Barn Talk - From Farming Roots to Forklift Empire w/ Alex Mortensen

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

Welcome to Barn Talk! In today’s episode we're diving into a unique business journey with Alex Mortensen, a man who's truly brought innovation to the heartland. Alex, our guest for this episode, has turned what once was a small-town elementary school into a thriving hub for his enterprise, Iowa Forklift and Equipment. But that's not all – Alex is also a Pioneer seed dealer and is in the process of developing a campground. From his humble beginnings on a family farm to exploring new horizons in the business world, Alex’s story is a testament to creativity and perseverance. We’ll explore how he’s leveraged social media, specifically TikTok, to propel his business forward and the lessons he’s learned along the way. We also uncover his insights on entrepreneurship, his approach to balancing multiple ventures, and a look at the prospects of his burgeoning campground project. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned business owner, there’s something in this episode for everyone. So, let's head into the barn and let Alex teach us a thing or two about finding success in the niches! Use code BARNTALK for 10% OFF your next order https://farmergrade.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR   SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c  LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY  APPLE ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● This’ll Do Farm Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/30KPBNk   ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS   ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4   ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS 00:00 Winter Storm Alters Shipping Plans 06:10 Truck Miscommunication and Frustration 15:35 Farm Work Reflections 19:05 Contemplating a Career Change 23:16 Podcast Networking Opens Doors 28:11 Embracing Social Media Trends 33:41 Unexpected School Purchase Opportunity 40:34 "Global Forklift Ventures" 45:22 Simpler Beer Era Recollection 51:30 Challenges in Management Growth 57:57 Expanding with Mobile Services 59:20 Diversifying Investments with Real Estate 01:05:44 Farming Ambitions and Nostalgia 01:09:07 Highway Driving: Missing Exits 01:16:28 Struggling with Being Present 01:20:31 Small Town Walmart Nostalgia 01:25:35 Podcast Appreciation and Promotion ------------------------------- ⚠NO FINANCIAL ADVICE / DISCLAIMER⚠  The Information discussed and shared on Barn Talk is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or success for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice. The Information on this podcast and provided from or through our content is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional, professional broker or financial advisory. Understand that you are using any and all Information available on or through this website at your own risk. R... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens at the barn stays in the barn, but not today. We're going to let it all out for you guys. Today is going to be a really great guest episode. This guy has a lot of unique stuff going on. He's on TikTok. He's doing something pretty cool here in the state of Iowa. And we're going to have a damn good conversation in the barn here today. but before we get into it, you guys know the drill. Share the show with the people that you know.

The more that you guys do that, the more of this show grows. The more guests we can get on, the more episodes we can make. Another thing you can do to help support Barn Talk is you can leave a review on Spotify or Apple. The more that you guys do that, the more it gives our show credibility. And the more credibility we have, the more guests we can have on. So we appreciate every single one of you guys that does that. Let's us know your thoughts. we love hearing from you so keep leaving those reviews um last thing you can do to support barn talk

and support our family farm here is support our direct-to-consumer meat business farmer grade farmagrade.com we got a crap ton of of restock items coming we have a crap ton of new items for grill out season that's came um we have pork sticks available it is going to be the official snack of the Barn Talk podcast and we also got subscription boxes but got a bunch of stuff always coming to the website so you can use code Barn Talk to save 10% off your next order and that code is always for you guys to use anytime you want to buy some meat. So is there going to be like a right here. Is there going to be like a pork stick mini? I know. We need to get like a dispenser. We need to have a pork stick button that like we have one of those one of those things in the corner of the barn that just

shoots, shoots us one that's perfectly aligned with our chair so we could just catch it and eat it. Maybe we get a trained. That'd be pretty insane. Like the trunk monkey, you remember the trunk monkey? Yeah. We could get a meat stick. I've seen dogs. I've seen dogs. It might have a little slobber on it. I don't trust that. I've seen a dog, you know, go get somebody a bush light. That's different. He ain't going to find a dog going to the fridge and getting a pork stick. Well, he might get you a pack stick, a pack of pork sticks. I don't know. Let's start with a dispenser, and then we'll go from there.

We definitely need to have it. Today has been, this morning has been just a dog gun grind. Can we just tell people about this? Oh, man, I think we should before you get in the show. So we had to load overstocks this morning out of our double site, and we took two loads out last week. We took four out today, and we started, we were going to start loads at four in the morning. and there was going to originally be five loads, but it got changed to four loads and it got

changed to 730 because we had a really bad winter storm last night and it was snowing all day. So wanted to get the plows out, wanted to get the salt trucks out, give us time to plow out the drive, all that. First truck arrives goes pretty smooth. 30 minutes, maybe 20 minutes, that gets loaded perfectly fine. Next truck pulls in. pulls in, backs up, backs up hits the shoot, and he's not, has no shavings, not bedded down at all. So he had sat there the whole time, 30 minutes, and I mean, he was even there before we started loading the guy.

So, I mean, he's there over an hour plus. Didn't bet a struck down, which I don't understand why not, why just not knock that out. But then he passed a pull up because he probably couldn't get his shavings in. the truck. So he pulls up, gets in the truck, beds it down, that's 15 minutes. He didn't get out of the truck for another 10 minutes. So we are literally sitting there in between trucks for, what, fucking half hour, probably? Half hour. Half hour. And then after we load him, we get him going. We get, we get him loaded. And I text the, I knew where these pigs were going. So I text the guy that the second truck is leaving, only then I realized that he hasn't left.

Yeah, he just, he's still, he still backed up to the dock. And he sat there for another 10 minutes, 10 minutes, probably, which whatever, fine, were loaded. And so these were turn around loads. So they were hauling with two trucks because they weren't going that far. They were going about 30 minutes away. So we loaded two trucks and then they were supposed to go unload and then come back. And so the guy that was done.

getting the pigs, he texts me and says, first truck left about 10 minutes ago. I'm like, okay. So it's one of those things you can't really, can't really do a whole lot because you can't get too far away because you're going to have to be back here. You know, he's going to be here a half hour. So we figured 20 minutes this trucker's going to be here because he had left 10 minutes before that. No truck, no truck, no truck. So I finally text the dispatch dispatcher. And I'm like, hey, what gives? He left this guy's place at 9 o'clock, and it's 10, like 10.07 now. And so then I get a text.

No idea. I'm loading pigs. He won't answer my calls. I'm like, okay. So I'm just getting ready to call the dispatcher at Eichelbergers and be like, I don't know what you want to do, but we're going to try. take off and go chore and I can't just sit up here at this building all day and the dispatcher texts me back and says he thought that he needed a clean truck for every load so he headed to the

truck wash so instead of coming back to our place he drives the other way to Cigerny to go to a truck wash and get his trailer washed out to come back to the same place he was and load weaner pigs or feeder pigs again at that point we were just like okay uh we're done soyer went to chore i went down home uh and was like i'm gonna change clothes because i was overheated pissed off and i'm like i'm gonna have me i'm gonna have a snack or something so anyway uh what we ended up loading at we loaded the first load at 730 and we loaded the last load at 1130. Yeah, we got done loading probably 1150. Yeah. So four loads took us pretty much all morning. I mean, it just took all morning. I mean, it just pissed our morning down the drain and. But that's a new one. I've never had. Yeah. I've never had

happen. Never happened. But then we just, yeah, it's been, it's been a morning. So we're going to bring it though. We're going to bring the fire for this podcast. You know a little bit more about this guest. Yeah. So it's really interesting. I hear a few months ago, I saw a TikTok about a guy from, lived by a small town in Iowa. I actually thought it was Southwest Iowa, but it's northern Iowa. And he sells forklifts.

And his business is run out of an elementary school. And like they took the, they took the walls out. you know, down where the lockers are and between the rooms and like he literally has forklifts in this school. And I just thought that was pretty interesting. And about two weeks later, his wife reached out to us and was like, hey, this is a long shot, but this is an Iowa, you know, my husband and Iowa come from family farm and my husband started this business. And I knew exactly who he was, so I'm like, yeah, we got to get together. So the riches are in the niches, and this guy has got like, he's found a real niche in this

equipment business that he's in. He's also a seed dealer. They're into real estate. They've got a new venture that they're working on. And I just thought, super interesting. And I love having people on that are in, you know, in business and building businesses because it doesn't matter what you're doing, so many things cross over to whatever you're trying to do.

