Season 2, Episode 126 - The Guys Take a Trip to Superior, Wisconsin for a tour of AMSOIL PT1

 

The following transcription of The Truck Show Podcast was generated using a speech recognition software, and will contain errors. 

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Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2s):

John Wayne Airport, Santa Ana, California. Headed to terminal two to take off on a flight to St. Paul, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and ultimately to Superior Wisconsin to go see our friends at Zo.

Recording (18s):

Flight 2 0 9 or clear for Vector 3, 2, 4. We have clearance. Clarence, Roger. Roger. What’s our vector? Victor

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (30s):

Holman. Welcome to Minneapolis St. Paul.

Sean P. Holman (33s):

I’ve been here many times.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (34s):

Yeah, you passed through this joint. Quite a few over the years.

Sean P. Holman (37s):

Say at least a hundred.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (39s):

Yeah. I’ve only been here twice. Both times for AMSOIL.

Sean P. Holman (42s):

This is the only place in 25 years of flying that I’ve ever gotten stuck overnight.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (46s):

Happy to say that has not happened to me. Have you been to AMSOIL Arena?

Sean P. Holman (51s):

No. And I have never been to AMS oil proper, so I’m actually really looking forward to this trip. I’ll be honest with you, when we signed Anzo, we both use their stuff anyway, but when we signed them on The truck, Show Podcast, by the way, the sushi joint here. Yeah, it seems like a sushi in the airport wouldn’t be great.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 6s):

But it’s really good. It’s really

Sean P. Holman (1m 7s):

Good. And if you think about it, all the fish is fresh. ’cause it doesn’t have to leave the airport. Right? There’s no ocean nearby.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 12s):

Oh yeah. I didn’t think about that. Anyway,

Sean P. Holman (1m 14s):

So this place is really good. Going back to AMS oil, one of the things I was excited about was taking a tour of their facility. ’cause I’ve never been out this way. So also we need to eat cheese curds.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 24s):

Cheese curds. Can we hit a, what’s the local spot here? Culver. Dover Culver’s. Yes. Culver’s. Yes. ’cause they butter their buns. So I have

Sean P. Holman (1m 32s):

No idea what we’re gonna do for a rental car here. Hopefully it’ll be something not crappy. We’ll see.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 39s):

Can we get an SUV? Small? SUV. Large SUV. Don’t care. SUV.

Sean P. Holman (1m 43s):

I think we have President’s circle so we get to choose.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 45s):

Alright, I’m gonna go on this escalator. And you go on that one. I’m gonna hold the phone record you across the way here.

Sean P. Holman (1m 50s):

So we’re going down two different escalators at the same time.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 55s):

We’re stereoscopic.

Sean P. Holman (1m 56s):

It’s very romantic.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 2s):

Oh, we’re getting on a tram. Oh. Oh. Doors are closing.

Recording (2m 4s):

Please stand clear of the doors. Please. Exit for car rental. Blue, red and silver parking. Shuttles, buses, light rail terminal two and off airport locations.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 18s):

I feel like we got ripped off. We went like eight feet. It was sweat. It wasn’t a tram ride. I could have crawled this far. All, right. Here we go. Rolling up to the Gold member directory. And we’re looking for Holman S President Circle. Look at that. What does it mean? President Circle? That just means you get the pick of the litter.

Sean P. Holman (2m 41s):

Yeah. Basically. See where it says President Circle? Oh yeah. Choose anything on that. Okay. Well

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 46s):

Let’s pretend that we are in Southern California getting a convertible Mustang.

Sean P. Holman (2m 50s):

No,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 51s):

I’m kidding. I’m kidding. We have Volvos Buicks. I’m not impressed so far.

Sean P. Holman (2m 57s):

Nope. There’s

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 59s):

A lot of Hyundais. Got

Sean P. Holman (2m 60s):

A Ram Classic pickup truck down there.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 3s):

Maybe.

Sean P. Holman (3m 4s):

Remember you hate those ’cause they’re

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 5s):

Boring. Yeah, but I would take that over anything so far. Oh, we got a Nissan. What’s this? A rogue, what is this? Murano. Murano. I’m concerned about The truck. It’s gonna be a total stripper model. I’m not feeling this truck. Oh, it’s actually clean. I I, I’m okay with a, it’s it’s kind of beat. It’s your call. You’re driving All. right? Well we settled for the Tiguan, the Volkswagen Tiguan with a whopping 2000 miles on the odometer. All. right. Pulling away from Hertz Poor selection rental cars there, unfortunately. And headed out to Superior Wisconsin to go visit our friends at AMS oil. And before we do that, we gotta thank a few of our friends, including Nissan. Well, you

Sean P. Holman (3m 45s):

Guys know The truck. Show Podcast is presented by Nissan. So if you’re in the market for a mid-size truck, check out the Nissan Frontier or a full-size SUV. You wanna check out the upcoming Nissan Armada? It is awesome. You can head on over to nissan usa dot com to build in price or to find out more information. And of course you can head on down to your local dealer and get yourself behind the Wheel for a Test Drive. And I hope it goes a lot better than this rental.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (4m 9s):

And when you’re not on a bridge heading over a lake, you’re at Banks Power dot com shopping for your duramax parts, including the brand new cool runner oil pan. And you can check out the brand new Ram Air Trans Pans. Everyone hates high trans temps, so get rid of those high trans temps and get yourself a Ram Air Trans pan from banks. You’ll find ’em right now for oh one to 2019 Allison 1005 and six speed transmissions. And coming soon for the 10 speed transmissions, you’ll find those brand new lubrication parts with AMS oil products over at Banks Power dot com.

Sean P. Holman (4m 43s):

Did you say AMS oil? That’s right. Alright, well we are actually heading to AMS oil. As you guys know, this is gonna be a great episode, And. we have to thank them for allowing us to infiltrate their facility and learn all about how the AMS oil is made. We won’t tell you too much. You get to listen to the show and find out all about AMS oil, but if you just can’t wait, go to AMS oil dot com where you can find all the different products they have for your vehicle. It’s not just oil, it’s a whole line of synthetic lubricants and car care products. We love our friends over at AMS oil. They were the first in synthetics.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (5m 14s):

And last but not least, EGR Our friends at EGR USA dot com have some of the very finest truck accessories, including my favorite, the roll track, which is electric or manual. It’s the retractable bed cover for almost all of the popular full-size pickup trucks. Head over to EGR USA dot com to buy yours

Intro (5m 31s):

The truck show. We’re gonna show you what we know. We’re gonna answer What The truck, Because truck rides with The truck show. We have the lifted We have the lowered and everything in between. We’ll talk about trucks that run on diesel and the ones that run on gasoline. The truck show. The truck show. The truck show. Whoa Whoa.

7 (6m 3s):

It’s The truck show with your hosts Lightning and Holman

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (6m 10s):

All. right. So Holman, if you look off to your left hand side here, as we just enter across the bridge from Duluth to Superior Wisconsin

8 (6m 16s):

Trying to merge, there’s Super Duty Fifth Wheel Tow the boat. Whoa. Whoa Whoa Whoa Whoa. Whoa Whoa. Wait a minute, we don’t see those. Where we come from. That’s a

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (6m 23s):

Super duty with a fifth Wheel and then a boat attached to the back of the fifth Wheel.

8 (6m 27s):

Why do people merge over here? They don’t

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (6m 31s):

All. right? Walking into Amil. Oh, it’s a beautiful lobby. And. we are greeted with, oh, Holly, wait. Holly, what are these orange vests that we do? We

Sean P. Holman (6m 41s):

Don’t. You need a safety vest Lightning. And they, they match your eyes.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (6m 44s):

We do not have to wear these, do we Really?

Holly (6m 46s):

Yeah. Safety first.

Sean P. Holman (6m 48s):

You know it’s funny, at The truck, Show Podcast, we always subscribe to safety thirds. So it’s gonna be A little bit different for us on this trip.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (6m 54s):

Do you have an extra, extra, extra medium?

Holly (6m 59s):

No. No.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (6m 59s):

Okay. Don’t walk away from you guys. We’re about to start the tour All. right? So Holman’s gonna repeat it. So Holly didn’t wanna be on, on Mike And. we have to go through a safety right briefing.

Sean P. Holman (7m 10s):

Well, she didn’t want the proprietary safety video to be recorded because you know, their competitors would know how safe they are here. So I’ll break it down for you Lightning. Sure. Please. It’s very simple. Yes. Don’t touch anything. Okay. Don’t touch anything. Yeah, don’t touch anything. Okay. Also, there’ll be some lines on the floor. Just stay between the lines. Okay. Better than you do. Like when your coloring don’t go out. Okay. It’s, it’s not a fashion statement. It’s not like new art if you’re

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (7m 33s):

Outside. So they’re not suggestions. It’s mandatory.

Sean P. Holman (7m 35s):

It’s mandatory All. right. Also wear your eye protection. Yes. And don’t scream, you’ll fire or steal anything. Okay. No mementos from AMS oil. You can’t have ’em. Do you have your clothes toed shoes on? Yes

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (7m 47s):

I do. Okay. Hey

Sean P. Holman (7m 47s):

Holly, do you have one of those monkey backpacks that have the tail on it? Because if you wanna put one of those, a safety backpack with a leash, I’ll clip ’em to my belt loop.

Holly (7m 56s):

Like the Disneyland ones?

Sean P. Holman (7m 57s):

Yes. I just clip it into my belt loop

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (7m 59s):

And it keeps me from wandering off. That’s

Holly (8m 1s):

A full-time job. Yes.

Sean P. Holman (8m 2s):

You are smart by adding the orange vests. Yes.

Holly (8m 5s):

That’s why we can keep an eye on you. And our visitors have orange and employees have yellow.

8 (8m 10s):

Oh, that’s, yeah, you

Holly (8m 12s):

Can stick out more. So,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (8m 16s):

Oh, we’re entering the floor and we’re following the yellow brick road. We’re inside AMSOIL All. right. We’re gonna start off our Azo tour in the historical section, kinda the wall of fame. And we’ve got Darren. What’s up Darren, how you doing? Doing

Darren (8m 31s):

Great. How are you guys doing? Fantastic.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (8m 33s):

Tell us, tell us where we are. What’s your job here?

Darren (8m 35s):

This, I’m vice president of manufacturing, so I’m responsible. So that’s

Sean P. Holman (8m 38s):

Pretty important.

Darren (8m 40s):

So. it is a time. Look in

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (8m 42s):

A minute, how did you get lumped at

8 (8m 43s):

With us touring? Why is, yeah, why is a vp?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (8m 45s):

Don’t you have a better job to do right now?

Darren (8m 48s):

Nope. This is exactly where I’m supposed to be. All, right? Yeah. I’m responsible for manufacturing and maintenance at all of the AMS oil locations. So we’ve got the building that we’re in, which is the manufacturing area, obviously your manufacturing plant. There are multiple buildings here in Superior Wisconsin. But then we also have another manufacturing site down in Milwaukee where we specialize in industrial lubricants. Okay. So stuff that your average, you know, your truck enthusiast is not gonna be interested in, but it’s,

Sean P. Holman (9m 14s):

Unless they’re in manufacturing or to

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (9m 18s):

Go there. I’ll say that Darren, we, so I work at Banks, Power out in Los Angeles, And. we just got a pallet full of industrial lubricants for a lot of our larger tools, CNC machines, things like that.

Darren (9m 27s):

Yeah. And, and that for truck enthusiast, that would be more on the front end of it, you know, it’s like, Hey, where’s my truck made? How do they make it? Yeah, these fluids would be used in that application. So stamping of parts, machining of parts, things like that. That’s what the Milwaukee location specializes

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (9m 42s):

In. And then you do have a facility out in Las Vegas, is that just warehousing? Correct.

Darren (9m 46s):

That’s our Las Vegas distribution center. AM Oil has 12 distribution centers. There are 10 in the United States, two in Canada. And they’re dispersed in such a fashion that for an average customer, if you were to order today, you will get your product tomorrow. Again, the dispersion just really gives us the ability to service the whole country in ideally one worst case two days. But then AMS oil is also sold in, I think the number is up to 84 countries now, so it’s a global corporation as well.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 14s):

Congrats. Let’s go find out about the history. I want to get to the roots of Al’s story here. So

Darren (10m 21s):

This is just kind of generically known as the AMS oil Museum. And as you stated, there’s a lot of historical documentation pictures off to the side here. And really it kind of goes in chronological order as you walk down. So there’s a, a great poster over there that talks about the history of Muzio. How he was inspired by his time as a fighter pilot to begin researching synthetic lubricants for quite frankly a civilian application. And his efforts where he wasn’t necessarily the chemist behind it, but he knew people to get in touch with and really was the one that organized all of that so that AMS oil could become the first manufacturer of an authorized synthetic lubricant.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 60s):

This would’ve been about what year range when he was for starting the company.

Darren (11m 5s):

Year range was 1963 was when he really started doing the research and trying to establish All. right. What would it take to kind of move this from a military application to a civilian application. By 1966, he had his first formula that was being sold commercially, and then he was actually given authorization through API. So they, they said, you know, Hey, we’ve deemed this the first true synthetic lubricant in 1971.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (11m 31s):

That was groundbreaking. Right.

Darren (11m 33s):

It it was prior.

Sean P. Holman (11m 34s):

And not being part of a massive oil corporation or anything either too. Right. I mean, that’s a big deal.

Darren (11m 38s):

And, and that’s, that’s really a, a cornerstone of the AMS oil philosophy, so to speak, is that, you know, it’s kind of us against the world. We’re not, you know, the other major oil manufacturers that you see on, you know, your, your Walmart shelf or whatever like that. So it’s always been this bit of a, of a David and Goliath story, AMS oil because we are the best lubricants that you can buy. We’ve always kind of had a niche within that market. And then also because we really service the enthusiast market and do a lot of specialization that the other majors just don’t do, has really been where we’ve been able to carve out our existence and really grow significantly in the time since 1971 in the API authorization.

Sean P. Holman (12m 21s):

How long have you worked here?

Darren (12m 22s):

I’ve been here for just under two years. Okay. It’ll be two years at the end of October.

Sean P. Holman (12m 25s):

What did you do before this?

Darren (12m 26s):

I worked in food manufacturing,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (12m 29s):

So you know how to run a plant.

Darren (12m 30s):

That’s all I’ve done. All I’ve done is operations company I worked for was Harman International. So we make, it’s the parent company for like HARMAN card and Stereos. So Oh yeah.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (12m 40s):

You know, man, after my own heart right here, car Stereo geek,

Darren (12m 44s):

Love

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (12m 44s):

All the Harman brands. The

Darren (12m 46s):

One I worked for was actually Crown.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (12m 48s):

Oh. Some of the best amplifiers in the, like if you go to a concert, those are all crown amps. Yes, they

Darren (12m 53s):

Are actually, you know, local to us, the Minnesota Vikings football stadium. My plant manufactured the 180 amplifiers that they used to power their sound system there. When I started with that company, 11 out of the 13 World Cup arenas were powered with Crown amplifiers. Okay.

