've got some just amazing photos from, from some of our soft launch partners of, of like you said, Steve, like, it looks like the parking lot's ready to seal coat.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Um, there's nothing. And they haven't insulted yet. There's nothing left behind. Uh, uh, it's pretty neat. And again, some of that's just aesthetic. Like, does eliminating those trails actually make a huge difference on the overall, um, you know, the overall performance for your customer? Not really, because that stuff does just disappear as soon as a car hits it or a salt hits it. But it is just a little differentiator that I think little things make a big difference.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker D: Detail.

Speaker B: We preach that constantly. Attention to detail is of supreme importance.

Speaker D: Right? Yep.

Speaker C: Jeremy, since you're in the coldest climate, like, can you, can you give some of your feedback on. On the edge in that type of climate?

Speaker D: Oh, definitely. Yeah. We, we used them all winter and being as cold it is up here, honestly, that thing would scrape it. We got it. Like Steve said, there is a few times where you, you could tell the difference between Antarctic or that, but not with nothing major. I mean, nothing. You had to go back over and over and over. But yeah, the thing would, uh, it would scrape everything that we threw at it this winter in the cold. The guys loved it. I mean, I don't know what, how to explain what they just a lot of guys that use them. We had, we had four of them. I think it was four. And the, uh, they would, they all ran the competitors before and they ran this one and it was hands down, this was so much better. Just, just from putting the plow on the ground was so simple. Your Hitch system is amazing. And it's easy. Not, not that, not that your competitors are hard, but like Steve always does. Takes a little time, but I mean, yeah, this is set down. Go scrape. Like Steve said, the. You can't tell where the wing and the um, mold board connect because it's a clean pass all the way through. Even our cold climates. And I, I beat the hell out of them when we had some hard pack and that thing would just pop that hard pack up, you know, and we would, I was putting a lot of pressure on that thing and she would just take it, no problem. You know, when you're cutting edge, wouldn't just. The spring couldn't give out like some. Do you know if you're putting all that down, pressure on it. So because, you know, we, we get some accounts that would want us come in and clean up. Not, not our accounts, but some hard pack stuff that hadn't been touched all winter. And just, you know, as a snow guy, I always think that's satisfying watching those big blocks pop up and then it's clean underneath. And that thing would do a hell uh, of a job at that. And we brought that thing out all the time for the, those little jobs like that or big jobs, but work great for us.

Speaker C: Sorry, I think, uh, I gotta give, I've given this privately, but I gotta give you a public shout out too because like I said, you were one of the first ones to have the product. And, and so you did, you did experience some of the R D side of this where you found issues right away. Like, I'm just gonna be transparent about it because I don't have a problem doing that. Uh, the first thing Jeremy did is he took these things off the truck. Now mind you, hydraulic leaks were like one of the main things that we were trying to avoid with this product, right? Especially with freaking snow jobs, right? We can't have freaking hydraulic leaks with snow jobs. Jeremy gets him off the truck, he's all hyped. These things look sick. And then next thing you know, I'm getting a video of him covered in hydraulic fluid. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. Oh yeah, you should have been pissed. We gave him a brand new shirt and it was ruined in five minutes because he got hydraulic.

Speaker B: Oh my God.

Speaker C: Um, so, so what we learned there was just something really simple like we're, we're using ah, aluminum hydraulic block and steel fittings. And the thing is tightened and tolerance and leak tested and perfect when it leaves and when it gets there and it changes temperatures and it, it wiggles around on the truck. Like stuff was loosening up. So we had to find a solution so that that can't happen. Um, and it, and we did. So between the way that we tighten the fittings and between a clamping mechanism to keep the lines from wiggling in the block, we were able to prevent. I think after that. Jeremy, you didn't have any leaks after that, did you?

Speaker D: No, no, we didn't have that. Yeah, it was a. Yeah. Once we got that figured out and then you can jump ahead. But that the block system, didn't you do something different with that? So we could actually, if we had to tighten them because they are so tight, I mean you have to take every, every hose off to get to the one you needed to tighten.

Speaker C: Yep, yep. That was based on your, based on your feedback as well. And, and Kyle, Kyle, uh, Kyle had the same issue because he, you know, he also had some. That, that uh, had the same issue you had. And, and uh, same feedback like, hey, you know, if I could just go and tighten the one fitting, this would be okay. But I got to take all these off to get to this one. And that's not, not cool. So we've made adjustments based on all that feedback, um, so that it's easier for the people that end up getting the product. And again, that's the point of this soft launch is like for whatever reason, I think it's probably because we were, you know, building these things for ourselves and uh, you know, our best people were, um, tightening all the stuff and monitoring everything as we put it together. So like, we didn't have those issues. But then you go into production, you know, manufacturing, uh, production mode. And I'm not saying there's a lack of quality control, but like there's, there's eight different people touching these things and you just don't get the final checks and balances. But because of the feedback, we've been able to dial that in and get these things out to the point where no one's having to worry about hydraulic leaks.

Speaker B: I didn't lose a drop on mine.

Speaker C: Well, we, we waited very specifically to send yours until we had that address.

Speaker B: I would have been losing it, but no, I wanted, I want to put that out there. That when I got mine, we did not, uh, and we monitored that. Cuz I told Mark, dude, if this thing loses a drop out of anywhere, I want to know about it. He's like, nope, no, it's, it's good. And everything stayed tight and we and we beat on that. Like we were told to beat it and we beat it. And the thing just kept spitting out candy.

Speaker D: So. Yeah.

Speaker B: And we worked a lot this winter. This was the winner. To test something up here.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker D: Well, getting. Getting back to hydraulic storage. Uh, but along with all the hydraulic hose and stuff like that. This thing has. Half the hydraulic hoses are less than that of the. Your competitor.

Speaker B: I noticed that first. That was the first thing I noticed which.

Speaker D: Which also is less points of leakage. So that's. That's always a good thing too. You know. I just have to point that out because we know how I bitch about that stuff.

