Shaun Newman Podcast - SNP Archives #20 - Wayne King

Episode Date: May 16, 2021

Inventor, business owner & community pillar. He developed the Grithog technology, a widely used auger-based system for removing sand laden sludge from heavy oil tanks. We talk about his business "Grithog Industries", his early days & travelling the world.  Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-85000

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inventor, business owner, community pillar. I'm talking about Wayne King. So buckle up. Here we go. I've been skating in the wintertime, and I always invite him into my man cave, and we all have hot dogs and cookies for the school function that either Bill Armstrong or Ross Richards or someone has been,

or Morgan Man has been involved with. and the man cave is a highlight. It really is. And I spend a lot of time out here. It's a great place to enjoy your efforts, your hobby efforts, or it's great in place even to just get your mind straightened out. And every man should have a man cave that he can hide out in. Well, I'm glad your name didn't come across my plate like two months ago

because the wood fire burning right now, This is perfect. Like it doesn't get much better than this. No, it doesn't. And I have my wood stove going all the time. My, my, my, uh,

my forest air furnace barely cuts in. So, so it's great. Well, here's where I normally start at the beginning and we're going to get there. But now all I can think of is you stop drinking. You stopped coffee on the same day. Right.

I think the drinking most people would go. Oh yeah. That makes sense. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Alcohol.

All right. Yeah. And I never did have. Well, I shouldn't say I never had a drinking problem. I was never, you know, got in serious trouble by drinking too much. I was very heavily involved in sports when I was young. Okay. And right up, right up too, not even young back, you know, when I was middle age,

I was still heavily involved in sports. And it was sports that kept me in school. It was sports that kept me involved with, you know, groups of school kids. and after school was over. It had me involved in weekend events and so on. It was baseball and fastball and broomball and some hockey and so on. I played sports, won many awards for sports and so on. But it was really the friendships and the social events that I very much enjoyed in sports.

And so going back to the alcohol, When you're in sports, you tend to have a lot of beer drinking days and social activities. I can remember one time in my fastball days, we had a had our fastball team called the Husky Oilers and the Colts. And we would go to a ball tournament up in Dorontosh, for an example. We would all ride the school bus. We had a school bus converted. We had all pile in this bus and get the Dorontosh. well by the time we got there

and this is when I was 20 years old by the time we got there we had drank too much and it was late in the evening we would park the bus on the ball diamond up in Dorontosh so it was that the tournament couldn't start without waking us up and having us move the bus it was a good strategy at the time it seemed like

so and I was always I was always in charge of lining up the tournaments and making sure everybody would was, you know, was present for the tournaments, and I was the go-to guy. It seemed like always, whether it be broomball or whether it would be fastball, it was, it was me that had a lot to do with organizing of the teams. And, yeah, so, so anyway, sporting events was a big part of my life.

Why coffee, though? Why no coffee? Well, coffee was funny. I would get up in the morning, you know, and I've been an early riser all my life, first out of bed, always. And I'm talking five. 5 o'clock in the morning, you would, you know, we're 5.30, you would, you would put on the coffee pot, you'd climb into the shower, you'd get out of the shower, have a, have a cup of coffee. And then, because I typically have lived out of town, or even when I was in town, my shop was outside of town, I would have another coffee on the road to work. I'd stop and pick up a newspaper

and buy a coffee. And you get to the office, have another coffee while you're reading the newspaper. And then it just, and it was, it was cream and sugar. And one day I said to myself, you know what, is just a habit is all it is and and the same as drinking alcohol was just a habit you know you'd have people over we couldn't have a social event without having beer involved and so i just said you know what it's you know i'm getting older it's harder on my health and i just one day said you know what i'm just going to quit so i quit both of them the same day and and and really i thought i would struggle because i drank alcohol the greatest part of my life and it was it was nothing Once my mind is made up, I just quit.

And I haven't had, and honestly, I haven't had a drink of alcohol in over 12 years. Good for you. Yeah. Just one of those things. But you know what? I also find that I've got a lot more money in my pocket. You know, it's, and, oh, and I'm a smoking Nazi. When I had my companies, I would, the smokers, I would go up to them and said, you know, how long have you smoked and how much do you smoke?

and I says, you know what, I'll tell you what, I'll give you $2 an hour extra if you quit smoking. And some people did. And even to this day, I will, I'll be buying gasoline at the service station, and there'll be somebody in front of me will buy a pack of cigarettes or a can of chewing tobacco. And I will get quite verbal as to why are you doing this? How much money do you make an hour? This is costing, one pack of smokes is costing you an hour and a half worth of labor. I said, you can't afford to continue smoking.

And I'm a smoking Nazi and I always have been. My mom and dad both smoked. And when I got my driver's license, my mom would ask me if I would go to buyer's pack of cigarettes when I was in town, I would refuse. I said, sorry, Mom, I'm not buying your cigarettes. And I would never buy her cigarettes. But that's just the way it is.

I've never been, that I've never smoked a cigarette in my life. It's just, and I think back as to how much big picture long term, how much money have I saved in my life by not smoking, by not smoking cigarettes, aside from my health, but how much money have I saved in my life by not smoking cigarettes? Huge amount from comparative to some people that smoke a packer or more a day, you know, so.

Pack a day, it would be a lot. Oh, yeah, but there's people do it. lots of people smoke a pack a day yeah well let's go back uh now that you've answered that for me because as soon as you said coffee i just i enjoy coffee coffee's part of the morning not habit morning routine morning whatever i i go for coffee in the mornings um and have for a long time when i had my company is going i would have you know i would have coffee in the morning i was always first at the office and what do you have in its place now water you just have a glass Just have water, a bottle of water or glass of water, yep.

That's what I have. And I try to have two bottles of water every morning, you know, so, so is it to get your liquid, you know, amounts up. Did you notice that you felt better after you? Obviously, the alcohol would be easy. I mean. Yeah, I, to be quite frank, I haven't noticed a big difference on my health, to be honest with you, whether it made a big difference on my health or not, I'm not sure.

But I, but I do know that, that it was a big difference. once in a mindless made up, it was an easy thing to do to quit, quit both, actually. Well, let's go back then to your childhood. We always usually start with, you know, like, what's maybe one of your earliest memories? You mentioned growing up with a family with six boys, one girl, like back in, well, that would have been the early, early 50s. That was in the early 50s. The way my family evolved was that, that, that,

my dad was married prior to him marrying my mother. So my dad married his first wife. They had one child and she passed away of tuberculosis. And then he married her sister. She passed away. So by the, by 1950, say, my dad was batching and living by himself on the farm with three boys. And he married my mother in, I believe it was 49. He married my mother and, and she came on.

seen. Well, my dad was a farmer and not, not educated, so he had to work on the farm. And we had, we had, we got that work ethic because we were born raised in the farm. We started, we started young. I mean, I remember as just, you know, four years old, my job was to come home or, you know, come out, you know, out to the farm yard and cut firewood, for an example. every day. I had to cut kindling. So mother had kinling to start a wood stove in the morning. It's all we had was a wood stove. And on the farm, we didn't have running water. We, we, it was, it was, it was a normal life at the time, but, but we had tasks. I mean, gardening, we grew our own vegetables and we, we, we cut our own firewood and firewood.