Sean P. Holman (13m 11s):

So what was it like coming over to a brand like Anzo that had this kind of, you said David and Goliath, but it’s this history that’s almost A, little bit gritty when you compare it to like, we like to say that, you know, we’re, we’re scrappy, but I feel like this company was founded A little bit on scrappiness and innovation and Oh yeah. Not having the massive resources of a big, you know, company at your disposal and it grew into what it is today. Yeah,

Darren (13m 34s):

And that’s exactly right. Scrappy is a great way to describe it. The current owner and, and CEO Alan Muzio, he is very good when he gives presentations to the company, our dealer network, where the passion that he has for AMS oil and that scrappy attitude comes through and it’s palpable. You can feel it. And that was instilled in him, you know, from his dad. And he’s worked for AMS oil, the corporation now for 36 years I believe. So really his whole adult life has, has really revolved around working for AMS oil. But as a kid it was working in AL’S garage and helping to manufacture stuff that he was then selling

Sean P. Holman (14m 12s):

The logo for AMS oil, which is really iconic. It’s, but it has an s you’ll see the old logo has a z and now there’s actually a really interesting story behind why Amio AMS with a Z oil today is AMS with an S oil. Yes.

Darren (14m 28s):

Kind of going back to that scrappy attitude when it was originally with the Z that’s more true, like you said to the Muzio spelling, but Penn’s Oil is also with a z and being the company that Pennzoil is, they had an issue with us using a z So the, the easy solution was change the Z to an S and that’s where you’re at with the, the modern logo for AMSOIL.

Sean P. Holman (14m 49s):

And there you are.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (14m 50s):

I bet you guys didn’t know that.

Darren (14m 52s):

No, it, it’s, yeah, it’s an interesting story. But again, that goes to the kind of David and Goliath nature of it. Fanzo saw Azo as being somebody that they could just crush and they’re like, All, right. We’re gonna go at ’em. And, and

Sean P. Holman (15m 3s):

You’re still here today. Yeah.

Darren (15m 3s):

It didn’t work.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (15m 4s):

I wonder if you’re like the old timer Pennzoil guy, you’re like, I can’t believe they’re

12 (15m 8s):

Still around. I couldn’t get rid of ’em with a Z and now they’re still doing their what a thorn in my side.

Sean P. Holman (15m 14s):

Is that what an old timey like oil executive sounds like? Yeah, I think so. Just checking All. right? So

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (15m 18s):

Walk through the, the, the wall of fame here. And as you can imagine, there’s all types of trophies and badges and, and

Sean P. Holman (15m 26s):

Motor sportsman back in the day. I mean, you’ve got, it looks like Mazda Rx seven up there in the corner. You’ve got Monster Trucks, you’ve got Dirt Track racers. You even have what is probably one of the original semi-truck owned by the company for delivering loads and things like

Darren (15m 40s):

That. Yes, it is. And actually the, the black and white picture you see down there. Yeah, that’s al with the first delivery truck that Azo had, which is

Sean P. Holman (15m 48s):

Known as, and it’s a Mac too.

Darren (15m 49s):

It’s known as Big Red And. we still have Big Red. Really? It’s in, in one of the garages over by our headquarters building. That’s awesome. Our maintenance crew still maintains it as a road worthy licensed semi-truck. It doesn’t ever go anywhere, but it certainly could. It’s capable of doing that. But yeah, that’s a, a very historical piece that is, is near and dear to Alan’s heart just from seeing his dad, you know, personally driving at and making deliveries.

Sean P. Holman (16m 12s):

So Holly, next time we come out, can we schedule a ride along in Big Red? Absolutely.

Darren (16m 17s):

Yeah. Like I said, it is a roadworthy vehicle. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (16m 19s):

So I noticed over here on the wall you’ve got some racers and one of ’em is Bobby Uner. My understanding is there’s a story behind him possibly being sponsored by another company, but maybe running AMS oil.

Darren (16m 35s):

So Bobby Unser was a good friend of Muzio and he typically ran AMSOIL in his vehicle regardless of who his named sponsor was.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (16m 47s):

That’s so funny. Cool and dirty all the same time.

Darren (16m 49s):

He, he did a practice that was known as Brown Bagging and it was literally a brown bag would go in and it was what he wanted to run versus what the name on his car said the

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (16m 57s):

Big sponsor probably didn’t care as long as he won. Right. Well

Sean P. Holman (17m 0s):

They probably, they

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (17m 1s):

Probably cared. Yeah, maybe they cared. Who

Darren (17m 3s):

Knows. I’m sure they’d be a little upset by it, but Yeah, I mean if they, if they got their name on the winning car, that’s fine. But at the end of the day, I think it’s pretty cool that he was actually winning with AMS oil versus that sponsor. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (17m 13s):

That, that story lives in legend today within the halls of AMS oil and

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (17m 16s):

I think there’s some video on YouTube whether him talking about it as well. So go find that, that

Sean P. Holman (17m 21s):

Is awesome. And then when you’ve got boat racing Pacific offshore Power Boat Racing Association, super cat light record, world speed record holder running amwell 1 31 0.981, which on the water it’s wrong. That’s a lot.

Darren (17m 33s):

Yeah. On the water. That’s scary fast. Yeah. I mean, 40 on the water is fast. I couldn’t imagine 131. Yeah, no,

Sean P. Holman (17m 38s):

It’s,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (17m 38s):

So was what was the original focus when Al launched this back in the day? Was it automotive? Was it motorcycles? ’cause you have everything on this wall. He’s touched anything with an internal combustion engine. He, he’s made a lubricant for

Darren (17m 53s):

Yes. That, that is accurate. And I would say that his initial offerings were, you know, for passenger car motor oil. So, you know, for, for Joe Blow driving, you know, his, his grocery getter daily driver, that was where it started. I think what happened was he quickly branched out and, and really identified the niche that AMS oil could provide for. And that was where we started down the road of specialization and really serving the enthusiast market because of the quality of what we had. you know, this was something where he quickly identified that under the conditions of racing and other really harsh conditions, AMS oil thrives in that environment. So, it allowed him to kind of, you know, again, take his entrepreneurial mind and say All.

Darren (18m 33s):

right. you know, how can I expand this beyond just being a little guy fighting a big uphill battle in passenger car motor oil where it was really dominated by the majors. Yeah. It’s

Sean P. Holman (18m 42s):

Basically commodity at that point, right?

Darren (18m 43s):

E exactly. It’s exactly what it was. So he branched out and said, All, right, well I’m gonna start serving the enthusiast market. And through that it became more word of mouth. And then also one of the pictures we walked by

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (18m 53s):

Over here, I mean, he was dealing with the early influencers before there was an Instagram and Facebook and TikTok.

Darren (18m 59s):

Without a doubt. Yeah. This, and again, this goes back to the old school word of mouth, you know, like you’re saying, nowadays it’s all social media. Back then it was, you know, hey, I’m using this stuff, it’s done great in my car. I don’t have to change my oil as frequently. All the different types of testimonials that you would get from people that use it were what drove the sales. And that picture there, that’s from one of our very early dealer conventions in its infancy. That’s really what drove the growth of AMSOIL. It’s great

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (19m 26s):

And, when you have so many of these, you’ve got like ambassadors now, thousands of, of brand ambassadors that are passionate about the brand

Sean P. Holman (19m 34s):

And, and the product is good. Like there, there’s a lot of things where the product isn’t good, right? Like it’s, it’s, it’s a, there’s a lot of marketing in whatever this, the product is amazing.

Darren (19m 43s):

Yeah. And again, going back to what I’d said before about the word of mouth, these aren’t necessarily paid spokespeople, you know, AMS oil and especially initially the word got out because people were just talking, Hey, this is great, you know, I changed my oil half as much or you know, a third as much, whatever the case may be, I’m saving money by doing it. Oh wow, that sounds great. Where can I get it? And it was that goodwill established by high product quality that really enabled AMS oil to grow.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (20m 9s):

Well said

Sean P. Holman (20m 10s):

All. right. Continue down the wall here.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (20m 11s):

So now we’re getting into like Bryce Menzies, who’s got a Red Bull Toyota Tires trophy truck and into the off-road scene I see snowmobiles.

Darren (20m 20s):

Yeah. As you get in more into this stuff, this is where AMS oil really got more into the sponsorship and race support. So Bryce Menzies, as you mentioned, he’s a huge supporter of AMS oil. Last year in July we had our 50th anniversary convention for the dealer network. Bryce Menzies was here with his truck. So we’ve got a lot of support from those people as brand ambassadors out in their respective, you know, race fields. But then also coming back here and supporting AMS oil locally for the dealer network and other events like that. What you see on the left hand side here, or I’m sorry, the right hand side, I’m getting myself backwards. These are all the products that AMSOIL currently makes and these are really divided up kind of by family. So this first group that you see here, I just generically call this toys.

Darren (21m 2s):

So this is motorcycles, dirt bikes, A-T-V-U-T-V, snowmobile, Marine Lubricant there. So these are all the products that we currently manufacture to support kind of that toy market. And again, I, when I say toy, I’m not trying to be offensive. This is really the enthusiast market where people get into this stuff and, and, and really are buying this for a very specific purpose. I

Sean P. Holman (21m 26s):

Like the, the two stroke oil, one oil covers all the mix ratios. Yes. Like that’s a pretty big deal.

Darren (21m 31s):

It it is. I’ve got, you know, multiple two stroke tools at home and having Sabre like that is fantastic because yeah, again, doesn’t matter the mix ratio, it is a good enough lubricant that even if it requires like a a hundred to one mix, you mix it at 50 to one, you’ll be fine. So the, the Sabre is fantastic. We got it in some of these little pouches here where it’s just a one and done, you know. Yeah. One gallon pouch finished makes it really, really simple. Very clean to mix that. In the past I’ve been out there, you know, using other brands with like a measuring cup or something like that.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (22m 4s):

I’ve done that too. Yeah. This

Darren (22m 5s):

In the butt. This, this takes all that outta the equation.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (22m 8s):

And, we move on to the next family over here.

Darren (22m 11s):

So everything that you see in front of us, this is gonna support passenger cars. So you know, any, when I say passenger cars, I mean that generically, you know, also trucks, anything that is a common use, I’d say daily driver type vehicle, that’s what you’re gonna find here. We’ve also got different flushes and engine additives that’ll clean out filters, things like that. This includes some of our new brands or new SKUs that we’ve launched recently. So the high mileage motor oil that you see here. And then also we launched a hybrid motor oil that is specifically for the modern hybrid vehicle. you know, those are becoming a huge thing. They’re, they’re, you know, every manufacturer makes ’em now regular oil works just fine, but this was actually formulated for the kind of start and stop nature. Yeah. That comes with a hybrid motor

Sean P. Holman (22m 52s):

And also a hybrid. A lot of times the engine’s not even warmed up. Yeah. you know, it’s just goes cold morning start, maybe it warms up A little bit, but like in California where it’s 60, 70 degrees, a lot of times in, in the hybrid Wheel And we drive on electric and the engine doesn’t even stop until you get on it. And I always worry about turbocharged engine Lighting up cold to give you that extra power you need to merge on the freeway or something like that. So that was one of those curiosities is I wonder what kind of protection that engine needs

Darren (23m 20s):

And that’s what it is. Again, it’s designed specifically for, you know, more of that start stop nature that comes with a hybrid vehicle. If you’re commuting locally Yeah. Your motor may not even really turn on. Yeah. you know, you go for a longer trip. Yeah. It’s gonna fire up the recharge the battery. So that’s where you do get that kind of protection

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (23m 34s):

In that startup phase is when you do the most aware. Right. That’s what I’ve heard is that, is that, is that true that like that initial startup is like, I mean it’s ’cause you’ve got bearing on bearing con contact potentially for a few moments.

Darren (23m 45s):

That is true from what I’ve been told. you know, learning, working here is that yeah, the startup phase is by far the worst. Where we live up here in northern Minnesota or northern Wisconsin, Northern Minnesota. In the wintertime it’s negative 25 degrees and at that point your oil is thicker and you have less coverage in your motor. It tends to drain out, your motor’s warm, everything kind of drains down to the oil pan. You have less protection for those wear parts. And that’s really where you get one of the biggest benefits for a synthetic lubricant is that it doesn’t have the same type of reaction to cold or hot weather that other oils do. So in cold weather it still flows well in very hot temperatures. It doesn’t get too thin where you’re getting less protection.

Darren (24m 26s):

So AMS oil is something that really runs the gamut from one extreme to the other and in the middle range, Hey it works great there too because now you’re getting, you know, truly the best of both worlds. But if you’re running in any kind of an extreme environment, you’re gonna be covered using AMS oil.

Sean P. Holman (24m 41s):

So what is the difference between the different colored caps and a black bottle and a silver bottle?

Darren (24m 47s):

The silver bottle denotes what I would say are a more pedestrian offering. Mainstream. Yeah. More mainstream. The black bottle is gonna be for our signature series, which is the AMS oil top of the line. That’s something where it’s guaranteed protection for 25,000 miles between oil changes. Even our, our next level down our XL line that’s gonna be guaranteed for 15,000 miles. So again, very long extended duration. The cap color historically was more family based, but that is something that has AMS oil has expanded and offered a lot more products. The cap color has become less of a focal

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (25m 22s):

Point. You ran outta colors, didn’t you? You weren’t gonna do pink there,

Darren (25m 25s):

There there is a point Yeah. Where quite frankly you do run outta colors. Salmon.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (25m 29s):

Salmon, sorry.

Darren (25m 29s):

This is a project that was recently brought up and it’s something that I think we will probably pursue where we go with a more standardized cap color. Again, looking across the market, this is not something that drives consumer behavior at all. you know, they’re reading the label, they’re looking at that type of stuff. They’re not going and saying, Hey, I need the one with the green cap. Yeah. And the reality is there are multiple different versions with a green cap, so that’s not really gonna provide you with a lot of information. So yeah. That was recognized where we can cut down on the different colors of caps we need to carry, gives us greater buying power for a smaller group of cap colors. We don’t have to store as many in the building, but at the end of the day, it’s not something that’s gonna directly affect a customer either. Sure.