Speaker C: So. Yeah, we have. I'm not the engineer but we have uh, just. Just over half the hoses. So we have 10 hoses on ours. Competitors um, have between 18 and 20 depending on the model. We have 14 total fittings where there's connections and the competitors have 30 or 32 depending on the model. So less than half the fittings. About half of the lines. That definitely reduce the chance for leakage and breakage.

Speaker B: One hundred and research.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Yes. The um. The one thing. I'm glad Jeremy brought it up because it was probably my. If you go back in the episodes to.

Speaker D: I don't.

Speaker B: I think it was last. Last spring you uh, wanted an honest review of a different. Of another wing plow that. That we had and I gave it to you. I said I don't think personally this replaces my arctics because of the reset time when I was going into a stack and then coming back and trying to figure out the sweet spot between the wing indicators and the slip pitch and stuff. Um, that was the first thing that I heard from Mark is. And Danny actually for that matter because he jumped in it too. And the first thing he said was this thing's drop and go. Basically like it's really simple to find the sweet spot in this hitch. And you know that was probably my biggest complaint. Cuz I said it's. It may be more efficient in some ways but If I'm losing 7, 8 seconds every time I come down and reset because I'm trying to find the right wing indicator spot, the right slip pitch zone. That's to me o over four or five hundred times a storm. That's costing me a lot of time where the arctics are set it and forget it. This did not do that. This was very quick on the reset. So hats off on that.

Speaker C: It was like one of the main. Outside of the hydraulic simplicity and eliminating the chance for breakage and leaks in the hydraulic system as much as we could. Another main initiative on this product was to make the sweet spot to set the plow down as easy as possible. And to be honest, that was inspired by Arctic. I mean, you know, when we got those. When we got those Arctics for Storm Academy, I had run some before, um, but. But I had never spent substantial time on them. And, uh, I'll never forget jumping in, ah, uh, one of our cat 930s, and I think we had the HD17 Arctic on there. And, um, I was on the phone, I was holding. I was holding the phone in this hand because my headset was dead, and I was driving the loader and trying to run the joystick, and I'm like, man, the Arctic is so easy to set down because you have this huge sweet spot where, yep, like, I can, I can run the thing while I'm on the phone. And there's no way I could ever do that with, uh, you know, the hydraulic wing plow product we've been running. And, uh, our goal was to achieve that level of simplicity with our wing plow. Now, I will admit we're not using rubber, um, uh, so we don't have quite as much of a sweet spot as Arctic. Arctic sweet spot is insane. I don't know how to measure it.

Speaker B: You're not going to get it. It's virtually impossible. You're talking about two different plows. Two very different plows.

Speaker C: Well, and you're also talking about having your hitch system, you know, three feet behind your moldboard versus right at your moldboard. That makes a big difference. There's a big leverage point there. Um, but what I will say is that I, like, this is probably the most complex engineering challenge we faced with this product was trying to figure out how to make this thing easy to operate and also have it perform really well. And what it ended up being is a combination of things that, that we're all moving towards our objectives. And one of those things, and I think it's one of our biggest differentiators. Jeremy, actually, um, uh, Steve, actually you mentioned it earlier, is that the reason we achieved equal performance from the moldboard to the wings, there's no gap in performance between the moldboard and the wings is because we have full floating wing. Typical hydraulic wing plow products, I think of all brands, they have a fixed corner where the mold board meets the wing. And the reason they have a fixed corner where the mold board meets the wing is because that is what prevents allowing the plow from blowing itself up. In the case of Full, uh, compression situation where one edge system dips down into say, a storm drain or something like that. Uh, when you have fixed corners, that can never happen that way. You're always on a level plane and one edge, you know, one edge section can't be subjected to all of that force. Uh, the problem is that when you have fixed corners, you have a very sensitive product to set down level. Because when you have fixed corners, picture it like a fulcrum. Like I'm showing it on video as if people can see it's a podcast, they can't see it. But when you have fixed corners, it's like a, like a rocking horse. Like you have to get exactly in the center of that rocking horse for the thing to, to be stable. Um, and so you have to set it down in this tiny little two or three inch window. And if you don't, the plow is not going to scrape correctly and you're probably going to leave scratch marks on the pavement. And that was one of the biggest complaints we've gotten over the last 10 years was like, how do I stop scratching the pavement? And uh, I will say, like a very good operator could run one of those products without scratching the pavement.

Speaker D: Sure.

Speaker C: When you're, when you're on the phone with a customer and they're upset because they scratched their customer's parking lot, the last thing they want to hear is be a better operator. That's like, that's not good feedback. So what Storm's approach to this was is we must make this issue simpler to resolve. And again, it was a combination of making the corners of our wing not fixed. So our corners of our wings are full floating, um, that allows us to have a full floating wing and get that equal scrape. It also makes the sweet spot, uh, setting down the plow much larger. And then that in conjunction with our uh, hitch system just gives you this huge dynamic range where again, like you said, it's as close to uh, uh, ease of set down as you get with Arctic as you can possibly get with a wing plow. To the point where like if you look at some of the other products on the market, they have like indicators to show you when you're set down level. And I think people think those are helpful, but honestly a lot of times they're distracting m because you're constantly fixating on those markers, like are they lined up? Is it where they're supposed to be? Um, I think we've made ours easy enough to set down very, that you don't need those. And the way that I proved that to my team because our team was kind of internally debating do we add a level indicator or not. Uh, I took my 10 year old, my middle boy, and I brought him down to Storm Academy and I said, I want you to run this plow. And I'm just like, I'm not going to train you a whole lot. He had run a loader before but uh, I just want to see if you can set this thing down level. And he consistently was able to set it down level. And it's not because he was a perfect operator, it's because you can have the thing tilted back 4 inches or tilted forward 4 inches and it still sets down level when you go to set it down. And then I put them on a different product that has the fixed corners and the kid couldn't get the thing set down level. And again, it's not a knock on that product, it's just, it's the way it was designed. And we specifically worked to design around those challenges because um, I'm not saying everyone's got 10 year olds running their loaders, but I think a lot of companies have people that are as smart as 10 year olds running their loaders sometimes.

