Episode 093: Drones Are Taking Over the Industry

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Welcome back to another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I'm your host, Jeff Jenkins. Glad to have everybody here and listening. We've got a very interesting topic today that we're going to talk about. Now, drones is not a new thing, but it may be newer in the industry. And I know there's probably a lot of people that don't use them or know how they could be applicable in their fleets. Now, I remember when I was running a trucking company and our primary commodity was like lumber and wood chips that the procurement people for the lumber companies would actually use drones to scout their terrain, their land for. and it was becoming a very, very common thing. Um, and this was probably about 5 or 6 years ago when I first started seeing that happen. So what we decided to do is we decided to bring someone on the show that has experience with drones in a government fleet. So I would like to introduce Nathan Schaefer, who was a former fleet manager for Sandy, Utah. How's it going, Nathan?

Good, how are you guys doing?

Doing good, doing real good, can't complain. So Um, we're glad to have you on. Obviously, you know, drones is probably going to be a new thing to some people out there and not really understand how it can be applicable. But one of the things that about drones is like you just can't go buy one and throw it in the air, right? I mean, there's like rules and regulations that you actually have to follow when it comes to drones.

Absolutely. Um, especially for, you know, business or government entities, if you're using it, you know, anything outside of recreation, right? You gotta, You gotta go through some licensing and registration stuff that's kind of managed by the FAA.

Why exactly is that? Like, especially if like, if I'm just at my own private location, right? Let's say I've got my facility, I got my drone, I wanna fly it in the air to like look at my roof or take a, you know, an overall view of my lot. Why do I need to get some type of a registration from the FFA?

Yeah, so the FAA kind of came out with rules and said, you know, we want people that are flying these things, you know, commercially or for business use to kind of follow similar, you know, rules and regulations that the aviation world would do. So, you know, you have to go through certain things on licensing and they call it the Part 107 and it's the unarmed, you know, the unmanned aerial drone stuff, you know. So you got to meet that Part 107 licensing rules, and they do that because, you know, they want you to understand, you know, flight operations, weather patterns, emergency procedures, airport operations, right? Like there's certain rules about, you know, how far away you have to be from the airport. If you're within a certain distance, you know, you have to call and let them know. You know, your flight limitation as far as your height ceilings, things like that. So you don't interfere with other, you know, aircraft that may be operating in your area. So it's very regulated. It's very in-depth.

Yeah, so I can understand why you wouldn't want to fly one near an airport, right? Obviously you don't want to have an accident and take out an airplane. Are there like other places that you're not supposed to fly a drone over?

Um, they definitely, uh, you know, you have to apply for exemptions if you're going to fly over, you know, roadways with vehicles, crowds of people, and then any nighttime operations. You have to, you know, you have to apply for those exemptions as well.

Interesting. You know, it's funny, but this is just business, right? It's not like if I had my own personal drone, could I go and fly it? Like, I don't think I'd ever fly by an airport, but could I fly it over roadways or people, houses, that kind of thing?

Yeah, as far as recreation goes, it's kind of unregulated at this point, as far as I know, you know, and some of that stuff may have changed recently, but recreation is a whole different ballgame.

And we're not going to get into much recreation, but I was in my backyard a few— gosh, probably a few months ago, and it was at night. And all of a sudden I see these red lights and you hear that little, you know, noise and you see a drone hovering over your backyard. I don't remember who I was. I think I was with my, my son. I told him to go get the shotgun because you're just going to shoot it out of the sky. Um, I mean, not really, it was like a sarcastic comment, but it's amazing to me how, you know, for recreational use you could just fly it wherever pretty much you want and it's like, yeah, not a big deal as a huge invasion of privacy issue.

Yeah, yeah. And that's, you know, that's a big concern in government fleets as well. You know, when we, we talk about doing road surveys or roof inspections, residents get upset when they see those drones flying around, but a lot of the bigger name drone companies build software in there that they can track flight paths and they can also track which direction the cameras are pointing, and whether or not it's on, right? So if there is any privacy concerns, especially in the commercial world, that stuff becomes public record. And people can request that stuff and it gets stored. It gets stored not only on the business's cloud where they keep that stuff, but, you know, DJI, for instance, they keep that stuff on their cloud to protect themselves. So it's— there's definitely some checks and balances there. Right.

Okay. Well, perfect. Let's talk about like the purpose of drones, like in a government fleet and the application. So when you were in Sandy, What specifically did you guys use drones for?