And I just thought, great story, and we're going to try to learn something from him. So without any further ado, let's get started. Alex Mortensen, welcome to Barn Talk. It's great to have you here. Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. For those that don't know you, one, give us a little bit of back. of what you're what you're into these days and how do people find you okay well so um i own i will forklift and equipment my wife and i run that and we have mortonson ag service we're piner seed dealers we do

that as well um we're we're actually working on a campground uh with a partnership with another guy that i'm doing and that's going to be called highway 18 hideaway i think is what we're going to call that yep up in between brit and wesley so okay um that's another thing and uh there's a theme there that i'm I'm always trying to explore other areas or whatever. Yeah, absolutely. You can find me probably my most prolific on the Iowa Forklift stuff. So that's where my TikTok is Iowa Forklift. Our website is www.IA4klift.com.

And we do have an Instagram and a Facebook, Iowa Forklift. Yep. So you're into ag. You're a seed dealer. You're into equipment. So I'm assuming that you've got a farm background. So how, where'd you come from? How'd you grow up?

All that good stuff. So I grew up on a farm east of Camerre in Hamilton County. And we had hogs. We had cows, chickens, sheep. We had all the stuff at one time, you know. So I did that. And row crop, we did at that time growing up probably 700 acres. Yeah.

And we've grown a little bit on that. But yeah, so that's where it started, I guess. So it sounds like paradise. Why would you want to leave all that? Well, you know, so my dad, when I graduated high school, I told my dad, I said, hey, I think I'm just going to build some hog buildings. If you sell me some land, let's do that. He's like, no.

And everybody had prepped, you got to go to college. He said, just go to college. You can come back and do the hog buildings if you want to after that. So I went to college, went to Ellsworth, went to Iowa State, and never came back. Never came back. Yeah. Yep. And I've got an older brother, too.

And he's been involved in ag and done different things, too. So what came first? The seed dealing, the forklifting. You know, what was the, what was the first kind of journey there? So the seed deal. And I had worked, I graduated, I went to Ellsworth Community College. I wanted to be a vet. I thought it would be a vet, but I figured out how much school that was going to take. And I decided no. So then I transferred from Ellsworth to Iowa State two more years in agronomy and had worked internships with several different outfits, F.S. But I ended up with Ag Reliant and worked for them for five years as a district sales rep under Agargold. So I did that. And that is kind of how I got into the seed. And that was when these bulk boxes

or pro boxes started coming on. So then I needed a forklift myself for that business. And I got one. and then one of my customers said, well, hey, I'd be interested in one. So I bought another one and fixed the brakes or something on it and sold it to him. Well, then his neighbor said, hey, I'd be interested in one. And I thought, you know, I think this might be, I think every farmer is going to buy one of these forklifts, you know? So that was kind of the idea that started that whole thing. How did you know to tinker on forklifts? Did that just come natural to you?

That's the farming background. Okay. So we had all older stuff on the farm, you know, and we worked on all that. And we race go-karts and we did, you know, just did. Yeah, fun country shit. Right, exactly. Yeah, yep. So constantly tearing apart stuff.

And later on, I grew up my brother raced. My dad had raised cars. I did the demo derby. So it was just kind of a natural thing to be tinkering and messing with stuff. Yeah. Demo derby is a, is an incredibly unique American sport. Yeah, it is. So every county fair, I don't know.

if every state is this way, but Midwest, I mean, to this day, county fairs have changed and some have gotten bigger, some have gotten smaller, some may have gone away, but at our fair, a staple is the demo derby. Absolutely. And it is probably, probably the highest attendance will be for the demo derby. It's like the crowd favorite. It is. Packs the stands, right? It's just, I don't know what it is about seeing somebody wreck a, you know, a car that's on fire. And or whatever, you know, but it's just, it's just, yeah, Americana, right? And the other part about it is, and I could be wrong about this, but when I go to the Demo Derby, there is always a pile of people there that I swear,

I have never seen, I've never seen those people anywhere. It's like they crawl out from underneath whatever junk car that they've spent the year under, and they load everybody up and they come to Demo Derby, and you're like, I've never seen these people before in my life. And then when the Demo's Irby, when it's over, they go back. You don't see him for another year. Another 365 days and they're back again, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Except there's, I think it's all, I think why people like it so much is it's all that, uh, road rage built up and we all secretly want to just, yeah, just bump them, but you can't. So you just see it, you just see it in other people with the demo derby. Yeah. The, the, the, the safety first has definitely, uh, it's hurt the demo. It's hurt the demo deal. Because when I was a kid, you know, it was a lot bigger.

area. You just cut down some trees and there were these big, you know, you just get the biggest tree trunks you could find and they would roll them in there and drive steel posts behind them. And then they would, they would barely wet down the track just enough that it was a little bit. And every once in a while, what everybody wanted to see was some car get hit enough that it, it went up over the log, you know, and you're like, yeah. But they keep shrinking the size of the, of the arena and you know the the sides get a little taller it's like osha ruins everything yeah they do so what was your least favorite uh farm chore like what are some core memories on the farm that you just like look back or like man those are the days least favorite farm chore or just

anything you can think of about on the farm yeah well you know so a lot of the stuff i did um i mean you know doing the doing the flat racks of hay you know i remember my dad turned me loose at 12 years old, throwing the hay, he's driving the tractor, you know. Probably not my favorite, you know. But I think about this all the time, how good that was for me, you know, but you don't think about it then. You think this really sucks, you know. I worked with two guys that were probably my age at the time,

and I would panel pigs tight and they would vaccinate them. And I hated that, you know. But that was more my outside of the family farm thing. I did a lot of stuff off off the farm for more money. Making money. Yeah. So did you get, did you as a kid like growing up, did you get paid? Did your parents pay you or that was just part of the deal?

And then whatever you could do on the side was what you could make money. That was just part of the deal. So room and board was helping on the farm, right? Yeah. And so if I wanted to have any gas money, it was done off the farm pretty much, you know. Well, that's a good. I mean, you're right in the fact that those jobs that you hated, they taught you a lot because when I went off farm and started doing construction, there were a lot of jobs that

guys on the crew that I worked with thought were terrible jobs. And I would be like, eh, this isn't that bad. I've done worse. It's like sitting there swinging trusses in the summer versus standing on a rack. down by the creek where there's no air moving and throwing them 10 high or stacking them 10 high. I'm like, eh, I think I'd rather be up here swinging trusses. This isn't too bad. So that's good.

You bring up a good point. It was probably worse in the barn than it was out on the rack, you know, when he had to get up in the barn and throw the hay from there. So, yeah. Definitely right. You're 100%. Had some core memories in here, huh? Oh, man.

And this was actually, I've said it before, this is actually a pretty nice barn because it still had the fork in it to where you didn't have to carry him to the back of the mow. you could drop them where you wanted. And I thought that's how it was done. So when I was the same way, I didn't get paid. That was just what was expected.

But my friends, they all bailed straw and bailed hay for other people. And the first time that I went and helped them, we go up into the hay mow. Sure. And I'm looking around. How are we doing this? How's this work?

And then we start carrying them. I'm like, well, you guys are doing this wrong. You know, this isn't how this is supposed to go. Well, nobody cared what I thought. So you're like, oh, yeah, this does suck. So you got going in your seed business. What year would have that had been? Well, so, you know, when I worked with Ag Reliant, I was the district rep.

So I was selling seed personally, but I also had dealers. So I did that. And that was from 2009 to 15. Yeah, somewhere in there. Or 14 or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then actually a Pioneer dealership came open in the Dauz area. And so I knew the rep at the time, the Pioneer rep at the time.

He'd grew up in the same area. And he reached out to me and said, hey, would you be interested in doing this? Because he was getting ready to retire or wanted to change. No, it was unusual. That rep had just left. And so it was an open area, which is very unusual. That is very nice. Yeah, yep, yep.

And really at the time that he made. made that call. I can remember talking to him and I thought, I don't know if I want to do this, you know, but I told him, I said, let me think about it, you know. So, and I talked to my wife and then developed the plan that I was at that time I was moonlighting in the forklifts, you know, I was doing a student on my acreage. We lived up actually up by Charles City, kind of east of, or west of Nashua at the time, south of Charles City. And that was when I came back and said, hey, I'd be interested in doing this, but I do this other thing too. And I kind of want to maybe be able to do them simultaneously.

And that was kind of the thought that, you know, that, you know, that happens. You were hedging your bed if this is exactly right. It was mixed reviews on how it was going to be left and, you know, how the, how the, the whole current affairs were in the area and whatever. So it's worked, it's, it's worked out fine. Obviously, it's been great. But, yeah. Did you always want to work for yourself or do you feel like it just kind of, as you worked for somebody,

like what sparks you to want to go out on your own and kind of go down your own half. Yeah, I definitely knew I wanted to work for myself. Yeah. I learned so much working for Agri-Lianto, corporate and that, and they were great. It was a great experience because you just throw into the wolves. I was actually, I was up in Northeast Iowa where people had never heard of what I was selling. You know, it's the best, it's the worst and the best case scenario, you know,

forced yourself to go out and visit with people. Most people in Niagara are so nice, you know. But you just get out of your comfort zone. So that was kind of, but I knew I wanted. I wanted to work for myself. You know, I knew that from even, well, when I was in college, I was buying and selling car. I was doing other stuff.

