Season 2, Episode 98 - Ontario Bollards - End Driveway Truck Theft

 

 

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Holman & Lightning (0s):

Come on, sing it with me. Nope. Sing it with me. Nope. Sing it with me. You ready? I know you’re gonna have to. I’m not singing. Once I start singing it, you’re gonna have to do it. Here I go. Fish heads. Fish heads. Rollie Poy. Fish heads. Fish heads. Fish heads. Eat them. Them up. Yum. Yeah. Okay. In The morning? No. No. Oh really? No. Nobody wants to start their Monday morning off with that. The Fish Head song? No. If you haven’t heard it, you’re very young. Go to YouTube, type in Fish head song and you will love it. It’s a great song from the eighties. Alright, so I have a feeling when You guys started listening to the Trunk Show podcast, you didn’t think to yourselves, if only they would talk about Ballards.

Holman & Lightning (42s):

I mean, maybe somebody did. Maybe this has been the moment they’ve been waiting for. I think some people are saying, what are you saying? What word is it? Ballard? What is a Ballard? A Ballard is a, It’s the thing that a bunch of listeners said, you, including myself, said, you should install at the end of your driveway to keep your TRX safe. And you dismissed us as being loony idiots with a dumb idea. Well, I, I thought of a Ballard as being like some bright orange plastic coated cement tube sticking outta the ground. So I don’t like how, why Would, why would we suggest Ballard and say, just put a permanent piece of cement sticking outta your driveway? Well, I know that some then you couldn’t drive Your drive. So it can be bolted in. I’ve seen the kinds with little locks. You put a padlock on, you unlock the padlock and you slide it off the base.

Holman & Lightning (1m 24s):

and I, how much Do you wanna keep your T Rx? I didn’t know. Well, I, I do a lot. All right. But I didn’t know that there were attractive ballards, as we will explain in this episodes, when we check in with Sean Lowry at ontario bollards dot com. which I gotta stop right here though, and Apologize. This, this is where you Stop. I gotta stop right here. Okay. Because I owe several people. Apologies. Who recommended bollards? Okay. rb. Trevor Nero, Dave sel, Tristan Perry. Gary Davis and Zach Taylor. No, you’re missing one. I am. Oh, The guy who up? Yeah, the guy who brought it up. So I feel like installing attractive retractable bollards in my driveway could Be, would it be cheaper For you to, the one thing that would keep my, my TRX in the Driveway whiten your garage and just keep it in your garage.

Holman & Lightning (2m 18s):

It would be a lot more money. Are you Sure about That? I mean, I think Ballards are gonna run me, let’s call it installed four grand. A garage is gonna be 40 grand. Easy at least. All right? I mean, cement all the structure co, you know, permits all that stuff. And the Ballards, What’s that? Oh, by the Way, have you checked to see if you need permits for Ballards? I’m, I ain’t gonna ask. Interesting. I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna coer some holes into the ground and pour me some cement. That’s the plan. So you’re going to buy an expensive Ballard and then put it in cheaply. Got it. No, no. I’ll do it. Right. I’m gonna find it. I think I’m gonna call myself some rich holdaway at Holdaway Construction. I Think you just did. I just did.

Holman & Lightning (2m 58s):

So, Hey Rich, I’m gonna need a cement saw Cord Drill. I need a cord drill. Probably I, don Dunno. 10 15. No. Okay, let’s inches. You don’t need any of those things. You need Rich to bring those things down and help you out. Maybe I do. Yes. All right. Well I think I do we, we need to check in with Listen Sean re No. Okay, we’re gonna, we’ll get to him in a minute. I need to tell you about my triumphant moment today. I, were You convinced Lightning to get Ballards? No, no. That that was, that was a sides show you, You can check that box. I’m going to, I drove all the way out to Riverside today and back. Okay. So that doesn’t win you any branding points. I’ve done that to On my own in the carpool lane. Yeah.

Holman & Lightning (3m 38s):

Did you feel dirty? Nope. I felt like I was passing a lot of people. Yeah. So you guys who don’t live in California may or may not know, but when You buy an ev, you can pay $21, maybe it’s 22 to the California Department of Motor Vehicles. And as long as you give them your vin, your registration, they verify that you own an actual ev, you can get a clean air access vehicle sticker, which ugly ups your car and you put it on the four corners and it allows you to drive in the carpool lane. Solo low. It is a woo. It is a butt ugly, minor red, reflective Sticker, minor red. So it looks awesome on the boulder Gray metal. when You, When You say awesome, it looks barely acceptable. No. So good.

Holman & Lightning (4m 18s):

But You know what, ’cause I don’t look at him as I’m passing all the other Cars. No, I get it. But it ruins The Lighting doesn’t like it. ’cause he’s like, that’s dirty. I’m like, yeah, well you listen, I got this thing as a tool. It’s ’cause the tool Person in the carpool, It’s a tool to get me around town faster so I can do more things. It’s not the only tool. There’s one in it, that’s Fine. But I have, I’ve got the EV and I’m going to, I’m gonna ring every ounce of benefit out of that thing as possible. My free charging, my super cheap lease rate and my carpool stickers. And this will interest you. I had a question that I thought maybe, well I know you’d be interested in the answer because you’re Lightning, but you maybe have thought about this before. Sure.

Holman & Lightning (4m 58s):

As you’re sitting in the number one lane watching Tesla after Tesla. Tesla after Tesla. Tesla after Tesla, after Polestar, after Tesla. Yeah, In there too. Tesla Rivian. Oh dude, I saw my first baby poop. Brown Hummer Drive passed me today in the carpool lane. Well That’s okay. Every time I go by I’m like, man, You know what sucks is those stickers de get destroyed when You try and peel ’em off. They’re designed to. I know, I know. So it sucks because you have to put’em on your paint. And I’m like, that really is crappy. And I see ’em all the time. When people put ’em on sideways. You’re like, oh Geez. Once you put ’em on, you’re done. You can’t move ’em around. So I go to Amazon and I found somebody is using 3M PPF cut to the size of the sticker with about a quarter inch over.

Holman & Lightning (5m 48s):

So you can put it on the PF and then peel It off and then No, no, no. You put it on the PPF. It still will destroy if you peel it off PPF. No, no. But when You can peel the PPF off. Yeah. So when I turn it, return it for a lease, I just hit it with a little bit of heat, peel that sucker off. No damage, no harm, no foul. Very smart. So I Was like, that’s pretty cool. ’cause I didn’t even, I, I was thinking there’s gotta be a way to put the sticker on and I what I originally just saw. Somebody makes these little magnetic plates that are the same size of the sticker. You put the sticker to the magnetic plate, put magnets on the back side of your bumper and then you just snap ’em on. Yeah. But Then if someone finds out in your neighborhood, then steal They ya ’em or the car wash or they get blown off. I’m like, there’s gotta be something else. And so I was looking and lo and behold in Amazon it was like, I think it was like I, don dunno, 12 or 15 bucks or something like that.

Holman & Lightning (6m 30s):

It was under 20 bucks, four stickers cut to the exact size. You just tell ’em which year. ’cause there’s a couple different variations. Came to my house and one day and on my kitchen counter, I lined them up, I put ’em on, put a little soapy water wa wiped off the car. A little water with, I had some sticker solvent. Cop will never know the Difference dude. And just put it on and it, they’re fine. And that way when I return the car, don don’t have to worry about having any damage. ’cause you know, if you hit scratch it and that there’s certain things that they’re, they’re like, yeah, I know. But the problem with these stickers are you can’t just take ’em off. So a lot of times it ruins the paint. So you need to refinish a bumper. Yeah. And this way I don’t have that Problem. So. Well it’s the same thing. If you’ve ever tried to take off the registration stickers from the license, same deal. And it pulls the, the paint off the license plate.

Holman & Lightning (7m 10s):

Yeah. I remember when I worked for the police department, we would find registration stickers that had been stolen. So the plate was not current registration and it had a registration sticker on it. and I was with this one cop. He used to always just take ’em off with his knife. He’s like, Nope, not yours. Write him a ticket. He would peel it off. But I learned there, just do a cross hash with a, with a knife. So they peel Up the Pieces in pieces. Yeah. That’s The best way to do it. I’ve done that. Yep. Yeah, it’s a smart move. So, So anyway, yeah. That’s Your tip of the day. Yeah. There you go. Slice up your, the month sticker or if you’re driving No, no, no. It’s a year sticker. Not the month, the month stays. Must stay In A year. But, or if you’re driving a rivian or a cyber truck and you want to get yourself a California clean air sticker, go to Amazon. Get that PPF ’cause that’s, that’s the winning deal right there.

Holman & Lightning (7m 51s):

So I guess it does a, it balances out the butt ugliness of the sticker a little bit because you’ve got the, you know, you can take it Off. I know I can take it off. Yeah. But I’m telling you today I save 45 minutes driving home. I, I mean that part is great. That part’s great. If I Have to go up to banks, guess what? There’s no toll road or anything in the banks. You’re sitting there the whole time. Yeah. This thing’s perfect for that client meeting. Drive up there, handle my business. Shoot back in the carpool lane. Yeah. Oh, today would’ve been a good day because I sat in traffic for about an hour and 15 minutes on the 6 0 5 North motorcyclist hit the back of a, a dump truck. I saw a guy, one of those dirt haulers and it and it, dude, I knew it was bad when his shoes were 30 feet apart. Yeah, I saw I his shoes.

Holman & Lightning (8m 31s):

I saw a motorcycle almost dude wasn’t wearing, wearing boots. Almost, almost lose it today. And then I saw a Tahoe cut across. There must have been some road raging going on, but it was on the, the 15 that was heading out to the desert driving a truck that we’ll talk about in our shorter episode this week. 15 goes from Las from LA to Las Vegas, Basically heading out to the desert to do a little testing and he cuts off like a, it was like a black older Range Rover and ripped it back over and went up briefly on two wheels and then did the tail wiggle. and I was like, oh, so close. Like that dude was all angry. I’m gonna show you. But he almost lost it. Yeah. And I’m thinking, yeah dude, not to, I don’t need to see the Road rages never get their, their Due. Their due. Yeah. No. Yeah, yeah.

Holman & Lightning (9m 12s):

Sometimes you, you want them to get their to, but you don’t want them to take someone else out with them. No, no. Absolutely not. Yeah. Alright, so we’ve got a lot of email to get to on this episode, but not before we thank Nissan for making this show possible. That’s right. Nissan is the presenting sponsor of The Truck Show. Podcast Nissan makes them reliable, durable, and great trucks. Head on over to Nissan usa dot com where you can build and price or head on down to your local Nissan dealer where you can check out the Frontier or the Titan. The Titan has the industry’s best five year, 100,000 mile warranty. And guess what? There’s a whole bunch of other stuff that Nissan has like aria’s, which are really awesome. Or the Pathfinder that’s coming to my driveway tomorrow. Say what Long story short lease is coming up on the four xe.

Holman & Lightning (9m 52s):

So we went to our friend Jackson and said, Hey, wanna do the exact same thing. The car’s prices increased like a thousand bucks in two years. More incentives, get the deal, blah, blah, blah. The lease payments almost double what it is now. Yeah. And we’re like, oh, guess we won’t be doing that. And just because with California being as crappy as it is, all these manufacturers are dumping all their hybrids here instead of the rest of the country because of the mandates. And so the residuals dropped out and so nobody’s buying like secondhand hybrids and Yeah. Where are they Going by the way? I mean they’re, they gotta, there are a lot of ’em sitting on lots. They just, they can’t move ’em. And so it’s just saturated with that. And so the value of the new ones, the residuals so bad that the lease rates are awful. So what’s happening is a lot of manufacturers are, are subsidizing those lease rates to, to keep moving those products.