When Lord Minister of area was first settled, there was no firewood locally here because of prairie fires killed all the trees. We had to go north of the river to get firewood. Now that was before my time, but when, you know, so we would, we would have our pile of trees and it would be my job when I was young, four and five and six years old to cut firewood, get kindling in place. And in the wintertime, we didn't have running water. In the wintertime, we'd have a barrel beside the kitchen stove. And it was my job as well to fill that barrel full of snow. That was our source of. of water. The wood stove would heat the snow up. We would have a barrel of water to do dishes with and so on. And as far as bathing and stuff, we didn't have that. It was all just a hand basin

and a washcloth. That was it when we were young. And my dad, you know, I always wanted a horse when I was young. And my dad, we had livestock, but he was. would never buy me a horse. And I would ask my dad, he says, dad, he says, our, you know, our neighbor kids, they have a horse. Would you buy us a horse so we can go riding with him? No, no, I'm not, I'm not going to buy you a horse. He says, I will never buy you anything that eats. And so he wouldn't buy me a horse. But when I was 10 years old, or maybe 11, he bought me a motorbike rather than a horse. And so we never had horses on our farm at all. We did have livestock but no horses and and we had to walk to the school bus did you ever did you pick his

brain on that then uh no that's just the way it was i accepted the fact that that uh he horses were expensive they were they were you know just on i'm really unnecessary they were but no he he never we never had any horses on on the farm at all and because just he he thought they were unnecessary another mouth to feed another mouth to feed yeah and vet bills and they're expensive so we never never had any horses and then and then as time went on uh you know when i was to start grade one in school the the old west dean country school was still active and and but it was going to shut down and all those kids were going to get school bust into lloyd minster so my mother held me out of school for the first year so that i didn't start school in the

old country school i started school in lloyd minster in the winston church school in Lloydminster is where I started, grade one. And then after school, you'd get home on the bus. We had to walk half a mile through the bus every day. And then at night, we'd walk back home. And then the chores would kick in, cut firewood, shovel snow, and help out around the farm. You know, that's what our life was. So I've had that work ethic drilled into me all my life and and and uh i've i've been accused of many times of of of of uh doing too much or or um you know not not sitting back and letting time lapse as that if if there's a project that needed to be done then it needed to be done and i would jump in and do it i was always leading the

charge so so so uh so Schooling was never a big event on me academically, although I did make it through to grade 12, but schooling was important to me because of sports. I was always very interested and excited in sports. Track and field, I always did very well in track and field, did very well in the school sports and so on. And it was more important.

And that's what kept me in school, was the sporting events of school. I, in school, I went to, I played football. I went to track and field events. I won first place ribbons in the Alberta track and field provincials. I broke a record in Polvold in Calgary when I was in high school, won first place, of course. and that's what that's what kept me in school. And actually I went back an extra six months in school

just so as I could play football. It was that important to me. It took the first semester. So I intentionally failed one grade or one subject so as I could go back to school in the fall so I could play football. That was, and don't tell my mother that, but. Yeah, no, yeah.

So. What, after you graduate, You talk about travel in the world. What was it that enticed you to get away from this area and go see some things? I was young fellow, of course, and I had no ties. My dad didn't need help. Our farm was not a big farm. And so I went to work.

I had an opportunity to go to work on a, well, I should go back. When I was in high school, I always worked, I worked pumping gas, for an example, and I, when I was old enough to get my driver's license, when I was 16 years old, I'd deliver dry cleaning for a local dry cleaning facility, McGill's dry cleaning. And I pumped gas, and so I was always a worker. And when I got out of high school, I said, you know, I said, what am I going to do with myself now? And I asked my dad, I said, Dad, what should I do? Now that I'm out of school, you know, I didn't have any intention to go to university

because that wasn't in our family. It was, we were workers. and well son he says he says I farmed all my life he says it's been a good life he says but as you see I don't have a lot to show for it he says my recommendation to you he says don't be a farmer and don't ever buy anything that eats that was his recommendation to me so then I said to myself well geez what am I going to do so I went out at the time there was a lot of patrolling ministry activity I went and worked on the drilling rig just helping out on a drill and rig got a little bit of experience then had an opportunity, went into the high Arctic, in the

high Arctic. That was before Pierre Elliott Trudeau and the National Energy Program was in place. We were drilling for oil up in the high Arctic. We would fly into Yellowknife and then fly by smaller plane, twin otter type plane into Resolute Bay for an example, and up into Alzimir Island and further north even, living in tents and while we're on the rigs. And that was a great experience. Actually living in tents?

Living in tents, yeah. Yeah, yeah, park hall tents. That's what we lived in when we were on camp, in camp up in the high Arctic at the time. Yeah, so we would move the drilling rigs, you know, move the drilling rigs, and then the camp was tense, was parkall tents. And so that was a good experience. When you look back at that experience, what's the things that stick out about being on those early drilling rigs, camping and tents around the...

Yeah. Well, I look back at it as a wonderful experience. It wasn't... I mean, you're living in tents, yes, and it's cold, yes. But, I mean, you had all the amenities and... And it was, you know, the biggest event was getting in and out, you know, because the runway for the airplanes was just a piece of tundra. And it was risky business, flying in and out. And I can remember one time, you... You would leave Yelanife in a Twin Otter airplane.

There'd be 12 people and their baggage and some supplies would fly in. And there was a crosswind that day. And I can remember circling the runway. There's a crosswind so strong that we couldn't land. But we didn't have enough fuel to get back to Yoleneyfe. And so we had to land. And so this pilot, I can remember looking out the window, scared, like very scared, and looking out the window and we're coming in crossways on the runway.

he hit the snowbank before the runway, crashed into the snowbank, which slowed us down. He hit the runway, reversed the prop, skidded into the, on the opposite side of the runway, into the snowbank on the opposite side of the runway. And then we had to get out.

We stopped safely. We got out. We had to shovel the airplane out of the snowbank on the far side of the runway. The crew was there that was, it was a crew chain, so the crew was there to help that was going out. We pushed the plane back

into the runway where we just shoveled out and they took off crossways in the runway the same way they landed. And this is 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Had there been a wreck, and nobody ain't coming out of there. No, no, that's right. Did you go, you know, maybe this is my last thing here?

Yeah, well, it was an experience, that's for sure. And then, and then... So did you stay longer then? Wait a second, you can't hop off of this. You're just talking about smashing the plane And can you imagine being a guy coming off shift going, oh boy. Yeah, well, that was just, that was piece of the job at the time. That's what you needed to do to make it work.

And then, and then we finished that project. Spring came. We finished that project. We received, I was in, at the time, we had to unload some ships coming in. And so I was, I was one of the workers on shore, unloading barges. we had to unload fuel because all the diesel fuel had to come up we stored in in

in a big bladders that we used to call them bladders or fuel bladders they were the size of maybe 200 or 300 feet long and 60 or 80 feet wide filled full of diesel fuel that was no no secondary containment no spill protection no nothing up there

at the time but that's that's what we did I was in charge of unloading fuel at the time from the ships and that was part of the job. And then so with that experience, I felt pretty comfortable, and I had a little bit of money. So at that point in time, I decided that I'm going to, I had nothing to hold me in the Lloyd Minster.

I thought, well, I'm going to travel the world and let's take a look at what else is out there. So a couple of my local buddies here, Larry Linnick and Ron Gunn, we bought a one-way ticket to Sydney, Australia, jumped on a ship in Vancouver, went by ship from Vancouver to Hawaii to Fiji and we had a friend in New Zealand we were going to visit

which was all good we got to New Zealand there was a great trip on the way down New Zealand I got bored from sitting around and so I left my buddies in New Zealand and went hitchhiking and I got up I got from New Zealand to Australia by myself and then from Australia Were those first days a little bit nerve wracking? Or did you enjoy it?