Sean P. Holman (26m 8s):

So we talk about this all the time on the show and that’s the fact that AMS oil makes more than just motor oil. And so sitting here on the shelf, we’ve got flushes, we’ve got brake fluid, we’ve got gasoline stabilizer,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (26m 20s):

Octane boost,

Sean P. Holman (26m 21s):

We steering Yeah. Steering fluid octane boost. And then to the left you’ve got the new interior products that we’ve been playing around with recently. And on the other side of the table you got the filters. So I mean you guys just released filter oil filter kits Yep. Where you can get nitrile gloves, the sticker, a funnel and the oil of your choice for your application along with the correct filter in one bundle directly from Amwell in one kit. You guys really are the one stop shop for somebody who wants to do maintenance on their vehicle.

Darren (26m 49s):

Yeah. And, and again, that’s where Amwell really caters to that DIY market where, you know, you’re, you’ve got people that, you know, they’re not a mechanic, but they do what they can to take care of their vehicle And. we wanna make that as easy and seamless as possible. So to your point about the kits we want to be, and the, the, the term that we use is the best online oil change. And that’s again, yeah. You get the sticker you put in your window to write your mileage on So You, get that reminder, you get a pair of gloves to keep your hands clean, you get a fast funnel so that you can actually do a, a nice clean job when you’re changing out your oil, the filter for your car. And you’re gonna get, you know, within reason exactly the amount of oil that you need for your engine. So You go into our lookup guide. The lookup guide that we have is extensive covers not only, you know, vehicles and trucks, but it covers motorcycles, boats, all that kind of stuff.

Darren (27m 35s):

So whatever oil change you’re doing, you go on there and it’s gonna tell you, hey, this is what you need, this is how much you need. Yeah. And we’re working to build that out into more and more kits so that we can support that DIY market and, and not have people having to run out to a, a hardware store or something like that to buy the, the little things that they need that you may not think about. Well

Sean P. Holman (27m 54s):

We were joking that the sticker, because the oil change intervals are so long, if you use a Sharpie to mark your date, it’ll just fade. And so that’s when you know when to do your oil change, when the marker fades and you can no longer read what mileage, then you’ll probably do. That’s,

Darren (28m 6s):

That’s actually a good point. Yeah. And, and since I’ve started with AMS oil, you know, even speaking with my family and friends, I feel like I’ve become a brand ambassador myself where it’s like, Hey guys, this is gonna protect your car for 25,000 miles. I I recently visited my, my father-in-Law in Colorado. He has a UTV, he’s due for an oil change. So I brought up the website and put in his stuff. I was like, Hey, here you go. You’re, you’re good to go with everything you need right here. So again, having that best online oil change experience is really good for people to do.

Sean P. Holman (28m 36s):

We’re thinking in terms of, you know, cars, trucks, passenger vehicles. So if you’ve got property and you’ve got a side by side or UTV up there, that only works when you’re out there. Maybe you go up there every, you know, month or six weeks, you can put AMS oil in it and not have to worry about constant maintenance on it because it’s going to last you a long time. So those extended oil change intervals aren’t just for cars, they can use it for equipment as well? Oh

Darren (28m 56s):

Yeah, yeah. Without a doubt. Again, the, the extended oil change intervals are something that are just inherent to the products that we produce cars because, you know, especially a daily driver type vehicle, you know, people rack up the mileage a lot faster. I’ve read recently that, you know, the, the average commute for people is longer than it ever has been. So you’re putting the mileage on faster. So with the pasture car motor oil, that’s always been the focus, but yeah, you’re exactly right that that same principle applies to the different, you know, vehicles, toys, whatever it is that you have. Yeah. And you’re pointing about a ranch, you know, that’s not a toy, that’s a working vehicle. Yeah. That you need to get the work done. And it still has the same

Sean P. Holman (29m 32s):

Protection. Nobody’s and nobody’s thinking about maintenance. If they have a part-time property that they’re going and use, they just want their, you know, work the pioneer or their John Deere whatever to fire up and do whatever they need to do around, they’re gonna park it and then go home. For me, I’m thinking that that’s nice. I don’t have to worry about that kind of stuff.

Darren (29m 46s):

Yeah. And, and that’s, that’s really what we’re trying to give people for that application is that kind of peace of mind, you know? Yeah. You don’t have to worry, gee, is this gonna start today? Or you know, man, last time I started up it sounded really rough ’cause I hadn’t run it for a month and everything was in the oil pan. With a synthetic lubricant, you get that startup protection and you don’t have to worry about that type

Sean P. Holman (30m 4s):

Of thing. That’s, that’s huge. Where

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (30m 6s):

Are you personally, Darren, in, in the mix of product development? Because ultimately you’re the guy that has to figure out how to package it and ship it to the customer. As the VP of production,

Darren (30m 16s):

I’ve really pushed to get more a seat at the table because of that reason. In prior roles, I’ve worked for companies that had a really robust process where there was A-A-D-F-M designed for manufacturer. And that’s something that I’m really trying to push since I’ve joined AMSOIL is the idea that, to your point, that yeah, you can make a lot of different things, but the question is can we make it? Should we make it and the market’s gotta support it. There are lots of sub genres or niches out there, even below the products that we currently make. And yes, we could probably go down two, three more levels in those niches, but there’s a point where I can’t manufacture it in a fashion that makes sense. So that’s where I’m trying to be that advocate for manufacturing.

Darren (30m 58s):

Like

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (30m 59s):

If you wouldn’t make necessarily oil for radio controlled airplanes

Darren (31m 3s):

And That’s exactly right. you know, and that’s a good example. Yeah. There’s a market out there for it, probably not a particularly large market. And at the end of the day, we are a company that’s looking to make money. you know, that’s, that’s what all companies do. A market like that. We would be doing that purely out of goodwill. More so than actually saying All. right. Does this make sense for the business?

Sean P. Holman (31m 22s):

Although you guys have gun oil that I really like. We do. We do. I I use it on, by the way, that’s

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (31m 27s):

A big market. So

Sean P. Holman (31m 28s):

In fact here is firearm cleaner and firearm lubricants. So I, I use those on my 19 elevens and my staccato and Nice.

Darren (31m 36s):

Yeah, it’s good stuff. We’ve got a a, a whole group here of aerosol products. We don’t manufacture the aerosol products here in house. It’s our formulation. We have somebody else do it. That’s,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (31m 48s):

It’s a science unto itself.

Darren (31m 50s):

Well and there, there is inherently some danger with manufacturing aerosol products. So that’s one of those things where AM oil just said, you know what, that’s not our core competency. We’ll let the people that do that do it, make it for us to these specifications. So it meets AM oil requirements, it’s just somebody else does it. Other than that, everything else that we’ve walked through here is manufactured in this building. The only other thing I will say that we haven’t manufactured is Grease, which you’ll see right there. Again, those are all AM oil formulations, but AM oil also just recently bought a grease company. So we acquired aerospace lubricants in Columbus, Ohio. They are a specialized maker of greases and the whole intent is we wanna start making our own grease.

Darren (32m 30s):

Grease is a thing that is required and basically everything. Everything. Yeah. Everything with moving parts. Yeah. you know, we were talking earlier about hybrid vehicles and how they’re becoming a lot more popular. Same thing with EVs. So fully electric vehicles and, and AMS oil sees EVs as you know, eventually being almost a systemic threat. Sure. All right. Let’s get into grease because those vehicles need grease too. Yeah. So it’s an opportunity for us to kind of control our own destiny and bring that manufacturing in house while also, you know, really kind of protecting ourselves against the shifting market in the future.

Sean P. Holman (32m 60s):

Love the, the diesel table here. It’s amazing. All the different stuff. Whether it’s injector clean and ctan boost or it’s oils, performance oils, racing oils, cold

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (33m 9s):

Flow. I’ve not seen that before. Anti gel.

Darren (33m 12s):

Yeah. That that’s a product that Yeah. In California

Sean P. Holman (33m 14s):

That’s needed up here. Yeah,

Darren (33m 16s):

Up here. That is definitely, definitely needed. That’s

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (33m 18s):

Probably why I haven’t seen it in

Darren (33m 19s):

California. Yeah. Yeah. You guys won’t need it out there. You should be just fine up here in northern Wisconsin. That is definitely a requirement. But yeah, everything that you see here, again, supporting all different types of diesels. This is all manufactured in house. So even down like, you know, you were looking at some of these additives and things like that. That’s all made right here.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (33m 35s):

And the final section over here is seems to be transmission related.

Darren (33m 38s):

Yeah. This is gonna be your gear lubricants, so you know, a TF fluid, different types of transmission fluid. Also these are, we also manufacture these soft pouches.

Sean P. Holman (33m 48s):

We love those for differential gear oil,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (33m 49s):

So, You have no idea.

Darren (33m 51s):

So good. I was gonna say that that is something that really caters to that DIY differential market. I’ve done the, the diffs in my four Wheel drive and I’ve used those and it’s fantastic to get to that little fill hole. It used to be that we would manufacture that oil here and then send it out to be packaged. But we just recently, when I say recently, within the last two months, bought a production line so we can now make the, or actually package the pouches in-house as well.

Sean P. Holman (34m 16s):

It’s amazing.

Darren (34m 16s):

So bringing that in in-house and, and really kind of shrinking the supply chain that we have to worry about.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (34m 21s):

If you guys are not familiar with the easy pack, go to amwell dot com and look at that because you can’t believe it’s, it’s, it’s giant toothpaste basically. And you just squeeze the oil into your differential housing through the, you know, the top fill port and it’s just so much

Sean P. Holman (34m 36s):

Easier. And then you guys even make a cooling booster, which can lower temps by pouring it into your cooling system on your car. Yep. And a lot of people are worried because a lot of new vehicles run at a 2 22 30 temperature and that’s because of emissions. So there’s a lot of people who maybe haven’t bought a car in 15 years and they get into a new truck and they go, why is this thing running at 2 22 32 32? There’s something wrong with it. And you’re like, yeah, no, that is something where the vehicle’s designed for emission standpoint. But you can help the cooling system out. Especially on something like maybe Don don’t know a Jeep Wrangler 3 92 with a giant engine in a small space.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (35m 13s):

Not that he would know because how would he know

Sean P. Holman (35m 15s):

To, to help out your cooling temps to make you feel A little bit better about lowering those temps inside the engine bay.

Darren (35m 20s):

Yeah. And especially if you live in a state that is, is known for warmer weather where Yeah. you know, not only do they typically run hotter, but now your car is really gonna be fighting to keep it even down to that 2 20, 2 30 something like that is a huge benefit, you know, so if you’re in your, your Arizona, New Mexico thing, like places like that Death Valley, that’s gonna be something you probably want in your car.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (35m 40s):

Alright, so this is the first part of the tour at AMSOIL. What’s part two? Do we go to the, the mysterious rail yard? Is that what it’s called, the spur or something you guys have?

Darren (35m 51s):

Yes. The rail spur is where we receive the vast majority of our raw materials. So really cool thing to see, this is one of those points on a tour where a lot of people say, wow, just given the space that’s involved, it’s an indoor area where we can have up to six full-sized rail car tankers in there and four tanker trucks all at one time.

Sean P. Holman (36m 11s):

Can we level set this next part of the tour and, and just let Lighting know that he cannot ride on a train today?

13 (36m 17s):

Boo,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (36m 19s):

Come on. All you had to say is train and I’m

Sean P. Holman (36m 21s):

In I know. That’s why I’m trying to make sure you’re not disappointed.

Darren (36m 24s):

The cars are not moving. So that’s the

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (36m 26s):

Good thing.

Darren (36m 27s):

We actually have a really good setup with the local rail yard. They come in at night and swap out empty cars for full cars. So when we come in in the morning we go, got a full set ready to go. So All right,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (36m 37s):

Everyone stop talking, let’s walk. Here

Darren (36m 38s):

We go.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (36m 41s):

Oh my gosh, this is freaking awesome. So this

Sean P. Holman (36m 45s):

Is the first time I’ve ever seen a rail spur indoors

Darren (36m 48s):

Being on the shores of Lake Superior. This is really required. The weather, the wind coming off the lake can get really nasty and having operators trying to climb up on top of rail cars in those conditions is really, really dangerous. So this is fully enclosed. We can have six rail cars in here, six tanker cars as well as four semi-truck trailers in here at one time. I will throw it out there. This is not heated though. So in the wintertime when it’s negative 25 outside it’s negative 20, cold five in here. It’s so cold, cold, but at least you’re out of the wind in the elements. So it’s, it’s, it really kind of makes it tolerable I guess. Although in the summertime, like a day like today, doors are open. It’s beau, you got

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (37m 28s):

A beautiful breeze coming through. We lucked out.

Darren (37m 29s):

Yeah. Today is beautiful. So people in the summertime wanna work out here and in the wintertime they don’t.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (37m 35s):

So then how do you get this base oil that’s coming in on these rail cars and these things have to be, is that 60, 70 feet long, something like that? Yeah,

Darren (37m 45s):

That’s about right. Each one, each one holds between 30 to 33,000 gallons. Wow.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (37m 50s):

So being like it’s ice on the roof and it, the whole place is freezing, how do you get it out of the car? It doesn’t wanna move the viscosity. It’s really thick.

Darren (37m 58s):

What we wind up doing is the rail company will bring these in at night, drop ’em off. So they take away the empty ones, bringing the full ones. We will then hook them up first thing in the morning to steam from our boiler And. we, each one of these tanks is act or rail cars is jacketed. So there’s a, a skin around the interior tank and there’s a space in there. We fill that with steam from our boiler to heat the material up. We try to get it up to 115, 120 degrees and then it’s something that’s actually pumpable into the building. Otherwise it’s like trying to pump molasses.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (38m 32s):

How many are coming in per week? Like what do you, what kind of quantities are you going through?

Darren (38m 37s):

Last time I checked we go through anywhere between 400 to about 450 rail cars a year.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (38m 43s):

Holy wow. Mackerel.

Sean P. Holman (38m 45s):

And right now we’ve got three in here and if you look off to the left, this is where taker trucks can drive in as well.

Darren (38m 51s):

Yes. And this is all

Sean P. Holman (38m 52s):

Delivery in here.

Darren (38m 54s):

It’s delivery And. we can also fill tanker trucks up. Okay. And send out full tanker loads. Wow. Given our, our customer base, we don’t do that a lot. We do probably four or five tankers per month. Our Milwaukee location, like we were discussing earlier with their industrial lubricants, they have two semi trucks that they use for deliveries and then they also have another bulk truck that’s subdivided into compartments. So they do that a lot more where they’re making mass deliveries for us because we’re selling more, you know, again, enthusiasts, passenger car, motor oil, things like that. People aren’t buying tanker loads full of

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (39m 25s):

That. Right. It’s going out in cardboard boxes full of 12 quarts at a time, things like that. Yes,

Darren (39m 29s):

Correct. So we do have the capability. So earlier this morning when I was out here, there was a truck in here it was being loaded into, but again that’s about four to five a month.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (39m 40s):

The scale of this building is wild. Like let’s walk over to the, can we walk over to the, to the tinker? Yeah. Okay. I’ve never been this close to an actual tanker. Like it’s just freaking massive.