Holman & Lightning (10m 37s):

Well there’s no subsidy right now. And I’m like, well we can’t do it. So I asked my wife, I’m like, well what do you like? And she goes, well, a couple years ago I really like that Pathfinder that we took to the Redwoods. ’cause we went up to Sequoia. Okay. And that’d Be kind of cool to see her in a Pathfinder So. Well so I was actually surprised that she was, that was the car that came up. ’cause we kinda looked at a bunch of different stuff. She goes no, I I Because She’s gotten a little bougie Over No, no, no, she hasn’t gotten bougie. I would say she’s gotten less bougie. Oh really? Yeah. So when we went that Jeep is that Jeep, if you took the badging off be before it was like Range Rover Ish before me. She had Audi A two, A three, A four, A five. How’s that? Not bougie. No, I’m sorry. A three. I’m sorry. A three A four, two A fives a Mercedes C class.

Holman & Lightning (11m 21s):

You’re Back in what I’m saying two BMW three suit. That’s what I’m saying. She’s actually backed off of that. Oh, I see what you’re saying. We Got her, her other Grand Cherokee before this. Well she had a Cherokee and that’s not bougie. No it’s not. And then I, I said, if you stay through this whole lease, because she had a thing where she leased a lot of cars and upside down and your wife is Yeah, my wife C and I said, Hey, if you get through this three years with this Cherokee and get whatever you want and we’re done, but we need to soak up and we got such a good deal. Took all the upside Downness and spread it across Cherokee. So she did that. Then she got a Grand Cherokee. She’s like, I always wanted a Grand Cherokee. So we had the last generation and then when the new version came out, she’s like, well I want that. Well she got, it’s been great, but just, we just can’t afford the model that she wants.

Holman & Lightning (12m 1s):

Like she wants a certain amount of features that she’s used to and we’re not paying what’s, what’s out there right now. So she had was like poking around a pathfinder when we picked up the aria and she’s like, yeah, I still really like these. and I was like, what? Really? Like, huh. Right. And so they, Where’s my wife? Yeah, They had a Rock creek. And then, so she’s been looking at the platinums, which are really nice. And so Nissan said, sure. They’ve been gracious enough to drop one off for her to drive so she can do a how long you have It? A week. Okay. So she’ll be able to drive it and see if it fits, you know, all of our family needs and stuff like that. And you get second row captain’s chairs, which he’s excited about. So, so who knows, we might have two Nissans in the, in the driveway. That’s really cool.

Holman & Lightning (12m 41s):

That’s, that’s Sean Holman putting his money where his mouth is. That’s right here. So we appreciate Nissan and we appreciate them presenting the The Truck Show podcast Nissan usa dot com. Alright, Well I’ve talked a lot about the bank’s Monster Ram for the 2007 to 2024 Ram with a 6.7 liter Cummins diesel. Not only does it improve your throttle response, your fuel economy, your power, but what you guys know it for lately is preventing grid heater bolt failure, which could destroy that $30,000 engine. Well Holman, you don’t know this, but just today we got our carb EO on the 22, 23 and 24 model years for the Monster Ram up until today.

Holman & Lightning (13m 22s):

So my uncle’s truck, he’s been waiting for the monster Ram I, know it. And so That happened this morning. We got the letter from California Air Resource Board. You can now buy a Monster RAM for your 22, 23 or 24. All right Uncle Warren, if you’re listening, hit me up if you want one Yep. Ram and you can go install it today and have your truck smugged tomorrow. It’s awesome. It is the only 50 state compliant intake elbow for the ram. If you’re interested in learning more, head over to banks power dot com, type in your year, make and model and before you buy it, hit up your boy Lightning. ’cause I’ll hook you up with a little something something. Part of the deal with the AMS oil sponsorship that we have here is that banks also has relationship with oil, which is great because you love AM oil.

Holman & Lightning (14m 5s):

I love AM Oil banks. Includes am That AM Oil Box right there. Box behind ib. Yeah. Zero W 40 for the the Jeep. So it’s off my shelf at work. All right. So part of the deal is when You guys sell a diff cover, you also include AM oil as an option to fill the diff It’s called The first Bill, which is awesome. Yeah. So one of the things I love about AMS oil is the severe gear comes in the awesome pouch. It’s not like a traditional bottle that gulp gulp, gulps all over your garage floor. Super easy to do a diff service and it’s got like just a little nozzle on the top. You screw it, you cut the top and you can squeeze it into your diff and the bag is awesome. You also get the 75 90, which is pretty common. Severe duty, 75, 1 40 for for towing.

Holman & Lightning (14m 46s):

The Reason we love the easy packs at work and I do personally is because with so many trucks to get up into the diff into the fill port, you need a weird funnel and a and a and a long, If you don’t have type deal, a lift where you can drop out the rear axle, the spare tire’s in the way of the diff fill, It’s totally in the way. Yeah. So with the easy pack, you literally can just take the, the nozzle and bend it over and just squeeze it like a ketchup bottle or like a ketchup Soft pouch that’s, there you go. Perfect ketchup. Soft pouch. That’s exactly what this is. Right? But for gear oil, It makes it so freaking easy. So if you are looking for some of the highest quality gear oil on the market for towing terrain, temperature, severe duty, we love the severe gear from Ansel head over to amwell dot com.

Holman & Lightning (15m 27s):

It’s more than just severe Gear oil. They’ve got all sorts of fluids, lubricants, car care products, everything you need. AMS Oil first in synthetics

Intro (15m 36s):

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. Woe wo

3 (16m 8s):

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

Holman & Lightning (16m 13s):

Alright,

Intro (16m 14s):

So I, this is that part

Holman & Lightning (16m 16s):

Of the show? This Is that part of the show when we talk about your security woes again, I think so we’re gonna talk about Lightning security woes, but I think this, when Will it end? Lightning, It’s going to end I think with bollards and I. I do think it’s gonna end with bollards. I we haven’t talked to the alarm people. At some point we’re gonna do that. ’cause I think that’s good for everyone. But another topic here, Holman, this is good for everyone. This topic is good for anyone with any car or any truck, You need an intervention. This is like somebody who is, is They don’t like themselves and they’re gonna get plastic surgery and they’re like, no, I need the lipo, the chin thingy, the nose drop the Brazilian butt lift. When will it end? But Lighting feel, will this be the end of your journey? I feel like all of these, all of these things that I’ve done, like the Just need to love yourself.

Holman & Lightning (16m 59s):

The, the, The, the sound effects that I’m blasting out of the, the front yard and the, the the driveway. The driveway signal and all that stuff that I’ve installed, right? Yeah. When someone walks in or, you know, onto my driveway. Okay, those are all bandaids. I think that Ballards will actually prevent theft and I will be able to sleep At night. I disagree. Really? I feel like you selling The truck will allow you to sleep at night. I Don’t wanna be that guy. Trust me. The Only person, you know, that’s like, you’ve taken a dog and the dog like nips at little kids when they come over and doesn’t really listen. You’re like, oh, I gotta rehome this dog. And then you’re like, oh, I’m the dude that rehomed a dog. Yeah. That’s gonna be what happens. I can’t, I can’t give in rehome. The T Rx know. I know people that are selling their TXs, we’ve talked about this before.

Holman & Lightning (17m 41s):

They’re like, You know what, dude, if that were me, I’d just sell it. I don’t, I I don’t wanna lose sleep at night over a car. I’m like, oh No. Well, no. But that’s, that’s, that’s disingenuous if you’re just, if you don’t are like, oh, I don’t wanna lose sleep over a car, then you’re shouldn’t be driving that anyway. That’s like a whatever. Then you don’t care if it gets stolen. ’cause you’ll probably get the bigger insurance payout. I did, I’ve done so much cool stuff to it though. Anyway, let’s call Sean Lowry at Ontario. Ballards up there in Ontario, Canada and hopefully he’ll have the answer that will keep this truck in my driveway forever. Yeah.

Sean Lowry (18m 20s):

Hello

Holman & Lightning (18m 21s):

Sean. What’s going on? Lightning at home at Truck Show podcast. How you doing?

Sean Lowry (18m 24s):

Hey man, I’m great. How are you doing?

Holman & Lightning (18m 26s):

Doing awesome. Hey, we have a quick jingle that we need to play for you. Don’t move.

6 (18m 30s):

Prepare to dive. Prepare

7 (18m 32s):

To dive. Hi Captain. Captain, we’re too

6 (18m 35s):

Deep. There’s no such thing as too deep. Okay, that was too deep.

Holman & Lightning (18m 54s):

Because you see Ballards, they go into the earth. Oh, is is that how you chose that one? They Retract into the ground and so they go deep and that way they’re flush with the driveway. See, I think most people think of bollards as sitting above ground and that’s where they’re, you know, they’re stationary. That’s, no, that’s not a Ballard, that’s a post. A poach just a post. It’s A post. No. Ballards are the things that come up and Sean prove us wrong or which one of us is correct. Is are there stationary Ballards or do they all

Sean Lowry (19m 22s):

You are, you are both right gentlemen.

Holman & Lightning (19m 26s):

Alright. Ra rarely something talked about on this podcast where we’re both right?

Sean Lowry (19m 31s):

Yeah. So there’s, you can do fixed, removable, semi-automatic, automatic. There are many different types of Ballard out there. Let’s dive into it. Thanks for having me guys.

Holman & Lightning (19m 41s):

So the reason that Lightning reached out to you is because we had an incident at Lightning’s house where somebody tried to steal his TRX, but that’s beside the point. It’s everything that happened after that that brought us to this point in time right here. And that is because our wonderful listeners brought up gazillion ideas, put stickers on your car trip wires, loud bangs, flashes, put a cage around, put Ballards at the end of your driveway. And I’ve done everything but the Ballards and I scoffed at The Ballards. And Lightning was like, that is the stupidest thing I ever heard. This is dumb. Why would I do that? And we’re like, because it takes up like six inches of, of whiff and your car can’t be moved from your driveway.

Holman & Lightning (20m 21s):

And he’s like, that’s dumb yet here we are. Here We are. Yes. That’s how it went down. Exactly. So I took some advice from some of our listeners and I clicked on their links through DMS at LBC Lightning and it led me to ontario ballards dot com and I discovered that they’re, they’re not always bright yellow and bright orange bollards that are covered in plastic. The kind you see in front of gas pumps so you don’t run into ’em more in front of your local target store so you don’t drive a tank through the front door. Stuff like that. These are attractive stainless steel bollards that rise outta the ground and then you can push it back into the ground and they’re flush.

Holman & Lightning (21m 1s):

They had photos in, in front of beautiful homes. I was like, oh my God, I didn’t know these existed. So Sean, have you been supplying bollards to people that are freaked out about auto theft? Like me,

Sean Lowry (21m 14s):

We get 30 calls a day for people looking for this kind of solution. It’s absolutely crazy. So we’re in Toronto and vehicle theft has been just rampant for the last two years basically. And so yeah, we, we’ve been installing this product, stainless steel retractable Ballard for about five years now. And we used to do maybe one a month now we’re doing, you know, 15 to 20 a week. Things have gone crazy. And like you said, the world of Ballards has evolved quite a bit from, you know, it used to be just a galvanized steel post that you’d put four feet below grade and four feet above and it would just be a fixed permanent structure. But the, the need for this kind of protection has really brought this retractable kind of more aesthetically pleasing product to market for us.