Yeah, so initially it started with our public works department, believe it or not, and they make, you know, one, mapping software, so they can map cities, roads, things like that, but two, surveying, right? So if you got a big road project coming or something like that, you can take one guy out, he can fly the drone, he can survey an entire area by himself. Right? So the safety aspect of not having the survey guy out there with the stick holder in the road, right, trying to survey stuff with moving traffic is a huge benefit. And then time, right? You're cutting it down by using one person instead of two. You're not closing lanes, things like that. So it's definitely less impact for public works when they're surveying projects to not have to close roadways down or put people out in the right-of-way and things like that. That's kind of where it started for us. And then once kind of public safety with police and fire started kind of seeing the benefits of it, it just kind of took off from there. So we got into, you know, with police, it went into like accident investigations. So if you're closing roadways down because there's a major accident, you know, they can fly the drone over, they can do a quick survey of the scene. They can lay cones out at 10 feet so they know how to get that accurate measurements later. They can fly an accident scene in about 5 minutes and get it cleared up versus multiple hours or an entire day, you know, if there's a fatality. So it helped a lot with traffic flow and getting that stuff out of the way. Interesting.

So how much does a drone cost? Just like that type that you're— because, you know, I know you can get one that like as a kid for, gosh, $20. And then there's probably tens of thousands of dollars in drones. So like the typical one that you guys would use, what's the rough estimate of how much that would cost somebody?

Yeah, we ranged from some of the ones that were just, you know, had a camera and could fly for a few hours. We were probably, you know, $1,700, $1,800. And some of the larger ones that had very detailed cameras for, doing surveying, I'd say we were probably up in the $5,000, $6,000, $7,000 range depending on cameras.

Okay.

So they're, they're, they can be spendy.

Yep. So is it, is this true? I had heard that the police departments use drones with a radar detector attached to catch people speeding in the air, and then they would have a cop on standby to pull them over based on, like, is that really something that happens?

I, in the PD side, and I won't give away all their tricks, but I will just say that I have never seen a radar attachment for a drone. So I think you're safe there. One of the really— so two of the really cool things that PD used it for was obviously the accident thing, right? They could fly the accident, get all the photos they needed, and get those things cleaned up. But one of the other things I thought was cool is some of those cameras have FLIR technology or heat technology, right? And if they had a suspect run from them, especially somebody that they knew was armed, right, they could fly the drone, use the heat, and then they weren't, you know, sending canines or officers into harm's way. They could kind of track them with the drone, set up containment, do it in a more safe way. So those are probably two of the coolest ways I've seen police use them. There are some other ways that the police department uses them for, and again, I don't want to give away their secrets, so, but I've never seen the radar thing. Right?

So have you operated one of these drones or no?

So I did briefly because I was managing the drones. They sent me through a lot of the training. They didn't make me do the licensing, but I did go through a lot of the training. So I have flown them. The nice thing about some of the, you know, the more expensive commercial ones is they have, they're very automated. You know, they'll, you can map out a flight path and it'll fly it itself. Or you can manually manipulate it. So, right, that's nice. You know, it can— from where it takes off, it tags it as its home location. You can go out, have it fly its own path. You can fly the path for it and then tell it to come home, and it will come home and land in a safe way. And not, you know, it's got crash avoidance and object detection and stuff on them, so they're very safe.

How difficult is it to operate a drone?

It's not. If you're manually manipulating, it can be a little difficult because some people have the issue with not understanding as the front of the drone turns, you have to manipulate the sticks in a different way to get them to move the way you want them to, right? So I think that's the biggest issue that people have when they first start to learn how to fly them. But, you know, it's like with anything else, practice makes you better.

Yeah. So, and I'm talking like a couple hundred dollar drone, right? Nothing super sophisticated, but like my, my son, we bought him a drone when they, well, it wasn't when they first came out, but it was probably 2 years ago. And that thing, we could like, we sucked so hard. We were crashing it. It would be end up in the pool. It's on the roof. It's in trees. Like to us, it was just very difficult to be able to maneuver and to drive around. I would just assume then that the ones that are more expensive have you know, uh, I don't know, they're better balanced or they got better controls or they just make it a hell of a lot easier to, to actually navigate.

Yeah, yeah. And they have some stabilization stuff and there's, you know, different programs you can pick where, you know, if you stop putting controls into it, it just will hover at its last known location, right? So, you know, if you're flying it and it's doing something weird and you just let go, it'll kind of stop and just hover there until you give it more input. So there's definitely some safety features in there to help, you know, protect that investment.

Right. Okay. Interesting. Is there any other application for it that you, that you used when it comes to, you know, kind of fleet service?