No, I enjoyed it, but I was fearless looking back. I was fearless. Like I don't know what I was thinking. I don't know what was driving me to do this. But I just headed out. I just couldn't sit around, you know. And I wanted to see more of the world. So I got to Sydney and I had $60 left in my pocket.

I got to Sydney to $60. And I had long hair and a pack sack, it's all I had, 60 bucks. And I thought, well, I got to see Australia. So I started hitchhiking from Sydney. I hitchhiked all the way across the Nolabar plane. And I didn't have enough money, of course. The Australians were very kind. They would feed me at times.

They would give me a place to sleep at times. Lots of times I slept in the ditches, old. Slept in the ditches. Yeah. All I had was a pack sack and no money. And no friends. I had no family, no friends, no nothing over there. And so I just, so I slept, did whatever he had to do.

So I slept in the ditches. But as you're sitting in the ditches, aren't you thinking like, what am I doing here? Yeah, of course I was. But it was an adventure. You know, I mean, it was an adventure. So anyway, hitchart all the way across and all of our plane. I know, but I got to stop you right there. So you're sleeping in ditches.

Yeah. You know, like Australia's got some of the most best. Enimous snakes in the bloody world sitting there. Yeah, no question about it. Out on the Nullabar plane, it was quite dangerous, actually. So why aren't you just, okay, I'm broke. I got, why aren't you, why are you still searching for? What my goal was, was I heard there was,

there was Petroium drilling happening in Perth. And so because I had some drilling rig experience, I thought myself, well, let's get the Perth and maybe I can get a job there. So that was, that's what drove me on to get across an all of our plane to Perth, which is on the western side of Australia. But this is, you know, for kids that ever listen to this,

this is different than flicking your iPhone on and going, there's a drilling rig sitting in Perk. Oh, yeah. You're going off of the words of a few people going, I think there's a drilling rig in Perth. This is before the iPhone era, that's for sure. And that was Australia's just inward, in hearsay, there was a petroleum activity on the west side of Australia.

So I hitchhiked, I got to Australia, or to the west side of Australia, I was flat broke. I spent all my $60 getting across the desert, and I was flat broke, had no money, and there was like homeless men shelters there, and so I was able to get fed at least in Perth. And then I went around and applied in different drilling rig companies, and I got a job. Actually, I got a job when I was in Perth on an offshore drilling rig that was located in between Tasmania and Australia. And so I had to get to, to, to, uh, to, uh, the, uh, and, and so, and, and, and then from there, you would catch the, the, the helicopter from there out into, to the drilling rig. And I got there, I got out, I got the helicopter. We flew out to the drilling rig.

And at that point, I might have worked for free, just for room and board. You know, I was desperate, really at that time. And I was making, they, they paid me a dollar 37 an hour. on an offshore drilling rig at the time. And it was all, they stayed right out in the rig, and it was three weeks on the rig and one week off. And the week off in Australia, they would fly me anywhere in Australia that I wanted to go for that week off.

So it was a match made in heaven. I got to see Australia and I had a job. So I worked that drill and rig and ended up having a little bit of money and time was a ticking, so I needed. How long did you work on the drilling? I worked in the drilling rig about seven months.

Yeah. So I worked on there a fair bit, not years, but enough. You know, and I thought myself, well, I got a little bit of money. And I gave my notice. I left the drilling rig and it hitchhiked up from Perth. Before we go any further, are you sending letters back? Do your buddies know you're alive? Actually, I kept a diary every day that I was gone.

And I've got the diary. I still have that diary. Really? Yeah. Every day. Every day I made notes in that diary as to what I was doing, where I was sleeping, the people I met, and so on. And I still have that diary.

When was the last time you read through that? I haven't read it all for years, but I thumbed through it here not that long ago. Actually, it's right in that little filing cabinet right there. And what's maybe the one of the, can I see it? Yeah, sure. Actually? Yeah. Yeah.

You want me to do it right now? I do. Yeah. There it is. There it is. So there's... You don't mind if I take a look? No.

Well, for a guy that didn't like school, your handwriting sure is nice. So what do you see in there? It says, caught the plane at 727 a.m. from Perth to somewhere. It starts with an A. Landed in Accolade? Is that something like that? At 6.30 a.m. Oh, so it must have not been...

It caught a 727 at 2 a.m. smaller two motor waiting at the airplane for us there wasn't enough room for all of my or for all of us so I sat in the cockpit along with the with the pilot and and the reason that that we that we had to land there was they wouldn't let anybody into Singapore with long hair and and so we had to get off the airplane to catch a bus to to get into into Malaysia just to a random question about writing didn't writing help you? Was it, was it, uh, at all therapeutic to, especially when you're sleeping in ditches and just kind of. Yeah. Well, I, I, I did it faithfully. You know, I, I kept my diary faithfully. And so it must have been doing something positive, you know, and, and, and, and I don't know when I look back, I glance back through it now. This is 1972. Yeah. You know, and, uh, and so I glanced back through it now. That was, that was, uh, 50 years ago. Yeah. You know, or, you know, you know, so. glimpse into literally where you were.

You know, the past, you know, and so yeah, you know, it's, and so anyway, to carry on, I got to Singapore and I went in. Why did you pick Singapore? Well, I wanted, I, I was going to continue hitchhiking, and I had a brother at the time that was, that was in, that was in Bahrain. And so I thought, well, I would get into Singapore and, and then try to catch a plane. you know and and so on and see how far I could hitchhike and see just to see more country you know I was hitchhike and see more country and and so I got into into Singapore and in through Malaysia and saw that part of the

world and and and and what what sticks it when you look back at those days what sticks out you know about Malaysia Singapore oh the the the crowds the people the you know the the it was just it It was just something that had to see, and I didn't have any intention on staying there for long. I was just kind of traveling through. And I was on a world tour, so I wanted to see as much as I could. And, you know, of course, financially I wasn't real great, you know, even though I'd worked the rigs, you know, for quite a few months. I still wasn't great financially. And so I had to watch.

But my goal, you know, by this time, my goal was to kind of start hitting towards. home. And, you know, so I was heading, I was in the far side of the world. I needed to get back home. So I was, my intention was to go from Malaysia, Jakarta, was to get to the Middle East to visit my brother for a bit and then get to England and get home from there. So anyway, the way it worked out was that I got to Malaysia, Jakarta, did a tour around there. And when I checked the flights, I flew over my brother. I didn't stop to see him. So I flew directly. I, directly to England. And because I was starting to get, you know,

the realization was I needed to do something with my life. And I needed to, enough of the touring, I needed to get back home to get to work. What was the moment that you started to go, okay, it's time I start pulling myself to get, well. Well, I was by myself too. You know, I didn't have no friends and I was out there by myself. And I think, you know,

the hitchhiking cross Australia and getting up into Singapore and so on. And then I think realization come that I need. needed to get the work, you know, and do something with my life, enough of this, you know, sitting around. It wasn't a conversation. It wasn't, not that I can remember. No, no, no, there's no one, one instant that's, that was, that was, I, I can, when I flashed back, I can, I can, I can remember some of the girls that I met and, and, you know, some of the, and had a girlfriend back home that I, a high school sweetheart kind of thing. And, and I just, realization came that I needed to get back home.

And so that's what I did. I flew to London. And stayed in England for, I can't remember how long, a few weeks. I was pretty much flat, broke again, sleeping in Hyde Park, in the bushes in Hyde Park with a pack sack. And I finally had enough. I phoned my dad in Lloyd Minster. I said, Dad, I'm broke. I need money to get back home.