I always, I'd ran businesses, vaccine hogs, power washing, doing it all for myself, you know. So I kind of knew I wanted to do that, but I just couldn't do it. You know, I went and got this college degree. I had to do something with it. I felt like, you know, you know, and I have. And it's been a blessing. Sometimes I question the value, how much value it brings, but connections, it's a big, it's a big value there. I learned a lot of things in the short time that I was at college.

Most of them I didn't learn actually at the school, but I learned from people that, you know, were fun. The night activities, people that were fun to hang around with. My biggest regret is not trying to build connections more than I did. really that's my biggest regret you know yeah yeah um i was just there to get that piece of paper get out of there and then i'd go to go work or do something you know and and i should have been involved in more things you know because that network carries through the whole your whole life it's a good thing you know that is a hundred percent true and i was the same way i i didn't um but you think

about who's the one person that we've had on this podcast that maximize their networking while they're in college that's a good question uh I don't know. Nup. Yeah. Nop. Yeah. So, Austin Nup, we've had him on the podcast and his family trucks and he does the transportation

for Eichelburgers, but he went to Iowa State and was in AGR and all that. When you go to a trade show with him, I mean, everybody knows him. Everybody knows him. And you're like, who's that guy? Oh, he was two years older than me. Oh, that guy is two years younger than me. Oh, that guy, this, that guy, this, that guy. I mean, I think he ran for mayor the entire time he was in.

college. I don't know how he did on his grades, but he met, and he, you're right there. And that's something that, that's probably something that doesn't, you know, we're probably not the most positive people on, on college, but what it's priced at versus what you get out of it. Right. At this point in the game is, it's a little different. But that networking is, but that's the most important part of it. That's the biggest value. Yeah, I think so too. You know, you pull out your phone, you have every bit of information you ever could want is on there. Yeah. It's the most incredible technology.

So I feel like I'm playing catch up right now on my networking. You know, now I'm behind eight ball. I want to keep networking. And it's a lifelong thing you got to do, you know. Yeah. This podcast has been the best way for us to network ever. I mean, like all the people you meet and just, yeah, it's crazy how many doors can be open up with people that you know, you know.

And I feel the same way with you because, like, I didn't go to college. So, like, you know, I always knew. Like all my friends, I have a couple buddies. I have a buddy named Chip that like he's kind of like Nuff where he like, he's mayor. Everybody knows Chip and like, it's just what you miss out on. But there's tradeoffs with everything. So I feel you on that. I'm trying to make up for that as well.

So your first job off the farm, was it just more farm work? Or did you, what was like your first non-farm job? The first job I can really remember. And I'm young. I'm like eight. one of our neighbors raised vegetables and fruit and would sell them to a local grocery store down, actually down to like Ames or whatever.

So picking raspberries for him was my first, you know, which I don't know, I mean, I picked plenty of raspberries, but I ate a lot of them too, so I don't know if that net worked out for him or me better. I don't know, but really, I worked for another farmer. Vaccine hogs was a big one that we would go to all these sites and I would just crowd these pigs. They'd vaccinate them.

which was not he actually turned that business over to me gave me all the contacts and then I did it and hired some buddies and we did you know did that so um I saw how much you was really making yeah right let me do that so so you decided that that dealership came open and you jump ship but you were already you were already uh dabbling in equipment yes before you started that yeah okay so today like how many, how many lifts do you handle? Like, because it looks like it's kind of turned into a, it's turned into its own thing to the point that you,

that you bought a school to put them in. Right. Yeah. So how, tell us about that, like tell us the evolution. Okay. You were dabbling in that and you got into the seed business, but obviously you didn't put that on the back burner because it's continued to grow. So that, that turning point, uh, when I went to do the new,

the new seed business and talked to my wife about about doing that was hey if we want to grow this thing like I want to grow it it I need to have more for you know I I felt like I owed the company I worked for the nine to five you know yeah um and as a as a as a pioneer seed representative you can you can change your whole time frame you know you can be doing you know it's a different deal or whatever you know so um but uh I guess I I've I forgot the question now so so so So you were, you, you, you had started that. You started with the Pioneer deal. But, you know, for a lot of people, that, that would be my, that's my, that's what I'm going to do. Right. Yeah. But you, obviously, the, the equipment side of it, it kept growing because it's, it's grown into its own space now. So like, how did you, how did, how did you, one, how did you decide, okay, this can be something in an above. this so I'm going to keep working in this but then what was the point where you're like this kind of needs its own its own space and you went down the road of well basically I looked

at where were my limits you know with the equipment business there was zero limits I can sell anybody in any you know all over the United States in the other countries which I have done you know yeah pioneer I have a I have a territory of you know area and I can work that to what I can do yeah but then I'm you've got a captive audience basically Yeah, yep, yep. And you know that. Your pioneer dealer can only service so many guys, right? You know, and so that's, that's, I just thought, okay, well, what, what, where is the limit? And we, you know, and where is it limitless, you know, and that was kind of how I approached that. And we've grown with employee, you know, we just hired another guy, a new guy. And I guess I still think it's still limitless, you know. Right. Well, how much is the, how much has.

Has the internet played into that and the online. Do you, do you online auction any of these or do you all private sale them? We do a very small online auction. I private sale most of the stuff. But yeah, so I'm trying to think. So the internet, my whole business isn't possible without the internet, right? You know? And I jumped on that early. You know, we were talking, my wife and I were talking about this other way out there. You know, Craigslist. I was a big Craigslist guy. If you remember Craigslist, you know, which is almost, it's still, there, but I don't know. But I use that for as much that, you know, I sold lots of forklift on Craigslist. It was a great way to meet people. It was free. Yep. And I remember telling my wife, the first time I said, hey, I think I'm going to put stuff on Facebook. And she

laughed at me, you know. And now, you know, Facebook Marketplace is the thing. Huge. Right? Yeah, yep. But I remember that. So I'm always looking for the trends and where people's attention and where are they going and that's why I'm on TikTok now. I'm a 39 year old guy. I thought it was kind of silly, but it's a, I mean, there's people, there's plenty of people older than me on there. There's a lot of actually knowledge and it's interesting, you know, and it's a great way to connect to people and you're kind of unlimited who you can connect with there. Well, and what you do is so unique. Like, I think TikTok loves unique, you know, what you're doing, your whole business. Like, are you the, are you the biggest, like, forklift? Like, how many competitors do

have nationwide? Like, is there a lot of guys doing what you're doing? Yeah. So in the truly in the used forklift space, I don't, there's guys that are doing it. Yeah. I deal with a lot of the actual dealerships, you know, that sell the new stuff and, and, and, and that, but I don't know. I think we're the biggest in Iowa for sure, you know, maybe the Midwest. Yeah. Yeah. You don't have any way to quantify that for sure, though. Yeah. You know, I guess I'm not certain how, you know, that's my answer to that. Yeah, well, you probably are the most popular. How about that? I hope so. Yeah. That's what I'm trying to do with you guys is get that out there. Well, the media, the media, the social media broadly, but TikTok specifically, it is a demographic.

So guys, there is just a lot of guys, whatever the business is, whatever they're doing, construction or ag or anything. I feel like that is the, that is like become the preferred social outlet to get your name out there. And so it makes sense because a lot of people that are starting businesses that are getting going, they're on there, which those are the people you want to reach. And so let's, let me ask you this. What is the, so what is that, what is the, what is the next? there that you kind of play in when it comes these forklifts because obviously there's dealers that want to sell new ones. And there's these big, big companies that I would assume they're

probably on a deal where they're either leasing lifts or they're just rolling over so many every year and somebody is selling them the new ones. But what's your ideal? What are you looking for when you're look and yeah so i think of a guy who wants to buy used forklifts as somebody who's probably not going to put the two to three thousand hours a year on it that those big companies are yeah um which would justify having to roll in new lifts all the time so a farmer or you know even construction any small business yeah putting 50 to 100 hours on them a year you know um so if they buy a new one i mean it's it i mean and they can and a lot of people do um but it's almost overkill because you know say you buy a new for you buy a new forklift in in 50 years you've put on 2,500 hours right well that's

what one is meant to be in one year you know you can put that many hours in one year so it's a poor use of your capital basically right yeah yep yep um so but yeah I just see that the niche is that a lot of people and a forkleth is so handy but a lot of people can use them but not everybody needs a new one you know right yeah um and then do you find that a lot of these dealers they don't want to mess with trying to sell them. They want to sell the new one, but they're not really interested in trying to sell a used one. That's right. Because, you know, they want to sell the new one. And where they're making their money really is the service, you know, and parts, right? And it's no different than John Deere or any of these. I don't know that they make a ton of money on their new