Darren (39m 54s):

Yeah. The the, the tankers are huge. I mean they’re, they’re definitely, you know, two stories tall, we have safety lines. So, You can see one up there where the operators, when they climb up, they actually tie off to those. This is certainly a huge risk as a fall hazard. Especially like you said, the wintertime. Yeah, it’s indoors, but it’s still cold in here. you know, the ice and snow is not gonna melt right away. So operator safety is, is by far one of our biggest concerns. So they’re all required to wear safety harnesses tie off when they climb up on those things. But yeah, they’re, they’re huge. And until you walk up and, and stand next to one, the scale of it is kind of difficult to understand.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (40m 30s):

And then how do you know what’s inside? Obviously you place the order, you know it’s supposed to arrive, but what are the markings on site outside that would indicate what is on the interior?

Darren (40m 39s):

The outside, it’s gonna be the, the car number there. So in this case it’s XO mx and then you’ve got a six digit code beyond that that’s gonna correspond to the report that we get from the rail yard that says that particular container is containing this. But then also we do a hundred percent first inspection upon arrival. So we’ll take a sample from this tanker that says it’s product X, we’ll send it up to the lab and they do testing on it to actually confirm that it is in fact that product.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (41m 6s):

So never do you rely on the paperwork. You always check to make sure a hundred percent of the time it is what it says it is.

Darren (41m 13s):

Yes. We 100% check everything that comes into this building. So whether it’s in a rail car, a tanker truck, a tote, 55 gallon drum, a five gallon pale, it doesn’t matter. Everything is sampled upon arrival and tested.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (41m 27s):

Is that normal in the industry or?

Darren (41m 30s):

I would, I would say we’re somewhat of an anomaly in many cases. People are gonna rely on the, on the C of a that’s provided by their supplier. The C of A is the license plate and you know, it’s got all that testing information on it. I would say a lot of companies do just rely on that because the, the testing process, it takes time. Certainly there’s cost involved with that to run the test. The people to do the tests. AMS oil wants to make sure that our products are exactly what we say they are. And also we’re testing for quality standards as well. So in incoming raw material, it has to be within the specifications that we have for that material. The only way to truly guarantee that is by doing the testing.

Sean P. Holman (42m 7s):

Have you ever had something come in that was different than what it was labeled as

Darren (42m 12s):

We have had that it it is very, very rare, but it does happen. you know, I mean PE people are people mistakes happen and that’s again where that, that incoming testing is, is important. All of our raw material tanks that we have are not general use tanks. They are devoted to a particular material. So if you were to pump 30,000 gallons of this into the wrong tank, you’re gonna have a probably a big problem in some cases. Like if it’s a base, oil may not be that big of a deal. Maybe it’s a viscosity variation or something like that. But there are other things where when you mix them, they truly, from a chemical level, don’t play nice with each other and then you got a big problem.

Sean P. Holman (42m 50s):

So is that what, these are 30,000 gallons each? The rail

Darren (42m 53s):

Cars, they’re, they’re typically between 30 to 33,000 gallons.

Sean P. Holman (42m 56s):

And this, I would say this room that we’re in this annex for, again, having six rail cars and tanker trucks is probably what, 300 by a hundred in terms of size? That’s 300 feet by a hundred.

Darren (43m 9s):

Yeah. That’s probably pretty close. Okay.

Sean P. Holman (43m 11s):

So just so you guys can imagine, so imagine you know, it’s 300 feet long. It’s about a football field, it’s about a hundred feet wide. There’s roll up doors on each side. The cars get rolled in and then there are stainless steel valves and overhead piping and things like that to transfer the fluid. And then think of it as like a gas station on the tanker truck side where they drive in. They can hook up and and drive out.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (43m 32s):

Are you taking the oil out of the bottom and letting gravity feed it or are you sucking it out of the top somehow?

Darren (43m 37s):

It’s, it is a combination of what you said. So it’s gonna be taken outta the bottom So. it is gravity induced, but we are actively pumping everything. So in order to get it up over and into the tank that it would go in, the head pressure in this vessel is not big enough to overcome that. So we, as you can see on the floor here, we have a number of different pumps. Everything is actively pumped out into the tank that it goes into.

Sean P. Holman (43m 59s):

So after you pump out from these tankers and it goes, I’m guessing, into some sort of holding vessels inside. Yep. And then from there, is that where we’re going next?

Darren (44m 8s):

Yeah. We will go check out what’s known internally as the North Tank farm. Yep. That’s something again, from a scale perspective is really hard for people to understand. Yeah. Without seeing it, there are 37 50,000 gallon tanks in that space. Wait

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (44m 21s):

One more time. 37 50,000 gallon tanks. Correct.

Sean P. Holman (44m 25s):

So when I was 14 years old, there was a place called the Tank Farm. So my dad worked for a division of Chevron. My job for that summer was taking a weed whacker and walking around the oil fields in Huntington Beach and doing weed abatement. So make sure there’s no fires that could lighten near the oil wells. Right. And so the place we based out of was the tank farm. When I think of Tank Farm, I have really fond memories of my first job when I was about 14 years old.

Darren (44m 50s):

Luckily it’s inside, you don’t have to worry about doing any weed abatement while you’re here. Again, we gotta keep the stuff in. Did

Sean P. Holman (44m 56s):

You see the PTSD? I was shaking A little bit when you said tank farm.

Darren (44m 59s):

I saw your hands get a little twitchy. I I I wanted to make sure you understood. You don’t have to do that while you’re

Sean P. Holman (45m 2s):

Here. Okay. All right, All right. I’m ready to go then. All right. Let’s

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (45m 4s):

Go into the tank farm.

Sean P. Holman (45m 7s):

Why’d you do that?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (45m 8s):

’cause it was cool and I got echo. You wanna do with me? No. 1, 2, 3. Ready. Damn. Oh, come on. Okay. Holman, this is a whole nother level of impressive. No,

Sean P. Holman (45m 22s):

This is the first level. There’s actually another level above us.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (45m 25s):

I don’t think they’re gonna let us in the level above us. Okay. Now Darren, we are in a tank farm and it quite literally is a tank farm and

Sean P. Holman (45m 34s):

There’s no weeds. I’m super excited about that.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (45m 36s):

It’s all cement now the tanks appear to be, I’m gonna guess the tanks appear to be about 15 to 20 feet in diameter and then about

Sean P. Holman (45m 48s):

Three stories high.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (45m 49s):

50, 60 feet tall.

Darren (45m 51s):

They are 44 feet tall. So yeah, each, like I said, each one of these is 50,000 gallons. Almost all these tanks, this one isn’t, that one is our jacketed. So they’ve got a heating jacket around them. ’cause again, a lot of this stuff we need to keep warm. You may have noticed in this area it’s kind of warm anyway, we just generally keep this area hotter because it makes it that much easier to keep the raw materials warm as well. This is where all of our stuff that is coming in from the rail spur where we were just at is stored. So that’s where I was saying we need those pumps to get it over here and then actually get it up into these tanks. It’s

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (46m 25s):

Quite a distance. I mean we just walked a thousand feet over here. Oh

Darren (46m 28s):

Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s a good, it’s a good distance. Everything is hard plumbed. All of these tanks are plumbed individually. And again, like I said, each one of these is dedicated to a particular product. So

Sean P. Holman (46m 38s):

That way if something’s staying inside the line after you’re pumped it. Right. Because there’s always gonna be A, little bit of residue. you don’t have to worry about it. ’cause it’s always the same product. Yes. In the same tanks.

Darren (46m 46s):

Precisely. Yeah. And you’re right, there’s always A little bit in there. Something that I’ll show you guys later. We have what’s called a pigging system. And, we do pig, some of these lines. And a, a pig is just basically a rubber plug that you’re using compressed

Sean P. Holman (46m 58s):

Air. You drag through the, the lines

Darren (46m 59s):

You use compressed air, you just fire it through the lines and it scours the inside. It gets them completely clean, but you can’t pig everything. So that’s where the dedicated tanks

Sean P. Holman (47m 7s):

Come in. They use pigs on some of the big oil lines Yes. That go, you know, like that go across the country Yes. To clean out and move things along. Yeah.

Darren (47m 17s):

And it’s, it is exactly the same thought process. Yeah. you know, it’s, it’s just a big plug. And in our case, you know, when I say big, it’s like a three or four inch diameter rubber plug that compressed air goes through. The ones you’re talking about are, you know, three, four feet in diameter. So, but the, the, the thought process is the same and it’s just to scour the inside of that, get everything out of it so you’ve got a clean surface to work

Sean P. Holman (47m 37s):

With. So one thing I’m noticing, while we’re visiting your lovely state of Wisconsin and, and Minnesota, it’s humid here. So what happens inside the tanks? Do you have humidity buildup or water buildup? And how do you separate the raw materials from any moisture that gets into the tanks?

Darren (47m 56s):

Honestly, these tanks don’t have a lot of humidity buildup, so that’s really not an issue that we deal with. It doesn’t typically get crazy humid here where you have that level of buildup. We did have a few warm days this summer that got to the low nineties. Yeah. When I say a few, you can count ’em on one hand, but we don’t have a lot of issues with water in our product. So that’s not anything where we’re, you know, running a separator or something of that nature to get

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (48m 18s):

The water. So this facility in Texas would probably have different equipment to get rid of some of that water that you don’t need.

Darren (48m 23s):

Yes, correct. Texas, you’re gonna have that, that extremely hot summer. You’re gonna have a lot higher humidity, unless you’re out in the desert areas, your, your tanks are gonna be different. You’re gonna have, you know, a skimmer system or something like that that would pull water and other potential contaminants out here in northern Wisconsin. It’s just not needed.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (48m 39s):

What’s in these tanks? Is there any kind of a mixing device, a big arm that goes around like a blender? Or is it just like a hundred percent empty in there? Just thousands of gallons of, of

Darren (48m 50s):

Oil. It’s a hundred percent empty and it’s just thousands of gallons of oil or, or additive or whatever the raw material is. So yeah, once they get in these, there’s no mixing required. Our products don’t have, you know, sediment that falls out or anything like that. They are a homogenous product. The only mixing that happens is during the blending process. And we’ll cover that later. So

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (49m 10s):

As we walk through the aisles here, you, there’s no way for you guys, we’ll have to take a picture because it looks like it’s, forgive me, but it’s out of a horror movie where there’s some kind of a monster chasing you through a factory and these giant blue tanks, and they’re, by the way, they’re all blue, kind of a deep blue. Everything is painted blue and it just goes on and on and on. But

Darren (49m 32s):

Blue is actually a particular color. It’s a particular shade of blue and it’s AMSOIL blue. Oh,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (49m 37s):

Well there you go.

Darren (49m 38s):

So yeah, I, when we get this, I mean, it’s got its own Pantone number and all that. It’s a particular shade of blue.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (49m 44s):

So walking through here, everything is so precise. Every valve, every nut is clocked the same direction. Like it is also precise in here. Everything is, there’s nothing is left a chance.

Darren (50m 1s):

No. The, the maintenance crew, like I said before, they do a phenomenal job and they are very, very detail oriented. And for, for our industry, it really has to be, again, like I’ve said a couple times, we’re on the shores of Lake Superior. you know, if a leak happens, it’s a big deal. And actually even the building that we’re in, you can see how the concrete wall goes up. This whole building is designed as a containment. So God forbid one of these tanks sprung a leak somehow it’s not going anywhere. It’s gonna stay right where we’re at. You can see the trench drain on the floor. That is by design And. we have pumps that are activated when they, when a float goes up and there are two giant empty tanks that are on the backside of this building, and they’re kept empty all the time.

Darren (50m 44s):

That is in case a leak were to happen. It goes into the trench drain and then it is pumped into those tanks to clean this area out. But then also to give us time so we can figure out All, right, what do we need to do? What agencies do we need to call, whatever. But at the end of the day, it never left our building. It never hit the ground. It stayed in a concrete berm and then went straight into a steel tank

Sean P. Holman (51m 5s):

And, and speaking of the ground, it’s super clean in here. You would maybe, like I, I’ve gone to Walmart where my feet stick to the floor and I’m walking around here and there’s nothing on the floor. There’s no residue, there’s no puddles, there’s no oil, there’s no film. It’s, it’s as nice as a sidewalk outside.

Darren (51m 23s):

We have very high standards here. And that was something again, that started with Al and his time in the military. He has very exacting standards and that’s something that really AMS oil has continued and is part of the cultural DNA of of this organization. I spent a good chunk of my career working in food manufacturing and I tell people the cleanliness of this plant rivals food manufacturing.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (51m 44s):

I’m seeing every pipe here is welded. There aren’t like V bands and everything is hard lined and welded. There’s no soft tubes.

Darren (51m 53s):

Yeah. Everything is welded. And actually, you know, if you look at some of the bends here, these are called soft nineties. And that is specifically for being able to pig clean them out. If you have a hard 90 degree angle, trying to get a rubber plug to go around that corner is gonna be pretty tough. So, you know, both through here as well as in our blending area, that’s all you’ll see are those soft 90 degree angles. And the, the welding, you know, you can see the bump where there’s an exterior weld. If you were to take a camera and look inside, it’s welded on the inside too. So there is a seamless joint there inside that pipe.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (52m 25s):

Holy mackerel. Alright, what’s next? I don’t think you can impress us more than you already have, but let’s try

Darren (52m 32s):

Next on the docket is blending.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (52m 34s):

I have a feeling he’s going to impress us yet again, no less high tech than the last place we were at. And now we are in the blending area. Is that correct?

Darren (52m 44s):

Yes. Now we’re, we are in the control center, so to speak, of blending. So we’re here with Steve and Tim. They are the, the brains behind this operation. So if you see the screens here, they’re actually doing all of the blending that happened. So between Tim, Steve and Jason, they yesterday did almost 50,000 gallons in a single shift.

Sean P. Holman (53m 5s):

Okay. So Steve, you said that you’ve been here for 42 years. 42 years. Yes. Have you been a blender the entire time or is that a job you grew into? Well, I,

Steve (53m 14s):

I would say probably about 32 years maybe

Sean P. Holman (53m 17s):

Blending. So, so in the early days did you have like a vat and a big, or, and now you’re pushing a button on a computer? Like what has evolved over the time? Pretty close

Steve (53m 24s):

To that. You had one hopper, you didn’t have the three hoppers We have now. Okay. For the A, B and C hoppers. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (53m 29s):

Just for fun. What was a day at work? How many gallons would you have blended back in the day versus what you guys are capable of doing now?

Steve (53m 36s):

I, Don dunno, maybe 13 to 20,000. Okay. ’cause we had, you had B one that was 1400 gallons. B eight was 1400 gallons. MO two was 7,000. I think it was. B three was 10,000. So they weren’t very big blends. And and our biggest one I think was 13,000 was, okay. MOB four.