And so he sent me enough money to, or wired me enough money, to get. get me a one-way ticket from London, England to Montreal. And then I got to Montreal and I hitchhiked home from Montreal to Lloydminster. Flat broke and realizing I needed to do something with my life. And so from that point on... I'm going to stop. We're right there. Broke?

Broke. Hitchhiking from Montreal across. You remember what time of year that was? No, I can't. That's interesting. Yeah. No, I can't remember. I just, you know, and I, wherever we're sitting, right, like the time we're sitting in with,

um, being warm, belly full, smile on our faces. Life is good. Life is good, right? Yeah. Life is good. I mean, but we're living in some interesting, interesting times right now. I can't speak for everybody. Oh, yeah.

There's lots of people that are hurting. Oh, big time. You bet there is. But. And it's not over. No, it certainly is not over. No. I just.

to willingly become broke to the point where you're hitchhiking across our country it's very interesting to me it's intriguing

and it seems like it was a life experience you know I mean it was it was a life experience and that's what given me the drive all these years

the last 50 years it's been it's given me the drive to work hard to do your best to accomplish things that are extraordinary

and make the best out of life and that's what I've done That drove me on to do that. You know, and that's what I'm still doing of this day, for God's sake. I'm still working hard. And this summer, I'll take you for a tour around here later.

All the stuff I did this summer is just, I'm a workaholic, is what it is. And you enjoy it. Yeah, oh yeah, I enjoy it. Absolutely. But so anyway, just to carry on when I got back from Montreal to Lloyd Minster, then I said to myself, geez,

I've got to do something with my life. what am I going to do? And I was always interested in furniture and furniture upholstery. And I said to myself, you know, I'm done, you know, I was painting houses a little bit from time to time. And, you know, I said, I got to get a trade. So I went, I had no money, of course. I went to Canada Manpower. I went to Canada Manpower and asked them if they would sponsor me for a trade.

And they said yes. And I said, well, I want to become a furniture upholsterer, get a trade. And we looked, and the only place that the offered furniture upholstery as a trade was in the Weyburn mental institution. And so the Canada Manpower sponsored me. And you went to the Weyburn. To the Weyburn Mental Institution. And the trade started in September. And so I went down, had no money.

I slept in the park in a tent until the weather got so cold that I couldn't sleep in the tent any longer. And then I got an apartment. And at the same time, in October, I got married. So I got married on October the 6th, in 1973. And so I was living in the tent. When I got married, I got an apartment and finished off my course in Wayburn. You're bringing up so many. Okay, wait.

Were you living in a tent when you got married? I was living in a tent, but I knew when I got married it had to get an apartment, so I moved out of the tent and had an apartment. Was your fiancé with you in the tent? No.

Living in Lloyd. She was still in Lloyd. Yeah. You literally have lived from the meagrest of meager. No question about her. Right? Like not a pot to pissing comes to mind. I mean, even when we're on the farm,

we had no money. you know and so I was used to having no money you know we were not a wealthy family we were we were we were workers and and that's reality of it and so it didn't it didn't shock me that I was living in a tent you know it was just what I do what I had to do to make it work and I obligated you know Canada manpower I obligated them I told them I was going to get this trade and they sponsored me so I that's what I had to do was going to this trade right and and and so I got the trade so So then the next question I have is, what was it about a poultry? Like, was that a big thing back in the 70s?

No, I don't know. It was just kind of interested me. More automotive, fancy car type of poultry than furniture. Okay, okay. But the only course that was available was furniture. And so I went and took a furniture, learning how to sew, learning how to stitch and thread and, you know, tailor, you know, living room furniture kind of thing. And so then once I was done that course, and there was some furniture refinishing,

was involved in this as well, and so on. So then I was able to get a job in Prince Albert and moved to Prince Albert right from Weyburn straight to Prince Albert, got a job there, which was good. I was the guy in this furniture store, I was the pollster, but I was not there for too long, only about six or eight months. I decided that I'm going to move back to Lloyd Minster and I'm going to start a furniture upholstery store. So that's what I did. I came back to Lloyd Minster and took on Larry O'Linnick as a partner and we started the furniture clinic in 1974. Started the furniture clinic. People can't see me right now, but this is like, this is very, like, this is, I don't know what it is about furniture.

That just today, today's age, would you ever think it started in a furniture clinic? No. Right? It just seems. No, but it was, it was something to do and it's something I enjoyed. And I'd gone to school to get some training, so I needed to do something with that.

You know, and all that makes sense. And we did, and the furniture clinic did pretty good. But I only stayed in the furniture clinic for five years. The reason being is that the, bulk, and this is not a slur to the female population, but it was dealing with ladies all the time. And I was more of a rigor, you know, type rough and tough, blue collar type of guy. And I, I did it for five years. And then I decided that I needed to move on to other, other bigger, better adventures, more, maybe more opportunities that are out there. So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so,

I sold out to Larry Olinick, and Larry Olinick just, he operated that store for, for many, many years that you're well aware of. And I kept, and we're still good, we're still best of friends, you know, even after all these years, we're still best of friends. And, and I went on and got into the sales, well, actually, I got into building radio communication towers, is what I did from the Furniture Clinic. I didn't know anything about radio towers, but an old neighbor on the farm, he got into the radio communication business. That was just when they were introducing the transition from CB radio, which is just a broadband open type radio system to VHF radio,

which is very high frequency radio and private channels. And that was before cell phones. That was before any mobile communications. It was just that the advent of mobile communications was coming in. So I saw a future there. So I went and saw my neighbor who was, his name was Bill Till, and he was getting into the radio communication business because he was a ham operator.

He was familiar with radio communications. And he said, well, Wayne, he says, I said, yeah, Bill, I'm looking for work, looking for a career path. He says, well, he says, how are you at building radio towers? And I says, I don't know. I've never built a radio communication tower before. Well, he says, I've got some antennas to put up, and let's see how you like it.

So I said, okay, he says, are you scared of heights? I says, no, I'm not scared of heights. I would work on the drilling rig up the rig and so on. I said, no, I'm not scared of heights. Okay, well, let's get started. So I went to work for Bill Till, that Till Communications doing radio antenna installations on tall towers. So you would climb up the 200 footer or 300 foot tower with a rope tied to your belt

and then a pulley. You get up to the top. you'd put the pulley on and then send the rope down and then another fellow would tie the antenna on you rope the antenna up to the top of the tower you would affix the antenna run the feed line down the tower and then that would be your antenna

for the radio communication and I did that and then I built towers around move from antennas to building towers and I never built towers before. I had no instruction, no training if Bill just said, Wayne he says we've got a tower to build it's 250 feet tall on top of Mount Joy, go out and build this tower. You got to put in, you got to do the concrete

work first, you've got to drill, dig a hole, fill it full of concrete, put in the anchors and so on. So I did all that and then built towers. And I built them all over, all over Alberta and Saskatchewan, right from downtown Lloydminster, one of the towers is still there. The tower that's on top the uptown apartment block, right across from the CKSA radio station, there's a tower on top of a building there. And without engineering, without any, plans of any sort, I built that tower on top of that building. And it's been there since probably 1978. And it's still there. It's got antennas hung all over it. And I put that tower up. And I built another one on the east side of Lloyd. I built on Mount Joy. I built them on Moose Mountain in

Bonneville. I built them all over. One day Bill comes to me and says, Wayne, he says, I've got no more towers to build. What are you going to do now? I said, well, I don't know, Bill. I says, I kind of enjoy those communication work. He says, well, I'll tell you what. He says, can you sell? And I says, I don't know. Well, I think I can. He says, well, go out and sell radios. And I says, I don't know anything about two-way radio communication. And he says, well, he says, start selling farmers because they don't know anything about it either. He says, so I started selling. And he says, I'll pay you 10% commission on everything, on anything you sell. So I said, well, there's an opportunity.