equipment. Right. Service and parts, you know, so. And we, and we do service and parts too, but we actually make some money on that used stuff because a lot of it comes in. You know, a lot of people don't, don't buy a forklift. You know, I learned this the hard way. I would buy stuff in an auction and say, boy, I know why they put this on auction. You know, we put thousands of dollars into it to get it to get it to where it needed to be, you know. So I'm the buffer, you know, when somebody buys a for me, it should be ready to roll. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's your main thing's flipping. Like you're flipping forklifts. That's the main thing. But you still, will you still do people that come in and say, hey, my forklips are messed up? Yeah, we will work on forklifts too. Cool. So, you know, the, the. in that space, the Forklift companies, you know, it's just, it's no different than your,

your local implementer or whatever. It's expensive, you know. It's 150 bucks an hour or whatever, you know, so there's, there's, we can offer a cheaper option there, you know, when it comes to getting your stuff serviced. So how did you go about getting, like getting a school? Like, how did that all work? Because like people, I think that's what the most fascinating part about your business. Yeah. I was, I was, dad came home. Doom, Scroves. rolling and here's this here is are there four is your showroom in the gymnasium showroom is in the elementary wing of the school okay so which is is unique the the gymnasium is my seed warehouse so you know we talk about i think we're 26 foot high in there so i can stack my boxes so you're

you've got it in the same space yeah yep yep yep it's the same building yeah that's pretty slick so how this happened was um one of my customers for pioneer john um he said hey the school's going to close this year, you should buy that. Because I was looking at building a facility out by Interstate 35. And I was looking at what it's going to cost. Man, it's going to cost a lot. And he kind of half serious, half joking, said, hey, you should buy the school. They're going to close that.

And I'm not certain. I said, yeah, maybe, you know. And it wasn't like maybe the next day the superintendent called me. He said, hey, you want to come look at the school? I heard you might be interested. So he obviously, somehow that got hooked up. So I thought, well, yeah, let's go. let's go check out the school.

So I'm walking around. They were having school yet when I was looking at it, you know. It was just an elementary, you know, at the time. But I walked into the gym and I thought, oh, yeah, I can store seat in here, you know. And they had their original or their bus barn that they had out there was like a, I don't know, 60 by 80 Morton building style building, you know, half heated, half not. I thought, this would be a nice shop, you know. Yeah.

And then their original bus barn from the 40s, they'd come. kind of converted it into a industrial arts thing. They had welding tables and stuff in there. And we made that our office. And yeah. So I knew I didn't want to heat that whole giant building. And the superintendent had told me that the building cost about $50,000 to heat that winter. Oh, shit.

Oh, boy. But yeah, that's, so what happened was I talked to him. I don't know if I brought it up to my wife. I know I basically how I approached it was, hey, I made an offer to buy the school. but don't worry, we're not going to get it. That, it's ballsy. Yeah. Yeah, and I'm a little further down the road than you by a little bit.

And there's no better way to jinx yourself than saying something like that. So I'm assuming your bid was accepted. It was accepted. Yep. Yeah. And, yeah, I was 28 years old, I think. Yeah. Yeah, the rest is history.

What's interesting is I had played basketball in that. in that gym because I went to a neighboring school, you know. I'd played football in the football field across the road. Never would I have thought when I'm a kid in there. Yeah, I'm like, I'll own this place someday. Yeah, there you go. That's crazy. Yeah, so how long, like, how long has the business been going?

Like five years? No, so, you know, we started Iowa forklift. I think maybe in 2011 or 12, I think, you know, yeah. Wow. Okay. So, cool. I had a, and this is, I had, I had, I had an accident actually working on a forklift very early on. Forklifts have split rims, and you know how dangerous those can be, you know. We were working on an old Alice forklift

from probably the 50s. And I was going to take the rear tire off because the steering was broken or something, and I had the impact, and I'm zipping the lugs off. And I was zipping the lugs off, but also unbolting the two-piece rim at the same time because it was all nuts. And I didn't, at that time, I never, yeah, I had, yeah, I didn't, yeah, I didn't, I didn't, experienced a split rim, but that 100 PSI tire blew up and it broke my wrist, it knocked me clear out of the shed, it broke my wrist, knocked me out, cut my legs up bad. And it hurt me bad. It's kind of a, I don't know, it's one of those things where it's like, should I double down on this and that's what I did, you know, but I got to experience what split room is very dangerous,

you know. Did you have somebody with you? Yeah, my father-in-law was in the shit. shed and he kind of gathered me up and got Brittany and took me into the emergency room. And they, I guess I didn't, I just thought I'd jam my thumb real bad. I had stitches in my legs and stuff. But reality was if that wheel would have hit me in the head, it would have killed. Yeah, it would be. Yeah.

So, um, very fortunate. Holy cow. That's crazy. What was your biggest struggle like scaling the, scaling the business, getting it started and making it sustain and growing up? you know, I did it like I did everything, you know, I was pretty conservative, so I bootstrapped it. Yeah, yep, yep. I would buy the forklift, fix it up, sell it, use that cash, go buy another forklift, fix it up, sell it, just kind of just on repeat, right? You know,

and my father-in-law was instrumental in help me. He's a good mechanic, and he always, and I don't know if this was around in the 80s, he did LP on all his vehicle, still does to this day, but he knew all about the LP stuff, you know, and that was foreign to me. I did get one, an LP pickup when I was in college. But yeah, that was all four and up to that, which it's not a huge difference. It's just, you know, whatever.

So he was instrumental in helping, and mechanic-wise, he's way better mechanics than I ever, probably whoever will be, you know. But I was the better sales guy. Yeah. So we used our forces and started. And then when I hired my best buddy Derek,

he was working for Fairway at doing computer drafting. And he was just tired of sit in the office, you know? Yep. He's a brilliant guy. He can do anything. And I, first I tried to convince him because I want everybody to work for himself and said, hey, you could do, you know, you could do anything. Do it on your own, freelance, you, whatever, right?

I could tell, no. And he was helping me build the office that we were going to have up at the school in his time off. And then finally said, why don't you just come work here? We'll make it happen, you know. It's the best thing. He's so good. you know so what's he do for you so he's he's he's he's a shop manager yeah and he orders all the parts he's like he's so organized he's so everything that i'm not right yeah and so he's great

and then we've got our young guy clay is 25 so he's yeah and he's a local guy and he's a and he's a cdl he's a great drus has really turned him into from a good mechanic he's really good mechanic and now we have Travis which is a guy that i actually met derrick through in He's a great guy. He just started in January. So nice building the team. Yeah. Yeah. We're working. We're building that team up. So you said like you feel like your business is limitless, you know? So like where do you, how far do you want to take this thing? Like, you know, like what do you dream about, you know? And would you, if you could, would you do the, the Iowa Forklift full time like and not ever kind of like, if you wanted to scale that, would you get rid of the seed business?

or I don't know. I like to do so much. I like to do so many things. I'm very curious. So I want to check other stuff out too, right? So I don't, my dream is not to turn that into 60 locations. Yeah. You know, like that. That's probably not my dream, you know. Yeah. I still like to grow it. And it's taken me to other countries. I've went to Japan, the Philippines, China, Korea. And we started importing forklest there was a time there before COVID where I was doing a lot of that because it was you know it was a challenge until you get in you got to find a source of equipment to buy and you can only buy so many wholesale forklifts from from your the dealers or whatever sometimes they don't want to sell them to you whatever you know but so the the equipment the forklet

business has got has shown me so many other people's businesses too and it's so many interesting people to talk to they're doing so many cool things yep it's the greatest business ever because of that, right? I learn about, I mean, I don't know. I just think like maybe a month ago, I talked to the Coors distributor from Waterloo area, and he was telling me about they're seeing people drinking less beer, right? And they were on the THC drinks thing. They're bringing those in, right? And it's like, you know, I don't know what other people do, but I get to learn about all these different businesses. It's so cool, you know. Because everybody needs a forklift. Yeah, everybody needs a forklift.

I would contend everybody needs a forklift, save their back. You know, I tell everybody, if you slip one disc in a back, in your back, you paid for a forklift. Yeah, true. I mean, basically, it's almost like we just had Jared Flynn on talking about trucking. I mean, it kind of goes hand in hand. If you, other than if you're hauling commodities, but anything else that rolls on a truck, it probably got put on there and taken off. with a forklift. So, I mean, it's kind of like, I need a damn forklift. Well, you do, you do need a

forklet. I need one at Farmergrade HQ. He loads up our skid, we got two skidloaders, and he loads up the smallest one, hauls it in there and unloads ice, then hauls it back, and then halls it in there and unloads boxes and liners. Yeah, yeah, it's all white stuff, but yeah, I need to get one. Well, someday. I think that's interesting. How did you, what was the catalyst to make you think that, oh, I need to figure out how to buy these forklifts. out of country. Yeah, and what was that? Go in depth on that about like going and seeing all that stuff.