Speaker D: Right?

Speaker B: You're saying. So this is Sean proof. Sean will be able to run this.

Speaker C: Yeah, Sean, Sean should be able to handle this product. Our target demographic. Love you.

Speaker B: It's awesome. It's uh, I'm excited for you guys. You know the, the, the biggest thing I think Mark, I'm trying to get his feedback pulled up here. I'm on a backup computer here so I'm trying to go across systems. But if I remember correctly, one of his biggest feedbacks was the, from year to year, the difference in time for greasing. There were a astronomically less zerks on this plow than in uh, previous products we've been running. So that was a big savings.

Speaker C: This was another very intentional move that we made. Uh, we recognize that in our own snow business that we are not diligent about greasing. A lot of our machines sit on site year round and we have mobile fleet mechanics that do this stuff. But when it snows a lot it's not a priority. And so oftentimes, just candidly what happened is our plows would get greased when they came in for the spring and they get greased before they get sent out and that was the only time they ever got greased. And I'm not saying that's every company. I'm sure there's some companies on you Saying, oh, no, we grease our stuff every time. Well, good for you. Not. Not most. Most companies don't do that. Um, our company doesn't do it. Uh, I've talked to many other companies that don't get out there and grease stuff between storms. So what we've done is we have integrated, um, self lubricating, greaseless bushings into a majority of the rotating points on the plow. Now, I'm not saying there's no grease zerks. Like, the main pivot pin still has a greaser. Yeah, there's a couple, which I think once a year would be enough for that because it's a sealed environment. Um, the hydraulic cylinders, those are off the shelf hydraulic cylinders. We've kept that very simple so that they're inexpensive. Because some of the other brands out there, you pay 1,000 bucks for a cylinder when you break it. Ours are a couple hundred bucks off the shelf. Um, those have grease zerks in them from the factory. But otherwise, yeah, we have very few grease zerks on the plow because we have greaseless bushings. The other nice thing is when and if those greaseless bushings everywhere out, you just pop in new bushings and you have a brand new plow when it comes to the tightness and performance of it. Uh, so just another one of those things that we've gotten this feedback over the past decade. We've seen it in our own snow business, and we're just trying to address these little. I wouldn't say massive issues, but these little things, they all add up.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker D: Yeah. It's.

Speaker B: It's not major stuff. It's tweaks. It's, you know, that. That's what anybody would do. If you're out there and you're saying, well, I really like this product, but if I could get this, this, this, and this just turned up a little bit, that would be perfect for us. And, you know, it sounds like you went and did it, so, I mean, it's great. Do you want to. Do you want to talk about, like, we've. We've talked about the scrape and the scrape. Is it for wing plows? There's nothing, no wing plow that I've run out there with a, uh, even close to as good a scrape. Do you want to talk about the. The edge system a little more? Or do you. Or did we kind of. You think we covered that enough? Because I know it's. It's different. It's definitely a different way to go. Yeah.

Speaker C: And we kind of talked about it. It's a Three layer system. Uh, it's got the steel, rubber, steel. The steel does a good job with the hard pack and the scrape. The rubber does a good job with the moisture and the sound dampening, but no carbide. But we don't have to use carbide to get long edge life.

Speaker B: There you go.

Speaker C: So because we have a three layer system, it's thick. When you come to Syma or when you get a demo or whatever you do, you'll see that our edge system is over an inch and a half thick. Uh, it looks a little ridiculous when you look at it. But because it's three layers, uh, it's thick. But because it's thick, you also get an extremely high service life without having to use carbide. And don't get me wrong, carbide's a beautiful thing.

Speaker B: It's awesome. But what's it cost right now?

Speaker C: Well, and it is ironic timing on carbide costs, but it's up like 500% in the last year. Um, and that could come back down, of course. But it's not just the cost. Uh, uh, it's also that back to the feedback said earlier, people were concerned about the scratching. Uh, uh, carbide is ten times harder than steel. So carbide does leave scratch marks on asphalt and, and concrete.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker C: And it, not only does it leave scratch marks, a lot of times they're superficial, but it leaves like a bright white scratch mark so it like stands out. It's like, hey customer, come check out this. And a lot of times you can scuff it off with your foot. Uh, so it's superficial, but it is still something. It's an appearance thing.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker C: Like it does matter. And we don't leave any of that with our edge system. Uh, and you still are going to get that long service life. Now do I think we're going to get as much service life as carbide? I don't know that for sure yet. Uh, we got, you know, 70 plows out there. We got tons of hours on them. We took measurements to try to best drive what we think that translates to in terms of service life. I think it does depend on what size plow. I think on the compact plows, you're probably going to get four or five, six, seven or eight years of service life out of those edges. I think on the bigger, heavier plows with the bigger loaders, you're going to get less.

Speaker D: Mhm.

Speaker B: Well, I mean that's, that's kind of

Speaker C: all of them, right?

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: Like even, even Jeremy with the HD Arctics. I mean he, we always joke that I've never broken a block because all I use is LDS, but he breaks blocks on the HDs. Uh, the bigger plows are always being pushed by bigger, heavier machines putting more stresses on, on components. You're always going to have more breakages with, with the bigger, heavier plows and bigger, heavier, heavier machines.

Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, we, with the plows we use this year, we put, you know, a few hundred hours on um, them for sure and we just hardly see any edge life wear.

Speaker B: We didn't see any wear.

Speaker D: Pretty happy with that.

Speaker C: So yeah, Jeremy, the 16 footer you, the 16 footer you sent back to us, you had sent us, how many hours were on it? I don't remember what the number was, but it was, it was a few hundred for sure. There was only about 20% edge wear on that. Um, so we had 80% life left on that one yet after a couple hundred hours. So based on that math that means it should be uh, a thousand hour edge. But I don't want to, I don't want to come here and advertise that. Won't be disappointed.