So I had to provide my own beat-up truck. I had an old blue GMC beat-up truck. And I went out, started selling two-way radios. And I learned. And it was a great job because no one else is doing it. It was a great opportunity. And there were some months I would sell $20,000 or $25,000 worth of equipment in a month. and Bill, you know, he was growing his business and he was just loving my efforts out there.

And I went hard at it. And I traveled all the way from Kindersley down into Oyen, over to Camrose and up to Coal Lake and all around the country. And I got into selling not only farmers, but selling municipal governments. And because they were getting radio communications and selling hospital paging systems and oil companies and and really grew the business, eh? And and one, you know, then there's a downturn

in the, there's a downturn in the late 70s, early 80s, and the radio communication fell off, and so I moved on. But Bill, Bill Till was very grateful on, on the effort that I put in to help him grow his business. As a matter of fact, it'd probably be 10 years ago now, Bill stopped me on the street one day. I said, Bill, how are you doing, anyway? Oh, great, Wayne. He says, he says, Wayne, he says, I just want to thank you. And I says, Bill, thank me for what? What have I done? He says, I want to thank you

for all the hard work that you put in to helping us grow our business. He says, we never would have done as well as we did, because he sold out by that time to Motorola. He says, we never would have grown that business like we did without, without you being in sales. So that was really a great gratitude and I'll never forget that comment that he made. So it slowed down and I was a five-year man at that time. It seems like I was working a job for five years and then move on to do something different, you know, kind of thing. And so I went from selling two or radios and I went to work for a trucking company in Lloydminster called Lloydminster Heavy Crude and started there. I didn't know much about trucking, but I was in sales and promoting the trucking company I was working for.

And then I moved into management, and I took over the assistant managing of the company. We had a depot in Elk Point, Alberta. We had Lloyd Minster. We had trucks scattered around the country doing, you know, pressure trucks and vacuum trucks and fluid hauling trucks and that and that sort of thing, all petroleum industry. And I recognized some of the jobs I was having to send my man into with a trucking company, some of the jobs on tank cleaning, some of the jobs on dealing with settled solids at the time, because the industry was just changing from the way they produced our heavy oil here. At one point in time, all we had was the old pump jack, the stroking type of pump jack. And they were running very slowly because oil is so thick and heavy and solids and so on.

And at the time, they were just introducing the progressive cavity pump, which is the screw pump, the rotating screw pump. It was intended to pump solids rather than leaving the solids in well bore, pump the solids to the surface, have them accumulate in the tank and then remove them. And then as soon as you can clean your well bore out. And so I was all part of that. And, uh, I, I was having to send my men into really nasty conditions when they come to tank cleaning. And so I was watching all this going on. I hated sending my men into those tanks. And so then it came to me that, geez, maybe there's better ways to clean tanks.

And with my farming background, I remember us using augers for cleaning grain bins. And augers would move, you know, lumpy type frozen grain. it would move almost water, you know, and so on. So I thought, myself, geez, maybe we can use augers to come up with the system. Well, my boss at the time wasn't interested in taking on a long-term project like that. And so I decided that I would take on this project. There was no technology like it out there. I decided I would try to build a prototype of a machine to see if I could make this work.

and come up. And actually I went to see a fellow in Elk Point. His name was Graphica. Hans Roner was his name, Graphica Arts. And he was quite knowledgeable on how to deal with government lending agencies and so on. Because my intention was to come up with money. I needed to, although I had a little bit of money by this time, because of TIL communications, I had some money

and I went to the government and asked them for some funding for a project that I had. And so we did some drawings. I've still got the drawing to this day and the presentation that I made to the government and what I was after was $50,000 to build a prototype what I called a Grit Hog machine

so that we could clean tanks without digging a hole in the ground, environmentally friendly, and without having any men enter the tank or enter the confined space, that was very hazardous. So that was my intention. So we started design work,

you know, because I had no money yet. And then the government come back, it took me two years, but the government came back. Bud Miller was our local MLA, and he came back. One day I went to see him, I said, you know, after two years, I was getting kind of fed up with it all.

And I, and I, I had a show and tell at the Lloyd Minister heavy crude shop. I invited a lot of oil company people there. I invited Bud Miller there to give them a presentation as to how I thought this thing could work. And I'd actually built a small scale prototype that I could actually shovel in oily sand and have an auger. It was just a prototype machine. And it worked. And after that meeting, Bud Miller was, you know, he was friendly at the meeting, but as he walked away, I followed him out to the parking lot.

And I says, well, bud, I says, what do you think? What do you think of my idea? Do you think the government will help me out with the development of this technology? He says, no, he says, it's just going to wear out. It's not going to work. And I, and I says, bud, I said, I proved that it works. You saw that it works. No, he says, the wearer.

It'll wear out too quickly. It's not economic for us to invest in the project. So he was the MLA for Alberta for the area. So I cussed him out. I blew a gasket on him. I used the F word several times. Called them useless, freaking politician. Because they had nothing to lose at that point in time. So I just cussed him out. And I was kind of from the school of hard knocks, you know, oil patch type. and he got into his car and I slammed the door and I walked away and that was it. I thought, well, that's, that's it for that project. And the very next day, he called me and he says, Wayne, he says, I've thought about this overnight. And he says, I've decided to sponsor your project.

I'll give you $50,000. So I had to get mean and cranky to him, but he saw how serious I was and how, you know, indebted I was to this project. I wasn't going to just quit. And so the, so the government came up with a $50,000 grant, forgivable grant that allowed me to build the prototype machine of the grid hog. And that was the start. And that was the start of the, so I, so I left Lloyd Minister Heavy Crued, I left the company and put full time into developing further machines and developing further technology of the auguring technology that is that is scattered about around the world now when you leave heavy crude yes are you earning an income while you're going or you just had the

$50,000 grant to I had the $50,000 grant and I was living on my savings account that was it's a ballsy move yep it was but I was dedicated and I knew you know I I had big visions and I and I thought I could make it work financially. So I had a class five driver's license and I had, you know, I bought it a $4,000 truck and a $2,000 trailer to haul this thing around and went out and started, you know, started.

And the oil companies were very supportive. They would actually give me work and very supportive of what my ambitions were. And they hired me. They hired me and it worked. And I was able to do you know, four and five and six tank cleanouts a day. And, you know, sometimes they had seven, eight, nine, ten feet of sand in these tanks,

I was able to clean them out. And with nobody entering and no muck on the ground. And so that was the start. And once that work got around, you got extremely busy. Once that word got around, I got busier and busier and came up with different ideas on how to clean pits. I came up with different ideas. One idea we came up with was spent catalyst out of upgrading facilities.

What spent catalyst is it's a product that is used in the upgrading process of heavy crude oil. The oil passes through this particulate matter called catalyst that attracts the heavy metals. And so there's a continual flow of catalyst going into the process. and a continuous flow of catalyst leaving the process. And the catalyst that leaves the process is done. It's called spent catalyst. And it has to be transported from the refinery or the upgradeer facility into facilities in the U.S.

that extract the heavy metals from the catalyst, they process this catalyst, they extract the heavy metals, and the heavy metals are then used in the steelmaking industry. Okay? So up until that point in time, They were, the industry was trucking all this catalyst from Lloyd Minster, from Regina, from Edmonton, Fort Saskatch and so on. They were trucking it all into the recycling facilities in Freeport, Texas, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Cambridge, Ohio.