Holman & Lightning (22m 3s):

Well, I’m looking on the website and what I am impressed with, and clearly you guys understand it too because one of your key words is basically attractive, safe and secure perimeter protection. So attractive being the first thing in that sentence you realize that there’s a need out there for, for homeowners or for more upscale areas to have a Ballard that disappears within its environment. It doesn’t stand out necessarily. I’m curious, what is your mix between, let’s say commercial, industrial and residential now? Are you seeing residential become a more important part of your business?

Sean Lowry (22m 42s):

Yeah, it’s, it’s been huge. The last, like I said, 18 months to two, two years, we used to be 98% commercial. And now, you know, the residential market’s probably 20 to 30% of our business. It’s, we can’t keep up with the demand. It’s crazy.

Holman & Lightning (22m 57s):

I started looking around here, of course I go to the website and this is before I called Sean and I start poking around Googling Ballards Ballard installation near me. That’s what everyone does, right? and I find that there are a couple industrial places in like Long Beach and air in, in LA that will put in those stanchion like devices around stores, shopping malls, things like that. But nothing about any residential, nothing. And then I, as I open up my search, it’s really just Canada and I go, how, how is this possible? How is this tech not popular, at least in Southern California where there’s a Porsche sitting in front of, you know, a a million homes, that type of thing.

Holman & Lightning (23m 40s):

How is it just a like a, a Canadian thing right now?

Sean Lowry (23m 43s):

I mean it’s still a newish product for us, us And so just educating people on the fact that there is this solution out there because people don’t really know You know what they can do. They, you know, they’ve tried the club, they’ve tried the Faraday box, you know, all the other solutions you’ve already mentioned and just those things aren’t working anymore. So we kind of went back to the old school ways of just make it so that even if a beef can get your car started, there’s nowhere that they can drive off the property.

Holman & Lightning (24m 9s):

Sean, there’s a video that’s going on right now on online going viral that everybody’s sitting around. A guy has a TRX in his driveway and he blocks his driveway with the raptor. They move the raptor out of the way and then steal the TRX anyway, I mean the madness. I love the fact that the, the Raptor guys are all butt hurt, you know, because they’re like, oh, he Didn’t want my truck. Yeah, exactly. That’s pretty funny. But then we heard another, another story who told us that about they removed a, a, the guy’s wife’s Jeep 3 92 outta the way to get the T Rx Oh, wr wrangle Wrangler. Yeah. Yeah. It was a wrangler. Yeah. Yeah. So it, it, it’s funny, I’m kind of curious as a, as a homeowner myself and somebody that suggested this product unknowingly that you guys actually made it, maybe it’s half joking at the time to, to Lightning here.

Holman & Lightning (24m 52s):

But what goes into the construction? You talked about, you know, they’re eight feet, four above grade, and four below grade. What is it like to basically do the install then? How do they retract? What’s the mechanism in, in construction behind them?

Sean Lowry (25m 5s):

Basically we have two models that are the most popular. A manual retractable and then an automatic retractable. And so the installation is similar for both, but the manual, basically we use a core drill and we drill a 14 inch diameter hole by about four feet deep sit about eight inches of gravel and then pour concrete. And so the Ballard is about four feet below ground. And then in the upright position, it’s a little under four feet. It’s a pretty simple installation. The, the automatic that we have, everything runs on low voltage cable. So it’s a pretty simple installation as well. Just the Ballards get hooked up to a control panel that you probably have in your garage.

Sean Lowry (25m 48s):

And then you can use a key fob or cell phone app.

Holman & Lightning (25m 53s):

I mean even, even the Ballards have cell phone apps now. Right. So the construction I’m looking at online, you have stainless steel, they’re really beautiful looking. So they’re about, they’re about four inches in diameter. They have, you can get different colored stripes around it so you don’t just walk into it in the middle of the night. Reflective stripes towards people. Like, Well they’re round people bounce off of ’em. There’s no hard, there’s no square Edges. Well the question that I had, and actually I didn’t ask when I was talking to Sean setting up this interview is let’s say that I have the, a-hole that really wants the vehicle and he is, he’s gonna push the nose of The truck against it or he’s got a stolen Kia because that’s even easier to steal. So he, he straps up a, some kind of a, a chain or something to the, to the, to the frame of the Kia and he gets a running start and he tries to yank this thing over.

Holman & Lightning (26m 39s):

What’s the stopping force of the Baller? So think about this too. It’s like a mast on a sailing ship. You know, the mast doesn’t end at the deck, the mask goes all the way down. Or like when they do, when they do the foundation for bridges and things like that, the, the magic is how much of that is underground. But I like you, I’m curious, what’s the force that they can stop? These are Hollow, I think they’re not solid. That would be so heavy. The average person wouldn’t be able to pull it up. Unless, it was spring assisted.

Sean Lowry (27m 3s):

Correct. It is hollow. This product is designed as a visual deterrent first. It can definitely withstand an impact. Like we have seen a Range Rover hit it 10 times from about a five foot runway weight and it still remains fully intact. It’s not like an official crash certified Ballard. We do carry those types. But for the residential, what we found in Toronto anyways is that if a thief pulls up to the residence and there’s a Ballard there, they’re gonna move on to the next house. We have dozens of videos that homeowner, homeowners have sent us that a thief literally pulls up, scopes it out, realizes it’s not worth his time to try and dismantle it moves on to the next house.

Sean Lowry (27m 45s):

And having said that, it’s setting concrete. If you hooked up a chain to it, you’d be there for a while trying to pull it up for sure.

Holman & Lightning (27m 52s):

So it wouldn’t bend or snap or I guess that’s what, what, what force would it take to get it to like curl over enough that you could drive the vehicle out? And I’m not saying that I’m gonna try this of course, but I’m just curious. Obviously hook it to a tank, it’s gonna bend right? If something’s gonna happen. But I I would imagine that some guy just tries to yank on it. He’s gonna realize it’s pretty sturdy

Sean Lowry (28m 11s):

Oh. yeah, you’re you’re gonna need to drive over it at 40 kilometers an hour with a big truck to, to do something to it.

Holman & Lightning (28m 19s):

I think we’re bearing the headline here in that these look way too nice for your house or your neighborhood. So what, what are you gonna do? How dare you, what are you gonna do to match your house? I, I’m envisioning Lightning installing these at the foot of his driveway and then getting hollow vinyl square fence posts to put over the top of them. That way it blends in with his yard. How dare you? I, so I sent Sean a photo of my front yard because I, I was thinking and he said We don’t have the vinyl ballers yet. No, no. Listen, I, I realize that my, my my, my vinyl fencing is a little ghetto. You know, it’s not ghetto. It’s, I’m Just saying is what it is. It’s vinyl fi now it’s not ugly. It’s right. I’m just kind of ranch style. Right. This is what I’m saying. You’re misunderstanding me. So You’re making me feel Defensive. No, no, no, no, no.

Holman & Lightning (28m 59s):

Stop. You’re misunderstanding me. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with your house. I’m just saying that with the stainless steel beautiful Ontario ballards out front, your fence is gonna look not as good. I Agree. These look like something you’d see at the foot of a museum Or at the a, a brand new modern mansion in the harbor or something like that. I agree With the McLaren on the other side. I See. But I, I have the way that I’m gonna solve that. You ready? Really? Okay. So I’m gonna swap out the garage door for a more modern garage door with like that dark tinted glass, very modern looking ’cause maybe some stainless in there as well just to tie it in. I’m going great lengths right here. Well

Sean Lowry (29m 36s):

You can powder coat them too.

Holman & Lightning (29m 38s):

Oh you should

Sean Lowry (29m 38s):

If you want a different color. We do. Perfect. We do powder them.

Holman & Lightning (29m 42s):

Can you powdercoat that patina where they look rusted already? No

Sean Lowry (29m 47s):

Oh. yeah.

Holman & Lightning (29m 49s):

I don’t wanna do that. I love the stainless look. It’s, it’s great. So Sean, question for you, what is the density that you recommend for a residential installation? How far apart would they have to be to be effective? It

Sean Lowry (29m 58s):

Depends on what you’re trying to protect. I mean the industry standard, it’s five feet on center but if you have a seven foot wide truck, I mean you can go six, six and a half feet kind of thing. The whole concept behind this product is that if a thi can get the vehicle started, there’s nowhere on your property that they can drive off. So something that we do with all of our installations too is, you know, we do a full site assessment. Just take a look at your property and make sure that where we’re putting the Ballards, there’s nowhere that they can drive off. So what we’ve done in the past is if there is a vulnerable area on the side of the lawn or something, we’ll put decorative armor, stones there just so that the entire area is like fully barricaded but also still looks aesthetically fleeting.

Holman & Lightning (30m 41s):

Now do you guys have any installers or subsidiaries in the states? Are, are you a supplier for anybody or are you strictly a Canadian company?

Sean Lowry (30m 50s):

We supply into the us We don’t have a installation network at the moment. We’re working on it.

Holman & Lightning (30m 56s):

I asked him about that Holman off the air and I and I am just, I’m like this is such a huge opportunity when we spoke to our guy. So you started USA Ontario bollards LLC today. Do you remember when we talked to John at Igla? Right. And he was the one guy installing igla devices, which is a security system that kept my TRX in my driveway. He’s the only guy ’cause it’s such a new technology. Hold on, I’m on Instagram right now. I just logged in and LBC Ballards is actually available. Oh, LBC Ballards. Is it Really? Yeah, that LB Ballards. Yeah. I was like perplexed that someone hasn’t taken this initiative and either licensed Ontario Ballards or, or become a distributor in LA Like it’s so, it’s so wide open here, dude.

Holman & Lightning (31m 40s):

Like it’s crazy. There’s so much money to be made ’cause there’s so many nice cars that sit in driveways because people just don’t have the garage space. And most people down here have 2, 3, 4 cars for a one or two car garage. So it sits out in front. I’m just counting how many cars, how many cars do you have? I’m trying to remember. Is this something would consider seven? Do I have seven Cars? I mean, no Holman was this, is this something that you would consider in the front, In your driveway? Well I live in a good neighborhood, not by the freeway, so That’s true. I gotta see Sean. There’s a, there’s a lot of escape routes by my house. Like I don’t live at a cul-de-sac. He backs up to a river bed near a freeway, near a major thoroughfare. It Is crazy in. And he’s about 10 minutes from the port at like a hundred miles hour in 30 seconds.

Holman & Lightning (32m 21s):

My truck could be gone north, south alley except for helicopter. ’cause that big tree’s right there. That’s true. Your neighbor’s tree is overhanging all of your driveway. So that’s crazy. No way for helicopter To you. I don’t think how easy it would be to get my vehicle down to the port of Long Beach and then in a sea container or to, or just as fast to get to Mexico. 15 minutes. No, it’d be 15 minutes to the port. An hour and a half. Hour half To Mexico. Mexico. Yeah, exactly. You, you started talking about the theft early on in Ontario. Is it the same issue down here where guys are doing the key replication, getting in and hacking into the, the OBD port and just putting the vehicle in Key Perry mode?

Sean Lowry (32m 54s):

That’s definitely one of the ways that, that they’re doing it. But things have gotten pretty bad here to the point where sometimes they’re just walking in and taking the keys right out of the people’s houses.

Holman & Lightning (33m 7s):

Wow.

Sean Lowry (33m 8s):

Has been one of the most popular things. It’s it has, yeah, it is brazen for sure. But yeah, stealing the signal. There was a, the Lexus was the number one stolen vehicle for a long time. I think they were just going through the headlights. I saw a few videos and within 30 seconds they had access to the computer and the car was started.

