I AGREE with @Stan Galat on this if he can’t get to his customer or one of his clientele when they call guess what— they are going to call someone else and that’s money out of his pocket and into someone else’s or a client that’s always done business with him calls someone else and you might not be there first call any more. There’s a lot to be said about dealing with a reliable company these days.
@Stan Galat, good, clear explanation. Thanks. Just an observation, I don't know about your experiences with ICE vehicles over the years, but mine have never been 100% reliable. Whether it's something simple like a clogged fuel filter, a weak fuse, dead battery, or something serious, I've had my share of unplanned delays.
Even if you stick with ICE vehicles, it sounds like you should consider having a backup van (even a beater) in case a customer needs help and the regular van goes on the fritz. But, I'm sure you've worked out the cost/benefits of that long ago.
Good luck with your search for the right van for your business!
@Robert M posted:My hope is that the next governor cancels that mandate. Newsom isn't know for thinking through his decisions. He shoots from the lip without giving much thought to the ripple effect of those decisions.
Sounds like pretty much every politician.
@Former Member posted:I AGREE with @Stan Galat on this if he can’t get to his customer or one of his clientele when they call guess what— they are going to call someone else and that’s money out of his pocket and into someone else’s or a client that’s always done business with him calls someone else and you might not be there first call any more. There’s a lot to be said about dealing with a reliable company these days.
It's a lot worse than that, even.
One customer (a supermarket chain) has 5 stores we service regularly and are secondary contractors for 6 more. They are about 60- 80% of my business depending on the year. The stores I service cover a pretty wide geographic footprint. If we drop the ball badly, we lose them all, and I'm out of business. My relationship with them goes back 22 years, but we're by far the smallest contractor they deal with, and this world has become "take care of everything or nothing".
Suppose with me that I'm in North Peoria at 2:00 PM, and that I've driven about 60 mi on a full charge. There's an emergency at the Champaign store (that's about 104 mi, and another 80 to get back home). Let's also suppose that I don't need any parts, because the nearest parts house from Champaign is another 40 miles further away. Assuming 250 mi range, and assuming I've already driven 60 miles when that call comes in, I've got nowhere near enough battery to risk responding to the call. At a minimum, I'll be driving 185 more miles, which already pushes me over 250, and this assumes I don't need parts.
Here's the thing, though - nobody drives 250 mi on a "250 mi. range" BEV, unless they're trying to prove a point, or they badly miscalculated. So unless I can charge my truck at the store while I run the call, I'm going to be sleeping in a hotel with a charger. I don't know of any in Champaign, but that doesn't mean there will never be one.
I'd rather not sleep in a hotel room just because my truck needs plugged in. I'd rather just switch on the range extender and get home where I can hook up to a proper charger for the night and start fresh in the morning.
My hired man lives even further away than I do - he's 30 minutes from the nearest store (to him) that we service. A BEV is completely unworkable for right-hand-man Brad.
I'm not like FedEx or UPS at all - UPS maps their route out at the beginning of the day. They know exactly how far they'll be going, and even get things down to reducing the amount of LH turns. That would be unspeakably excellent.
I have no idea what I'm doing in the next 8 hours or 8 minutes. I wake up in the morning with a vague plan for the day, which may (or may not) resemble what the day ends up looking like.
@Michael Pickett posted:Even if you stick with ICE vehicles, it sounds like you should consider having a backup van (even a beater) in case a customer needs help and the regular van goes on the fritz. But, I'm sure you've worked out the cost/benefits of that long ago.
Trucks are the bane of my existence - a necessary evil that never seems to have a final solution. I've had everything from a Transit Connect to a E350 diesel cutaway dually, with a service body on the back (the truck had a 12,000 lb GVWR). I've purchased 14 trucks in the 25 years I've been in business, and all but 4 were new vehicles.
We've had excellent reliability with domestic trucks. The Promasters drive super-weird, and are FWD (which is exceedingly odd when all the weight is in the back). They have the Pentastar V6 and a minivan transmission (they're mechanical clones to a T&C minivan, only with a huge box and payload). I suspected they'd be a nightmare, but Brad's truck has 180k mi on it and we've had zero issues. I know we're on borrowed time, though.