Speaker B: Too soon to do that. Yeah, I mean, but it's definitely weird. We didn't notice. I mean we had 100 and something hours and we didn't notice anywhere.

Speaker D: It's.

Speaker B: If there is anywhere, it's not noticeable at all.

Speaker D: Um, we p a lot of, lot of, lot of concrete and stuff and some around here. I know a lot of guys out Easter me mainly asphalt but pretty fast, you know, big lots we around are all concrete. So that thing, I mean like he said, I'm just trying to not plug it, but I'm just trying to let me know that we pull a lot of concrete and then still didn't have much wear.

Speaker C: So that's awesome. Well, and I think just to round out the edge discussion, uh, so we can move forward. The other thing that that glacier and Jeremy helped us with a lot was, you know, some of the earliest testing they did, they, they were sending us videos of just this beautiful scrape. But then when the edges would hit hard, hard, hard pack, they would trip back before they would scrape it off. And basically Jeremy's feedback was, hey, it's working good. But what if this could be better? Like what if, what if you could make this not trip back quite as easy so that we could scrape this stuff off. So that actually led to one of the biggest changes we made on the product. Um, to stiffen up the trip force on the sections which Helped us. Not only helped us achieve even better hard pack scrape performance, but it also just generally improved the overall scrape, uh, uh, of the plow in all conditions. Because, again, it's always. The scrape is good in all conditions. It's phenomenal in all conditions. This just made it that much better. And, and a lot of that feedback came from Jeremy. I don't even know how many videos you sent us, Jeremy. It was hundreds. Uh, you were great about sending us feedback. Um, but that feedback helped us make, again, a final, better version for everyone that's going to get them this year.

Speaker D: I would send those. I would send those videos in the middle, and I didn't care. I sent a group chat about you and Phil and, uh, Steve. I sent to those things the middle of night, and you guys would even respond, in all night. It's pretty cool.

Speaker C: That's right. We're out there doing snow, too, baby. That's what it's all about.

Speaker B: Is it so quiet because of the edge system, or is it a combination of, like, the edges, the springs, the bushings? How did you achieve that?

Speaker C: It's all of it.

Speaker B: It's, uh, all of it.

Speaker C: It's all of it. So one of the reasons that a lot of products with segmented edge systems rattle is because in order to float over an uneven surface, you have to have a lot of moving parts. And when you have a lot of moving parts, you have a lot of places that can rattle and make noise and vibrate. Uh, and candidly, because no one else in the industry is using bushings, they're leaving, um, a significant amount of tolerance gap between their pieces so that it's easier to assemble them. Uh, and I don't want to get too much into engineering talk because I'm not an engineer, and I'm just regurgitating what my engineers have told me. But essentially, a typical tolerance, uh, for metal parts going together is like 60 to 70,000ths, uh, of an inch tolerance, which I don't even know what that equates to. It's like, it's based. It's like human hairs. It's not a ton, but it's. It's slop, right? It's. It's slop. And when you're using bushings, you're like. You're like ten thousandths. So it's like five to six times less tolerance gap in our pieces, which makes it harder to assemble and put together. But what it means is, when you get the final product, the thing is really tight. And because it's really tight, and when I say tight, I don't mean it's, like, binding. I mean, like, all the stuff fits perfectly.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, there's no vibration. There's no rattling. And then you put that in conjunction with the fact that there's a layer of rubber in the edge system, which is a dampener. You now have a tight plow with a dampener in the middle of the edge. And again, we didn't intend to make this plow quiet, but the first time we ran this thing on the pavement, I was like, holy smokes, something's wrong.

Speaker B: There's no noise.

Speaker C: All you hear is the engine of the loader. You don't hear the plow at all. It's insane. Uh, it's insane.

Speaker D: That's the first thing I did. I took it off the trailer when I got it. Late fall was dry pavement. Ran it outside on dry pavement. Couldn't even hear it. All I could hear is the loader.

Speaker B: Well, that's what that was. One of Mark's first feedbacks. He was running, uh, ours on a 321, and he said, uh, if I was running this in a skid, I would be nervous because I'm not hearing anything. I would be trying to put tremendous down pressure on this thing because I'm. I. I'm so used to hearing the plow, and I'm not hearing it. So he's like, thank God. With the loader, I can just look down over the front tires and see that, hey, listen, this is scraping clean. I don't have to do anything, but it's so quiet. Uh, and that was like. Yeah, he was shocked by how quiet it was. And then when I got there and took the first video of it that we took while I was plowing, I was like, holy. I only hear the loader. I hear more noise coming off the moisture on the tires than I do from the plow.

Speaker C: It is very quiet, which, again, wasn't necessarily the intent. And it's. And I'm not even saying it's a huge marketing push, but I will say that from an operator experience standpoint, over the course of, uh, a long night or day, it allows you to keep the radio quieter and still hear. Um, doesn't rattle your brain as much like it does make a difference on operator fatigue over a long shift.

Speaker B: 100% mental fatigue. It is. Yes. That is definitely a key thing in mental fatigue, is the noise.

Speaker C: Yeah. I love it. I would say one of the last main differentiators, um, that we haven't already talked about is probably the biggest piece of feedback we've received from our customers over the past decade and that is that it would, you know, basically what they've said is it would sure be nice if I didn't have to stock all these different edges and all these different springs and all these different cylinders and all these different hydraulic lines. Like why can't this same cylinder, like these two plows look like they're the same size? Why does it have two different cylinders and these two plows look like they're the same size? Why are the edges half an inch different? And like for, for extreme, uh, example, like let's say you have a fleet of 30 hydraulic wing plows, um, not, not called Phantom. If you're going to support those 30 hydraulic wing plows and let's say you have five different SKUs, you probably need to stock like a hundred different part SKUs to support that fleet of product if you want to proactively stock at least. Now one great thing about Storm is we stock all this stuff and overnight if you need it. But that's not cheap either. You need overnight cutting edges, the shipping costs more than the parts. It's not great. We can do it. But so one thing that we laser focused on with this product is cross compatibility between all of the different models. So right now with uh, our product launch, um, you know, all the way from our 16 footer, uh, for compact loaders up to our 26 foot man wing, all of the edges, all of the shoes, all of the springs, a majority of the hydraulic lines and uh, a few of the cylinders are all cross compatible. So like if you owned a fleet, 20 Phantoms and you owned all five different SKUs, you could probably stock 10 parts to support your entire fleet.