Sean P. Holman (54m 0s):

And what’s today like a, a good day of production?

Steve (54m 3s):

Well, you do that in a day easily. Okay. It varies. Depends on how, how many blends. The sizes, of course. ’cause our blends, our tanks now are 22,000. So just one blend. You get that easily more

Sean P. Holman (54m 17s):

Than what you would’ve done back then. Yes,

Steve (54m 19s):

Absolutely. So did

Sean P. Holman (54m 20s):

You help develop the system? No. Or did you evolve with, you evolved with it as new technology came online?

Steve (54m 27s):

Yeah, I started in 1983. So, You had your basic maybe about maybe 10, 13 guys at, at the other plants. The the workers. You had a few warehouse guys, stuff like that. Then Alan came in and he put in the whole picking systems and all that stuff when he, he first

Sean P. Holman (54m 45s):

Arrived. And is it true that you got rid of all those guys? So, You could be here the longest.

Steve (54m 49s):

Yeah. Yeah. I figured out ways to get ’em outta here.

Sean P. Holman (54m 53s):

Hey, wait

16 (54m 54s):

A minute. I’m, I’m next in line.

Sean P. Holman (54m 56s):

You don. Have you guys always worked together?

Steve (54m 59s):

Pretty much. He was here one year in production before we came into blooming

16 (55m 2s):

In the Yes.

Sean P. Holman (55m 3s):

Do you guys ever fight?

Steve (55m 5s):

Not really, no. We’re

16 (55m 7s):

Getting too old for that

Steve (55m 9s):

Great setting in.

Sean P. Holman (55m 11s):

So what is it about ans oil that has made you guys want to stay for so long? I mean, it’s so rare these

Steve (55m 17s):

Days. Steady. It’s steady. Yeah. And they’ve always treated us good here. So

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (55m 20s):

Talk us through the process. We’re looking at a series of screens. It’s all levels of tanks and ways of mixing things. And there’s a million valves and pipes above our heads to the left and the right. Generally speaking, how does it work? Are you taking a small amount of an additive and putting it in a very large amount of, of oil? What does, how does it work? Well,

Steve (55m 42s):

This is your blending sheet right here. It kind of gives, it’s like a recipe. So when, when we start off, you’d go like say a, a hitter here and then you hit formulas. Don, don’t want to clicker now ’cause we’re in the middle of something, but then it will give you all these chemicals. We have to go through it, click ’em, make sure everything’s fine, and then we have to open up our tanks, hook up our hoses, then we come back, start it, make sure that everything’s going correctly. And once we know everything’s going in our tanks that everything’s fine, then we start doing our drums.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (56m 11s):

And what’s in the drums?

Steve (56m 13s):

Different additive.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (56m 13s):

Oh, the additives like

Steve (56m 14s):

This? Yeah. Okay, got it.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (56m 15s):

Yeah. So again, we’re taking relatively small amounts of the additives with drums. Yeah. Putting it in a, a blender basically. And that sends it into the much larger tank. So. You might take a 50 gallon drum of something and put into a 50,000 gallon tank. Yeah. So

Steve (56m 33s):

Just tank your, your peppers and your salts. you know, you add it to the, the big blend. But most of it’s coming through additive packages. It’s costi, improvers and whatnot. Yeah. So, it goes to our system gets heated up, metered and it automatically shuts down when, when you get what you need.

Darren (56m 48s):

And one thing I’d, I’d say is that Steve and Tim, while they didn’t do the programming, a lot of the way that this functions is from their knowledge and what was put into this by the programmers. So the, the platform we use is, is nice ’cause it, it’s very configurable. But with Steve and Tim’s knowledge, they were the ones that really kind of helped design this system and get it to function the way that it does.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (57m 10s):

Take us through how it actually physically gets over to this area. You’ve got forklifts that carry the drums over the drums, then they tilt over and they pour into a vat. And then Nevada’s only waist high A, little bit higher than that. And, we

Steve (57m 23s):

Got a forklift that lifts it right up and over. So And, we don’t have to, there’s no manual labor really. It just, it’s a machinery that will lift it up and above that hopper.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (57m 32s):

So what’s happening when it pours it into that hopper, what, what’s happening in that it

Steve (57m 36s):

Weighed at that particular time, it’s being weighed and when you get to the amounts, you just cap off the drum. What

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (57m 43s):

Tells that line to feed one of these many, many tanks that are behind us? Like how do you direct, how do you route that particular additive to the correct 15,000 gallon tank?

Steve (57m 53s):

Oh, well say for example, like this one is three 14, we’ll go and we’ll do open up our tank, the header system. Then we’ll also do all our double checks to make sure that everything else is closed. And, we also have a thing on our screen here. I’ll show you this header layouts, which will show you that three 14 is open.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (58m 15s):

Oh, no kidding. So we’re looking at a single screen right now, the monitor and it has all tank,

Sean P. Holman (58m 19s):

It’s schematic of basically tanks, the blending tanks,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (58m 21s):

All the tanks. Yeah. And it shows us how many of the ones, 41% full, one 66% full. And then you can see by little arrows open or closed, how the valves are configured. So

Sean P. Holman (58m 29s):

You’re, you’re blending the additives at the tank level, not remotely, right, because the amount would be stuck in a long pipe if you did it remotely.

Steve (58m 38s):

No, everything’s gets metered and heated right here. Right here. Yeah. And then, and at the very end we do a, a picking system that squeezes every little drop out of the pipes.

Sean P. Holman (58m 46s):

And that way you make sure those, those are mounts over that travel the pipe is, yeah,

Steve (58m 50s):

Nothing’s wasted. Our

16 (58m 51s):

Formula here says that we have five hookups. We go up on the skid and we’ll do our five hookups. So they all go into the blend at the same time. Like in the, in the good old days we used to do one hose at a time, but now we got all five going at the same time. So actually everything’s mixing on the way to tank three 14. And then we turn the recirculation on too as it gets to three 14 and that gets recirculated. So by the time we get done with the blend, we can probably sample it, send it up to the lab within an hour and it gets passed and approved and we’re off to the races with the next blend.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (59m 30s):

So the blending is happening on the way to the tank and in the tank itself. Yeah. And that’s it. It takes care of itself. Yeah.

Steve (59m 37s):

Blends that don’t have a lot of thick stuff, you can actually sample it probably about 15 minutes.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (59m 41s):

Quite a science going on. Just the blending and the amount of, if you had to guess how many miles of tubing and pipes do you have? Just in this section alone? It’s gotta be a couple miles worth of

Steve (59m 52s):

I thought they said five miles at one time. I was thinking

16 (59m 54s):

Three to five miles. Yeah, easily.

Sean P. Holman (59m 56s):

Well awesome. Thanks for showing us how you guys do the blending. That’s pretty amazing. Can we get some stickers like that too? You guys got all the

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 0m 5s):

Good stickers? I, I got the one on me that says blowout and another one that says rework

Sean P. Holman (1h 0m 9s):

And rejected

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 0m 10s):

And rejected. Yeah, I’ve, I’ve earned all these the hard way gentlemen, I see you. Come back

16 (1h 0m 14s):

Tomorrow and we’ll show you how to do this and

Sean P. Holman (1h 0m 17s):

Oh yeah, he’ll put you to work. Bring donuts. Bring donuts. Donuts. Oh,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 0m 21s):

Bring donuts.

Sean P. Holman (1h 0m 21s):

We

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 0m 21s):

Can do that. Alright gentlemen. Thank you. Thank

Sean P. Holman (1h 0m 23s):

You guys.

Darren (1h 0m 25s):

So at this point we’ve seen incoming raw material in the rail spur. We’ve seen the storage process in the North Tank farm. We’ve now covered blending And. we will move on to the packaging process.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 0m 34s):

All right? Let’s do it. Wow. Look at this machine. Alright, where are we now?

Darren (1h 0m 39s):

Right now we are in the heart of our packaging operation. So on the right hand side we have our quart line. On the left hand side we have what’s known as the multi-line. The quart line does exclusively quart bottles am oil quart bottles. We typically package about 200 to 205 bottles per minute. This line will do 15,000 gallons at a shift. On the other side we have our multi-line, which is a larger package size. So we’ll do one gallon jugs and two and a half gallon twin packs on this line. Does fewer bottles per minute based on the size of those bottles. But it’s relatively comparable as far as overall gallons output. During day. You still

Sean P. Holman (1h 1m 15s):

Around that 15 gallon a shift.

Darren (1h 1m 17s):

15,000. Yes.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 1m 19s):

So then overhead, I see you’ve got these dark blue or black lines and those are coming from the large 15 to 50,000 gallon tanks and those are being injected into the bottles.

Darren (1h 1m 32s):

Yes. Those are all the pack lines coming overhead. You can see on both of these lines there are what are known as filter platforms. Each filter platform has, I think it’s nine different filters on it. Those are different micron filtering sizes. So before anything actually goes into a final goods package, whether it be a quart bottle, gallon, whatever it is, run through those filters, that’s all specified by the lab So. it is essentially filtered immediately before going into a bottle.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 1m 60s):

Wow. There’s so many quality checks on the way to the bottle.

Darren (1h 2m 4s):

Again, that’s one of the cornerstones of AM oil is the quality that we give to our customers. So to a certain degree, you know, you can think of it as almost being over-processed or over-engineered, but it’s not when, when that’s really the company’s name and the, and their, their reputation on the line. It requires that level of, of reassurance.

Sean P. Holman (1h 2m 23s):

So while you’re talking Don, don’t know if you noticed, but there’s a basically the, the machine that takes a stack of flat pack boxes, opens it up and then rolls it down the line had a jam. So the lady that was working down their wave to the supervisor I guess, and then he came over, they unjammed it. But then that kinda led me to look downstream. So here’s the conveyor in front of us, the boxes are flat, they get opened up, they go down above that is the line where the bottles are being filled and the caps are going on and the labels are going on and then they’re meeting just down here boxes and bottles and being dropped in the boxes. It’s fascinating to watch the choreographing. Yeah. That goes on between all those little processes to just have a packaged box on the other end.

Darren (1h 3m 4s):

And all these pieces of equipment are tied together through our PLC or process control system. So if a sensor underneath the line there where the boxes are going, if they detect that there’s no box for the bottles to go in, they don’t drop, then the line just starts to back up and eventually it gets to the labeler. Alright. They can’t go any further. The labeler shuts down. So everything is daisy chained together and they’ll keep running until they get to a point and then they stop.

Sean P. Holman (1h 3m 28s):

And it seems like there’s A little bit of a buffer at each place. So one part further upstream can still run a bit Yes. If something downstream gets clogged or jammed. So as long as you can fix that box process fast enough, you are not gonna run outta boxes for those finished bottles to be able to go into place. Correct.

Darren (1h 3m 44s):

And and like you said, you know, they, they had a jam here, they were able to fix it. The upstream stuff doesn’t necessarily have to stop. Yeah. And if you fix it quickly enough, it will never stop because everything downstream will catch up. you

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 3m 55s):

Know what it is, this is Saturday afternoon traffic on the 4 0 5 through Los Angeles. I

Sean P. Holman (1h 3m 59s):

Was thinking it was Laverne and Shirley. It’s

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 4m 0s):

Like an inch worm, you know, just inch worms through it.

Darren (1h 4m 3s):

I’ve been to California, I would say that this is better than the four. Oh yeah,

Sean P. Holman (1h 4m 7s):

Yeah.

Darren (1h 4m 7s):

We don’t have anybody trying to eat chocolates as they’re going down the line.

Sean P. Holman (1h 4m 10s):

I I, I notice none of these bottles were on their cell phone. No.

Darren (1h 4m 13s):

One thing that we’re employing the multi-line is vision based detection. So it’s looking for certain attributes of a label. And that way as it goes by, if the label doesn’t match those specified attributes, it will say, Hey, something’s wrong here and it’s just gonna be another check that’s computerized. You’re not relying on a person that maybe isn’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing or asleep at the Wheel, whatever, but it’s looking for a color, a shape, you know, a certain

Sean P. Holman (1h 4m 40s):

Face. Is that why that machine was blinking when Lightning walked by? When his label said rework on it, it detected him while he was, yeah. Okay.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 4m 47s):

He visualized me head to toe like Terminator does and said rework and then it gave me a blowout. Exactly. A blowout sticker. Alright Darren, before we wrap up this particular segment of the tour, talk me through that crazy machine over there that looks like a hopper where I see the guys putting in all the empty gray bottles and then they go through the filling station. That filling station is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

Darren (1h 5m 12s):

The filling station here, it’s made by a company called Weight Pack. They’re an Italian company. The great thing about that filler is it’s fast, but the biggest thing is it is hyper accurate. So each pedestal that an individual bottle rides on is a scale. So when the bottle goes in as an empty bottle, it’s weighing that and saying, okay, this bottle weighs XI need to add this many grams to make it the right weight.

Sean P. Holman (1h 5m 37s):

So it knows even the the inconsistency in an empty bottle. Yes.

Darren (1h 5m 42s):

And that way the, the filler is hyper accurate. The old style fillers that we have that were more gravity fed, there’s a lot greater variation that can happen with that. Especially in oil where there’s a lot of different viscosities. Well,

Sean P. Holman (1h 5m 52s):

And over 15,000 gallons a day, that adds up to a huge increase in efficiency too, right? Yes.

Darren (1h 5m 59s):

Yeah. We’re actually able to make technically smaller blends now and wind up with the same amount of packaging because we’re accurate the way that AMS oil used to always do it. And this is common amongst, you know, companies with not high degree of accuracy in their fillers is they overfill intentionally. you know, we will not short our customer, we’re gonna give you A little bit of extra just to make sure you always get what you paid for. That’s exactly what AMS oil did.

Sean P. Holman (1h 6m 21s):

Everything comes out of the bottle is what you need. And even if there’s little left in there, you’re

Darren (1h 6m 25s):

Covered. Yes, exactly. You’re not going back saying, Hey, I was shorted 10 grams. Yeah, yeah. What the heck? I couldn’t finish my oil change. This is gonna ensure that it is the right amount every time no matter what.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 6m 35s):

I can’t get past this filling machine. It looks like something that’s created for food and not oil.

Darren (1h 6m 42s):

I think you, I think you’re right. It’s, it’s a hundred percent manufactured at a stainless steel. A lot of the fittings are, are such that are used in the food industry. And if you talk to the manufacturer, they would tell you that the vast majority of the people that buy this line are using it for a food application. We just happen to use it for oil.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 6m 59s):

We are seeing again, the raw bottles come in one side and they go out the other. Just this machine has a footprint of like Don, don’t know, 10, 15 feet wide, eight feet deep and about eight foot tall. The bottles come in one side, they get filled and they get capped and go out the other side complete minus the label.