Yeah, we, a couple. So, you know, even our parks department, because, you know, they're out doing those events with in the community of, you know, 5Ks and festivals and things like that. So our parks department would fly those, during those events to kind of use for marketing or PR and things like that. So that was one application that they used it, but they would also fly trails, right, to see what kind of maintenance they would need up in the mountains. And the other good public safety one, you know, the fire department. We were in an area with a lot of trails and mountains and people would hike and, you know, they'd either get injured or, you know, fall off of cliffs or whatever it might be. And so, you know, the fire guys would have to meet at the trailhead and then send a crew of 2 up, not maybe knowing the full story of what's going on yet. So the nice thing was, is they could launch the drone and we had one that had 2-way communications. So they could launch the drone, fly it, find the injured person, and actually communicate with them real time as the crew was heading to them. So, you know, definitely some good life-saving. Type stuff going on there.

Um, so then the drone would hover, I guess, over the person and then they'd be like, act like a, like an intercom service to where the fire department would talk and they could talk back.

Exactly. And then they could update the crew that was on their way up the hiking trail to, to get to them and let them know condition, or, you know, they'd be a lot more prepared. Or let's say they're halfway up there and then they find out some new evidence or new information. They could send another person with maybe you know, a piece of equipment they needed. So, right, uh, definitely just some really, really cool applications, especially in public safety, right?

Yeah. So yeah, no, that actually sounds pretty cool. So this is, this is off the wall. So here's Jeff's off-the-wall comment for the, for the podcast episode. So I would play Call of Duty with my brother, and they've got like that surveillance drone in Call of Duty, right?

Yeah.

And we figured out how to throw the C4 on top of the drone to where we could fly the drone over next to some enemies and like detonate it, and it would blow them up and kill them. Now, this has nothing to do with fleet or public safety, but like, that's actually real life. They, they actually do that in the military.

Yes, they do.

Which is crazy to me.

It is crazy. I mean, you think about— I mean, you think about drones and, and defense and the military, and you know, where do you think personal application for drones came from, right? The military's been doing it for years, right? You know, you see those unarmed aircraft that are launching missiles and having missile strikes, you know what I mean? Like that stuff, that's kind of where a lot of the technology in the fleet world, you know, or any application in the rest of the civilian world come from is military applications. So it's definitely evolving and changing fleets for sure.

Right. How about the upkeep for drones? Like, is it expensive? Is there like a lot of service that has to be done on it? Like, how do you maintain those things?

Yeah, so the maintenance is pretty minimal. The biggest expense was crashes, right? If you crash them and things like that, and 95% of the issues that we had with crashing was human intervention. And one story that comes to mind is they were surveying a roadway, not necessarily flying over cars, but they were flying along the sidewalk. Kind of surveying stuff, and as they were trying to land the drone, I don't know why, but the operator reached out to grab it because he didn't feel like it was coming home where it should.

Okay.

And as he reached out to grab the landing gear, you know, he hit a rotor prop and it just totally dumped it on its side and crashed it from about 6 feet in the air. So that's the most expensive part of the upkeep is if they crash, right? Because then you got to send them back and have them have them repaired at the facility from whatever company you buy it from. But other than that, it's really just kind of battery replacement or rotors, replacing rotors. And most of the ones that we flew, it was like every 300 flight hours that, you know, you'd have to change the props. So, you know, I would get calls from the operators every so often and say, hey, I need a set of props. So we'd, you know, track that maintenance and that inspection on it and and issue out some props and let them change those. Yeah.

Like, so how, how often were they used? Like, so you talk about 300 hours, that would mean how often were you actually having to do some type of maintenance on it? I'm not, I'm not, I don't like, is it a daily usage or is it weekly, monthly?

Yeah. So, um, you know, fire PD and fire, I would say were probably daily, uh, but they had multiple drones, right? So, yeah, you know, you got, the crash guy that's got a drone in his car and he's doing crashes and that might be 2 or 3 times a week. If they're chasing suspects, I mean, that could be once a month, it could be twice a week, it just depends. And then same thing with fire, just depending on need. But our building inspection and our parks department, I would say building inspectors by far were probably the highest use department, which is surprising. We had one guy that his job was commercial building, and so he was doing a lot of roofs. And if you've ever seen commercial buildings when they're being built, to do a roof inspection, you're like trying to climb up a ladder that you put up yourself, right? It's not super safe, right? So he just got in the habit of where he was doing, you know, 2 or 3 of these a day maybe, and he would just fly the drone. So the safety aspect was huge and and he could do more of them because he wasn't having to take the time to set up ladders and climb up there and be safe about it. So he started using it a ton. Um, and I think he was probably the only one that I ever had hit that 300-hour mark, uh, fairly quickly because we had multiple drones in the other departments. They just weren't getting used as much.

Right. That, that actually brings up a good point when you talk about risk management, right? Because yeah, with a building inspector, right? You gotta get on the roof. You've gotta see what's going on. So was there a, was there like a noticeable, you know, downtrend when it came to injuries related to jobs that I guess drones took over?