Speaker B: That's phenomenal. That's really um, that's a selling point. Honestly, that's a huge selling point.

Speaker C: It is. I as a contractor, I'm obviously biased because it's our product, but as a contractor, simpler is better when it comes to supporting a product. And the fact that we've used off the shelf cylinders and there's only three total cylinder SKUs across all models, um, the fact that we have the same hydraulic block for all the plows, the fact that it's the same two foot edge section for every single plow, the same two foot wing edge or shoe section for every single plow and every single spring across every plow is cross compatible. I mean those are really the parts that can break or need to be replaced. Oh, and curb runners too I should say. All the exact same across every model. Uh, I think that, you know, especially considering that we have a lot of customers that have fleets of 10 plus, that's going to be a huge selling point and it's going to save them a ton of money on supporting and maintaining the product.

Speaker B: That's awesome. Yeah, that's phenomenal. Yeah. And I had, I had the 816, uh, compact so. And I'm in my own little bubble because I don't have any heavy loaders. We do everything with skids and, and the compacts. Um, so I know there's other models out there. How many different versions are you building? How many different sizes, different models are you guys actually doing? Because I know Jeremy had different ones. I know there's other options out there, but I'm honestly not familiar. Um, I didn't invest myself in knowing everything you're making because I only need the one size.

Speaker C: We're keeping it very, very simple. This year there's going to be six SKUs. Um, the smallest one actually is going to be for this year that is going to be the 816. I know Steve, we had originally talked about maybe doing a 12 footer for you, but uh, after we looked at an eight foot mold board with, with uh, two foot wings, it just kind of looked like a T Rex. Um, yeah. And to be honest, to be honest, the weight savings wasn't enough to really make that SKU worth prioritizing this year.

Speaker D: Mhm.

Speaker C: Um, we're going to do something about that in future, future uh, years to add some diversity to that size. But so for this year the smallest one will be an 8 foot mold board with 4 foot wings on each side. 16ft overall. Now what I will say is because of our full floating system and because um, uh, the way we've engineered the plow to make it easy to push with the Stealth Edge system. You can push a 16 foot plow with, with a loader that would normally struggle to push that big of a plow. I think the best feedback I got was uh, on that was from Kyle, uh, at ud. Uh, uh, he was running. I, I would argue that these loaders are too small for this plow. But he was running uh, eight 16s on two 21 loaders. He had previously been running 13 foot plows on those.

Speaker B: I would agree with that but.

Speaker C: And I said, I saw a video of him running this thing on a 221. I'm like wow, how's the 221 handle that giant plow? And he's like Honestly, I, I, I think it walks the dog. And I'm like, okay, I mean that's good for you. I would still argue it's probably too big for that loader. Uh, but he said that going from a 13 footer to a 16 footer on those two 21s, he was getting like 40% more productivity out of that loader just because he's covering more ground with a taller board and wider stance. I thought that was kind of cool feedback. Um, and we do have some cool solutions that we'll present to you guys at SIMA to show you how you can potentially take a smaller machine like a 221 or if you're using a 321 and you're concerned about the weight, uh, because our product is overbuilt, uh, because we're prioritizing durability in our launch here, um, we have some, some good counterweight opportunities, uh, so that you have more stability, uh, with smaller loaders. I would say that the 16 footer is ideally engineered for like a ah, cat 908 which is like a 14,000 pound machine. Yep, that's a perfect combination. That's what Jeremy was running. So yeah, real simple. This year, six SKUs we're gonna have the, the 816, um, we're gonna have, and that's a compact 36 inch high mold board. And then we're gonna have a 1018. So that's a 36 inch mold board, 10 foot center mold board and 4 foot wings. 18 foot overall. And then I think maybe our most unique and maybe even slightly industry redefining SKU, uh, is going to be our compact 22 foot. No one that I know of has ever made a 22 foot compact plow. So it's 36 inches high. Uh, it has a 10 foot moldboard, it has six foot van wings on each side. Oh, so it's a 22 foot compact. You can run it on like a cat910, cat914. Case's new 421 is a perfect match for that unit. And I think the beautiful use case for this 22 foot compact is that, you know, you see all these guys on, on Instagram, LinkedIn, they're doing these 5060 acre distribution centers. I know, I know, Jeremy, you have one of those too. But what a lot of guys are actually doing is like they're doing uh, a little manufacturing facility that's got 15 loading docks. You got to get under 15 kingpins or, or they're doing a 10 acre distribution center like that's the more normal,

Speaker B: uh, on a route.

Speaker C: Right? On a route, exactly. And what we've done with this C22 Phantom, uh, is we've allowed van clearance with a much smaller loader that's much more practical to use on other types of sites. Because let's be real, a 26 foot van wing, like you're kind of doing a giant site or nothing because it's not super maneuverable. And don't get me wrong, we have a 26 foot full 48 inch tall mold board van wing plow that a lot of people are used to running and seeing with the incumbent uh, product that we've been selling. And it's a great product but it's, it's made for a specific case, it's

Speaker B: site specific, it's not versatile.

Speaker C: Exactly. This C22 I'm uh, extremely excited about because now we can take a, what I would say like is an everyman's loader and put an every man's plow on it. You can do route work with it. You can do Walmart parking lots, you can do bank parking lots. And by the way, also you get a little distribution center. You could go plow a 10 acre distribution center, get under all the kingpins and plow the whole site.

Speaker B: That's awesome.