I had an '05 Sprinter that was horrible in terms of... well, everything. I know all the cool-kids are upfitting them like post apocalyptic Mad Max Mobiles, but my foray into Sainted German Engineering left me pretty flat. It was in the shop at least every 2 months, and always consumed $1500/ visit, even when it was under warranty (?). It began rusting almost immediately, enough to remind me of a Japanese car from the '80s. The cool-kids can have 'em.
I had a backup van until we totaled a truck at the front end of the Recent Troubles. Now, even a beater is $20K for a box with 100K mi., so I've been riding bareback, which is frankly terrifying. I'd love to have the opportunity to pick up another E250 with 30K mi. for $10K (as we could pre-plague), but those days (like the days of 2% inflation) are over.
I'd buy another Promaster, but they're $42K now, equipped as we like (but pre-upfit), which just seems like too much for a beer can with a minivan engine.
I have another Transit Connect on order, and should have the truck by 2023, Lord willing, if everything goes OK. At that point, we'll move Brad into Inigo Montoya, and I'll stay in Fezzik (my truck only has 100K mi.). His truck will be a spare. I'm not sure where we'll keep it, which is always a problem.
As I said, trucks are the bane of my existence. We recently went to a $55 "truck/service charge" on every call. Gas is $5/gal and we get 13 MPG. I got 18 with the Transit Connect, which is why we're going in that direction. If I could run on $.10/kwh electric power with a range-extender, I'd jump all over it.
I'm not an ideologue, it's just that the product being sold as an adequate solution is not just impractical for me, it's unworkable.
I'm just havin' a little fun wit'cha, Stan. I thought the converted FedEx truck looked pretty good.
I've been on the end of a 24/7 phone call with a customer down and they don't know what caused the outage. All they know is they're losing a Million bucks each hour they're down and they need someone NOW! and "Where the hell is anyone that can help?!" so I hear your urgency - it's palpable.
So yeah, I can not see you being a candidate for anything battery powered into the foreseeable future until the whole vehicle/power/infrastructure/network thing is all worked out. It took over 50 years before ICE commercial vehicles became reliable enough that their very reliability wasn't questioned and I expect that it'll be quite a while before that whole equation is settled for electric vehicles, no matter how they get that electricity.
I'm wondering if the GMs and Fords and Mercedes of the world are thinking about you guys and not just Joe-Commuter. Joe can often work at home, now. You service and support people cannot. There's a HUGE difference in the infrastructure needed to support both.
Substitute the word plastics for batteries. https://www.bing.com/videos/se...D221E6&FORM=VIRE
@Gordon Nichols posted:I'm wondering if the GMs and Fords and Mercedes of the world are thinking about you guys and not just Joe-Commuter. Joe can often work at home, now. You service and support people cannot. There's a HUGE difference in the infrastructure needed to support both.
I totally agree. The need for the service industry to have the tools to do their jobs won't get ignored regardless of what current regs say is going to happen in 2035. That being said, I'm hopeful that we'll see some improvements in ICE and electric vehicles in that timeframe. Where's my darn flying car, anyway...
@Gordon Nichols posted:I'm just havin' a little fun wit'cha, Stan. I thought the converted FedEx truck looked pretty good.
I've been on the end of a 24/7 phone call with a customer down and they don't know what caused the outage. All they know is they're losing a Million bucks each hour they're down and they need someone NOW! and "Where the hell is anyone that can help?!" so I hear your urgency - it's palpable.
So yeah, I can not see you being a candidate for anything battery powered into the foreseeable future until the whole vehicle/power/infrastructure/network thing is all worked out. It took over 50 years before ICE commercial vehicles became reliable enough that their very reliability wasn't questioned and I expect that it'll be quite a while before that whole equation is settled for electric vehicles, no matter how they get that electricity.
I'm wondering if the GMs and Fords and Mercedes of the world are thinking about you guys and not just Joe-Commuter. Joe can often work at home, now. You service and support people cannot. There's a HUGE difference in the infrastructure needed to support both.
I can assure you with 100% certainty, by the product available and the rhetoric I hear, that they are not.