Basically, when I first started doing this, it was just a problem to find inventory. Because, you know, initially I think we'll go to auctions. Everybody's getting rid of just an absolute turd on an auction, you know, it seemed like. And that, man, that, you know, so I met a guy, I bought, there's a guy up in the cities, and I'm still very good friends with him,

talk to him every day. And he was importing forklis. And I, and I bought some from. And I said, hey, where are these companies? He said, Japan. They're coming from Japan. I said, man, they really must take care of this stuff. He said, oh, yeah.

He said, there's just a whole different attitude there about respect that they give to equipment like this, you know, right? And I don't know, we built, I built a relationship with him. And he's like, hey, just come over there with me. And we'll split the container. We'll buy some stuff, right? So he took me over there. And it was a blast, you know.

Yeah. We went into a yard that had like probably 2,000 forklests. It was kind of a weird, you go in there. give you, each give you a clipboard, they'll walk around all day right down the foreclose funeralists. Don't know what the prices are, don't know nothing.

Then you sit, you come back and sit and they'll give you a little green tea or something, you sit there, and you hand them the clipboard and they say, then they'll come back, here's what they come. Give you a number. Yeah, and you go through and,

oh yeah, I want this one, I don't want this one, you know. So that was the very first time I went to Japan. We did that. And, yeah, so just sourcing more equipment, good quality stuff, you know. Yeah. And that's, yeah, that's how that started, I guess.

Yeah. How many forklists have you bought in one time? Like, what was the biggest amount you've ever bought in, like a go? I can tell you the biggest amount I've tried to buy. Yeah. Okay. That's a good question. Maybe 40 at a shot.

Wow. Yeah, yeah, yep. So there's up where we live, there's a company called Van Deist. I don't know if they have any location down here, but, but, But he had a bunch of forklifts, and I tried to make a deal with him. We didn't get together on it, but he had a whole group of used forklifts. They had all their new ones already come in, and he was going to sell them all. But it didn't work out.

You mentioned the Coors guy, but what are some other interesting insights that you hear from some business owners that you've heard recently? Yeah. I know the THC drinks. I see that going around too. Everybody's drinking these damn THC drinks now. And my generation doesn't like to drink anymore. You know, yeah, that seems like it. That's what he, you know, that's what he was talking about.

Yeah. Yeah. They see that trend going down and the THC thing going up. Yeah. I've said this before, but like when you think about when I was like when I was a little kid, if you were the if you were the beer truck driver, simplest job in the world. You had like you had Budweiser, you had Bush. I don't know what else Budweiser had back in the.

the day. But, you know, they didn't, maybe they didn't even have Bud Light until I was, you know, my brother remembers when Bud Light. But like those guys, they hauled like four different kinds of beer. You went around, you can have whatever you want as long as it sees four. Right. Today it's got to be like when you're loading your truck, it's got to be a nightmare because it's like, oh, well, we're going to put, you know, two cases of this and eight cases of this and three cases of this. I mean, it's just, I don't even know how they keep it all straight. The world has changed so much. And not that's bad. Variety is the spice of life, but you just think about, from a warehouse standpoint, think of how simple that was and now how complicated that is.

I mean, it's just crazy. And I think a lot of things are that way. You know, choices, the consumer wants choice, but the person that's producing anything, the money is in volume of few things. And What did Henry Ford say? It was like, you can have any color you want, as long as it's black, right? Exactly right. I just watched that. That was when GM came on, and then they started offering colored vehicles. And they really, basically, they were going to take Ford out until he changed, you know.

Yep. That was interesting. Yep. Yeah, any insights, still? You know, nothing. So I'm sure there's plenty, and I'll think about that. I would say my whole success as a businessman is because I've got, to take parts and pieces from all these different businesses that I've got to listen about.

There's so many sharp people doing stuff, you know. I don't know, I'll have to think about that specifically. Come back to that, maybe. Is there any difference in qualities? So has there been a lot of consolidation in the forklift industry like everything else? Is there still a ton of brands? And then within that, is there a hierarchy as these are? Yeah, so people ask me that, what's the best one, you know, and for what we do, and I say low hours, you know, basically any forklift that you've heard of is good, right?

You know, from a brand perspective, Yale, Heister, Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, all these ones you've heard of these things, you know, they're good. You can get parts for them. It's more what was done to them while somebody else had them. Right, yep, yep. Um, so, uh, this, and when I say there's, there's, uh, some Chinese manufacturers. And some of those can be okay. It's just, I'm always worried on the parts. Um, how is that going to be? So when I've dealt in some Chinese stuff, I went there, visit the factories and had a good feeling about it before I would do it. You know, that's, that's how I, I am on that stuff. So, yeah, I've seen these guys at, uh,

like at a, uh, uh, like at a, uh, uh, like at a Richie's brother's auction. with mini excavators. And like, I mean, it's, it is just insane. They've flooded that market. Like, if you're looking for a mini excavator and you don't care what the brand is, I think you can buy one dirt cheap because there's a gazette, like me, just rows of them. Right. They've just flooded the market.

And see, now, you know, I don't know, if you don't want that cheap Chinese one, it's also made the good, the good quality stuff cheaper. Yeah. Because there's so many of those in the market. So from a buyer's perspective, it's a buyer's market on the mini-exfaters right now. And they continue to push those things in here. I don't know where the breaking point is. What U.S.

companies make them? Here, Kat. Okay. Cabota. Yeah. I mean, they all make them. Bob Kat makes them. Same people still make them, but there's just all these off-brand Chinese.

And I'm not talking like, it's not a, when you get up, when you get into like the biggest of the really compact, those, you don't get as many of those Chinese ones, but when you get down into the I don't know what size they are, like the one the guys got up there is a, that's a 90, that's a 90, a John Deere, like, I want to say it's a

90, it's a pretty good size mini excavator. You probably wouldn't see as many. I'm talking about forklifts though. Oh. Oh, back to forklifts. Yeah. Oh, look at him, try to bring it back to what was I'm talking about. Is there a U.S. Forklifts? Yeah. So Yale in Highsterex.

Okay. Yes. Yeah. And Yale and Heistr is like Chevy GMC. They're made in the same factory. Okay. You know, one, heister, I think is supposed to be the GMC Yale as the Chevy. That's how I equate it.

Toyota and Mitsubishi cat. So cats are Mitsubishi's. And they, but there's a lot of that stuff is, I don't know if it's assembled here. You know, obviously Mitsubishi is a Japanese name. Toyota is a Japanese name. build some of that stuff here of global parts, you know. But really, even a lot of our, you know, Yale and Heister, they're built here in Kentucky. But a lot of the parts come from wherever. Right. So wouldn't it be badass if you could make your own forklift company? Like making your own

forklift? So you can go to China and they'll slap your name right on one because they want me to do that all the time. But I haven't, I haven't done that yet. Yeah, that'd be kind of cool. So Clark and Dusan, which is now a bobcat forklift. They got rid of the Dusan name, and they're going to ever, because Dusan bought Bobcat maybe back in 2014, I think. Oh yeah, that's right. And so now all. They're re-labeling everything.

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's a good move on their part to call their forklifted bobcats, because that's the brand recognition, right? Yeah. But so those are Korean and still good equipment. There may be no global parts. We're one executive order away. from no global parts.

Right. And it's going to be fantastic until it's not. Right. But whatever. I don't know. So I think we touched on this a little bit as you talked about how you've grown and you've hired people. Like, I think this is one of the things that people both find interesting and we all

struggle with as we try to try to grow what we're doing. What was the hardest part? What was the hardest thing for you as you? you started to grow as far as were you good at managing people to start with? Was that something that came easy for you? Or was that a struggle? Like, is it hard for you to hand off responsibility

and become a mentor? Yeah, it is. And I'm, that's probably not, I'm not naturally, you know, I would say I'm not naturally the, you know, I'm not really the people guy to manage people. Yeah. I had to learn all that. I basically, I turn everything into how would I want to be treated, the golden rule, right?

Yep. It never fails you, I think. So I always think of, you know, think of how other people are feeling and whatever and how would you want to handle this and whatever. But I know what you mean. It's your baby, so it's tough to hand off some of that stuff. But you just, I'm really good at overwhelming myself with things. So then it makes it not so hard for you to say, hey, Clay, can you deliver this?

because I can't do it anywhere. Derek, can you deal with this guy or whatever, you know, so that, yeah. But I still like, I really, I get to deal mostly in all the buying, all the selling.