Holman & Lightning (33m 28s):

The manufacturers didn’t really think about that when they decided to put can bus in all the lights and, and everything. Right. And all you have to do is access a canvas wire and if you know the code or you’ve got a program that’ll speak to the vehicle, you make it your own within like 90 seconds. It’s disturbing.

Sean Lowry (33m 44s):

Yeah, it’s, it’s scary and it, it like don don’t know about in the US but it’s not getting any better here and our government’s not really doing anything to stop it.

Holman & Lightning (33m 54s):

No, I mean

Sean Lowry (33m 55s):

Homeowners are taking into their own hands.

Holman & Lightning (33m 57s):

In, in, in fact I believe the US news was reporting that someone high in government might have been Trudeau had said, just leave, you know, rather than have a home invasion, just leave your valuables by the front door and let ’em take it. That’s ridiculous. They, we were like, what? What

Sean Lowry (34m 9s):

You guys do it? Yeah, it was, I think it was the chief of staff for the Toronto police. Okay. They said, yeah, it’s not worth it. Just leave your keys at the front door.

9 (34m 18s):

A car is stolen every six minutes in Canada and the police are incapable of stopping criminals from stealing cars. It’s so bad that in March of 2024 the Toronto Police Department advised people to leave their car keys outside their front door at night to avoid having their homes broken into by criminals trying to steal their car

Recording (34m 36s):

To prevent the possibility of being attacked in your home. Leave your fobs at your front door ’cause they’re breaking into your home to steal your car. They’re, they don’t want anything else.

Holman & Lightning (34m 45s):

That’s ridiculous. That’s a good way of not going anywhere else in America. Walking into somebody’s front door and announced Oh mackerel. Hey Sean, what’s the story behind Ontario Ballards? How did it get started? How did the, the founder found it? Like what was the, what’s the impetus to the brand?

Sean Lowry (35m 1s):

Pretty interesting story actually. So our founders are Gary and Danny. Danny had his own GC for I think about 30 years. And Gary owned a couple of his own businesses in the past. So Danny came from the construction side. Gary came from the more business side and the two of them joined forces and started out of Danny’s garage. Basically just doing like galvanized Ballards in front of, you know, drive throughs, storefronts and that kind of thing. Doing onesie twosie jobs here and there. And things evolved over time. And the world of Ballard at the same time has just evolved drastically from just selling galvanized pipe out of Danny’s garage.

Sean Lowry (35m 45s):

We’ve now evolved to doing full crash certified Ballards, you know, we did Ottawa the capital of Canada, we surrounded Ottawa City Hall with crash certified Ballards. We’ve done the Edmonton Ice District where the Edmonton Oilers play. Same thing, surrounded it with crash rated automatic ballards. And so just to see it go from the most basic version of a Ballard to see how actually intricate Ballard industry is in 15 years, it’s been pretty amazing to watch how the company’s grown. Well

Holman & Lightning (36m 21s):

I, I’m looking at the website and under products you’ve got the driveway of Ballards are number one front and center. So that tells me, you know, that’s me. That’s huge. Right. And then there’s Ballards and I terrorism, which are the K rated retractable removable manual surface mount, bolt down portable Ballard covers, spring posts, Ballard Pipe. And you just go down Steel barrier systems. You guys listening, never in a million years did you think The Truck Show Podcast would have an entire episode. Hey listen, dedicated a Ballard. Two weeks ago we had a New York Times bestseller on it. That’s true. And now we’re talking about Ballard. That’s true point. And about a month ago we had the world’s biggest truck stop. You never know You know what you’re gonna get on The truck podcasts. Exactly. Hey, But real quick, the, the thing that caught my eye is what you were were just talking about and that’s the crash rated Ballard.

Holman & Lightning (37m 4s):

So I was wondering if you could walk us through what, what is a crash rating for a Ballard? What can it stop and what types of places are you protecting?

Sean Lowry (37m 12s):

In Canada, it’s a K four or K 12 rating. And so a K four is basically a 15,000 pound truck traveling at 30 miles per hour.

Holman & Lightning (37m 24s):

K 12.

Sean Lowry (37m 25s):

We take our product down to Buffalo and in order for it to be officially crash certified, we have to crash a transport truck into the Ballard basically. So we get to go down, watch a truck, get just absolutely ripped in half. And so for example, the, to have an automatic K 12 Ballard, it needs to stop a transport truck going 50 miles per hour and still operate perfectly fine. So that is what gives you a crash certified product. Wow. The market, it’s, it’s crazy. The market for these products has really changed just as the world has become a little bit more volatile over the past couple decades.

Sean Lowry (38m 10s):

So yeah, anything in anywhere that people gather in large groups, you should really have some sort of crash rated protection, you know, government buildings, embassies, military buildings, anything like that. Pretty much any new build in Canada now has some sort of key rated baller that’s been specified.

Holman & Lightning (38m 33s):

You know, it’s, I was gonna say, it’s funny because if you wanted to have the world’s biggest YouTube channel or Instagram, all you would do is do slow motion cameras every time you go down for Ballard testing. And people, I mean, can you think of all the automotive people that would geek out over watching a truck be sliced in half by a pole on the ground? You might be able to make enough money on advertising by monetizing your YouTube channel to paying for the trucks that you’re gonna destroy. Right. I saw you working a trade show was a video I think maybe in Las Vegas, some security show and you were moving around a Ballard that was about as tall as I was as tall as I am. Four foot four foot 10. No, it was over five, over five foot tall. And this thing had to be carried around with like a, a crane system that was about six feet tall with a hydraulic jack and two wheels on the side.

Holman & Lightning (39m 19s):

This huge apparatus just to move this Ballard around. and I think you said it could like withstand some crazy amount of force and yet it wasn’t bolted to the ground. I could not wrap my head around how it works because it looks, it looks somewhat phallic, right. And it’s standing tall and it’s gray with the stripes around it. But tell me about whatever that contraption was that you were showing off at that trade show.

Sean Lowry (39m 42s):

The Octa block. It’s such a cool product. So

Holman & Lightning (39m 45s):

Octa block

Sean Lowry (39m 46s):

We were just talking about. Yeah, we were just talking about K rating. So that’s K four rated. So it’ll stop a transport truck going 30 miles per hour and no excavation required. So it’s a 900 pound Ballard that sits directly on the pavement. So anytime you know you have a vent at a city or something like that, a lot of times they’ll use the dump trucks just to like cordon off an area and protect pedestrians. This is used in lieu of that or anytime that you can’t excavate, but you still need crash rated protection. So what it is, is it’s a portable crash rated Ballard. And so basically the base of the Ballard has teeth all around the outside of it.

Sean Lowry (40m 30s):

And so if it gets hit, it’ll topple over the teeth will dig into the concrete and the other end of the base will raise up and immobilize the vehicle essentially. That has been a super exciting product for us the last couple years. It’s huge in Europe and just starting to make its way down to the us We’ve actually actually just sold some to University of California Riverside.

Holman & Lightning (40m 55s):

That’s where, that’s where carbs located at. University of Cal State Riverside. It’s California Resource board. The the devil I was Out there today, it was out that direction. It’s about 45 minutes east of us. What does something like that cost? There’s no way that that’s cheap. I’m gonna guess that Ballard 900 pounds. It’s gotta be five grand at least.

Sean Lowry (41m 17s):

Great guess. Yeah, with between five to eight grand, basically, depending on how many you buy kind of thing.

Holman & Lightning (41m 24s):

Canadian dollars or American dollars.

Sean Lowry (41m 26s):

That’s American.

Holman & Lightning (41m 27s):

Sorry, that’s out of your price Range. It’s a little bit How crazy would it be if you pulled up and those were in my driveway? Could you, although imagine Every morning you went to work, you pulled out your little hand truck with the crane on it. No, had to make Debbie Ballards. It’s, this is not a little hand truck. No, this is the size of like, of a car that’s moving around this thing and it’s suspend. You should just put the hand truck in front of and then you don’t need the ballards.

Sean Lowry (41m 46s):

The most people will use a forklift or a crane to move those in place. But that’s what I was showing at the show is that like 120 pound person could move that 900 pound ball or

Holman & Lightning (41m 56s):

Yeah, I’m looking at it on the website. You can see all the teeth on the base and it’s, it’s pretty cool. So right now, Sean, if someone is interested in down here in the us obviously it’s easy in Canada because you could go to Costco, which is actually, I I didn’t tell that story. Wait a second. Costco carries Ballards. So here’s the thing though, only costco.ca not costco dot com, which sucks because, and I don’t know if they’re gonna ship me down here. I’m gonna try and hack my way in with a v VPN and like shop and see if they’ll send it to me. don don’t know that they will. The thing Sean did, I can’t even Imagine what’s gonna happen. Canadian and US customs, like when we just send a T-shirt to somebody or stickers or I I my buddy. It’s awful. It’s expensive. It takes forever. Well my buddy Buck was going to a meeting in, I think, where was he at?

Holman & Lightning (42m 39s):

I think he was going to, he’s in British Columbia going across from I guess Vancouver. ’cause he is going across from Washington. He had, he sells, his company sells big stainless steel valves for like oil production and stuff like that. So he had this cutaway valve. He was going for a three hour meeting and then driving a sample. Like a Yeah, a sample. And it was a, a cutaway and they made him, they’re like, no, you can’t bring this in. They, they put him in the side room and they all this stuff and they’re like, no, you gotta, th this is a product that could be used. He goes, no, it’s a cutaway. It doesn’t even work. I’m going for a meeting. He goes, well why can’t your Canadian subsidiary do it? He goes, ’cause we ha we’re an American company. I I’m the guy who carries this thing. And so he, he basically said no and turned around and didn’t go to the meeting and argued with the Yeah, the mounts.

Holman & Lightning (43m 23s):

And he’s on some lists going to Canada. So he gets a hassle every time. He goes, well could you imagine Ballard’s one? I gonna do it. Is it a pain in the ass? I, well I guess I should finish my Costco stories. One of our listeners tagged me on a post and it was a guy walking around like a local Ontario Costco and they had, they had ontario ballards dot com. I guess it was your A NNT brand, right? I’m not sure the difference there. Yeah. What does a NT stand for?

Sean Lowry (43m 49s):

So ANT is our brand of Ballards Ontario. Bollards is the parent company and Ant is our brand.

Holman & Lightning (43m 57s):

And what does it stand for?

Sean Lowry (43m 58s):

Ant is short for Antiterrorism. Bollards also, it’s kind of a combination of our two founders’ last names as well.

Holman & Lightning (44m 8s):

Gotcha. Okay. So there, there’s a number of stories in the past three days, the Toronto sun dot com and also the national post dot com where it says Costco can selling retractable driveway Ballards to protect pro protect cars from thieves. And so there’s a story. So this is a thing that’s just getting out on Canadian national media and I, we’ve obviously got a ton of Canadian listeners. I’m sure one of those guys picked this up and went, oh, Lightning got this Right. Yeah, that’s exactly, that’s exactly what went down. And right now I’m trying to figure out if I, Shauna and I are coming back and forth to find out if it makes more sense for me to buy through Costco or to go to him direct. ’cause you know, him selling me direct, he’s got all these fees and stuff that not that he has to pay, that he has to pass along to me. Yep.