That's where the recycling facilities were. So when I saw what was happening, I approached them and said, look, I can build auguring apparatus and we can transport this product by rail rather than trucking all the way down. And they said, well, prove it to us. So I did. So I built them an apparatus. We could auger this catalyst. We modified rail cars so we could load this catalyst by auger into the rail cars.

And we built an offloading apparatus that we could offload the cars in Freeport, Texas. We shipped it down and went down and installed it. We got offload. And so now, and for the last 20 years, or more, all the catalyst that comes out of Canada is transported by rail, by gridhog technology that we developed 25 or 30 years ago now, and it's all being still used to this day. And that, we had to go through certification and approvals process. We had to go through, you know, all sorts of processes getting the industry to accept this the fact that we're transporting this this this

classified as a dangerous good so it had to be classified and and that's still operating to this day all the catalysts coming out of out of Canada is transported by rail using gridhog technology for going into the U.S. You have a fascinating way of looking at problems. Yeah, just one thing after another. Why do you like is Is it something that you're just, you're growing up with, you look at a problem, you look at something going on, you go, why don't they try this? And then instead of not only saying, why don't they try this, they've then pulled together an application that then works. Yeah. Has that always been the case?

It's always been the case. That's, yeah. And, I mean, the gridhog technology, the gridhog technology was used in Albania. The gridhog technology is used in the Bakersfield, California. the gridhog technology is used in other parts of heavy oil in the far east as well. And it's all developed here in Lloydminster. Yeah. Why gridhog?

I'm staring, you know, you look around your man cave. There's all kinds of wild boars. That's right. Well, when I remember, you remember earlier, I mentioned a fellow name of Hans Roner. Yeah. He was with Graphica. Yes. The very first company that I went and saw that could help me come up with a,

a proposal for the government when I needed money for my initial proposal. And he told me that Wayne, he says, the most important aspect that you need to pay attention to when you start a company is the name. He says, the name is the most important part of starting a new company. And he says, the name has to reflect as to what the company is all about. And, and he says, you, he says, How do you see your company? Well, I says the company is, it's going to be a dirty job because it's oily waste, oily sand waste material I'm dealing with. He says it, I says it's going to be a dirty job.

The oily sand waste is heavy and hard to handle. The oily sand waste is very plentiful. And it's very, it's gritty. It's sand. It's grit. And it says, So I said, you know, Hans, I said, you know, a pig is renowned to being very tough, very durable, works under all kinds of extreme conditions, lives in extreme conditions.

And so a hog is something that would kind of fit here. And it's gritty type material. So it says, a gridhog would maybe be a logical choice of name. And he thought about it. He says, yeah, he says a grid hog would suit this application. very well. So we came up the name Gridhog before, as part of our initial presentation, we came up with Gridhog as a name. And that name is stuck with us for over 35 years now. Everything's Gridhog.

Here I thought maybe you had a bore out in the wild. Yeah, no. No. And then one thing led to another with the trucking company that I had going and all the employees I had and the equipment I had. And then we started getting into manufacturing. because part of Gridhog and the trucking company was manufacturing for international catalyst for an example, that rail company. Part of my company turned into manufacturing. And then it was a suggestion that we break the manufacturing away from the trucking company and that's where grit industries came up with. We had Grid Hog being sand control systems limited, which is the initial main company. And then it had grit industries, which,

was the manufacturing company. And then I had a fire burner systems. And then I had cold weather technologies, which was a new technology, the heating technology that we developed. And we had other companies as well. You, you're telling me earlier that you looked at,

you know, when you can't beat them, you join them and you'd go buy a company and bring them in. When you were evaluating different industries, companies, whatever you want to call it, what were you looking for? What was sticking out to you? Well, I was very interested and very heavily reliant on the heavy oil industry.

The heavy oil industry, because I'm born and raised and lived in Lloyd Minstrel all my life, that's what we have here is heavy oil. I was always looking at ways to improve the production technique of heavy oil. I was always interested in cost reduction of the producing heavy oil. And I was always interested in finding alternative ways when it comes to safety, when it comes to improving the environment as to how we operate and so on. So that's what drove me was to find ways to improve. Now always improve things.

Now, heavy oil, as you know, is cyclical. It's very up and down, reliant on world markets and so on. And I wasn't, I tried not to be solely reliant on just heavy oil. I needed to move away because of the ups and downs. If you're familiar with heavy oil, I mean, you remember in the mid-80s, there was a real downturn. That's when I started my company. It was in the mid-80s. I started it in the middle of a downturn.

And that taught me a lot to be frugal, to be, you know, have. have a reserve, unlike when I was traveling the world, I always wanted to have a reserve when I was in business and not be reliant on always just one. So I tried to be diverse. I diversified from cleaning of production tanks to cleaning of pits to transporting spent catalyst by rail using grid auger, you know, auguring technology. I tried to build heating systems for heavy oil and I diversified that into the heating systems for natural gas. And then when the natural gas heating systems showed signs of promise and and exciting application, then I moved into other opportunities,

which was the processing of light oil and moving away from heavy oil, trying to diversify into some light oil application and so on. And that sort of, that way of thinking really worked. To be, to be diverse is everything. Don't rely on just one thing in life, be diverse. So is that if through no fault of your own, if things fail, and it can do through no fault of your own, if things fail, you have another avenue to put your efforts toward.

So don't rely on just one, one area of, of business. Why start your business in the 80s when everything is going sideways? Well, Is it just timing because you're at the right age? It was timing. And timing in life is everything.

Don't get me wrong. Timing is everything. But I saw an opportunity there. It had taken me years to get the government to support me on my development of this new technology. And timing was such that that I couldn't spend several years of my life trying to get this project off the ground

and then all of a sudden just because the industry was in the middle of a downturn that I don't proceed with the project. It's something that I just needed to do. And I was fearless. Just like I am today, I'm still fearless. I still do things that some people shake their head at, but if you work at it, you can make them successful. Well, you've mentioned a couple things on here and then a couple things before we started,

and Fearless is a good word choice. But you mentioned before we started recording, your initial design for this auger on, to me it looks like a tractor, but on a unit that slides in and you augured out of the tank. This unit was a four-wheel drive, four-wheel steer. Okay, so. There's the more apt way of explaining it. Right. But then you talk about the regulations coming in and now, now you have containment.

So the machine almost comes obsolete overnight. Yes, yes, it did. But that's exactly. But who could foresee that that they were going to introduce secondary containment? And the fact was that it didn't happen overnight. It did happen over the course of a few years. Okay. And I tried everything to work around the secondary containment, build doors.

build access to the tank doors, do this, do this, try to make it work. I just couldn't. I couldn't get industries buy-in on how- how frustrating was that. Oh, awfully frustrating.