I do a lot of logistics, but I still want to work in the shop. Yeah. I don't hardly ever get to, you know? Yeah. And the guys give me a hard time about it, you know, oh, you know, in there in the office, whatever.

But I want to get in there. It's a relaxing thing for me almost, you know, but, so. but I've got to learn, you know, as I built that, this business, I've learned, you know, just about line up trucking and brokers and all the stuff that you kind of don't know how some of those wheels turn, you know, you have to learn it. Yeah, absolutely. Well, freight has gotten to be such a big thing that, you know, who you sell it to and where

you sell it to. Right. Are a lot more important than what they used to be. Right. Yeah. So. Do you, how many, how many, like, how many, like, how many, how many, like, how many, Forklifts did you flip last year or this year? Like how many? Like, I know that's, you don't have to answer that.

Well, I should ask my wife. Yeah. I, I, 250 is what she says. Wow. That's crazy. That's crazy. So, so the other thing we do a lot and we're getting more into is man lifts, right? And specifically, and that's what I've been overseas for is these track-driven man lifts. And I don't know if you saw my TikTok on that. I don't know if you did or not, but I'll just show you later. So it makes all the sense of the world to me that you could put a Cissor Lift on tracks. A lot of times you think of a Cisor Lift inside your building with a little hard tires, right? So they make them with tracks.

So you can, they load up easy. I see them really big for like spray foam guys when they got to come in and spray foam a hog, a building or whatever that they haven't poured the concrete. So they come in. We're building a 60 by 80 steel frame shed. Yep.

And these guys up here, they're doing it. There's four inches of snow on the ground. Yep. And they have a wheeled. scissor lift that they're ramrodden around up there trying to get in they got two they got two telehandler or one telehandler and then a bucket lift and then they got a scissor lift and I I literally thought that when it started snowing I was like well that's going to be like a pig on ice and they were

up there pushing around with a telehandler to get it where it needed to be you know so what you can do with these track lifts is you can use a smaller lift overall and normally you'd have to have a big Big 10,000, 15,000 pound lift on skid loader tires. It's hard to haul around. Yeah, yeah. Well, you can, you can take these track drive ones. They'll do everything that you can do inside, but also do the outside stuff, you know. So that's been one thing that we've got into. And, oh, that's cool. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you're not just dealing forklifts. You do that. Do you move anything else? Well, you know, if there's, during COVID, we really had a hard time getting an inventory. Yeah. And I was thinking of this on the way up here. I bought a Zamboni out on the East Coast. Yeah, like a literal ice resurfacing machine.

Yeah. Because I couldn't find, we look, you know, I know LP stuff, right? This had a Chevy 5-liter, 5.3 liter motor on LP and needed to tune up or whatever. It tuned it up and put it on Marketplace and some like Canadian. Hutterites came down and bought it and took it up there, you know. And so I will do, I'll work, and anything, I was really curious. I'd never been around a Zamboni before, you know, but I'll do anything kind of that way, you know, if it has a motor or something, you know, or.

Yeah. And there you think there's a market for it. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What about these Schwann's trucks? Have you seen any Schwann's trucks lately? Yeah, I've seen the swan trucks. I just, I was looking at the Ritchie Brothers auction in Houston, and they had some on there.

but I don't know. What would, what would be the utility for, I was just trying to think, I think about the market, you know, if you can buy something so cheap, it's whatever,

but if it's not so cheap, you gotta think about, well, where, where's the market there? Small wholesale meat business. Right. Yeah, there you go. I know, I need to get one.

Okay, yeah. Been looking for them. But I also think the nostalgia, I think people would like, like, there's going to be some people that buy it. I mean, there's a shitload of trucks, but you know there's somebody out there

they'll buy one just to live their, glory days of when the shan's truck came to their house i mean that was your generation yeah i mean if somebody uh came with the schwan truck selling ice cream out of the back of it i would run 53 year old torque would run out of the house and be like hey no give me my ice cream sandwiches right doesn't matter what it costs bill my mom wait yeah oh can't do that darn it so uh we kind of jumped around when i asked you like where you want to take this thing you said oh i don't want to like grow to 40 location. So like where what do you think you want to do with it like long term? I don't know. I guess that's I I just want to keep growing it. Maybe we will do another location sometime.

Yeah. I'm not sure. I don't know. I, you know, I've got other things that I'm working on right now with that camp campsite and other stuff that I'm not sure. I know our next step is to we've got a service trucks or getting mobile service going. That's our next step to do. You know, that's where a lot of the big companies have that, you know, and a lot of people ask me that. And I've always hesitated because I know, and here's my, here's my sales pitch on why bring your forklift to me or me come pick it up is we can go down and work on your forklift and we're going to charge you a trip charge because we've got to do that. And we don't, we're not going to guarantee we have the right stuff to fix it. So we're going to come back. Yep. And we're going to come, then we're going to

go back down there. And we hope we have everything we got. And there's something else comes up, you know, and so if you can bring it to me, I've got all the stuff. There's not multiple trip charges, you know, and not everybody likes that to hear that. But that's my pitch on why we haven't. But there's been overwhelming amount of people that say, hey, you know, so that we're working towards that. So maybe a couple mobile service trucks, maybe just and maybe adding things on, I don't know. But as far as, yeah, probably not going global is what I'm saying. Yeah.

So you do a little real estate, though, too. Am I right on that? Yeah, yep. So how'd you get into that? Well, that's just a matter of diversifying, right? You know, I mean, it's, you can invest in your business, you can put money in your Roth or 401K or whatever, but if you want to, if you want to round it out, you need to have some real estate, you know? So, yeah, so we bought some buildings and some commercial property and some residential stuff. And we've done that just, you know, just to kind of round it out, you know.

That's really, that's not a passion of mine at all. It's just I know it needs to be a thing, you know. So my wife takes care a lot of that stuff. Well, I mean, that's a good, it's a good idea. And it looks like we were just talking about this in, I won't get these dates quite right, but you'll get the idea. Like in 2009, the average home buyer, the average age of a home buyer, was 28 and in 2019 the average age of a home buyer is like 35 people are renting longer yeah which is

bodes well for people that own property that rent it out to me I mean and with housing prices the way they are entry to get into real estate is not great but if you're in it I think it's going to hold up pretty well. Sure. And if you're in it, usually you're to do a better job of finding deals than if you're not in it. So for the people that are in it, that want to stay in it, I think

real estate is going to be, I think it's going to be good. Yeah. From an investment standpoint, I think you've got to have it. I think it's got to be a part of your... Yeah, yeah, yep, yep. Generational wealth. Yeah, mm-hmm. For sure. So the, yeah, tell us about the, a little bit about the project that you're working on then.

Yeah, so we bought an 85, old quarry or gravel pit up there that used to have a cement plant and it's it's on highway 18 in between uh britt and wesley and so it's got there's like i think there's four or five pits total but the biggest one is 20 acres of water wow beautiful full of fish it's a great i mean you know and i love to fish and outdoor stuff you know so i love that um but i met a friend um he has a campground up by Northwood, or Lake Mills, I think. And it's a happy time resort. He's a great guy's named Rod.

And he showed me, he has a permanent camp sites, actually out of his acreage. He built a five-acre pond. And it's beautiful. And he opened the door and said, here's what we do, here's how we do it. You got any questions, just great dude. So we want to recreate or we want to do something similar to what he's doing.

Yeah. Make it nice. And that's good. This place is like with, and a half mile of a golf course and stuff right there. So, and I see that popular. And I like the idea of, you know, then you can have rentals that you don't have to, you just rent the spot, you know, you don't have to maintain the house.

So you're doing like RV hookups. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So we need to put it on land trust. I should put on my land trust hat. Yeah.

I mean, that's, that's, that's like the Airbnb of, of rural landowners. Yeah, of landowners. That's a really unique idea. I had no, I mean, I had no idea how popular or how much demand there was for people looking for like hookups like that. Sure. Yeah. Until we talked to Taylor and I got on their site and was looking at that. And I was like, dang, people like to camp.

I should just seed down the whole, seed down the whole farm. Yeah, you guys have such beautiful scenery around here with all these hills and stuff. If you could just put like 2,000 campsites out there, man, maybe $3,500 bucks a crack. Just got to convince all the farmers. Yeah. Yeah, it'll be, yeah, let them go. Just fine until the neighbor flies by spraying Dicamba on a 40 mile an hour wind day. Yeah.