Holman & Lightning (44m 47s):

Tariffs and all this other bs and it’s no different than like, when I say, when I sell bank’s products up to our Canadian customers. I Got an idea. What’s that? I got an idea. Let’s, let’s get a big Christmas tree for the Christmas in the pod shed. You’re gonna go to Canada just like your old radio days. What? I’m gonna sneak ’em down. Well what You’re gonna do is you’re gonna paint them like a Christmas tree and you’ll glue needles to them in the back of The truck Candy. Candy canes. Candy canes. Yeah. Candy cane Ballards. And, and you just smuggle ’em over to this side. I Didn’t think about that. That’s a great way of dressing them up in the wintertime. It’s a Great way of going to jail and never being able to go Canada again too. No, I’m saying like, put it when they’re in your front yard to trust them with candy. Candy canes. Yes. Oh, you could do every season. Could be something else. Yeah. There you go.

Holman & Lightning (45m 27s):

What would you do for Halloween?

Sean Lowry (45m 28s):

We’ll talk tomorrow. We’ll,

Holman & Lightning (45m 30s):

Candy corns. Candy Corns.

Sean Lowry (45m 31s):

No. We’ll find a way to get those ballers to you.

Holman & Lightning (45m 33s):

Just, just, just put ’em in an airplane and drop. Just airdrop ’em as you fly Over. No, don’t, don’t do that. No. Might hit the t rx in the Driveway. Don’t do. Yeah. So what do you recommend for our, we obviously most of our listeners are in the us we’ve got a lot of Canadians. But if you’re, if they’re down here, should they go direct to ontario bollards dot com? What is the best way? Because I’m telling you, this is gonna create some excitement, maybe not just our show, but when people start talking about it collectively, this is gonna happen for you in a really big way.

Sean Lowry (46m 1s):

Yeah, a hundred percent. So I would go, if you’re in the US I’d go to a NN t.ca,

Holman & Lightning (46m 9s):

A NNT

Sean Lowry (46m 10s):

Ant ca or you can go ant ballards dot com.

Holman & Lightning (46m 13s):

I just pulled it up. Came up right away. Oh. And it’s a slow motion of Oh, some sort of a, it looks like a Kia crashing into it. Oh, and is that the engine leaving the, oh this Is awesome. Hold on. I’m just watching it now. What happens? All the liquids fly out, Everything flies forward in the car Stops and then here comes the engine making its way out. Oh, that’s the Airbox flying through the air. Oh, there You go. Yeah. The air blocks the airbox flying through the other, oh dude. Oh, here’s a different view. It comes straight at and here it is the hits the A NNT Ballard and everything comes at the camera. That’s Awesome. That must have been fun to watch. Holy mackerel. Well, listen,

Sean Lowry (46m 46s):

It’s super cool,

Holman & Lightning (46m 47s):

Sean, this is, this is really great. You, you’re protecting owners from thieves and, and, and making a living doing. It’s super, super cool. I, I appreciate the tech behind it. I think that you should absolutely get something like this for your peace of mind because you haven’t been the same since you were violated. Feel like you have PTSD and having Ballard in your driveway are gonna make you right. Again. It’s so, I don’t, I can’t remember if I told you this sch not Sean. So my truck was broken into in what February? Is that when it was? Sure. Something like that. I had to wait on the glass for like 45 days. ’cause according to my inside sources, these trucks, these rams in particular are being broken into it like a hundred a week across the us So the glass is hard to get.

Holman & Lightning (47m 28s):

So I wait my 45 days, of course, can’t have it in front of my house ’cause anyone could just crawl right in. So I have to bring it to work and leave in a warehouse, finally get the glass in and it, and then it occurs to me, well, someone’s gonna break in yet again. So how am I gonna protect it? So I get an alarm from Compu Star and we do, we do a, a t 13 and a drone mobile. and I got all the GPS and everything, all the bells and whistles, and it’s amazing. And His battery only lasts for about three days. I also hooked it up to my Phoenix strobe system and pa and it, and it’s got a police Yelp. So when You break the windows, it literally is a police car at full volume. Then I went down to our friend, Brian’s at SoCal 10. Sean, We weren’t kidding when we told you that he did Everything.

Holman & Lightning (48m 9s):

No, I’m, I’m joking. Like Sean, like this is Crazy’s crazy man. And, and the reason, and I’ll explain to you why I did all this stuff. So then I go to, I go to Brian’s at SoCal Tint, and we do this 3M material on the inside of my tint. And you can break the glass, but it will not fall into the vehicle. It stays put like a shatterproof material. So now I can really keep someone out of the car. Oh. And then I designed Matt Gamble. One of our engineers at work designed a headache rack for The truck custom, so you can’t get through the back window. So back windows protected, signed wind protected, and I also, when the front yard, I put motion detection and I’m You know what I’m hearing right now? What’s that? I’m hearing you challenge thieves to take your Truck. No, I’m not.

Holman & Lightning (48m 49s):

I’m not. So then I have an alarm anytime someone walks up on my driveway, which I sent you a picture. You can see what it looks like three cars wide. You just, you break the little invisible line. And in my bedroom, a little, a little Asian woman says, driveway, Driveway You. know what I’m hearing right now? What’s that? Hey, Holman Drive by my house. I know, right? Yes. Middle and I just kick kick the line every once in a while. Well, no, you’re not gonna do, I think you might with your, with your daughter. And I’ll tell you why, because I’m gonna let you record the speaker that I have. I have a little speaker that sits under the eve and it’s got 120 degrees of, of, of viewing angle. It’s looking for motion. Just like all those lights that turn on when You walk by your neighbor’s house. It does that. Accept it, squawks, whatever. You can record your own voice. I’m Gonna get a family of raccoons and release them in your driveway.

Holman & Lightning (49m 30s):

No, it doesn’t go off with animals, but I’m gonna let Holman, I’m, I’m gonna get a family of deer. And what have, I’m gonna Let Holman be the voice of my squawk box and you can say whatever you want. Hey, get outta here. You Nope. Whatever you want. Okay, I’m ready. You’re Gonna record it. I’m gonna bring it in the next episode, you’ll record it. And that’s what will be in front of my house. So when he talks about the fact that I’m freaking paranoid, I it’s gone in my head like, I’ve never owned this expense of a vehicle and it has to sit in front of my house. Can I tell them? So like, if you steal this truck, you’re gonna feel the thunder. I mean, I’d rather you don’t, but you can if you want. I’m gonna let you do it and I’m gonna keep it out there. All I’ll, I’ll think about it. All right? Yeah. Put some thought into this one. Sorry To take you down that path there. Poor Sean, Sean, poor Sean. He Wants to go to bed. He’s like, man, these idiot podcast guys are Me. But I, I want him to know what, what, what good work he’s doing.

Holman & Lightning (50m 12s):

Like if he, We were actually really impressed by the product and when Lightning sent me the information, I was like, this is what I told you. He goes, yeah, yeah, I know, I know. Sean. You’ve got videos of, of people not stealing vehicles. Have, do you have any videos that people have tried to steal a vehicle and like vehicle get around the Ballards and then they’re unsuccessful?

Sean Lowry (50m 30s):

We’ve only had one incident. So everywhere we’ve installed a Ballard, we’ve never had a vehicle stolen except one. There was about six feet between a tree on the yard and the outside Ballard. And we said, this is a vulnerable spot. I highly, highly recommend you put a decorative stone or something here. And they took the cheap option and they did not put it there. And the next night, the Range Rover, we have video of it hitting the Ballard about 10 times and then eventually squeaking through the Ballard in the tree

Holman & Lightning (51m 3s):

And getting away. I know Lightning’s already measuring in his mind what the spacing’s gonna be. So he, he doesn’t have to buy four of ’em. I’m thinking. So ramp tier RX is 82.1 inches wide. I say you put it at 82.2 inches apart and then that way it destroys The truck as they get it out. And then nobody Wins. No. Why would I do that? I’m gonna place these things every 10 inches apart if you 10. Well, you’re not made of money. No, I can’t do that. Whatever you said five. What’d you say? Five feet apart, something like that.

Sean Lowry (51m 32s):

Yeah, five feet.

Holman & Lightning (51m 32s):

Okay, well that’s what we’ll do. All right. Holy Mackerel. All right, Sean, you’re the man. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. We really appreciate the, the intel on Ballards.

Sean Lowry (51m 41s):

Amazing guys. Talk to you soon. Thanks.

Holman & Lightning (51m 43s):

Talk to you. Thanks. Bye.

Sean Lowry (51m 44s):

Cheers. Bye.

Holman & Lightning (51m 47s):

I struck news time.

11 (51m 50s):

What’s new in trucks?

12 (51m 51s):

We need to know

11 (51m 53s):

What’s new in trucks.

12 (51m 54s):

We need know

11 (51m 55s):

What’s new in,

12 (51m 57s):

We need to know.

3 (51m 58s):

Lifted, lowered everything in between. What’s happening in the world

Holman & Lightning (52m 4s):

Of trucks? Ah, Holman stood for that one. Yeah. Kicked the chair out behind him. Yeah, the wall And stood, yeah, I was Ready. that was kind of cool. Although you were squatting a little bit, if you had pushed too hard, something might have fallen outta your It already did. Sorry, I did it. Oh man. Hey Lighting, did you hear? No, I said no. Nope. I have not Heard. So I know You Heard about this one. Our man, the Preez. Mike Spla, You mean Mike Spla, president of the Specialty Equipment Market Association. I, I do. All right. Thanks to Mike and his team of amazing people.

Holman & Lightning (52m 44s):

They released a press release earlier this week. Virginia becomes the first state to disassociate itself from California’s emission standards and internal combustion engine ban. Whoa. That’s huge. Wow. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngin on June 5th announced that the commonwealth of Virginia would not adopt California’s 2035 ban on selling new gas and diesel powered motor vehicles. According to our friend SEMA, president and CEO Mike Spagnola, 17 states have attached themselves to California’s emission standards. Over the past 20 years, nine states have passed laws under resolutions, rejecting government, deciding what technology American consumers must purchase and buy.

Holman & Lightning (53m 28s):

Mike’s goes on to say, Virginia is now the first day of the nation to untangle itself from California’s emission standards and ev mandates. We applaud Governor Youngin for this bold action that rejects the notion that California should determine policies for nearly half of American consumers. We urge other states to follow Virginia’s lead. Wow, that’s bold. So Virginia lawmakers back in 2021 passed a law under youngin’s predecessor that tied their state to California’s emission standards, which includes California’s 100% EV mandate by 2035 will never happen. Since then, CMAs dev awarded bills aiming to repeal the law, have narrowly failed to pass the democratically controlled legislature.

Holman & Lightning (54m 8s):

This is the thing I don’t understand. Why would any state be so lazy about their old laws? Like, ah, we’re just doing whatever California does. It’s ridiculous. So youngin who was elected back in 2021 campaign on repealing California standards and pledge to follow through during his 2023 State of the Commonwealth address. So Jukin says this in quotes, it defies common sense that in 2021, lawmakers decided that instead of writing our own electric vehicle laws, Virginia would simply do what California decided to do. Said youngin because lawmakers outsourced their responsibilities and surrendered our values to California. Virginians face a mandate starting in 2024 that limits and eventually bans the buying of gas powered cars or trucks unless we act Virginia’s hostage to the extreme policies of California.

Holman & Lightning (54m 54s):

Common sense says that the law of Virginia should be written by elected leaders here, not outsource to radical bureaucrats in California. Yeah, buddy. It’s a hell of a statement. So Simas led the charge to pass laws and resolutions in nine states that would outlaw states and local governments for mandating a singular vehicle technology over others and protect the American consumer’s right to choose the vehicle technology that best suits them and their families. Siemens efforts have also led to the successful delay in the adoption of California’s ice band in Connecticut and Maine earlier this year, which are both huge. Again, let the consumers decide. The tech is great, but everything has a use case. Get the thing that works for you. The, I will say that driving an ev there is a stigma attached with it where other EV drivers like, yeah, what’s up?