I put 25 years of my life into developing this technology and through some do-gooders somewhere decided they were going to do secondary containment that it just killed the whole project. And how do you ever foresee that? You know, it's impossible. But look at Kodak.

you know. Yeah. You know, they're a huge worldwide company and new technology killed them. You know, so that's just, that's the price you pay for being an entrepreneur, an active entrepreneur,

is that risk is the risk that you accept. It's an ever-changing world out there. It certainly is. And that's what I find very interesting about your, your story is you just, you build, this machine it works exceptionally well. Yep. Then the industry

goes, nope, boom, we're going to do this, which I mean, literally. You're toast. And it happens all the time. That's why it's important to be diverse. And don't rely. Is that what saves you right there? Absolutely. No question about her. Is that I had started

because my dad told me, don't rely on just one area of expertise to be diverse. Exactly. I was looking for a way to replace fire tubes. And because fire tubes are a hazard, they're unsafe, they're inefficient, they're environmentally unfriendly, and so on,

I was looking for a way to replace fire tubes. And I was still doing gridhog work, of course. That's what was funding all this, was gridhog technology. So you're investing in this other side as you're going along. You bet, absolutely. And I was looking for a way

to replace fire tubes because fire tubes are hazardous, they're dangerous, they're just inefficient and antique. They're an old technology that needs to be replaced. And now I started replacing the idea of fire tubes in 2004 is when I started with the idea of replacing fire tubes. And now, finally, I introduced the technology into the light oil market in North Dakota in about 2010, say, or maybe 2009. I went to some trade shows. I took our heating systems into trade shows, and I couldn't convince the government of North Dakota

and the industry of North Dakota to change from fire tubes to our steam heating system that we had developed and had perfected and was now being commercialized. I couldn't convince some change. What it took, unfortunately, what it took was a couple of the operators in North Dakota ended up pulling the water out of a vessel that had a fire tube in it because in North Dakota the oil is light and very volatile and so they have to have the fire tube immersed in water. They heat the water, the water then heats the oil above it. Really? Because oil is very volatile.

Well, by accident, they pulled the water level down. The oil level hit the fire tube, blew the tank up, or there was a vessel, blew the vessel up, killed two guys. And at that point in time, I was dealing with engineering departments and engineering groups in North Dakota. And they saw what I was promoting and what I developed and what we were doing. They saw that. They said, and I said, it eliminates the, the unsafe conditions that a fire tube has, we can heat that oil directly. No need to heat the water first and then have the water heat the oil.

We can heat the oil directly because it uses steam. It's not direct flame like a fire tube is. And it took, they tried one and they tried another one over the course of the next five or six years. And now the company that I sold out to five years ago, they're swamped, with now converting all the fire tubes into steam heating, cold weather technology's heating systems. So it typically what I've learned in life is that it takes 10 years by the time you come up with an idea, go through the prototyping stages,

the debugging of the technology, and then commercializing the technology that you've developed. It takes at least 10 years to do that. and I've proven this over and over. And so now, now they're building heating systems for tanks. They're building heating systems for vessels. They're building heating systems for light oil, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas. They're all putting in the heating systems that we developed in Lloyd Minster, Alberta, Canada.

And they're going very hard on this. And now I'm even told that one of the technologies that I developed, that I developed, here that we couldn't sell to the Canadian Petroix industry. They're now interested in that technology to eliminate the need for heating of oil in tanks altogether. And they're going to flow line everything now. So it never ends. That's why you have to continually develop, continually develop technology when you're in business.

And another thing, you hit the nail on the head with, you say, 10 years, and all I heard was time. It just takes time. It just takes time. Yes, it does. But it takes 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. But, I mean, it's nice to put, ah, 10 years.

That's going to take 10 years. But 10 years are long-ass time. Yeah. It's funny that you just can scrap it and throw it in the back. Well, this is odd. We've lots of, there's been several projects that have been. Mothballed. Yeah.

There is. But I was always able to come up with new projects, you know, that I could justify putting some time into them. And I, because I had an engineering staff, I mean, it wasn't just all me. I had an engineering staff and we had, of course, had counts looking over my shoulder all the time. As to how much money I was spending on these different projects. And it just, it's a big gamble. What do you think, Wayne then currently, climate change, global warming, you name it, they've said it, whether or not it's true, right. It doesn't matter if you believe this or way.

At the end of the day, the amount of oil in the ground at some point is going to be half of what it was, a small amount of what it was. And it would just make sense that down the road you move away from this technology. Well, why is there such a, to just shut it off? It's going to take time. It's going to take time. No question about it. Time to move away and it's going to take people investing to entrepreneurs to help try and develop something. And I assume at the start, it's going to be rudimentary.

It's not going to work that well, and you're going to have to continually grow and get better at it and smarter until there's a day where all sudden the entire world, like you said, is now using whatever technology comes along. And it's just like, but nobody sees that that took 20-some years. I don't believe that in our lifetime that we're going to eliminate the use of petroleum products.

Yes, we can be smarter. For an example, some people that commute daily from their house to downtown, to their job and back to their house, those types of people could possibly use an electric powered vehicle. When you get out and we need to do our best to reduce the usage of petroleum products and to reduce emissions, but I don't believe that we're ever going to eliminate the petroleum industry. I don't believe that the electric powered vehicles in Alberta and Saskatchewan,

for an example, are going to be as prevalent as what they are in parts of... States of the U.S. Because for an example, we're so distant, you know, from point A to point B is much further. We've got minus 20 and 30 and 35 degree temperatures that we have to deal with. I also don't believe that our electrical distribution system is up to the standard that we need to have to power all these vehicles.

And so it's certainly going to take a significant amount of time. And depending on who you talk to, there's lots of people that are very much in the know that are seriously debating whether it's the Petroi ministry that is or whether it's a cyclical issue on our climate change. There's lots of talk about how it's just cyclical. You know, there's people talking about in 1948, for an example, the water in these lakes locally here was four feet higher than what it is today. Yeah. You know, and so there's so many variables and so much debate as to what it is.

And, you know, this is going to take years, decades to figure. you're out. Well, I just, when you're talking about new technologies, innovative technology, technologies that have worked very, very well. Chances aren't when they come along in the first sales pitch, it isn't like, oh yeah, that's brilliant, let's do it, and let's implement it everywhere. Well, no. Even if you get a yes, then you've got to build the bloody thing, then you got to get it to work. Yeah. Then, and they're going to, okay, we'll put one over here. We'll maybe put one over there. We'll see, we'll give you another six months, right? Yeah, or longer. That's right. And then just to kick it in the butt and say, yeah, we're going to put it everywhere.

Well, now you've got to manufacture the bloody things and get them all implemented. And then you've got to protect that technology. I mean, I have patents, and I've, I've had patents for decades. And it's very difficult to protect a patent, particularly in other countries. And so, I mean, I hired a fellow, for one example, I hired a fellow in Calgary to go to England to promote one of my technologies in England. And he took all of my inside information, detailed, technical information, went to England, and hadn't heard from them for 10 years.

Now that technology is going strong in England because I didn't have patents in England. You can't patent in every little country around the world. It was just not economically feasible. You can't do it. So that's another hardship of. of new technology is to protect, you'll protect your rights. Yeah.

So now that technology is going strong in England that we developed here in Lord Minster. Yeah. But it's going strong in England. Ah, it's super cool. You know, another story you told me as we walked around your place and you're showing me different things

was the natural gas heater? Yes. And we don't need to get in the nuts and bolts of it. Yeah. But the story of, of basically having the government of Saskatchewan in your shop for five days and in the last two days they got nothing to do

hey you got anything that can work and you build something overnight very rudimentary just so they can see it and get to play with it you think of how successful that's been that to me is like seeing a remarkable story well then you may tell it because I think it should be captured

in all my life of developing technology that story is a premium. The idea that I had was to diversify my company. I knew that I was getting a lot of pressure from the heavy oil industry to reduce prices, come up with better technology to suit their needs because it's ever changing. and so I was diversifying my company and the manufacturing. And so what I was trying to do was I was trying to focus on the hazards that the common fire tube. And every tank we have in heavy oil has at least one fire tube.