I get my. Might need to slow step that a little bit. So if you look back, what would be one piece? piece of advice that you would give to 18-year-old Alex? Just don't get discouraged because things are going to come up and just fight through it, right? Yeah. And I think, and I have done that, but I've, you know, I've relied on my wife a lot. She's good at pushing the card ahead, but yeah, just don't get discouraged.

Just know things are going to constantly come up. Yep. And if it's going easy, if it feels easy, it shouldn't, you know, right? So I don't know. That would be my advice to my younger self, I suppose. So do you ever see yourself getting back into farming at all? Is the family farm still going today? Family farms going, yeah.

Okay. And I get, well, this fall, I was, I'm truck driver number one, you know, so. Yeah. So, which I know my wife says that just makes her a single parent for five weeks, but I, I, basically I jump at the combine and start combine until somebody else shows up and then I'm the one with the CDL. So, you know, I'm the CDL holder. Well, you're the smartest. You're the smartest tool in the whole shed then if you're the number one truck driver.

Well, maybe. Yeah, I don't know about that. But so, yeah, I'm going to continue to stay involved in that and hope to get to do that someday too. Yeah. Capacity for sure. So, yeah. Which will make it even more interesting when I got other things going on, right? But yeah, I love that.

I have to be involved in that when the opportunity comes. So, yeah, for sure. There's some, there's some weird addiction that happens when you grow up on a farm that we, and I don't know whether other industries are this way or not. But it's amazing how people will build businesses and work three other jobs so they can afford to farm or they build them so that someday they can, just go back to farming.

Isn't that funny? Like, there aren't any farmers out there that wake up and hope that they can farm long enough that someday they can open a plumbing business. Right. You know? There isn't anybody in farming that's like, man, someday, I hope I can open a meat locker. But there's thousands and thousands of people that have that, that either grew up on a farm or, you know, their grandparents had one.

I mean, we're all getting, if you're not in it, you're getting removed pretty fast from that. Right. But, man, it's like we're all, yeah, we'll do five other things to be able to keep doing this or to get back to doing it. I don't know. It's a crazy. You're exactly right. I think I have to keep doing what I'm doing so I can financially be able to farm someday. Yeah.

Yeah. Is that like your, if you, you know, is that like your retirement plan, like long term? If you could like just do it, would you do it full time if you could? Yeah. Yeah, I would. I think, yeah, it would definitely, it would feel like a retirement probably to just grain farm. You know, we don't have any livestock. But yeah, I shouldn't say that because, you know, a lot of people that say, well, you know, oh, no, that's my, that's my go to. That's my go to.

People are like, oh, you know, what's the plan of this? Oh, I want to be able to, I want to be able to grain farm and not worry about whether I make money at it or not, you know. Yeah. Because that's the, that's the thing, kind of how it is. So what's next? I don't know. It's that next conversation I have with somebody that turns over some new leaf that takes me in some direction that I'm not sure about, I guess, is the indirect answer to that. I think you like the spice of life. I feel like you are definitely like you like doing a lot of shit at the same time. Well, curiosity, right? Yeah. We have incredible ability to check everything out that our ancestors never had. It's the most

incredible time to live ever. Yeah. Why not go check it out? I mean, that's how I feel about, you know, about that. And so I don't know what's next for sure. Just keep working on the projects I've got. I know opportunities constantly come up. You've known that too, you know, just the way, just the way life is.

So, you know. That's a real good optimistic view of that because there's a lot of people that look at it. You either look at it that way or you look at it the other way where everything sucks, all this, like the world sucks with the media. It tells him he sucks, but I think I'm right there with you. I think it's the best time to ever be alive. Just sheer amount of opportunity. For sure.

There's just so much to learn. Are you a reader? Yeah, so I, and I do a lot of my reading through the audio reading though right now. So I listen to a lot of books and stuff like that, you know. But yeah, do you mean like specific to books and stuff like that? Yeah, absolutely, yeah. You got anything you've read in the last six months that you really like? Yeah, good question.

Don't feel bad because when people ask me this question, I can't even remember. I couldn't tell you what I'm reading like. Right. You don't read consistently. No, I listen. I don't read consistently. No, I listen a lot. Yep.

I don't feel like the retention is as good either. Do you? The audio? Yeah, I agree. Because it seems like you do that because you're doing something else and you constantly, you know, I don't know about you, but when I try to multitask, I don't know if men can do this. I see my wife do it all the time. Like I'll be talking on the phone to somebody and I'm typing an email and I can't do both.

Yeah. I'll like stop talking and I got like, are you there yet? Like yeah, I got to finish this email and think of the sentence out, you know. Well, speaking of your neck of the woods, the worst part for me when I was selling, if I was driving on, say, Highway 20 or what, highway 14 or 18, whatever that is, next one north, it all looks the same for miles. miles and miles. So I'd be listening to a podcast and I'm thinking, you know, and listening and I'm really getting into it. And then all of a sudden I like catch the clock on the thing and I'm like, wait, I should have been where I was going. Where was I supposed to get off? And then you have no idea where you're at because it all looks the same. And you're like, God, dang, and I passed my exit

like eight miles ago or, you know, whatever. So no, I can't multitask at all. And I was feeling pretty good about trying to get back into the rhythm of like reading or listening to books. And then I'm talking to this guy and he's like, yeah, I listen to this podcast where this guy goes over people's biographies. And so I listen to the podcast and then I bought the book and I'm going to read the book and then I annotate the book. And then when I'm done, I'm going to listen to that podcast again. And I was like, hmm. Well, because, For me, it's like quality over quantity. It's all, like, I've, I got to really read a book to really get it, you know.

I got to, I want to comprehend it. I want to understand it. I really want to know and soak up everything that there is to know. Sure. So, I read several of Gary Vaynerchuk's books. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Gary Vee's awesome. He was, I will say, I, I didn't even, I remember, I can remember right when I first heard of him. I was listening to Dave Ramsey's podcast. Uh, a long time. ago. I was mowing and he was on there. I'm like, who's this guy? Energy, whatever. And business and positivity. Oh, positivity. Yeah, yeah. He is, I would, I recommend anybody to follow him. Read his books, whatever, you know, I think he's a great, if you're an entrepreneurial guy or gal,

you should be, you should be following him. Do you, do you, do you, is that what you traditionally, you know, is that what you predominantly listen to or read as business and entrepreneur? viewership stuff. A lot of that. But, you know, I'm trying to remember, gosh, I wish you're, there was a book that I read that followed specific to like, I, and I'll put, I can't even remember the name of the book, but I remember it was like, they followed these kids and they were looking at outcomes. So like, say in a wrestling, kids that were born are old for their age, right? I think this book was called Outliers. I don't remember. But, But so the older kids in their class were always, you know, turned out to be better athletes and always were ahead.

And it gave them a leg up in life later on. And just all happened to be because when you're born and where they put you in the class. And where they put you in the class. Yeah, yep, yep, because you build confidence in that. It's just interesting. I don't know if it's truly business, but it was like coincidence, right? Yeah. And. Dang it, that's what happened.

Right. Were you young for your? Oh, yeah, I was young for my class. Yeah. That's why I look so good at the reunions. There you go. Holding up way better. So are you an April birthday? May. May. Yeah. You were a young one. So one of my best friends growing up, he was just a little bit younger than me. And so, yeah, like my oldest friend, he actually would have been one of those kids that he could have gone with the class ahead, but they held him back because his birthday was like in. maybe August or something like that. So he had his permit before everybody else did. And then one of my other friends was he's a little younger than me. But yeah, I don't know. That's the way my brother,

my brother was a May birthday, but he was one of the oldest in his class. Oh, sure. Yeah. They pushed him ahead a little bit. If they would have pushed me ahead, my mother would have been just even more disappointed. So both my brothers were very, my oldest brother was a very good student, very smart, always top of his class. And so there were a lot of teachers that were initially excited when they saw me on their roster and they would always ask, oh, are you Todd's brother? And then very quickly they realized that only thing we shared was a name, not the same. That's how I was with Clay, my brother. Yeah. Yep. Clay was the same way. Yeah, I've walked in and they're like, oh, this is going to be easy.

It'd be like, oh, they're like, what is wrong with you? What did you do to this one? I don't know what happened to him, but he's not right. I don't know if I'm, I don't know the utility in sitting in a classroom eight hours a day when you're a kid. I could never, I just, I'd get so, I'd go, I was, I would just want to do something funny because I'd just be so like, bored. Just bored. Out of my mind. Just bored. Always so bored. I would like to be the class clown because I just thought that was fun. And I get bored. Well, I would have been a kid that if they would have given me, if they would have given me like shop class or building trades when I was like in sixth grade, I would have been tickled to death. Like I loved doing stuff like doing things. And I could learn by doing. But I hated learning by, you know, read this and tell me what it. said. I just, I could never. And I was like you. I would just get bored and then, you know,

what is that? What is the devil's play thing? What do they say that? An idle man, an idle mind. I don't know. I don't know. Idle hands with the devil's play things. Well, that was, that was me pretty much. That's part of the reason why I keep going and doing lots of stuff is, I don't know. When you're sitting around board, it's not good for you. No, it's not at all. And that's what, that's why I, I'm challenged on the, the kids that are like that in school, you know, I don't know. Well, and the problem is, too, it's like, it's so easy for us to do nothing and just consume. It is.