And FWIW, I loved your customization of the BEV van.
@Michael Pickett posted:I totally agree. The need for the service industry to have the tools to do their jobs won't get ignored regardless of what current regs say is going to happen in 2035. That being said, I'm hopeful that we'll see some improvements in ICE and electric vehicles in that timeframe. Where's my darn flying car, anyway...
Well the ideology does not have any common sense as a whole so I don't think your right on that assessment Michael but it will probably go like this... they will push until it breaks and when you can't get service they might wake up and grant exemptions.
There are so many parts to the EV problem yet to be worked out. As I have said in other forums, batteries are not the real answer to EVs. My opinion is that they are a transition technology. Just think about how many years it took to build up the gasoline and diesel infrastructure that we take for granted every day with our current transportation devices. Except for the wide open spaces out west, it's really hard to be more than ten miles from at least three gas stations. And service shops and parts suppliers of every stripe are all over the place, including your keyboard. Electric motors instead of ICEs will be the thing eventually, but not with rechargeable batteries. That technology is doomed to environmental disaster, IMHO. And those batteries are too heavy. Burning natural gas or coal to turn turbines to generate electricity to pump through wires to charge your battery is just NOT THE ANSWER. My utopian world involves hydrogen fuel cells, using green hydrogen, produced with renewable energy sources. And what I have said here is an enormous undertaking. Transportation of all kinds uses unimaginably vast amounts of energy and getting that from sun, wind, and waves is theoretically possible, but requires an infrastructure that nobody today can imagine. Will probably take another 100 years. So something has to give -- we can't be burning fossil fuels to charge Li batteries 100 years from now. Especially if the Russians have all the Li. But that is a whole other story.
Hey, remember a while back when I posted about a power generator over at MIT that could power a small city? I also mentioned in another post that I am a believer in small-scale power generation at the house or apartment building level as an alternative to a huge, fragile and expensive power grid, especially in far-flung areas.
OK, so make it scale-able up and down and place it under the direction of DARPA for a few years and whaddyah get?
https://www.militarytimes.com/...wer-far-flung-bases/
Now, I am NOT a proponent of fission-Nuclear power generation. Fusion would be much more efficient (once they get the kinks out and actually get it to work) and would be much safer, but as a power generation concept for remote areas, IF IT IS PROVEN SAFE, this is pretty interesting.
You don't necessarily need (or want) a power grid connection everywhere.....
@Gordon Nichols posted:You don't necessarily need (or want) a power grid connection everywhere.....
Have you ever driven through western Nebraska on I80 past the turnoff to Denver? Seward is about the only thing at all until you get to Cheyenne, WY. The topography looks like a Shar Pei dog as the land transitions from great prairie to the eastern slope of the Rockies.
I personally think it's gorgeous, but what strikes me is how utterly empty it is.
... except for that one dirt road that leads to that one farm stand out on the very edge of the horizon, the only thing around for 10+ mi in any direction. The only thing, that is, besides the power and phone lines running out to him. Lines mandated and made possible by the rural electrification act.
There is no way that will ever pay the utility, not in 100 lifetimes. But there it stands, probably 20 miles of poles and lines, headed off to one lonely house out on the rim of nowhere.
That guy needs what you are talking about.
I have never driven that far west on I-80 and, in Nebraska, only been to Lincoln (Chris was skating in Nationals there when he was a kid but we flew there). I've seen some pretty remote places in Colorado, though, ( Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, too) so I know what you're talking about.
You're description of being way out past the middle of nowhere, however, reminded me of something a Russian-American co-worker told me after he had been part of a trip to Russia in the late 1990's which might seem timely, today.
He had flown in to Moscow and then took a train way out to Yekaterinberg to the East - A long day's train ride. When they got there they wanted to rent a car to get around but were told there would be no rental cars and that they would be better off hiring a car and driver (taxi) who knew where the good roads were (???)