Darren (1h 7m 18s):

Yes. At this point, without the, you know, minus the label, it is essentially a sellable finished item. There are 24 fill heads, we’ve got, I believe it’s 16 capping heads. This machine if configured properly, we will run 240 bottles a minute. We typically run about 200, but we’re making line upgrades to get to that two 40 market. It’s a relatively new piece of equipment. It’s only been with Azo for just over three years.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 7m 42s):

All right now, Darren’s dropping us off in Elise’s office. Ooh. This is the laboratory,

Sean P. Holman (1h 7m 48s):

Elise Sorenson. And she has, as we always say on the podcast, the more words you have in your title, the more important you are. She has chemical laboratory director. So that sounds pretty important. So

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 7m 57s):

Now Elise, do you say laboratory

Sean P. Holman (1h 7m 58s):

Or laboratory? I

Elise (1h 7m 60s):

Say laboratory. Laboratory.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 8m 1s):

Okay. And. we also have Paul. Paul, how you doing? What’s your last name? Paul Rele. Oh, nice to meet you. So we’re in Elise’s office now Elise, you have kind of the, the penthouse window into the lab here and you are overseeing staff I assume? Yes. So at what point are you in the inception phase or the corrective phase or,

Sean P. Holman (1h 8m 22s):

Or are you in the phase where somebody says, we need this, you go, yeah, we can’t do that but we can do something close.

Paul (1h 8m 27s):

We are in all of those phases.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 8m 28s):

We

Paul (1h 8m 29s):

Have our hands in everything. I would say at AMS oil we are working with our market managers, our development engineers. We’re helping define what the product can and should be so that as it gets into the design phase with our chemists, we’re working on the right things and building in the performance in the right areas and then getting it into the lab and really building up that performance, testing it, putting it through all of its paces so that when it gets to the customer we have the right solution going to them. So that also includes our work with production to make sure quality is up to snuff.

Sean P. Holman (1h 9m 1s):

So I’m curious, obviously there’s different categories. It might be gear lube, it might be lubrication, it might be grease, it might be what all the different things, car care products, I’m guessing all that passes through the lab for each of those categories, do you typically have, over the years there’s been a lot of development, do you have like a base formula that you’re like, oh we can go to 21 A that’d be perfect for this? Or is everything a brand new unique venture? Are you talking,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 9m 25s):

You like building blocks?

Sean P. Holman (1h 9m 26s):

I’m talking about yeah, developing products. Are you, do you have like a catalog of, of things you’ve already figured out that you build upon or do you start fresh every time and say, well this is a new approach, we have to go from zero.

Paul (1h 9m 39s):

I’d say there’s A, little bit of both. There’s a lot of experience on the team at AMS oil from customer experiences through formulation development. So we leverage that every time we can to make sure we’re putting the right thought into the new products. But we also bring in fresh ideas. So depending on the need for the customer, maybe there are some new chemistries or new components that we would wanna take a look at to see if they can really bring that performance to the table. So we balance both sides of that.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 10m 6s):

I feel like I want to zero base the conversation. We’re in the lab and you guys can’t see this, but it’s white floors, it’s ducting venting everywhere. There’s all sorts of, that looks like coffee makers and cappuccino machines that have nothing to do with anything you’d ever drink. Right. And we’re in her office looking out and it just makes me think that where do all of the raw goods and chemicals come from and how did you get the base understanding for these things? So for example, you obviously you’re a chemist

Sean P. Holman (1h 10m 34s):

And way smarter than both of us put together. Correct.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 10m 37s):

We don’t even know where these things come from, right? Like where should, that’s how I wanna start, right? Paul, do you want to start?

19 (1h 10m 43s):

I’ll, I’ll jump on that one. Yeah. So Elise, I, a lot of people here on our team, we attend trade shows and different industry conferences. We work with great vendors out there that provide raw materials for us. And so really it’s a team approach and yeah, you, you mentioned all the instruments, but you don’t mention much of the chemicals because we do keep them somewhat separated out so that way they’re, it’s just A little bit cleaner out there. But, but we do, we work with a lot of different vendors, great vendors and they understand kind of our, our needs and they actually will work with us to solve some of these problems as well. So it’s not even just our team here, but we, we really work across the industry.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 11m 26s):

So, You occasionally just go shopping if you have to make a new, a new lubricant to new grease or something like that, you know, what you, you want the end goal to be, but then how you have to make it, it’s like making a, you know, a pizza, right? You, you can make a good pizza or one that’s awful. Although I don’t have, I haven’t had many awful pizzas.

Sean P. Holman (1h 11m 44s):

Oh I’ve definitely had awful pizza. Yeah.

Paul (1h 11m 46s):

There’s a lot of componentry we can bring into our design. So as Paul mentioned, we have great relationships with a broad supply base so that we can leverage existing chemistries, new chemistries, and have good partners that work with us on our design goals to bring in the right performance.

Sean P. Holman (1h 12m 1s):

So what goes into a good chemical lab for this? Like what are the people, what are the skill sets? What are the machines? What, how do you decide, oh we have this lab, how do you know what equipment to even have? Oh gosh,

Paul (1h 12m 13s):

That’s a lot of questions.

Sean P. Holman (1h 12m 15s):

I know, I, I I ask, I’m very efficient. I ask, are you holding in your own lab or maybe, maybe I, I ask three at a time, four or five at a time and then I just try and be quiet after that.

Paul (1h 12m 23s):

So a loaded question, but a lot of good information we can share. So a talent is key. You can have a lab full of equipment.

Sean P. Holman (1h 12m 30s):

Well let’s strike one against our own lab right there. Lightning. So

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 12m 33s):

One man down

Sean P. Holman (1h 12m 34s):

All, right? All, right. So that’s not gonna work for us. So, so

Paul (1h 12m 36s):

People are key in any lab equipments without equipment, without good operators is pretty much a really great paperweight. So as Paul mentioned, we have chemists, technicians, chemical engineers in our team. Lots of experience and lots of training to both design the formulations as well as run all of the different tests that we would need to do. So that comes with education as well as just, you know,

Sean P. Holman (1h 13m 1s):

So what, what kind of degrees do people have to be a chemist in the lab?

Paul (1h 13m 6s):

So typical degrees would be a degree in chemistry as well as chemical engineering. Both are pretty prevalent in our industry.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 13m 13s):

So it’s important for everyone to note that you guys are not buying a, an oil and then adding a couple little things to it and then putting a label on it and shipping it out to us the customer.

Sean P. Holman (1h 13m 24s):

And there are a lot of companies that do that. They white label add some additives and that’s what I then they put ’em on the shelf’s.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 13m 28s):

Like this is your

Sean P. Holman (1h 13m 30s):

Formulation’s

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 13m 31s):

Formulation from the GetGo, So, You are even specifying the exact base oil, the raw goods that you’re starting with, is that correct?

19 (1h 13m 38s):

Definitely, yeah. So, it has to meet am oil’s performance requirements and so that starts with the base oils themselves. And that is integral because base oils really impart a lot of performance to an oil And.

Sean P. Holman (1h 13m 51s):

When you say base oil, we’re talking about a petroleum product.

19 (1h 13m 53s):

When we’re talk base oil, you can’t necessarily call it petroleum exclusively because base oils can be anywhere from rock crude all the way up to a highly synthesized molecule. Okay. And that’s group five. If you were really into the base oil kind of lingo, which is any other type of fluid So, it could be an ester or even a, a vegetable oil if you needed it in an application. So there’s a, a selection, a a down selection if you will, for performance on how the product needs to perform. And it starts with the base oil, which is really fundamental and it is also probably the largest component of an oil as well generally too.

Sean P. Holman (1h 14m 30s):

And then just to, to describe that synthetic oils don’t magically appear from the synthetic oil machine, that there is some petroleum in it, it’s been refined in a certain way. Like what, what makes that different from you? The bottle of conventional oil that’s sitting on the shelf and then a bottle of synthetic next to it. What’s the major difference that a consumer should know about?

19 (1h 14m 51s):

The big difference between synthetic and a conventional or mineral type oil is really how much it’s been pure, how pure it is, how clean, how engineered that product is. And so the, the synthetic type oils are going to give you better oxidation for extended drains, possibly give you better low pore points, better volatility. They really speak to their performance is what

Sean P. Holman (1h 15m 18s):

Synthetic oils. It’s almost like a, a designer oil in a sense, right? Like you, you’re shooting for, you just mentioned a few different features I guess that an oil could have. So you’re basically taking whatever comes outta the ground, it starts as, you know, old dinosaur juice and then goes through a process. But when you guys are making your product, you’re saying we need X, Y, and Z. So we’re going to design that into our product to make sure that it’s very specific to what our com consumer needs

19 (1h 15m 46s):

Are. Very much. Absolutely, yes. We design the fluids to meet the needs for that requirement. And that’s where the engineers and the whole product development team really I think do a good job is we set a a basically a list of requirements for what that product needs to be. And a lot of times that base oil does come in there. Now when you say it comes outta the ground, some of it doesn’t, some of it is, wait, what? Some of it could be natural origin, some of it can be greasy teenagers faces, right? Exactly. That’s, that’s oil. Oh

Sean P. Holman (1h 16m 16s):

That’s actually their brand new product. They haven’t announced it yet. We’re ac teenage face. Yeah, oil. We’re, we’re breaking that live here in the structural pockets. Now do I, I would assume that you guys get along really well with the Lisa’s face when I said it was cringe, so so is mine. I would assume you guys get along well with the, the product guys who are coming in and saying, hey, we need this. Or is it like anchorman fights in the park, you know, after work where you guys are bringing like AMS oil bottles and chains to fight it out for whoever gets to win of what, you know, how that product becomes. I

Paul (1h 16m 48s):

Think an anchorman style fight could be interesting

Sean P. Holman (1h 16m 51s):

But we, well where’s the gladiator gear? Definitely the cameras. But no, we all

Paul (1h 16m 55s):

Work really well together. We are a big team of collaborators so everyone has different perspectives, experiences and that all really shows itself in the products that we can

Sean P. Holman (1h 17m 5s):

Build. So if they come to you and they say, Hey we need shiny unicorn lube or something like that, are you guys like, yeah, I don’t know how we’re gonna, or do you guys huddle and go, oh this would be awesome, this is a great challenge, let’s figure it out as there obviously a collaborative environment you want to be able to deliver something that nobody else has. But is that like a fun challenge for you guys? Is that like, oh, we hadn’t thought about that before. Let’s see if we can do this. Yeah,

Paul (1h 17m 31s):

The, the fun challenges are the best ones to work on.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 17m 33s):

Paul’s over here writing down shiny unicorn lube over here,

Sean P. Holman (1h 17m 36s):

Wanna make sure somebody shiny unicorn. If you were to take synthetic oil and conventional oil and put it under a microscope, would you see a difference between the two? I know, like you’ll look sometimes and somebody go conventional oil has rectangular and parallelogram molecules and synthetic has ball-bearing beads and things like, is that a real thing? Is that something that you would see?

Paul (1h 17m 58s):

Not with your eyes.

Sean P. Holman (1h 17m 59s):

Okay. Well definitely not with my eyes with chemical techniques,

Paul (1h 18m 2s):

I mean in theory can distinguish the differences between base stocks. So as Paul mentioned, there are chemical attributes that as a base oil becomes more refined or as it becomes chemically synthesized from certain types of feed stocks, it does build the molecules up differently. And, we can measure those in terms of certain characteristics. It could be level of unsaturated molecules, how uniform the molecular structures are, which can be imparted by different types of, again, processes in that refining and or synthesis process.

Sean P. Holman (1h 18m 36s):

So what goes into refining I know something that we’ve said. So I know I, this is you, you have to tell two morons, like, you know how the sun makes power. I get that. But so when you’re explaining to really slow people like Lightning and myself, what’s the basic process of refining? Like what, what is the outcome? So I have a, a cup of oil that needs to be refined and I want to get it into this cup on the other side of the room or something. What is that in really general terms? Purifying

19 (1h 19m 4s):

Ultimately. Okay. And and processing. Right. So

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 19m 8s):

Well you’re not running it through a strainer. Are you heating it up? Are you like how are you, how are you distilling this to it’s, it’s best form? So before you start putting your additives in it.

Paul (1h 19m 18s):

So for us we are not necessarily refining, we are working with others who may do that. Yeah. Or who may synthesize these molecules. So like Paul mentioned, there is a host of base oils that can be used depending on the customer needs. Some could be refined, some could be vegetable oil. We focus more on what the attributes of that needs to be after a supplier has run it through the process to make sure it’s free of certain impurities. In the case of certain synthetics, there could be different catalysts that were used in its manufacturing And. we need to make sure our base oils are free of those types of contaminants so that when it comes into our products and we’re using it, it brings the right performance to the table.

Paul (1h 19m 58s):

So that’s where our focus is. Got it. In the development process,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 20m 1s):

Paul, how often have you guys rejected products that you’ve said All, right? We have been tasked with from either sales or marketing or heads of the company. Mr. Amia says I wanna make whatever, right? And then you order all the ingredients and then one of the ingredients that you thought was going to prevail failed in the field. It just didn’t hold up. Does that happen often or No,

19 (1h 20m 27s):

Not really. We do a pretty good job validating our products. Where

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 20m 31s):

Meaning No, no, not not after you’ve made it cooked it like this is a, this is the dough before you’ve made the pizza. Oh okay. So You ordered all the, the pepperoni and the dough and all that stuff, right? And then you get the, you make the dough and the flour turns

Sean P. Holman (1h 20m 42s):

Out you’re iterating at the moment and so you’re choosing your formulas and maybe like what, is there a, is there a certain percentage of failure rate as you’re going through where you guys are like, oh yeah, this is great. Oh it didn’t pass this one test.

19 (1h 20m 55s):

From a design of experiment standpoint, absolutely. Failure is a good thing to experience in the lab because then we can actually iterate to your point and and find, find those bounds, find those limits. And so yes, we’ve experienced bad dough, however it’s, it’s been caught in well managed and I think we’ve sourced then probably made a really good pizza from, from the components that do

Sean P. Holman (1h 21m 21s):

Two just happen there. I know, see Paul just figured out how to talk to two morons right now. We totally understand. We talk pepperoni,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 21m 27s):

Understand them. Yeah,

19 (1h 21m 29s):

No it, it, it is not complicated but it is complicated in that the concept’s very simple. It’s just when you get into the details, of course it’s gonna sound complicated, but an oil is have very simple properties but we just push them to the limits and so validating to make sure, you know, so there’s not really quote unquote bad dough out there. There’s just better dough. And so we, that’s where the value proposition we work really hard at is to push those limits, make a calzone. Okay,

Sean P. Holman (1h 22m 3s):

Oh I like that snap IPO

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 22m 6s):

Right there.