Yeah, I think definitely in, in building inspection. And you wouldn't think that that's a dangerous job until you, you know, you go out to these, you know, buildings under construction and see what they're actually doing. Um, and we had a few different inspectors actually get hurt because they fell, you You know, so I think, you know, we were fairly new into the drones. We'd only been doing it maybe 6, 7, 8 months when I left, but I think they saw a noticeable downturn in the, you know, dangers that they were being put in. So I think they appreciated that side of it, that the, you know, the city took the initiative to kind of help make things more streamlined, efficient, and safe, not only for the employees, but for the public in general. Hmm.

Yeah. Like that, that's not even something I would consider, right? The risk management facet of it. But obviously that's a pretty big deal. Um, especially when everyone's so happy nowadays.

Right. Okay. If you're only, you're only sending, you know, 2 fire guys up the trail instead of a, you know, a crew of 8, cuz you actually know what's happening and you may not need everybody, you know, that definitely helps too.

Yeah. Well, and you know, that, that reduced man, that reduced manpower that you need, obviously those other guys can go and do something else if needed, you know, that may be, uh, you equally as important or life-threatening. Yeah, perfect. Well, we, you know, so we talk about a little bit fleet, and obviously I think people have heard about drone delivery services, right? Like, that's kind of popular. Hell, at the Walmart up the road from here, there's a, like, a canopy out there all day long with, you know, I guess you can go sign up for a private delivery service via Walmart. But our producer Tim was telling us before that, like, the company that does the Ring cameras, they actually have a drone that'll hover over your house for security purposes when you're away, which I hadn't heard of before. I can only imagine like the, the security application, right, when it comes to using drones. Now they do have a fairly limited time frame they can be in the air, like, you know, isn't it only like just a couple hours?

Yeah, and it's, it, you know, it's generally a couple hours and that varies greatly depending on You know, flight speeds, distances, things like that. Temperature obviously has an effect on battery life, so that shortens your flight times too. So, and obviously the bigger drones have bigger batteries or maybe multiple batteries. You know, you may have 2 batteries on one of the larger drones and that's what helps increase that flight time. So, and I think a lot of those delivery service ones would be a multi-battery drone. But yeah, it's, the application is cool and You know, I think you're going to see it more and more. I mean, we're already seeing it more and more, but, but the security aspect, I mean, think about construction companies building commercial buildings all the time and how much they get robbed of copper and things like that. So to have a, have a drone kick off in the air when they, you know, notice motion and be able to zoom in on that motion and record that stuff real time, I mean, that's, it's just amazing.

Hmm. Yeah, I guess I've never even thought about that. Yeah. So your recommendation, I'm taking it, is like it's very, very useful. And you would say that people should be using drones if they're not already?

Yeah, I think, you know, find the application. I know, you know, for us and a lot of other fleets that we talked to, because when we were getting into this, you know, we were making a lot of phone calls to other people that maybe were using them. The biggest issue that I see, especially in the government realm, is, is that Privacy, right? Because you're flying, you may be flying next to or over residential areas and people are worried about that stuff. But again, like I said, some of the bigger commercial manufacturers build into their software where they're tracking the flight path, where the camera's pointing, its elevation even. So if somebody's like, hey, it was right outside my second story window, pointed right at me and it was recording and I know it was, They can actually go back and look at what the elevation was at that time during the entire flight path. If the camera was on, which direction the camera was pointed. I mean, so yeah, there's some concern over privacy, but at the same time, you know, I think if people understood the way they're tracking the flights of these things, it would put them at ease a little bit and they would know that, you know, hey, I can request that under open record request and, and get that flight log. I think it'll make people feel better.

Well, what's funny is, you know, people get worked out— worked up about something like that. But guess what? You have a phone in your pocket that's a walking surveillance device. You have your Amazon, right? Alexa devices or whatever else in your house. And I mean, hell, you can't even talk about like wanting to go to Disneyland with your friends without getting 4,000 Disneyland ads right after it. Exactly. Like, I don't really think there's much in the way of privacy nowadays anyway.

Yep, yep, exactly.

Well, cool. Well, any, any final thoughts, Nathan, just about, you know, drones in general?

No, uh, I think we covered most of it. I, you know, it's exciting. It's just, you know, I think you're going to start seeing drones like you see electric vehicles in fleet. I think it's going to start taking over more and more, and, and people are going to be talking about it. So I'm glad we got a chance to talk about some of the application, and, and hopefully it piques some people's interest.

I mean, we are too. Obviously, you know, we try to talk about things that, like, can help fleets succeed and get them in a better position, and, you know, hopefully save time, save money. And I definitely think this is one of those things that when applied correctly can do both of those. So yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we definitely appreciate having you on. Thank you very much for having me.

Yep, you're welcome.

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