Holman & Lightning (55m 37s):

We’re all in this together. And then all the like non EV drivers, like, you’re a jackass, right? Like, so I’m seeing both sides. It sides it’s very divided. Yeah. Sides. But I get it. I’m like, dude, I’m just driving my tool around to make money and go visit clients and do work. This works. But it’s interesting, even at the charging stations, I’ve had interesting call conversations with people as I’ve sat there, you know, plugged in and have you Run into the, the douche truck driver yet? The the pickup truck driver that parks in the charging station. Like, I’m gonna park here. Nope. Just to be a dick. No, you know, there’s so many charging stations around and I I haven’t had any of that. Most people at the charging station’s pretty interesting. A few of ’em are like, totally like, I’m saving the planet, which we all know is not the case. And some of ’em are like, Hey man, how, how are they that misinformed?

Holman & Lightning (56m 20s):

I think they’re just in their echo chamber. They don’t listen to The, Truck, Show, Podcast. So they just dunno any better. I I and, and some people are just like, yeah, I wanted to try the technology. I thought it would be cool. I talked to one guy who had a Tesla and he’s like, yeah, I got it. And you know, it’s Great for, it’s soulless, It’s great for around town, but we went to Vegas and my kids were sweating in the car as we were charging because it was so hot outside. You know, the, the HVAC is managing the batteries as well as the internal and it was just, it was just not a great thing. We couldn’t make it all the way to Vegas. We had to charge, we waited in line and then the charging, you know, it was hot and it just was not what we thought it would be. I, I didn’t expect that to be the case. And then I’ve talked to people who were like, yeah, man, I, I just needed something for work or this is my work car or whatever.

Holman & Lightning (57m 4s):

So I mean, I’ve, I’ve talked to people all over the spectrum. There’s no one class of Californians now. This is at a standard like ev go charger. This is now the Tesla charger. I’m sure the conversations over there at the supercharger network on the other side of, of where I usually charge. It’s probably way different. But it’s been interesting. And then people find out what I do and they’re like, really? And and you got one of those, you got one of those in the garage. You got a 3 9 2 you and they’re super confused. Gross Polluter. Yeah. In the car next to listen an electric. Listen, I’m just trying to undo my own carbon credit here. Yeah, yeah. I’m just trying to help myself out. Anyway, Lighting, did you hear? How about No, no. I have to say my good friend Jim Morrison retired from Jeep.

Holman & Lightning (57m 45s):

Oh no. Yeah, totally sucks. He’s not old enough to retire. Yeah, it was right about the same time. Our man Hellcat everything. Canisius retired as well. Really? They’re pushing out all the, I think, large displacement fans. Yeah. I think all these stellantis Frenchies are trying to get rid of all the Americans so that they can come in and ruin our brands here. Well, You Know what they should do is put more four by ease on every lot and then, and then Not discount the leases so they’re totally unaffordable. Yeah. And then suppress the sales of the vehicles that people have actually want. Oh, you mean the fact that you have to order a, a gas powered Jeep here? Correct. But you can just go down to your local Ford dealer and get a Bronco. Yes. Yeah. Somebody screwed up majorly. It, it’s just, it’s so wrong.

Holman & Lightning (58m 25s):

Yeah. I, I won’t go more, but this Is, this is foreigners. I, maybe it’s not just foreigners. This is people saying we know what Sean Holman wants better than Sean Holman knows anymore. Or They don’t care. They just wanted the, the, it’s back to the bean counters back, like when Daimler had had Chrysler. And it’s just like, we’re gonna rip everything. We’re gonna rip the soul out of all these cars, make ’em super cheap for a couple decades. I mean, the one thing that Fiat came in is they injected a ton of money. The interiors got really good. The engineering got really good. We had some really amazing vehicles during Fiats. Right now the Frenchies with Lanis, which is Citron and They’re stripping it all Out. It’s, it’s not good guys. And I’m sorry to see, well, Hopefully we got some of the last decent ones. Well, I I mean There are some complaints about both of our, well, there, There’s some Covid covid, you know, building quality.

Holman & Lightning (59m 12s):

But you think, like Mark Allen, head designer of Jeep Jim Rapp, who was one of the souls of Jeep Engineering retired. So where’s Jimmy? Where’s Jimmy? He said that he, would He be cool if I call him Jimmy? Probably not. He’s like a friend to you, I’m sure. Yeah. So anyway, he’s probably listening. He loves our show and we just, Jim, What’s up? We wish him the best because he was awesome for the Jeep brand. And was is he Actually retiring or is he going to consult as many do? No, Listen, i I I he’s too young to be done with the industry. Right. So I’m sure that he is enjoying a little bit of peace and quiet for a little bit. And we’ll be back on the scene somewhere. And I have some places in my mind that I think would be awesome if he Ended up there, like, as a correspondent for The Truck.

Holman & Lightning (59m 54s):

Show Podcast. No, No. He, he’s, he’s a c-suite guy. He’s not coming. He’s not hanging out with us. Damn. But no. Anyway, so Jim, we wish you the best and really appreciate the friendship and all the cool things that we got to do at Jeep over the years and looking forward to doing more with you wherever you go next. So a little shout out to my friend Jim Morrison. That’s the truth. Hey Lighting, did you hear? No. Nope. So are you familiar with YouTuber, Alex Choi? Of course I am. He is the guy that famously has the rich father that allowed him to buy the exoskeleton Lamborghini. You guys know him from the Tesla video when the Tesla went into like a Hollywood Hills area and shot over the hill and then nose dived and crashed and airbags went off.

Holman & Lightning (1h 0m 38s):

And he got that on, on video and well, He’s got like a million followers on YouTube and he does outrageous stuff. And I met him through some events, not impressed. And He doesn’t really have a personality. He just has money to do silly things. Well, He was arrested. So really he faces 10 years in the pen.

13 (1h 0m 58s):

YouTube influencer facing a federal charge for a video that chose fireworks shot from a helicopter at a Lamborghini

Holman & Lightning (1h 1m 7s):

Sukuk Min Choi. 24 AKA Alex Choi was charged with one count of causing placement of an explosive or incendiary device on an aircraft. Wait, excuse me. So if you remember back in June of last year, he had a video of a Lamborghini on a dry lake bed with a Robinson R 44 helicopter with SAPD, like Grand Theft Auto San Angeles Police Department. Yeah. Shooting fireworks at the Lamborghini while it was driving. Well, apparently it’s illegal to do that sort of thing and then not have a permit. And of course he did it on El Mirage dry lake bed, which you also need a permit. ’cause that’s BLM land. So he was on federal land violating that.

Holman & Lightning (1h 1m 47s):

And the helicopter shooting, hold on. Shooting on fireworks. Hold on. You can’t buy fireworks in California like That. And you can’t buy fireworks in California, which according to this, he picked up in Nevada because he knew they were illegal here. So did a, did a bunch of stuff according to our local news, a BBC seven. It says in the video, Cho allegedly presses a fire missiles button while two women in a helicopter shoot fireworks at a speeding Lamborghini sports car. Law enforcement believes the video was shot on El Mirage dry lakebed, which is, you guys will know as a place where a lot of speed records are done. And then apparently there’s a portion of a video where Troy made various references to himself being the director and thank the camera company for being part of his crazy stupid ideas and some other comments that could be used against him, I would imagine anyway, if convicted, he faces a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison.

Holman & Lightning (1h 2m 39s):

Dude, 10 years away for the clicks. Is that worth the clicks? No, he’s wealthy. He’s not gonna do that. I bet he gets just dude, You okay. Wealthy. He gets An ankle Bracelet. So you, you spend one year in federal prison, Don don’t even think he’ll get time. Okay. But I’ll have, I’ll take that bet. I’ll yeah, I’ll The f fa a does not mess around, dude. I got you. But he’s FAA does not mess around. He telling Ankle bracelet No. At home. No. He’s get minimum some type of confinement. I just, and it won’t just be home. No. In a, in a prison. Really. So you think, okay, let’s, Let’s hold on. Let’s, let’s put, let’s put what, A dinner beer on it. Whatever. What do you wanna do? Well, we’re We’re, we’re gonna do a beer on a dude’s life going to jail.

Holman & Lightning (1h 3m 19s):

That’s, yeah. Seems wrong. So, okay, listen, you’re telling me that if you were facing 10 years in federal prison, you’re like, ain’t gonna do it. I’m only gonna get six months. Dude. Could you imagine six months in the pen? It’s Awful, dude. Yeah. All because of clicks for YouTube. He wasn’t thinking about it. Of Course. That’s the point. He’s a I’m rich. I could do whatever I, well, there’s a thing called account accountability for some People. I, I made an exoskeleton around my Lamborghini so I could bump into things. I I get it. I’m, I but at some point, this may be that point. So we’ll do it over pizza. Okay. Who? Whoever loses buy-in. Okay. We go to Beachwood over here at that awesome sourdough.

Holman & Lightning (1h 4m 1s):

Oh, That was really good. Yeah. Good call. Good call. I’m saying at home. And you’re saying even one day of prison. Yep. You buy pizza. I’m saying zero days of prison. Yep. And we’re not talking about like holding as there as there like awaiting trial. Like sentence after sentence. Yeah. Like real prison. Hey Lighting, did you hear? No, no. There’s apparently a wheelbarrow with a new land speed record. Did you say wheelbarrow? Yeah. Apparently there’s a guy who wanted to set a land speed record with a wheelbarrow. That’s Super cool. I’ve seen shopping carts. I’ve seen motor homes. Yep.

Holman & Lightning (1h 4m 42s):

All sorts of things for like land speed records, but not a wheelbarrow that I can recall. So he went off to straight liners, speed week and straight liner hosts multiple day weekend events in Europe, in the uk in the crowd were supercars super bikes and all sorts of weird stuff. He broke the Guinness Book of World Records for fastest motorized wheelbarrow. His official speed was 84.627 kilometers per hour, which he did on his last run. The pre, the previous fasted wheelbarrow record was 74 kilometers per hour or 46 miles per hour. What was this built on? Like a motorcycle or a trike or what? I can’t even picture. It’s, It’s a wheelbarrow. We Stretch this. It is a Wheel. It’s a wheelbarrow, but it it’s got two, Well it’s got a platform where he can Yeah.

Holman & Lightning (1h 5m 24s):

Sit on and steer. So it’s A trike. It’s barely, that’s barely a Wheelbarrow. No, no. There’s definitely a wheelbarrow in this picture. Oh. yeah. Where the wheels would go on. And that hoop on the bottom is far gas as Gas tank. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know. That’s, that’s pretty awesome. So it was built by a 30 5-year-old macca named Dylan Phillips from the uk. So according to the drive, he says everyone loves it. It’s so stupid. You can’t help but smile when You see it. And that is exactly what I thought of when I saw, oh, there he is. Right. It. Wow. It’s a good motion shot right there. Nice. So he’s jumping up on his knees. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Driving wheelbarrow. That’s, that’s super Cool. That’s pretty rad. Hey Lighting, did you hear? No. No. Wow.