Speaker C: And by the way, you can also do that for a total investment of under 200 grand for the loader and the plow as opposed to needing to buy a $200,000 plow with a 50 plus thousand dollar van wing attachment to do those bigger sites. Um, I think this is going to be a big one, not only for people doing route work, but for guys in transitional snow markets. Like I think you could do a 40 acre distribution center in St. Louis, Missouri with this compact 22 because they only get 15 inches of snow a year.

Speaker B: No, this is going to be huge.

Speaker C: I think it's going to definitely huge.

Speaker B: That's awesome. Good for you guys.

Speaker C: We're going to do some case studies on it this winter. I wish we had a little bit more data, uh, but we're going to. We bought a couple case 421s and we're going to run these C22s on them and we are just going to compare the productivity and versatility of uh, a 421 with a C22 versus like uh, you know, a 621 with a conventional 22 foot 48 inch tall mold board wing plow versus like a cat or a uh, case 321 or cat. 908 with a 16 footer like this falls right in the middle. Can it do all the detail work that the small one does, but also do, you know, get the kingpins like the big one? I think so. But we're going to test it this winter and see.

Speaker B: Did you guys, did Storm or anybody have these C22s last year for the soft launch?

Speaker C: Uh, Jeremy, did you guys have one or Is that a C18?

Speaker D: What's up?

Speaker C: Did you guys have a C22 or is that a C18 you guys had?

Speaker D: I can't remember the C18. I think Putz had 22.

Speaker C: That's right. Putz. He had the 22. He didn't get to run it that many times though. Because you guys had a slow end of your winter.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's just.

Speaker D: No, he got it. What he got in front of a couple we had. Last couple storms were actually our biggest ones of the year. So he actually ran them from them.

Speaker C: That's true. Yeah.

Speaker B: But did you guys run them in Storm Jordan?

Speaker C: We, we didn't. Uh, it was one of those situations where we prioritized our own fleet last. So once we started shipping soft launch product out to, uh, partners, we deprioritized our own.

Speaker B: Gotcha.

Speaker C: Our own units.

Speaker D: So.

Speaker C: So the ones we started with are the ones that we stuck with for the season in uh, Mankato here. Um, but, but I just remember Kyle, uh, Kyle, uh, in Ohio had a C22 and he actually was supposed to have a 521 he was going to

Speaker B: run it on and.

Speaker C: Or a uh,421. I mean and something happened with having that thing ready. So he actually ended up running his on a 621. So he's running a compact 22 foot on a 621. And he said it was just an amazing combo. So I think I thought that was kind of a cool testimonial to the durability of what we built into our compact plow line. Like you can take one of our compact plows and run it on a 621 loader and it will hold up to the abuse. And I think a couple of the storms you ran to them were like 8, 9, 10 inches of very wet, heavy snow. Uh, he sent some really cool videos from that too. So he, he loved it, um, did very well with it and he was, you know, candidly running it on too big of a loader, but it handled it just fine.

Speaker B: Well, I mean I think that that 421, as soon as case can keep up with the demand that that loader has now coming for it because it fits that bill between. It's a beefier 321. Because the 321 is great. It's a great, absolutely awesome snow loader. But it is a little bit light and you. If you need more power and a little bit heavier machine, that 421 fits the bill so perfectly that you don't have to jump up to a 521. And I see this combination, the C22 with that. I just see that taking like that's just going to be so popular with guys.

Speaker C: I, I think so too. And again, that's kind of what our case study is going to be around is, is, uh, is that 421 with the C22 or C18. If you don't need van clearance, a C18 is great. A uh, little bit shorter wings are a little bit easier to maneuver in tight spaces with. Like, is that the perfect utility machine where you can do a bank parking lot with no space all the way up to a small distribution center? I think the answer is going to be yes, but we got to prove it out. So be keeping an eye out for videos and case study that this winter because that's like. I mean we literally bought these 421s just to do this case study. And we're going to compare it again with the more conventional route is you have your compact, your small compact, like a uh, cat 906 case 321 case 221. And then you have your case 621 or your 930 cat or whatever brand you run. And, and there's kind of a gap in the middle that no one's filling.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And uh, I'm really curious if that gap in the middle is actually the sweet spot where people could eliminate dual running. Uh, you know, a big and a small together and just run a, A mid size.

Speaker B: Yes. I think that's. I, I think people are going to be looking to do that. As you know, two machines are way more expensive than the right size machine in the middle. So I mean if you can get the right setup that, that hits home in the middle, you don't need to get a smaller one and a bigger one to do it. So efficiency, that's the way everything's trending. So makes sense. So I think you guys are going to hit a home run with that.

Speaker C: The only other thing I would say is we did. Obviously the prevalency of distribution centers is growing. Uh, so even Smaller startup contractors are ending up with a distribution center in their hometown. And they might have a shot at getting that. Um, but they might not want to invest in a full blown van wing plow. Uh, because again, a lot of these small town distribution centers are 10 to 15 acres. They're not, that's not worth investing in a $300,000 setup for that. Uh, just for that. So what we've done is actually every single SKU, um, from the 16 foot compact all the way up to the 26 foot full size, they all have a tapered wing. So any phantom plow can reach underneath a van trailer. Now I will say a four foot wing is not going to get all the way to the backside of the King. It'll get up to the front of the king pin. Uh, we had a couple soft launch partners last year, say like, hey, there's a couple storms where you know, the snow hadn't really drifted under the kingpin. And actually the 16 foot compact did just fine getting a little bit of snow that was underneath the trailer. Uh, and, and they liked the fact that they could get underneath those trailers with any of our plows.

Speaker D: Cool. Yeah.

Speaker B: So now you guys, uh, you're doing the wing plows. You got the new wing plows. Is there anything else with the line coming out? Because I, I heard a rumor, I, I saw a couple maybe, you know, some specially painted products out there. Uh, is there something else, uh, coming?