What they hadn't noticed, on the train ride, was that starting about 30 miles outside of Moscow, most of the roads were packed gravel and were only semi-paved (they mixed oil and crushed coal with local gravel to form a packed roadbed) and those roads only if they were going to industrial centers and suffered heavy truck traffic. In Yekaterinberg itself (a regional city), about half of the streets were semi-paved and the other half regular packed gravel, while everything immediately outside of the city was just a clay and gravel mix that was constantly muddy. He had us in stitches over lunch telling us how their knowledgeable driver was constantly changing direction to avoid poorly passable roads and how they got stuck and freed a few times in very muddy conditions - He even had a few photos.
Remember, this was around 1998, and the conditions he was describing sounded like 1930's America. The lunch table was incredulous, for sure. So I was wondering how things are in Russia, today, after seeing on news-casts the invading Russian tanks and personnel carriers in very poor shape with things flapping off of them, spewing heavy blue exhaust smoke and so forth, and I found this on the Internet (Caution - You cannot believe everything you read on the Internet!):
https://factsanddetails.com/ru...5157.html#chapter-17
Looks like not much has changed. The section on the "Shady side of Russian Used Car Business" is particular interesting.
@Stan Galat posted:Seward is about the only thing at all until you get to Cheyenne, WY.
First order of business: I had a brain fart and said Seward, NE and I meant Sidney, NE. Seward is down by Lincoln in civilization. Sidney is about an hour past the 80/65 junction at Big Springs.
@Gordon Nichols posted:I have never driven that far west on I-80 and, in Nebraska, only been to Lincoln (Chris was skating in Nationals there when he was a kid but we flew there). I've seen some pretty remote places in Colorado, though, ( Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, too) so I know what you're talking about.
Eastern Colorado is very, very sparsely populated (and vegetated too - it's pretty much high-desert scrub). Vermont sounds pretty sparse too.
The thing about the Shar Pei country (my name for it) in Western NE is that the topography is lumpy, but the grade either rises or falls away depending on whether you are climbing into Cheyenne or falling into the North Platte River. Regardless, from I80 you can see about 40 miles to the east and north, as there isn't a single tree anywhere except at that old farm stand with the wire running to it.
It's the same in Colorado, except the ground isn't falling away from you as aggressively.
That lone house in Vermont is hidden in the trees.
"I had a brain fart and..."
Please Stan, let's raise our vocabulary standards a bit and refer to this as "cerebral flatulence," mkay?
It's important to know your audience, Lane. "Brain fart" seemed appropriate.
Tru dat.
@DannyP posted:Ummm? What about "That's very true" Lane?
Language, Dad.
Ya gotta know your audience, son.
.
"...The moniker “Pele” ... is a nod to the Hawaiian deity Pele, the goddess of fire and volcanos and mythological creator of the Hawaiian islands. But of course, there has to be an acronym and for this project it is Portable Energy for Lasting Effects..."
Ah yes, lasting effects, indeed - in the sense that Chernobyl had 'lasting effects'. What could possibly go wrong placing a nuclear reactor in the middle of a battlefield site that will be targeted by the enemy's laser-guided smart bombs?
Why does our military never see the humor in its own unwitting irony?
.
Stan, Vermont’s “Northeast Kingdom” isn’t sparse, as in scrub brush, more like lots and lots of trees, very few roads and even fewer houses/buildings.
There used to be a WHOLE LOT of managed lumbering going on up there, but these days there’s less lumbering as the demand for paper has trailed off. There are very few actual roads up there, but a VAST number of managed snowmobile trails through the forests and over the winter’s frozen lakes. I used to get up there a lot, years ago and wondered if the VAST (Vermont Association of Snow Travelers) trail system is still alive so I found this current map. Wow! Lots more snow trails up there than roads!
https://vtvast.org/trails.html
My brother and I were charter members of VAST 50 years ago when they had maybe 300 miles of semi-managed trails around the state. I believe VAST is now partnered with similar organizations across New England and into Canada. It’s the best way to see what I think is the prettiest part of Vermont! Really way out there, but really pretty, too.
@Lane Anderson posted:Ya gotta know your audience, son.
I'm telling Mom. She'll grab you by the ear and pull, I know how you love that.
Unless you get me pie. I like pie.
Hmmm... To pie or not to pie. That is the question.
That SUCKS ROYALLY...