Holman & Lightning (1h 6m 5s):

A Ford dealer recently got fined over $160,000 for Charging Too much for what? They crashed a superduty fixed it then sold it as new. Oh that’s, that’s dirty. That’s A bad one. Wow. Yeah. Crashed it like to the point where it should have been salvaged or Something. So it was a Ford dealer in Kentucky who lost the lawsuit. And basically if you’re from Lexington, you might know if Paul Miller Ford. So a new car director wrecked a 2019 Ford F two 50 and they totaled the vehicle that they rear ended. And then automotive news said that the manager informed their supervisor about the crash. And so the dealer paid $6,298 for repair.

Holman & Lightning (1h 6m 47s):

But they didn’t tell the sales department that it happened. So apparently At least they say, well they didn’t tell Sales important automotive news. Right. Three months later, Barry Smith bought the F two 50 and he wasn’t told about the damage, but then The truck had 6,656 miles on it. He was just told it was a demo. Ah, it’s got some demo miles on it. Our sales manager’s been driving it, don’t worry about it. But then he had a bunch of issues with The truck. He had like vibrations and steering issues. So he decided to get rid of it and he only found out about it when the dealer he traded it in, ran a Carfax on it. Oh no.

Holman & Lightning (1h 7m 27s):

That stings. So The salesperson said that he was, you know, downplayed the damage and that he didn’t disclose it because things fall through the cracks. You know that they didn’t fall Apart. No. Literally they fell through the cracks. Yeah. Seriously. So the Kentucky Court of Appeals dismissed the buyer Smith’s accusation of fraud, but it did find that the dealer was liable and they breached the warranty, violating a law requiring disclosure of pre-sale damage. That’s over $2,000. So Smith came out with $8,026 in compensation plus $73,001 in, what do you think? Imp Punitive damages Attorney’s fees.

Holman & Lightning (1h 8m 7s):

And on top of that, the dealer is gonna pay $80,260 in punitive fines. Yeah. So as they should have. Wow. Yeah. So buyer beware. I guess even if you think you’re buying it new, always good to, That’s rare. And that doesn’t, I can’t imagine that happens that often. I hope not. Ugh. Yeah. Hey Lighting, did you hear? No, No, no, no. Okay. This is one of those patent stories that you love so much. Ooh, Yes, yes, Yes. But it’s also one of those stupid stories where you’re like, no. Yes, Yes, yes. Is this, is this, are you solving a problem that doesn’t need to be fixed? Well, don don’t know. Tell me what it is. Okay, so apparently this is one of those things.

Holman & Lightning (1h 8m 48s):

Are you gonna show me what it looks like here? ZF has created a steering Wheel where the airbag blows out of the top of the steering Wheel instead of the middle. Is this on? Hold On, hold on, hold on. ZF is transmission company. Yeah, Hold on. I’ve developed a steering Wheel where the airbag goes out of the top so they can put a screen in the center. Do we really need a freaking another screen? Does it need to be in the middle of the steering? Wheel ZF did this? Yep. Transmission company. No, there’s Some fire. I know they do. Not just a transmission company. I’m saying that, but yeah, they’re heavy into electrification. We had a conference call with them this morning. Oh, nice for you. I can’t say, did you ask them about their weird airbag? Like why do we need another screen? You do. I like it. You need it. You like that? I Kind of do.

Holman & Lightning (1h 9m 29s):

I don’t like this design. I’m not talking about the design. I’m talking about having a screen in the middle of your steering Wheel I. don, I don’t mind having a screen in my steering Wheel. No, I don’t. I think that’s, I’m kind of surprised someone hasn’t done it already. All right. Well, but the reason they haven’t done it, Airbag z zf solve that problem. So Interesting. They basically say that the airbag, because it blows out from the top and through the hole in the top of the steering Wheel toward you, allows there to be a screen in the middle That’s very creative. So I told you That that’s a patent well worth having. Now they say it’s not for entertainment. The idea is for the screen to give you more situational awareness and what’s going on with your safety systems. But you also make, but we all know that’s what you say in the beginning before, But if it’s soft buttons, you can move your buttons where you can have configuration.

Holman & Lightning (1h 10m 13s):

Like, because they always put the up, down and left. Right. Upbeat people stair controls in the wrong place. You’re going to be watching movies on that screen in no time. And you get the cheat model where you don’t have a screen in the middle, but the airbag blows out from the top. You’re just gonna put a magnet and put your iPhone there. Anyway, So I don’t know why your story about the steering Wheel inspires me to ask you about enhance sexy buttons. Have You Heard of this. So Model S model three, model X model Y for The Tesla. Yes, that’s correct. So Joshua, who is one of our mechanical engineers at work, has a Tesla. And so obviously we clown him about having a Tesla at a Teel performance company. But so be it.

Holman & Lightning (1h 10m 54s):

He pulls in and he’s so pumped over this big knob that’s in the center console of his Tesla. I just don’t notice it ’cause it figured it’s stock. Right. And he goes, no, this is aftermarket. I said, how’s that aftermarket? How’s someone in Tesla’s electronics? Because Tesla is famous for not letting people into their electronics. Okay. There’re no, there’s no one tuning them that I know of or any of that stuff. And you got this big BMW esque knob in the center console. The rotary controller. The Rotary controller with, with, it’s got four buttons, two on either side, very much like every modern car you’ve seen with a rotary knob in the center. But this one looks Tesla.

Holman & Lightning (1h 11m 34s):

It it looks, it Looks like it looks like a therm. It looks like a thermostat. That’s exactly, it looks like a Google Nest or something Like that. That’s exactly right. But it controls all this stuff, right? You can move the seats around, you can pop the hood of the trunk or the windows or configure all this stuff using this knob that apparently was hard to access in the, the Screen. Yeah. ’cause not having buttons or interface sucks. Right. and I hate. But here’s, here’s the question. How did this Bulgaria based company get into Tesla’s software? There’s people who are in Tesla software Are There, there’s a Canadian company that does performance improvements and there’s people who are taking Tesla motors and they’ve gotta have software that run all that stuff. Well, No, no. But you can make a Tesla motor run on external custom Software.

Holman & Lightning (1h 12m 19s):

I know, but that’s not what I’m saying is these guys Are, what I’m saying is that there are companies in Tesla software today, right now. There are. Yes. Well, I mean, clearly I’m looking at their website. At what? ENHA, UT n and hato e Just look up enhanced sexy buttons. It’ll pop right up if you have a Tesla. This is bizarre. Like I thought they were like unhackable. that was just my No, we told you that. No one told me that. I just assumed Tesla was unhackable. Of course You did. Well, I, I because they’re it’s all digital. Why wouldn’t they be unhackable? But clearly they’re not. They’re all di analog is unhackable. No, no, no. What I’m saying is no analog is hackable. Digital is digital. Is Is Hackable also what can be encrypted?

Holman & Lightning (1h 12m 60s):

You’ve gotta do. I’m I’m just saying like I I’m falsely assumed that Tesla had was very good at locking people out. And if someone gets in, they change the code, they lock you out. Again, Think that that’s part of the problem for the companies that are in in Tesla, is that they can do over-the-air update and brick it. So you, they have to have people that are on top of it. But it’s Wild. They’ve got buttons and knobs in a screen called the Commander and all this stuff for Tesla. I’m thinking how did they get in? And then it occurred to me, Holman. See if you go, this is a theory. I think that when Tesla or other companies like Stellantis or whoever open up manufacturing plants or design centers in other countries that are not as well, that may have a higher corruption level than here.

Holman & Lightning (1h 13m 46s):

Maybe people get paid off to share code that would otherwise be proprietary Maybe. And so I, I don’t know this, but it sounds plausible, right? And so if I have a hundred grand and I hand a developer in Tesla, in in Bulgaria, you know, a hundred G, and I’m like, slip me a USB drive with all the code now for a hundred grand. I’m in Teslas And, I can go create a bunch of really cool knobs and buttons and screens and everything. Okay. Do you think, I mean, sound legit? Sure. Just wild. I don’t know. Just, all right, well, well let’s just fade into the next Tesla story while we’re at it. Our friends over at Unplugged Performance recently just showed off their upfit prototype of the Tesla cyber truck.

Holman & Lightning (1h 14m 29s):

That’s a police truck. As a police car. Yeah. Interesting. That’s out of Robocop. I’ve seen it in the movie.

15 (1h 14m 35s):

Drop the Gun. You are under arrest.

Holman & Lightning (1h 14m 37s):

It’s it’s not but no, that has to be, that was in Robocop. Like that was, it’s kind of cool looking. I mean it definitely looks futuristic. Your

15 (1h 14m 44s):

Move creep.

Holman & Lightning (1h 14m 45s):

I, you know, don don’t know that it makes a great police vehicle because it’s not space efficient. But I, but they’re already doing model threes as police cars or Model XI think Model Y as police cars. So they have a upfit division. So good for them on doing it. I’ll be curious if anybody jumps on it. You know, we’ll see if they do. They won’t dent it well and it’s bulletproof, so you gotta like that. So maybe, maybe it is good for, for police cars, but it gets lights, sirens, a PA system, radio computer system, forged upfit wheels, upgraded brakes and starlink satellite internet connectivity. There’ll also be partitions for prisoners in the back. Storage options for weapons tools.

Holman & Lightning (1h 15m 26s):

A canine enclosure as an option. So a bunch of different stuff. So maybe your local police department will be cruising around in Tesla cyber trucks in no time. Let’s hope not. Why? ’cause they’ll catch your TRX. Ooh snap. Ouch. Hey, Lighting, Have You Heard. What is no, the Mopar Jeep Gladiator Limited edition will cost $72,190. Damn. They’ll be limited to 250. It basically gives you all these Mopar accessories on a gladiator from the factory. You get that 72 grand custom graphics package. Two-tone, cat and leather, heavy duty rock rails, the Mopar kit.

Holman & Lightning (1h 16m 8s):

And they’re only gonna be making a few of them plus an $1,895 destination charge. I like the little badge they got there. Oh, oh, one of 250. Yeah, badge is cool. Colors are cool. The, that’s still a lot of bread. Tailgate wrap is pretty cool. So you get Falcons on 17 inch aluminum wheels with black inserts. Two-tone, cat skin leather, two-tone, cat skin, leather, Marino, red seats. Hmm. You also get the Mopar Headliner Black Citri custom badges like you noted. So just all the things. And then you can also get the two inch lift that has the new Bill Stein shocks on it, which I drove back in Moab. Freaking awesome. So which ones are they? Are they 8100, 51 hundreds and 51 sixties.

Holman & Lightning (1h 16m 49s):

Okay. And so this is mopars 14th year producing limited edition vehicles across Dodge, Jeep, and Chrysler vehicles. And this, this gladiator, if you want it and it’s not spoken for yet, you might wanna run out to your local dealer and pick one up or order it now. Hey Lighting, did you hear?

17 (1h 17m 7s):

No and I don’t

Holman & Lightning (1h 17m 9s):

Care. No, no, no, no. I haven’t heard. So I think we were talking about the Rivian R one T and R one s. I don’t remember if we talked about the power in our last episode, but just in case it’s still worth repeating. The old quad motor powertrain used to be 835 horsepower. It’s now it gets a, a little bit of a bump for the, the new Gen two. So from from 8 35 you said 8, 8 35. Just a little bit of a bump. Two Oh. So 1025 horsepower. No, no, no. And When Lose thousand, 25 Horsepower, listen, when using launch control, the torque output rises to 1,198 pound feet. So I did not know that. Even though I saw a clip of our friends at TFL truck.