Speaker C: Yes, there is. And uh, this is one that really hasn't been teased yet. So this is like breaking news flash here. Um, we, we did enter this season, uh, this upcoming season knowing that we like a lot of our customers that come to us, they come to us for their full needs, everything that they need to, to run their heavy equipment, uh, attachments. They come to storm and we take care of them. And historically we've been able to do that because we've been distributing someone else's product that had a full lineup. Um, obviously we were fortunate to be able to engineer and develop the Phantom, uh, uh, in the way that we did and then timing that we did to have that ready for market this year thanks to our soft launch partners. Um, but as we looked at the fixed wing push box market, which is a diet, like a dire need, you know, even companies that are running hydraulic wing plows, like, there's still times when you absolutely should, should supplement uh, with a push box because it makes sense financially. It makes sense from a simplicity standpoint. You're not always going to have enough competent or well trained operators to get the most out of a wing plow. Anyway, so push boxes are a big piece of this equation. But also, uh, you know, we work with, uh, I joke with our team internally. Like, we work with a lot of bougie customers that like their Instagram image and they want their stuff to all match and look the same. Um, so we looked at the market and said, who, you know, who makes the best push box? I think listeners, uh, of this, listeners of this show will have no qualms with the idea that our Arctic, uh, has built and engineered the best mousetrap m on the market when it comes to fixed wing push boxes. And hands down, thanks to Snow Jobs, we have developed a great relationship with the Straits over the last three years, um, ironically, which was really kicked off at SIMA three years ago. So this is coming full circle. But, uh, we've been working closely with the Arctic team to come out with a Phantom edition sectional. So we will have, uh, color, uh, matched branding, matched Phantom sectionals along with our Phantom hydraulic wing plow line starting here in 2026.

Speaker B: That's awesome. Good for you guys. Good for Arctic. That makes sense. And they. These are. These are jet black.

Speaker C: Yep. They're black and black and gray or black and silver, just like our Phantom, uh, plow. So if you're running a Phantom hydraulic wing plow and you put it next to a Phantom box, we'll have it at SIMA too. So you guys can come check it out.

Speaker B: I saw a couple. I saw a couple on the paint line in a. In the background of a photo, and I'm like, did we order more Snow Jobs edition Arctics? Because I ain't paying for those. Yeah, I think they're a jet black. They looked really good.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's the same. It's the same hammered black, um, powder as our Phantom wing plows, and then it's the same hammered silver or hammered gray, um, for the push frame and for the shoes.

Speaker B: Oh, that's cool.

Speaker C: So it's all color match. Exactly.

Speaker D: Storm's going to have a full fleet of southern Arctic black Phantom Arctics in there.

Speaker C: We will. Yeah, so, so we, uh, we will have a full. Plenty of inventory, uh, of Arctic sectionals for anyone that needs, uh, and obviously there's lots of good dealers for that product out there. So we're not trying to snipe other people's business necessarily. But we do also understand, again, that our customers that buy our wing plows are looking to supplement their fleet with push boxes as well. And for those that have those needs we're here for you.

Speaker B: That's awesome.

Speaker C: I should, should also mention we wanted to, uh, try to differentiate a few other things besides just paint. So we did do paint. We have some cool decals. Phantom edition. I think they look pretty badass. I think you guys will like them. Um, but another thing is because the product we're coming from, uh, had a carbide edge system where you get, you know, a thousand hours edge life, we thought maybe our incumbent customer base might want a little bit longer edge life. So we did make, uh, not carbide embedded, but we did make laser welded carbide edges standard on our Phantom edition. So if you buy a, uh, uh, Phantom edition sectional from Storm, it will have carbide, uh, embedding or, sorry, carbide laser welded on. One differentiator with carbide being laser welded on as opposed to embedded is because it's on the surface instead of in the middle of the steel, you don't tend to get the scratching that you can see with carbide, uh, embedding. You also don't get quite as much service life. So just being straight up about that, you're not going to get quite as much service life improvement with laser welded versus embedded. But it's kind of in the middle, right? It's going to get you that three, four, five year cycle.

Speaker D: Yeah, I like that brand that. We've been using that for years here, and I really, I like those better than the embedded, honestly.

Speaker C: Yeah, it holds up really nice. Um, so that's one differentiator, and then the other one was, you know, just to help, to help people, uh, hopefully prevent them from breaking blocks. We did make the bottom blocks 2 inch thick as standard on our Phantom lineup. So not huge things because the Arctic product doesn't need a lot of improvements because it's great from the factory. But we, we've just made a couple minor tweaks to, to just differentiate them slightly besides just the paint.

Speaker B: That's great. Good for you guys. Man, you guys are one stop shopping. It's, uh, it's pretty awesome. We're, we're very happy for you guys. We're very proud of you guys. I mean, this is going to be awesome. It's going to be industry changing, which is what you've always set out to do, right? You know, set the future standard. It's, uh, you know, you guys are doing it. You're, you're not just talking about it. You're out there doing it. So good for you guys.

Speaker C: Well, and I think this is Just the start. Go ahead, Jeremy.

Speaker D: I said gonna be busy. Booth at, uh, Sinai. Everybody's checking this out.

Speaker C: I hope so.

Speaker B: I would say so. I would definitely say so. I mean, it was at Storks, uh, you know, you always had 25, 30 people huddled around the thing. You couldn't even see it. If you couldn't get into the, uh, front row of the pushing and shoving, you couldn't see it.

Speaker C: That's right. Yeah. I'm excited. Team's excited. We're gonna have a huge group there. So make sure, come and, make sure to come and say hi, check the stuff out. Even if you're not in the market to buy it. Uh, uh, just come check it out and help spread the. Spread, uh, the hype. Our team is hyped and uh, they love getting hyped with the industry. And like, like I said, it's, this is just the start. We're, we're all about setting that future standard. Uh, we had to start somewhere. You know, we, we've been blessed to do very well distributing product for the past decade. Uh, we felt that between the feedback we've received and between some challenges with tariffs and other things, that it was time make a us made product in this product segment. And so that's what we did. And no, uh, no ill will to our competitors. Um, I don't know if that's totally mutual, but from our side, no ill will. That way, we still think it's a great product. We're still supporting that product. We're still here for all our customers that have bought that product from us. Nothing changes there. I've said that before. I'll say it again. Um, if you talk to anyone from our team, business as usual when it comes to other product lines. Uh, uh, but, but the future for Storm is, is an OEM product. And this is just the start.