All you do is consume. If all you do is consume and don't create anything in your life, you're going to feel like shit. I mean, you're supposed to do something. Do you struggle with balance, though? Like, do you struggle with, like, within, between you and your wife, like, can you shut it off? or is it always going? And are you both that way to where it doesn't matter? How I know I can shut it off is I can go to sleep.

So I can turn it off, right? Yeah. And so I can do that. I don't know how I curated that ability, but I could do it. I think the balance is pretty good. I don't know. My wife's looking at me like, I don't know. But I can come home and kind of get the noise out.

I know, you know, when you leave work, if you own the business, you never do. You never do. Yeah. So, but I don't know. Yeah, that's, like I said, because I can go to sleep and all my friends know me, they know I'm really good at that, I can turn it off, you know. Yeah. Well, that's something that we struggle with.

I mean, my wife and I struggle with it in the fact that I, I'm better now than I used to be in part of that is just because I'm getting a little older where my mind wonders anyway. but I had a really hard time just being present when and the moment, steering every conversation towards what I wanted to talk about, you know. And we still struggle with that. Yeah. I mean, we're all, we're all thinking about business stuff and talking about ideas and moms like,

let's just enjoy the meal, you know, how about that? Yeah, because his older brother's exact same way. I mean, they're, we're like, well, we kind of are right now. we're just talking about what we want to talk about. It's hard turned off, though. It's struggle with that too. But that, I mean, it's kind of a good thing. It's kind of what makes you you is, you know, that drive.

But you find time to go fishing enough? Does that help take your minds off stuff too? So I do go fishing. I don't do it enough. I'll promise you that. And so recently I just started flying. So I'm taking my, trying to get my pilots license. Nice.

And Doug Prowley up in Hampton, he is a spray business and he's my instructor. Oh, boy. Yeah, he, he, yeah. I don't know if you should take pilots license from a, from a crop sprayer. He's a very good pilot. But that is the one thing that when you go up in the air, nothing is going through your mind except for that. And I love that about it, right? You know, because it's just, that's what you're concentrating on.

You're not thinking about the guy that called that is, cylinder blew out on his forklift or the guy that called that um you know his corn didn't come up or whatever you know you're just you just up there and i love that so that's been and it's it that's probably since college it's one of the biggest challenges i've had to do and i put it on myself like i just i wanted that challenge you know to do that and i'm working at that and i love it so yeah that's great i told myself i want to learn a hobby this year because i said i got to find something to take my mind off of all the stuff we're doing. Sure.

You know, because I don't feel like I have one, really. I mean, I go to the gym, but like, that's that. I don't know. I've been thinking about, you know, archery or hunting or fishing or something like that where, yeah, you just, in those little bit of time, you just take your mind off completely. I think you've got to have those outlets. It's hard to find. Washington's got an airport down here.

Yeah. Cheapest gas in almost the state of Iowa. Yeah. They do a good job. there's a pile of people that fly down here from Iowa City and fill up and fly back. Because that's their niche. Right. So.

I got a story about Washington. I bought a forklift from the Walmart here in Washington. Oh, no kidding. And I came down, I delivered a forklift to Mount Pleasant to a guy who bought one, came back. And this forklift, it was advertised to me, leeks oil, right? So that's all I knew about it. And Walmart, they don't have a lot of good automotive technicians. historically, you know.

I don't know if they even have an automotive department. They don't have the one in Washington, I don't think. So went there, fired it up. It was making a lot of noise. I got it on the trailer, chained it down. Then I opened the hood up and the rod was out the block. So the motor was blow it up. It did still run, you know.

That was where the oil leak was coming from. It was out the gaping hole on the side of the block. Yeah. So I remember because we came into town and I was like, oh, I've been here. I've been to Washington before, you know. And that was the story of that. So, yeah. Yeah, that's about Walmart.

That's pretty on brand for them. Yep. Yep. Every time you go into Walmart, you don't know who you're going to see in there. It's like you talk about the demolition derby. Yeah. But if you go into Walmart, you're like, who in the hell are you? I've never seen you in my life.

I wonder how many small towns are like that. So our Walmart is kind of like on the edge of the town. and part of this is just nostalgia for like me because growing, if you've, I've spent my whole life in this town, so you just know everybody, you drive around and hi, hi, hi, hi. But you go to someplace like that on a random time, like a time where you would think, okay, there's not going to be anybody here. And you walk in and you're just like, did I just, did I just time, like,

I go to Iowa City? Scotty beam me somewhere because I literally don't know any of these people. It's such a weird thing. But I would assume all your rural people from 20 miles away are probably coming there, right? 30? I don't know what the next town. Well, I think you actually go all the way to like, so in southeast Iowa towns are like 10 miles apart. Okay.

Like Cologne is 10 miles from Washington, Ainsworth 10 miles from Washington. Kyoto's 15 miles from Washington. But then you go another 10 miles and you're in Columbus Junction. And I think that you go that far. If you're going east and west, you've got to go a pretty good distance before you're close enough that you would go to somewhere like Oskillusa or Muscatine to go to Walmart. So you get a pretty good draw people coming.

Does your little town have a dollar general? No. I can't believe it. Yeah, where we, the town that we lived does, yeah. But that town where your deal is, you said it's like 500 people. Yeah, I don't know. I can't believe it doesn't have a dollar general. By the time you get back today, there probably be building one.

There's a Casey. There's two Casey's there. I believe that. I believe that. The scourge of Iowa. Yeah, Casey's is, they've gone downhill. I hope we never accidentally make friends with somebody that's like the CEO of Casey's and not know it. And then they go back and start watching the podcast because they'll be like, they

they used to be friends. When they first started, they were really, really, really good. good but I just feel like when they tried to go the whole Brandon everything in there and yeah so come and goes are gone now and it's like star is that you see in quick start we don't get we there's one quick star in Iowa City so 25 I like that I would take a quick star that's a lot of people they're they're really building building around us and a lot of people like that quick star I like it a lot better than a Casey's yeah I'm just thankful we have something in our yeah true yeah true that true that.

Well, I got all my words out. Did you get all yours? I think so. I think, one last question. I was thinking about this earlier. So in the world of used forklifts, like, what's the average, you know, what's the average price of a good use, 25, what are you, 2,500-hour forklift? Like, what's the range on that? Well, so I'll tell you, here, I'll tell you what, what forklift ever.

everybody wants. I can already tell you because I'm a farmer so I can. So everybody wants a 5,000 pound triple mast with side shift pneumatic tire forklift LP typically. Now the new thing is everyone's fork positioner so you can narrow and widen the forks right from the seat, right? You know? So that is that is the catch-all for everybody, a lot of people, whatever. But that that market, we always joke about it. It's always, so it used to always be that everybody wanted to buy that forklift for $5,000. This is before COVID. And it usually wasn't there. And if you could buy it, you should be suspect of what. Right. Something's probably wrong with it. It's going to cost you more. So in today's world, you know, 8,500 to $20,000 really depend on the age condition.

Because we'll have, we'll have 20 year old forklifts that have $2,500 hours, you know. So that had never been in real service. And then we'll have real late, real model stuff. So just depends that way. But that's your big. broad range. Yeah, I was just curious because I had no idea what the gamut ran on them. I think the new market is like 30,000 to maybe 45,000 is where new is. You know, there's so, yeah. Okay, people want to get a hold of you. How do they find you? You can message me on my Facebook, message me on TikTok, email me at Alex at IAForkliff.com, check out my website. Yeah.

www. IA forklift.com. Perfect. You know, if we would have had, each of us had a bottle of whiskey, we would have had a shot glass. And every time somebody said forklift, I don't know if we could have gotten out of this barn.

I'd be on the floor by now. I feel bad that that seems like that was focused on all that. No, but that's what you do, man. That's what you do. So it's really interesting and cool and unique, you know. Not everybody has a school full of forklifts, flipping them. That's Midwestern right there. That's,

take anything and turn it into a drinking game. Yeah, true. We should have done it. We should have done it. Well, Alex, we really appreciate you coming on the show, man. Really,

really appreciate. Guys, go follow them. Thank you so much for watching. Leave your view on Spotify or Apple. Share the show. And we'll see you here back next week for another episode.