Sean P. Holman (1h 22m 7s):

Calzone. All. right. So I, here’s a question that I I’m sure our listeners might have when you’re formulating something, do you also formulate shelf stability into it? Because obviously there’s big warehouses, there’s distribution, there’s trucks that are hot trucks that are cold or there’s a guy who went out and bought Gear lube and he used two and a half bottles and he is got half a bottle that’s sitting in his shop on his work bench, whatever for the next time. What is the shelf life of a a product or does it vary and is that something that you actively are w working into the formula to ensure that you know, you’ve got stability if there’s in the bottle before it’s being used?

Sean P. Holman (1h 22m 49s):

So

Paul (1h 22m 49s):

As Paul mentioned, when we go into any design effort, we have a set of requirements they can vary by product when it comes to shelf stability and shelf life. However, that would be a very standard test that is put across every product that comes

Sean P. Holman (1h 23m 1s):

Through lab. Oh, interesting. Okay. So we, is that one of the few things that is standard across everything that you do?

Paul (1h 23m 6s):

There’s other things that are pretty just standard ways we, we test things, I would say. Yeah. But that is one thing that is required for sign off on the formula we develop. It has to go through its paces to ensure that the packaging it’s going into has good compatibility so it’s not gonna have issues when it’s being stored and packaged as well as again from the shelf life perspective that it can meet our, our typical requirements or if there is something unique about it that we make sure it is known to the consumer that maybe you need to use it up in a shorter period

Sean P. Holman (1h 23m 36s):

Of time or you have to shake the bottle. Is there anything that needs to be shaken? Well, I don’t know, is it, do additives like settle in inside a motor oil bottle on a shelf or is the, are they always suspended? Like

19 (1h 23m 47s):

Generally you should not have to worry about shaking your product. Okay,

Sean P. Holman (1h 23m 50s):

So it’s not a Polaroid picture. Yeah, right.

19 (1h 23m 54s):

I think there’s one product in our portfolio that’s used for firearms that does have a shake. I always give it the Polaroid shake but it, I don’t think it’s even needed there. So.

Sean P. Holman (1h 24m 4s):

Interesting. Okay. Okay.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 24m 5s):

So let’s go through, what do you want to start with the, the lab here? Where does, like where would you start with testing a base oil, that type of thing?

19 (1h 24m 13s):

I guess I would start with our quality area with our technicians where the raw materials would come into the lab where it would be entered in and logged. And then also tested for its basic properties. So making sure it meets our specifications for that raw material. And that would be done on the benches as you come into the lab, you’ll see there’s some oil flowing through what we have our viscometers, it manages a very precise temperature. Let’s go over

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 24m 40s):

Here. All,

19 (1h 24m 41s):

Right?

Sean P. Holman (1h 24m 42s):

Jay just wants to see the viscometer up close. Yeah,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 24m 45s):

I can feel the heat radiating off this machine.

19 (1h 24m 48s):

Right. So this is one of our sets of viscometers. This is a a kind of, we have a more electronic version or an automated version as well. But we do bring it back to a very common method for measuring how thick or how thin something is. And so that’s a lot of our base oils in particular, even some additives we wanna make sure hit certain targets for SCA metrics ’cause that is really critical for engines as well as most of our products

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 25m 14s):

Without describing this exact tool. But what is the, the, the, the concept for how this works? You’re pushing, oh, there’s a bunch of test tubes.

19 (1h 25m 23s):

This particular viscom viscosity method is A-S-T-M-D 4 45 and it is a canon finky type apparatus where you measure flow from the top of the tube. You, you draw it up and you measure gravity, pulls the fluid down just as any thing you measure how long it takes to go between two lines and that distance or how long it takes can be calculated into what the viscosity.

Sean P. Holman (1h 25m 48s):

So imagine a glass tube and on one and it’s in a U shape and on one side it’s a thicker diameter. On the other side it’s a thinner diameter and in the middle there’s glass bulbs that are engineered into this glass tube where it flares out and So, it looks like something they would see in a really advanced science kit if you’re a kid and you ever played with those science kits, but this is probably very expensive. Yes. And and used for more than making volcanoes. Right.

19 (1h 26m 15s):

Very calibrated. So there’s good precision with what this does, but really the principle is imagine a pouring water out down a water slide, right. How long it takes to get to the bottom of the slide is really viscosity. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (1h 26m 31s):

Syrup would take a lot longer.

19 (1h 26m 32s):

Syrup would take longer. Longer than say water. And so that’s kind of what we do. So these each have sort of different diameter circumference holes or water slides or tubes. They allow different flows and So, You just calculate based on time then.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 26m 47s):

And I assume the the temperature has a great deal to do with that as well.

19 (1h 26m 51s):

Absolutely, yeah. So temperature is critical to have really precise and so there’s two specific temperatures, 40 C and 100 C that are very common in this test.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 27m 2s):

So You have a whole host of all sorts of different and they’re all numbered right? Labeled from

19 (1h 27m 7s):

Very thin to very thick fluids. So

Sean P. Holman (1h 27m 9s):

Don’t walk any closer Lighting. Those are very expensive. I’m gonna break our budget is does not include you breaking glass tubes in the am o lab. If

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 27m 16s):

I just walked by casually, I wouldn’t see much difference between them because it’s so minute. But I assume that it makes a world of difference. Just, just a a millimeter or

19 (1h 27m 26s):

Two. Definitely. You can see it looks like almost like about a hair length width on that one. Where this one is actually the like quite wide, several millimeters wide. And so they have different, they have permit flow at different viscosities in a reasonable amount of time.

Sean P. Holman (1h 27m 44s):

I like the old AMS oil, like engine oil cans there too.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 27m 47s):

He’s keeping it real.

19 (1h 27m 49s):

This method is kind of the original. We have a more automated vis oter for higher throughput that is more accurate in because it’s not human related, right? So we get more consistent results

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 28m 4s):

From moving through the lab here. Now this, this machine takes up the whole wall. This is four feet deep, eight feet tall and equally as wide. And what are we looking in here? There’s a lot of tubes.

Paul (1h 28m 16s):

You’ll see in a few areas of the lab. Some really fun, crazy looking glassware. So we have a few different techniques to do oxidation studies.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 28m 26s):

Ooh. And so that is where the oil burns basically? No, I would

Sean P. Holman (1h 28m 31s):

Say burns. Ages.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 28m 33s):

Ages,

Paul (1h 28m 33s):

Yeah. Scientifically ages.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 28m 35s):

I like that. Scientifically ages

Sean P. Holman (1h 28m 36s):

By the way that band was opening up last night at the Amesville arena.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 28m 39s):

Scientifically ages. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (1h 28m 40s):

Yes.

Paul (1h 28m 42s):

So it’s a controlled study. We don’t burn the oil. That’s not meaningful. Although if an oil were to burn in one of our tests, that would definitely be a red flag that something is not right. These are more methodologies that can let us age oil in a meaningful way. So it’s kind of the, you don’t wanna burn a Turkey test, right? So, You wanna have maybe a lower temperature over a longer period of time. We can

Sean P. Holman (1h 29m 3s):

Talk if you can destroy the Turkey, make it really dry. Don’t make it into charcoal. Exactly. Got it.

Paul (1h 29m 9s):

So there is, there is an art and a science to how oxidation studies are done. You could try to get a test done really, really fast by cranking the temperature up, but the meaningfulness of that result is null versus again, just having a thought out oxidation test that may have lower temperatures for certain durations of time may include different types of catalysts, different types of gases. And so in our lab, again, we have a, a variety of them. Some are proprietary methods that have been developed over time. But essentially they let us accelerate the testing to understand oil life. And that could be in a, I don’t wanna say simple ’cause it’s not a simple test, but it could be in an ox oxidation study that is more representative, say an air compressor.

Paul (1h 29m 50s):

So it’s more of an oxygen environment. Okay. Other tests we have could be more akin to say an engine where you’re bringing in other types of reactive gases to accelerate that study. So what that lets us do is monitor viscosity increase over time. So we could run these tests for a few days, a few weeks, maybe even longer, to understand that that how the oil ages viscosity increase, we can monitor the additives and how they’re performing in these tests.

Sean P. Holman (1h 30m 19s):

Could we monitor lighting’s additives to see how he’s aging and oxidizing? Well that would

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 30m 23s):

Be, he’s talking about the pizza. No. So what does it mean on just a very basic level to oxidize? What does that mean? Because we throw that around as if everyone knows, oh, the oil oxidize is, or anything oxidizes. What does it mean when a chemical oxidizes?

19 (1h 30m 37s):

I would say when it breaks down, start on the beginning of breaking down, right? Decomposing is another term. Oxidizing is a, has a very chemical background where

Sean P. Holman (1h 30m 48s):

Lighting brought up burning it, right? So fire is a way of oxidizing something, but it’s rust is oxidizing too. And that has no heat to it at all. That’s

19 (1h 30m 57s):

Actually, I was getting you’re you’re hitting the perfect question. There is oxidizing is a, it is a chemical term where essentially it’s a transfer of electrons or, or a more stable state. It’s a reaction of sorts and oil it oxidizes is like a decomposition. It’s it’s breaking it apart it

Sean P. Holman (1h 31m 14s):

And when that happens, you’re losing viscosity, you’re losing some of the properties of the oil over time you’re losing the lubrication properties.

19 (1h 31m 21s):

When it begins to oxidize often it does start with cleavage or breakage of the, the base oils or additives causing a, a very minimal thinning. But then you do see other properties take over that cause a gradual increase in viscosity. So okay, an oil becoming more polar or getting more of those oxygens attached to that backbone will start to, so like create glue essentially in

Sean P. Holman (1h 31m 44s):

My mind I’m thinking oil sludge, you didn’t change your motor oil for five years and you pop open the drain pan, right? And it just comes out in a gloopy sludge So. it doesn’t necessarily break down, get thinner. It could get, and

19 (1h 31m 55s):

It is really the, the, the intermolecular attraction between its oil molecules because they’re now very polar and, and so they’re almost acting like a A, little bit more like a glue like between one another thickening up the product

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 32m 9s):

So You can have a, it can go both ways though. You can thin it depending on the oxidation or, or, and thicken it. Right.

19 (1h 32m 15s):

And it’s really hard because depending on where you look at that picture, you can see one answer or another. Correct. Interesting. And then you throw in variables of fuel dilution or different type of additives that can cause change in viscosity and it becomes a really complex kind of soup.

Sean P. Holman (1h 32m 32s):

Now with the food you’re looking at, you may have, you talked about the air compressor oil, right? Where the compressor pistons are just moving air up and down. Or you talk about a engine, a diesel or gas where you might have the fuel leaking down the rings and contaminating the oil. Or you may be looking at a transmission fluid where you have clutch wear and things like that. Or bearing wear and a gear loop. So oil being put into the final use case, it, it’s not by itself. It has to be able to deal with whatever contamination is being created by the environment it’s in.

19 (1h 33m 4s):

Absolutely, yes. So there’s definitely environmental considerations as well and the impact on the performance, right? You mentioned transmission with clutch materials. Yeah. And oxidized oil is gonna handle differently, behave differently on that friction performance as well. So those are all considerations where it’s important to test new oil, but it’s also important to look at that used oil as well or oxidized type of oil. And what that property has,

Sean P. Holman (1h 33m 27s):

It’s amazing, if you think of, I mean you guys think of it all the time, but for the average person, think of it, you’ve got an oil that lasts 10,000 miles maybe a year in a vehicle that is whatever mean room temperature is. Or if it’s winter it can be negative, whatever that temperature is. If it’s summer it can be positive, whatever that temperature is. But it cycles through those, those thermal events every single time you drive the vehicle and it goes from being stored at whatever the outside temperature is to having to be stable at whatever the engine wants that temperature to be. It’s pretty amazing that a, a substance can go through all that and and have to your marketing the long drain intervals, right?

Sean P. Holman (1h 34m 9s):

I mean you just think what oil goes through, let alone again the contaminants, clutch pack, wear down, bearing wear cylinder wall wear rings, all of that kind of stuff that’s constantly contaminating the oil throughout that entire process.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 34m 22s):

Yes. That’s So, You can just not say yes. That’s not, you didn’t ask a question. He was telling you how to do your job.

Sean P. Holman (1h 34m 27s):

I’m just think, I’m just thinking out loud. I’m just thinking out loud. Yeah,

Paul (1h 34m 30s):

No, a lot of thought goes into all of those considerations in an application and so we put all of that thought into the designs to make sure we can perform across the whole regime

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 34m 40s):

All. right? So we’re walking from one section to more lab materials Now wait, what? There’s weights over here. This is not for someone working out there are weights at the end of a a lever. What does this machine do? What is this

19 (1h 34m 54s):

For? This instrument here that you’re looking at with these weights is they’re calibrated weights is used for a wide variety of different testing. It’s a multi, generally it exposes oil to different conditions. One of them being extreme pressure. So the more weights you add and the further out the way they go on this lever arm, the more pressure you will exert on that oil. And So You can, we can actually like weld steel and evaluate how an oil will either prevent that or aggravate that. So that’s a, a good test here. We call it EP four ball. We also can do different shear type testing.

19 (1h 35m 35s):

So spinning a a, an oil fast enough where the molecules inside the oil start to not thermally break down but actually physically get torn apart. And so we can measure the viscosity loss at that point. Is that like

Sean P. Holman (1h 35m 49s):

If you go from a, a container to a film like how the oil reacts as a film, as it’s getting thinned out

19 (1h 35m 58s):

Or,

Sean P. Holman (1h 35m 58s):

Or surface to surface or

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 36m 0s):

It’s

19 (1h 36m 1s):

Generally a, a bearing where it just mechanically shears essentially the, the oil. So think of like a differential for example. And So You don’t want the mechanical churning in that, that application reducing viscosity and thereby reducing the film strength and causing wear. And so this gives us an ability to evaluate that without destroying differentials

Paul (1h 36m 28s):

From a shearer standpoint, as Paul was mentioning. So depending on how different products could be built, including competitors, different types of chemistries could be used and some can actually be literally torn apart and cause permanent viscosity loss. Other chemistries can come in that are more robust that can allow for say, some more extended viscosity control. So this testing allows us to look at that from a sheer perspective. So more of a permanent shear.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 36m 55s):

The machinery and the equipment in this lab varies considerably. Some are mechanical in nature where you’re physically just putting a grease between two metal pieces and squeezing it versus this machine over here that literally looks like something I would see in a doctor’s office to test blood. Meaning that I can’t see any external components. It’s a big computer and you feed some type of a test tube into it and then it performs an analysis. So the breadth of equipment here is really fascinating to me. I mean, if you didn’t know that this was an, A lab that tested lubricants, you’d think that you guys were running tests on the human genome or something. I, I mean it’s

Paul (1h 37m 34s):

Fascinating. Yeah. So we do have a variety of test equipment. Some is very dedicated to lubricants analysis. So for example, as Paul was mentioning with the the four ball, that is something that tests lubricant properties. What you see here is an ICP system, inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy. If you want a mouthful of words.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 37m 56s):

Great. One more time slower.