Holman & Lightning (1h 17m 51s):

Yeah. Drag racing. One of these things. Yeah. Zero To 62.50 My God. 2.5. And here’s what sucks. The trim motor powertrain. So you get the two rear motors, but a single front, you drop all the way down to 850 and 1013 pound feet of torque All the way down. Oh My God. Do you notice Holman as now an EV driver? I notice don don’t know if you notice, but I, I feel like people, some just some, some people drive EVs differently than a gas car. Is that the EV driving itself And No, it’s not. And here’s why. Because there’s so much torque as soon as you hit the pedal and it’s instant, unlike a gas or diesel vehicle, internal combustion where you hit the pedal and it just, it takes, even if you have, no, let’s see if even a pedal monster, right?

Holman & Lightning (1h 18m 39s):

You’ve got no very little lag at all. It still takes a while for it to accelerate, let’s say 60 to 80, that type of thing. But a Tesla, you hit it and it just goes. So I’m cruising along every day and I’m looking over at people driving Tesla’s, three Xs, Ys, whatever. And the way they drive is go slow down faster, slow down. Faster slowdown. Faster slowdown. And they’re, you wouldn’t, you don’t drive that way when you’re in a normal internal combustion engine car. Because when You hit the gast, it speeds up kind of smoothly and then slows down. Well, I Think there’s a few things to play. You’re steady and I, they just drive it like a light switch. No, it’s because re they have high regen and that’s why when they lift off to coast like you do in an ice car, you are regen.

Holman & Lightning (1h 19m 25s):

So it’s almost like having the brakes on. Mm. That’s what you’re seeing. So the, the, the proper thing to do, I guess, is that when I coast, I always still have a little bit of throttle. So I’m not like slamming on the brakes for the guy behind me. So I’m conscious of that. I mean I, but most of the rivian, the Nissan aria, I’m sure Tesla also show you on a screen when the brake lights are on. ’cause there’ll be times that you’re wondering like, man, if I lift off, here are my brake lights on. So it’ll show a graphic. So You know what the driver behind you seeing, which is kinda cool. It’s interesting. Yeah. I, I had a friend in high school and I’ll never forget we went to the forum for a concert to go see the Smiths and he had a BMW, like a three series or something and he couldn’t hold his foot steady on the gas.

Holman & Lightning (1h 20m 7s):

We were always accelerating or decelerating. We were never just smoothly going down the highway. and I asked him, I said, why are you driving like that? He goes driving like, what? I go, you’re always accelerating or decelerating. He, he had No, he’s like, why are you always judging me when I drive? No, He had no comprehension that he was doing this. He was, I’ve been driver like That. Some people are on off. I’ve been in plenty of cars where you get seasick. ’cause the driver can’t maintain a steady steep speed. It’s super weird. So maybe this’s just the same more kind of driver. But the, I think it’s, it’s exacerbated when You have that much torque and you’re like, go stop. Go stop, go Stop. Okay, so speaking of weird glitchy truck ev things, Johnny Lieberman recently wrote a story for MotorTrend talking about how some rivian R one Ts are going through tires in 6,000 miles.

Holman & Lightning (1h 20m 51s):

Oh, why is they wrong rated tires? No, no. It’s the fact that all of these people think, oh, there’s a conserve mode which puts it in front Wheel drive only. And they think to themselves, wow, I’m gonna be in conserved mode ’cause I get more miles and it lowers the car down to basically the knee position for the most arrow. Oh. So it’s cambering out the tires. It’s Cambering out and you don’t, aren’t spreading the power load between four wheels anymore. You’re only doing it through two and you’re just roach the inside of the tires. And so he has a interesting p he owns A-R-O-N-T telling other rivian owners, listen, like you’re tired, like read the owner’s manual. You shouldn’t be using conserve in that way for daily driving and things like that.

Holman & Lightning (1h 21m 30s):

Number one. Number two, it’s a, it’s a user error and it goes on to explain like, don’t do that unless you need to conserve. So anyway, that’s A good observation on it. Yeah, I I, I read it. I knew he was a, a rivian owner. I’m like, ah, it’s Johnny, he’s probably gonna, but he had some really points. I’m like, Dude’s got a point Also, he’s got a aria this week. Oh Really? But a loaded one with the dual motor and the big battery that does zero to 16, like four and a half seconds. And so I can’t wait to follow up with him and see how he likes it. Hey Lighting, did you hear what you talking about was Stellantis recalls more than 211,000 RAM trucks Dodge Durango SUVs. Ow. So this one is a voluntary recall campaign covering 211,581 SUVs and trucks with a problem with their a BS control module software.

Holman & Lightning (1h 22m 18s):

The issue could render the vehicle stability control system inoperable and make it so you, the driver can’t maintain traction in slippery conditions or an emergency lane change. So according to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, it impacts 50,000 Durangos. The rest are 2,500 pickups and 3,500 chassis cab models. They have a suspected period for when these vehicles were built. So it’s April 14th, 2021 through December 27th, 2022 on the 25 hundreds. There’s a a handful, like 500 3500 chassis cabs that were April 21st, 21 through November 25th, 22. And then the Durangos are the balance of those.

Holman & Lightning (1h 22m 58s):

That’s August 23rd, 21 through December 9th, 22. So it sounds like they’re going to be able to make a fix by updating the software on the a BS control module on the affected vehicles. Most of the vehicles are probably still under warranty and they’ll cover it. I, I’m sure if you’re out of warranty it’ll still be covered. But the company will notify owners and dealers of the software July 26th. So if you own one of those vehicles, keep your eyes open for that recall. It should be as simple. Go to the dealer and get a Come over your RAM app probably. Right? Well if you have it, it’ll probably tell you it won’t update over your RAM app, but it’ll notify you that you have a active recall. Gotcha. And one last story here. What the heck? Hey Lighting, did you hear?

Holman & Lightning (1h 23m 38s):

Yeah. This is a super irritating story from Nico. Thanks for that lead in Don don’t know if it’s Damia or Damia at the drive. He has an article that he just wrote published June 11th, 2024 that says the Chevy Silverado EV should have been named Avalanche. Well you’ve been calling it the forever. It’s like, dude, we’ve been saying that for two years. I think he’s listening to the show. Yeah, I think Caleb Jacobs told him, I think you’re right about The. Truck. Show Podcast. Caleb, are you guilty of sharing this Oversharing? Well I was say sharing Holman’s potential trademark that he couldn’t have owned because he doesn’t work for a Chevy.

Holman & Lightning (1h 24m 18s):

His subhead says the comparisons popped up immediately when Chevy revealed the Silverado ev. And after driving it, I’m even more convinced. Yeah, we know Nico. I think after that I’m ready for some emails.

Intro (1h 24m 32s):

You email? Yeah, I email. Do it. We email. That’s right. Everybody email type it up. You email proofread. I email send it. We email. Click it.

18 (1h 24m 58s):

Wait, wait.

Holman & Lightning (1h 25m 0s):

Beat it. Beat it. All right. What do you got over here? We have this one here. Can I start? Sure. Milk truck question. ’cause milk truck brings all the boys to the yard. That’s not it’s Who’s this from? This is from Stewart. Stewart bro. In a few years ago I heard they might be bringing back Milkmen in the uk. Does anyone today in the USA make anything like a milk truck? That’s a great question. The closest thing we have, I think to a milk truck are those all access vans? Have you seen those things? Who makes those? Because one of my guys at work, Matt Gamble and I are obsessed with those access vans.

Holman & Lightning (1h 25m 40s):

Like The bright drops. It’s the really weird looking access van that looks like a, is it FedEx? No. Like a fifties English taxi. So it’s not the thing that I Not even close to that at all. No, no, no, no. This is something that’s been around for years. No idea. Gas powered AM general MV one, Is that what it is? Yeah, they’re around Southern California and they’re super Cool. No they’re not. They’re horrible. They were designed to replace a taxi and basically have turned into, I guess like a lot of people are using for like mobility vehicles and things like that, right? Yeah. Fleet only. I think they’re horrible because They’ve got a long slider door. Well The whole point of it, it was to make it easy for people to access them.

Holman & Lightning (1h 26m 25s):

Right. That’s why I called it an access van. Yeah, But it’s not really a van. It’s like a tall wagon. Yeah, it is called tall wagon. It’s, they’re ugly. But don don’t like the one that’s in your photo here. ’cause the one that I like are way ugly. No, They’re these, these are, they’re So ugly that they’re Cool’s not, that’s not ugly. That’s, that’s it. That’s the one on the right. Oh, look how ugly that is. That’s tedious. Official bus ride. Yeah. No mobility ventures. MV one. Yeah. There’s a whole history behind that vehicle. They, they were, I think they were released back in 2016. And can You buy those Like No, I think it’s fleet only. The, I want to get one of those. What? I want it on air on the ground. It would look so it’s so silly looking. It looks like you took, It’s been, it’s literally made by the same people. You know what it looks like that make Humvees You know what it looks like.

Holman & Lightning (1h 27m 8s):

What My kids’ Scion Xb the toaster. No, right. The no. Listen to me. No I’m not, I’m not listening to It’s Scion xb. But then you blew it up with helium and it got puffy. That’s what it looks like. Horrible. Don’t you think? Horrible. Trevor Nero writes 7,000 pounds. I actually said Holy it out loud. Gosh damn man. My 2021 F 2 56 7 crew cab short box three sevens and toolboxes 7,900 pounds with me in it. That’s nuts man. Treat those port axle shafts with respect with that 3 9 2 power. that was from Trevor. Yeah. I may have hit 7,700 pounds on a trip. Oh my God. 3 9 2. That’s a very heavy Jeep. No more squat is the subject line from Greg Madden.

Holman & Lightning (1h 27m 49s):

Hey, by the way, my wife loves your shoes. I sent an article to y’all last year about this and following up with it today. I love that they’re stopping this stupid look. But they’ve also added a regulation about lifted trucks. Hopefully they will not enforce the lifted truck part. Love the show. Five stars and yeah buddy, he’s sharing an ad with a, an anti symbol around a squatted Ford F-150. And it says No more warnings apparently on South Carolina roads. They will be enforcing South Carolina code section 56 dash five dash 4 4 4 5 which says no more squatted trucks.

19 (1h 28m 26s):

Five star review. Five stars.

Holman & Lightning (1h 28m 30s):

Yeah buddy. Thank you Greg. All Got one here from Kelly Nauman says, Hey Banksy haul racer. Here are some pics of my new feed truck. It started out as a special order cab in chassis. It had a hydra bed flatbed put on it. It’s a 2024 F three 50 XLT regular cab with a long frame. And the seven three Godzilla with the new emissions on diesels, putting around the pastures feeding during the winters. I wouldn’t get hot enough to burn out the filter. Actually plugged a filter on a tractor this winter for the same reason and had to have the mechanic come force regen it. You know, funny he should say that the Kubota that we have at the ranch, when I was dragging the, the roads and and grading my uncle’s like, make that throttle higher so you don’t plug up the DPF. And I’m like, okay. So he runs that thing like at hot 75% throttle all the time.

Holman & Lightning (1h 29m 14s):

And he’s like, yeah, don’t, you don’t need to get this thing plugged up. It’s like, oh man. Okay. He says, oh Lightning, you mentioned a couple months ago wanting to drive a cab in chassis. Trust me, unless you hate your kidneys and back, don’t. I had to drive it about 80 miles to get the bed on it. It was one of the worst drives of my life, Kelly. And he says, PS unfortunately Lightning, I wasn’t able to work. I seen into this email and promised to do better next time. Mount your parameters and five stars and here’s his picture of his master

20 (1h 29m 40s):

Monitor key engine parameters.

Holman & Lightning (1h 29m 43s):

Congratulations.