Speaker B: So I got one more question though, for you, because this, this is actually important in my mind anyway. You guys started as a dealer. You built your reputation on a dealer service. Service has always been synonymous with Storm. Everybody says it like, I can't get parts anywhere. I can always call Storm and I get them overnighted. That's, that's not open for even debate or dispute. Everybody says it. You now a manufacturer, that same level of service that you've been producing for years on another product. I would assume that that same level of service and parts availability is going to come with this. Do you have a network set up or they have to all go through Minnesota with Storm?

Speaker C: Yeah, great question. It's something that we. So just to frame it up. Like, I think we've done a great job supporting customers from thousands of miles away because of the miracles of overnight shipping and air freight. Um, and we're going to continue doing that. However, we also understand that people sometimes need local service or want local service. So our intent over the next number of years is to continue scaling out, um, locations throughout the snow belt. And I think my ultimate goal would be is that we could be within two to three hours of every major snow market, at least east of the Mississippi River. Once you get west, it's, it's, it's hard to touch that because the density is so low. But, um, so as of right now, many of you know, we've been partnered with sns, uh, in Scranton, Pennsylvania for many years that continue. They will have, uh, not only the incumbent product, but also the new, uh, Phantom sectional and Phantom, uh, parts service plows, all available there. Uh, last year we also partnered up with Northeast De Icing Solutions to offer the same type of cooperative setup in Massachusetts, uh, there in Uxbridge. And uh, this year we've added a third option in the Northeast, uh, or in the Great Plains, depending how you want to define it. We've teamed up with Kyle and his team at UD Maintenance in Amherst, Ohio. So now we have coverage, uh, you know, Cleveland, uh, uh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Canton, kind of that market. And it's a little bit of a drive from those places, but it's accessible if someone needs something same day instead of next day. Um, and I think the intent would be to, to continue. I don't think. I know. The intent will be to continue scaling out partners and locations like that throughout the snowbelt to get more, more coverage.

Speaker B: Awesome. Very cool. Excited for you guys. This is huge.

Speaker C: Yeah, we're pumped. It's uh, it's almost, it's almost too close to home for us to, to totally appreciate the significance and how much work has gone in because it's just been embedded into our lives for the last, you know, eight, nine months here. It's just all we've been working on, uh, is getting ready for this and the soft launch and ramping up manufacturing and ramping up, you know, part support and a new website launch that we're doing and you know, hype videos and then at the same time we're, you know, trying to keep storm chasing going and doing our snow job stuff and there's just, there's a lot going on, but it's all super fun and we're all super Excited. And we, uh, appreciate all the support, uh, you know, snow jobs being at the top of that list.

Speaker B: Oh, it's no problem. Oh, it's no problem at all, man.

Speaker D: We're.

Speaker B: We're. Like I said the. From day one. What have we said about this show? Uh, you know, get exposure for real snow guys and help the good guys win. There are good guys out there and, uh, you know, people doing stuff the right way. That's. That's what we're about. So, I mean, we couldn't be happier for you guys. And, uh, we're very proud of you guys. So good luck. And, you know, I think, uh, I think the booth at SIMA will be mobbed. And, uh, you know, after that, you come relax and, uh, you come to the party with the best cups ever. And, uh, uh, we'll see you guys there. But, yeah, we're looking forward to seeing you guys at Saima.

Speaker C: Awesome. That's all I got, boys.

Speaker D: All right.

Speaker B: Anything else, Jay?

Speaker D: I don't know. Not nothing, really. All right.

Speaker B: All right, cool. Then we'll wrap it there. Jordan, thanks for coming on, as always. Appreciate it. And that'll do it for this very special. Uh, it was a dusting, but I guess it turned into a product profile. So you guys got the bonus. This was your, uh, this was your first look. The. The product launch drop, the information dump. So now you know it. If you're going to sima. Check it out. Jordan, you remember the booth number there? I got it, uh, written down.

Speaker D: I don't think we can call it a dusting. It went from a dusting to a storm with this big announcement.

Speaker C: Marketing magic. Wow. Went from dustings to a storm.

Speaker B: The cannon has fired. That's awesome. Good one. Oh, geez. That's dusting to the storm. I love that.

Speaker C: I don't know the booth number, but to be honest, Steve, it's so big, you can't miss it.

Speaker B: Yeah, you're gonna see it. You're gonna see it. Just look for the mob of people that the, uh, last couple years, it's always been at the storm booth. So I think it's one of the

Speaker C: biggest booths at the show. And we actually. We have two booths. We have the storm booth, and then we have the Storm Academy and storm chasing booth, too, across the aisle from.

Speaker B: Very cool. You guys hate money. We do.

Speaker C: We're spending all of it. So please buy plows. Please come by our plows.

Speaker B: You can't go wrong. Uh, we, like Jeremy and I, you know, we call it as we see it. If this thing was, we would have told you it was, because that's exactly what we told Jordan. Don't send it if it's not ready because we're. We're gonna say it. And, uh, this thing was, uh, head and shoulders above any other wing plow we've ever run. Um, and the scrape, I'm not prepared, as I will go to my grave. I'm not prepared to say it scrapes as good as an arctic, but it's the closest thing I've ever seen to an arctic. And it's a wing plow, so you're adding that kind of versatility. Uh, check it out. Make sure you hit the booth. Make sure you come by and say hello. Jordan, congratulations to you and the team again. We're excited for you guys, and we'll see in a couple days.

Speaker C: Appreciate it. See.

Speaker B: All right, that's it. Snow Jobs nation. We're going to wrap this dustings, everybody. Have a safe weekend. All right? If you're traveling to Simon next week, have safe travels. We will see you there. And, uh, keep pushing.

Speaker A: I stand and still Defy every light Stretch every light all every line.