Paul (1h 37m 59s):

It’s I-C-P-O-E-S. So inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy. So this can be used in many different industries. Lubricant analysis is one. You could find this in a medical lab. Ours is dedicated to the analysis of lubricants. Typically, this is how we look for contaminants, understand the additive pack. So we can see upwards of 22 elements in our oils. We use this across the development process through supporting customers working with our mechanical lab, doing used oil analysis. This is a widely used instrument to kind of help us fingerprint in some ways the, the elemental composition, So, You can see your zinc.

Paul (1h 38m 42s):

You can see calcium if you’re getting contamination, say in a used oil, you could see your silica start to creep up. Those are the examples. This is what you’d see in your, you know, oil analysis program if you were sending out for that type of program. We have that in-house. It’s typically running every day. It sees a lot of work.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 39m 1s):

So this one looks like a refrigerator, but with 50 C on the readout, that doesn’t

Sean P. Holman (1h 39m 5s):

What is that in fair highlighting? I

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 39m 7s):

Don’t know, but it, I think it’s warm.

19 (1h 39m 9s):

It’s pretty warm. Probably pretty close to about 120 if I had to guess off the top of my head. Okay.

Sean P. Holman (1h 39m 15s):

I, I like the sign that has a hamburger and a soda on it with the red circle that comes through.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 39m 20s):

No food beverage for ice or human consumption. Yeah, that’s

19 (1h 39m 24s):

What it says here. Yeah. No, we have a a no food policy in the lab. So there’s, you just never know.

Sean P. Holman (1h 39m 30s):

Did you take those m and ms outta your pocket before you came in here?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 39m 32s):

I did not come in with m and e, m and MS for later,

19 (1h 39m 35s):

But yeah. But no, it’s a large, basically oven recreates some of the higher temperatures that a customer’s product might see. And so we will test our formulations in either this oven or the other, several different ovens and, and refrigerators to verify that the product is stable under normal conditions. Especially some of our customers overseas. Some products will make it into a container. You can’t control those temperatures as well. So we,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 40m 1s):

We should say that these are in their bottles, for example, a hundred percent synthetic CVT fluid, like and, and I see some additives in here. You have bottles. This is not like in test tubes. This is as I would buy it as packaged in a case as packaged. Right.

19 (1h 40m 15s):

Yeah. For validating any changes. Validating even just,

Sean P. Holman (1h 40m 20s):

This goes back to our previous discussion of shelf stability, right?

19 (1h 40m 23s):

Absolutely. Yeah. So this is where it is being done, right? So we do some quality checks. We verify over the life cycle of a product. We wanna make sure that product is keeping contaminants out. It’s also keeping the product in and making sure it’s delivered properly for the customer.

Sean P. Holman (1h 40m 42s):

And I would imagine you actually have to test your bottles to make sure the bottles don’t leach anything into the oil as well, right? Yep.

Paul (1h 40m 49s):

And that would be more akin to what is happening in this oven right now. Okay. Where it’s finished containers, we might put them in different configurations to check for seal integrity. Leaking heat will help accelerate any interactions that can occur. So say for instance, one of these bottles had an improper resin that had been selected and it starts to panel or maybe

Sean P. Holman (1h 41m 13s):

Le out or disintegrate

Paul (1h 41m 14s):

Or leach, you get pools of oil. We would be able to catch that before allowing use of certain materials on the stability side to your shelf life question. Yeah, we would typically be using something in a clear container. Okay. And taking it through similar paces so that we can visually see any, anything that could be occurring that would be of concern to the formula

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 41m 35s):

All. right. We are walking over to an entirely new section of the laboratory that I didn’t know existed. This is like a labyrinth in here. Well,

Sean P. Holman (1h 41m 41s):

Since we basically always relate everything back to food, this is basically if you have shaved ice and you have 47 different flavors and they’re all different colors and things, that’s like the, the syrups and the coloring.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 41m 53s):

This is so at

Sean P. Holman (1h 41m 54s):

Least you don’t wanna eat these taking

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 41m 55s):

Bottles out of a box here. And they’re all labeled and holy mackerel, there are so many additives,

Sean P. Holman (1h 42m 1s):

Anti foam antioxidant dispersant, anti-wear, synthetic base oil, conventional BAS oil, visco

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 42m 7s):

Friction modifier modifier, poor point depressed scent

Sean P. Holman (1h 42m 11s):

Detergents,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 42m 11s):

Conventional base oil, anti foam. So this is wild. And they’re all very different colors and whoa, he

Sean P. Holman (1h 42m 17s):

Ti one and, and not all of them are liquid either.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 42m 19s):

No. Hold on. Paul just tipped one over and it, the, the, the goo inside didn’t, doesn’t even move this a viscosity modifier. And it almost looks like a solid like candle wax even though I know it’s not. This is fascinating because I’ve not seen this on camera before.

Sean P. Holman (1h 42m 32s):

So You are showing a couple bottles there that have base oil and synthetic base oils and they’re clear. So how does oil get its color? Everybody generally is like, ah, it’s, it’s gold. Okay, there we go.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 42m 45s):

Or conventional base oil. It

Sean P. Holman (1h 42m 46s):

Actually, but some of it’s clear. So is some of that from the additives or do you purposely color the oil?

19 (1h 42m 51s):

So you’re onto a really good point. The level of processing that an oil goes through will generally show first and foremost in the base oils. Okay. Is getting more clear or water white as sometimes we call it. Okay. So

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 43m 5s):

This colorless, we’re looking at three specifically right here. One looks like honey, the next one looks like a cooking oil, right? Cooking oil, it’s kind of a, a lighter yellow and then a conventional base. Oil is almost clear. Like you, you might mistake this for water

Sean P. Holman (1h 43m 18s):

And the viscosity seems like water too is you see moving the bottles around.

19 (1h 43m 22s):

It just goes to show not only can conventionals have quite a stark difference, but as you get higher and higher refined, they do become more clear and you’ll notice some different properties about them including sometimes a little higher viscosity or lower viscosity and particularly at different temperatures.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 43m 43s):

Okay. So then what you’ll do is start with the, the correct base oil that your front row of these bottles, these little six inch tall bottles here with caps on ’em. And then you’ve got all the potential additives behind us like antioxidants, anti foam

Sean P. Holman (1h 43m 60s):

Friction,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 44m 0s):

Wildfires,

Sean P. Holman (1h 44m 1s):

Viscosity, like I say,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 44m 2s):

Four point detergent. Look

Sean P. Holman (1h 44m 4s):

How dark the detergent is.

19 (1h 44m 6s):

And that’s actually when you look at a oil, you will see a darker color and that’s generally due to the additives. Particularly detergents are often darker. Some dispersements can be as well as other, other additives. So that’s generally for a synthetic oil where you see a lot of the color come from. So

Sean P. Holman (1h 44m 24s):

I recently learned something that maybe you guys can speak to you because your scientists and I’m not, and we’re talking about viscosity and we’re talking about extreme pressure, which has me looking at this box of gear lube over here and the gear lube is a 75 W 90. You might have a 10 40 as a motor oil. And somewhere along the way I was in a forum or a group and somebody says, why can’t I just put motor oil in my differential? And somebody says the viscosity scales are actually different. And so motor oil viscosity and gear loop viscosity aren’t one-to-one and So You shouldn’t do that. Is that true?

19 (1h 45m 1s):

Generally? Yes. So motor oils follow a different viscosity range. Okay. Than gear oils. There are some viscosities that would kind of line up and in fact in some applications usually non-automotive that you can put different oils in different applications. It’s depending, really depends on the application though. Okay. But yeah, no you’re right that it is a different viscosity gradient. It’s like So,

Sean P. Holman (1h 45m 26s):

It would be like my 10 40 feels thicker than my 90 weight gear lube or something like that. Like they’re not a one-to-one and So You don’t wanna put your motor oil in your dip that in the added package. And thermal manage is always, is all wrong as well.

19 (1h 45m 40s):

Absolutely. Yep. You’re right.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 45m 41s):

So then looking at the different bottles, you’ve got this, this front row here that you just set up first on the countertop with the base oils all the way from, like I said honey, all the way to super clear. And then will you put those in a beaker and then you start putting in other viscosity modifiers based on predetermined quantities and then you’ll test them from there? Or just take me through just generally how you’d go about

Paul (1h 46m 3s):

It usually starts out on paper. So we kinda lay out our whole design, the different ingredients. Think of it as the recipe. Yep. There may be a few iterations of that that will come to the lab to be blended where we work with our scales and beakers and we’re pouring together, mixing together the the chemistries. Those then start through the lab process to do some basic quality checks to make sure the viscosity is what we intended it to be. ’cause as you can see there’s a lot of different thickness to the different components. And so as, so

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 46m 33s):

Elise is literally as she’s saying that she’s turning a bottle upside down and it doesn’t even, well it is moving. Whoa.

Sean P. Holman (1h 46m 37s):

Looks like molasses.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 46m 38s):

Yeah, it’s molasses. It’s a dispersant is how this is labeled. Yep.

Paul (1h 46m 43s):

So. You have to balance out the different viscosities, So, You kind of start with the, what you expect in your paper formula. You obviously have to validate that in the lab, get that all into the requirements before you then start doing all of your other testing. ’cause there’s a lot of testing that goes on So, You have to kind of take your first couple of baby steps, make sure your formula is built as you intend to be. You typically then build a larger blend so that we have more oil to work with so that as we’re running the different tests than the labs or as we’re sending samples down to our mechanical lab, we have one big batch of formulation to work from to help with that validation process.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 47m 21s):

Can you take us through, just, just quickly take us through some of these types of things. For example, I’m holding in my hand viscosity modifier and this looks like I,

Sean P. Holman (1h 47m 30s):

But check this out. Flower salty is, this is also viscosity modifier

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 47m 33s):

Like Don don’t understand one. Like a gel or a, well this is a powder right in my hand here. And then like Holman you had, there’s another one that’s a gel. How are these three viscosity? They’re all labeled viscosity modifiers. Okay. We’ll put them side by side. And one does look like Vaseline, the middle one looks like a very thick but clear oil. And then this one looks like salt or, or like sugar or something like it’s that granular. How is that possible that they’re, they’re so different. They’re

19 (1h 48m 2s):

Different because they are, the composition or how they’re built is different. And so each one has unique properties and this really does speak to how you design a product to meet requirements or how you could mis formulate a product and have a product that fails if you don’t understand the chemistry properly. And so this was a really good example of showing when we had a, a dealer convention showing our dealers the uniqueness of the components. And so these are all polymers. They are generally larger molecular weight, but you can see that each one kind of carries a different property to it. And so they perform different, whether it be in how it manages viscosity at high temperature or how it can maybe resist shear in that test that we were talking about previously.

Sean P. Holman (1h 48m 47s):

Here’s lightning’s favorite ZDDP right

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 48m 50s):

Here. Oh, anti-wear

19 (1h 48m 51s):

Zinc dyl diphosphate.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 48m 54s):

Now this chemical is famous when it comes to motor oil. Why is that

19 (1h 48m 59s):

ZDDP? It’s an excellent additive for a lot of reasons. It is great at providing anti-wear. Basically when it falls apart or oxidizes, it actually creates a a layer and reacts with the surface of iron to create a harder iron surface. So, it prevents wear, it also can lay down some phosphorus in a generally kind of a amorphous sort of less durable but still a good cushion for wear. So it’s like multiple ways it protects against wear. It also is what they call a multifunctional additive because it does impart some antioxidation as well as it does when it gives up, it’s when it breaks down, it actually is sacrificing itself for preventing other things from breaking down So.

19 (1h 49m 47s):

it is a,

Sean P. Holman (1h 49m 48s):

It’s a martyr

19 (1h 49m 49s):

Additive. It is a martyr additive, yes. But it is, it’s a good one. But unfortunately you do have to balance it because too much is never, always a good thing even for the best of things. Right. And so phosphorus for example is can hurt emission systems and too much zinc you can actually impact some other properties of an oil that you wouldn’t want to have be present in an oil So. it really is kind of finding that balance for each formulation. And that’s kind of, I think some of the expertise and understanding that we can offer. So

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 50m 22s):

Elise, Paul, thank you so much for touring us through the AMS oil Laboratory. It’s it honestly, it’s an honor. You guys are amazing. Thank

Sean P. Holman (1h 50m 29s):

You. And you guys can let the, all the technicians who disappeared when we entered the lab, come back to work now.

Paul (1h 50m 34s):

Sounds great. No, thank you all for visiting. It was great having you. Okay,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 50m 37s):

Thank

19 (1h 50m 37s):

You Paul. Yeah, thank you. We appreciate it. All,

Sean P. Holman (1h 50m 39s):

Right. So we had so much great content in this episode from visiting AMS oil. We’re gonna break it up into two episodes. So we are gonna take a break and the next episode will be the second half of AMS oil. So for this show, we have to thank all of our sponsors presenting sponsored Nissans. If you’re in the market for a brand new Nissan truck, head over to nissan usa dot com where you can build a price or head on down to your local dealer. And,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 50m 59s):

We have to thank Banks Power Don. Don’t know Holman if you noticed above Mark OL’s desk, but he had the brand new Cool Runner oil pan for Durmax pickup trucks and Ram Air Trans Pan. Both were hanging up there because you can also get AMS oil with those kits. So head over to Banks Power dot com. If you have a Durmax truck, you need to know about the Cool Runner oil pan and the Ram Air Trans Pan head there now.

Sean P. Holman (1h 51m 21s):

And I would tell you more about AMS oil, but you’ve just listened to this entire episode, So You probably Know What, and

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 51m 26s):

You’re gonna get more

Sean P. Holman (1h 51m 27s):

Episode. So you’re gonna find all about all of this and more from this episode and the next one at truck Show Podcast dot com wherever you download your podcast. Or AMS oil dot com.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 51m 35s):

And, when you’re looking for phenomenally engineered truck accessories like window visors, LED lights or our favorite, the EGR roll track Tono cover you. Head over to EGR USA dot com. The truck Show Podcast is a production of truck famous LLC. This podcast was created by Sean Holman and J Tillis with production elements by DJ Omar kh. If you like what you’ve heard, please open your Apple Podcast or Spotify app and give us a five star rating. And if you’re a fan, there’s no better way to show your support than by patronizing our sponsors. Some vehicles may have been harmed during the making of this podcast.