Some have multiples. And a fire tube, what it is is you're heating flammable liquid with a direct flame. And to heat the oil, we have to heat the oil at the 85 degrees C, to get the oil and water to separate and the sand to drop out so as we can have pipeline spec crew oil is what the goal is to truck it to refinery. And so I was working on a technology to challenge the fire tube technology and come up with a system without getting into too much detail, coming up with a system that created steam under vacuum.

and because all these sites that we have in the petroleum industry are quite remote and the majority of them don't have electricity on site, I needed to develop a technology that was safe and efficient and clean burning environmentally would burn either propane or natural gas or wellhead gas. So I had to be flexible that way. it there's most often there's no electricity on site so it couldn't have electric motors and electric pumps and and electric controls it had to have millivolt controls that were able to be created from a from a flame and and so on so that was the criteria that it had well i i developed a technology that we call a heat-driven loop and what it is is it creates steam under vacuum and and and i in the event of a failure, equipment failure, or so on,

we needed to have a glycol water mixture so it wouldn't freeze if the unit went down. So we had a system, a closed system, operating on vacuum, and the maximum vacuum that you can achieve is about 30 inches of water column or around 30. We could get minus 26 or minus 28 reasonably easy, and it was a closed system that maintained at minus 26 or minus 28. When you have a system that's operating on vacuum and you boil water,

water will boil at roughly 40 degrees Celsius on vacuum. Okay, so it has a very low boiling. Water typically boils at 100, right, at sea level, and it'll boil at about 40 degrees. So the beauty of that is that water boils very quick. When you heat water to 40 degrees, it'll turn to steam. The steam will expand a thousand times its volume, roar off out of the boiler system into the heat exchanger, transfer its heat, and then condense back to water and flow by gravity back to the boiler. Hits that hot bed of glycol, flashes back to steam, so it's cyclic.

Very quickly cycles and so on. Well, that's the way the system works. and I couldn't sell, because of the 10-year term it takes to get industry interested in new technology, I couldn't hit it off real well with the heavy oil production group. So then I bought a company by the name of A fire burner systems and decided if you can't beat them, join them. We started manufacturing naturally drafted fire two burners. Well, along came Sask Energy one day. They knew that I had bought A-Fire Burner Systems,

and Sask Energy came along and asked me one day, so Wayne, he says, I understand you bought A-Fire Burner Systems, which was a local Lloyd Minster company. He says, we use A-Fire on some of our natural gas line heaters, and we want to once and for all standardized, so as all of our natural gas line heaters in the province, have the same technology so that our service people are familiar with the technology. And I said to them, I said, well, geez, what does the natural gas line heater do in natural gas

distribution? And they said, well, what it does is that when you have high pressure natural gas being transferred in high pressure natural gas pipelines, it's typically at 1,000 or maybe even 1,200 pounds pressure. Before the gas enters the community, the pressure is dropped at the edge of town to 60 pounds pressure, and then before it enters your home, it's reduced to two ounces by a regulator on the back of your home. And said, when you reduce the pressure of a gas,

every 100 pounds of pressure you drop, you lose 7 degrees Fahrenheit of temperature, which is called the Jules Thompson effect. And because the natural gas in the high-pressure natural gas pipelines has been transferred thousands of miles, perhaps, underground, the natural gas is at ground temperature. And when the pressure is dropped, for every 100 pounds of pressure you drop, you lose 7 degrees Fahrenheit of temperature.

So when you're going from 1,000 PSI for easy figuring to 60 PSI, you're losing about 75 degrees of temperature. So you can't transfer natural gas at minus 75. Obviously, you'll freeze the roadways, crossings, you'll freeze the lawns, you'll freeze the, you know, the countryside. So you have to heat the gas where the pressure is dropped. So there's what's called the natural gas line heater there. And the old technology would typically use a naturally drafted fire tube burner,

a tank, a horizontal tank full of glycol. And inside, in the glycol would be a high pressure gas pipeline that would take the heat and act as a heat exchanger. And they said that when they asked me, they said, geez, you know, you bought A-FIRE. We like A-Fire Burner Systems. We want to once and for all standardize for ease of field repair and field maintenance. We're going to bring Saskatchewan Research Council in,

and we're going to do some testing on which is the most high-performance system available on the market today. We're going to test glycols, we're going to test burner systems and so on, to see which we should standardize on. and and I said, sure, yeah, come on in. I've, I've got a vacant shop from another project that I've had going on. I'm waiting for. I've got a vacant shop. You can come in and use that shop and all for free.

So they came to Lloyd Minster. They moved into the shop on a Monday morning. They had, they had five days planned with Saskatchian Research Council to do their testing of glycols, of heat transfer, of, you know, efficiencies of burners and so on. And they started and they went along and everything was ticking along and Monday was done and then Tuesday was done and Wednesday was done and they were, they come to be Wednesday morning. I said, geez, Wayne, things are going along quicker than what we had planned. And it looks like we're going to be done sooner. We, you know, we're going to be done maybe Wednesday afternoon and we got nothing to do on Thursday and Friday.

He says, you've been watching us. Have you got anything else that might work in this application? And I said, you know, I've been watching, you know, for the last. three days and I think I might have, you know, a new technology I've been working on. And the technology is what I call a heat-driven loop. It's the system that does not require electricity, has no moving parts, is very safe and efficient, uses natural gas as an energy source, does not require electricity and so on. And they says, well, good. Well, let's get one of these things together so so we can test it tomorrow. And I said, holy, I said, I don't have a natural gas line here to test.

but I'll tell you what I'll do is I'll put together my welding staff and my fabricating people and we'll see what we can do for tomorrow. So, you know, I recognize this as an opportunity and so I had my staff work all night long, putting together some, you know, using some used equipment we had and some used heaters and so on. And by the next morning, we come up with this

this really rudimentary, simplistic, ugly looking thing that was not painted, not insulated, no control system. It was just awful looking and they looked at it and they, I could just see them shaking their head in disgust and we're questioning, you know, the whole technology. Well, we hooked it up and the control system we had was, well, there wasn't a control system. It was me standing beside the heater, the Robert Shaw gas valve. switch and the guy from the Saskatchewan Research Council would look at me and wave and I'd turn it on and he'd be watching his gauges and and thermometers line thermometers and so on and he'd

wave at me and I'd turn it off and cycling this this air through this line and watching the temperature rise and so on and then after a short while he waved at me in disgust it looked like he said shut her down shut it down he said something's wrong here we're we're running at 85% overall thermal efficiency and the best we could achieve the last three days was 30 to 35% with the natural gas fire tube. He says there's something wrong here. We've got some some malfunctioning equipment. So they checked their computers and they checked their sensors and checked everything all over and waved at me again and I turned it on and they were watching and I was watching and I could just see the excitement on all of those high-tech engineers and from Saskatchan research

Council and the Sask Energy guys are over there looking and I could just see the excitement going on and they looked over and shut it down shut it down so I shut it down and they said you know what we've got a miracle happening here this is this is almost triple the efficiency that we that we had in the previous three days you know what where do we go from here so I said well we can build some prototypes that are insulated and cladded and have the best of control equipment and so on, and put them out in the field. And so that was the start. That was the start of how we discovered an application for the technology that I thought was on the way out for the heating of heavy oil.

That was the start. And at that day or even the very next day, the management of SAS Energy come to me, and said that they wanted to do an alliance partnership on the development of this natural gas line heating technology. And this is the head office in Regina. They invited us down there. We went down and we became best of friends over the years. And today, that's all Sask Energy uses, is the cold weather technologies, natural gas line heaters. The technology has spread now into Alberta, into British Columbia, into California all through the U.S. As a matter of fact, there's now a manufacturing facility in Florida that all they build

is cold weather technologies heating systems for light oil and for natural gas distribution. They've also all throughout Toronto area, all of Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and so on. So that's just how you call it lucky, but it's, it's, it's, just strategically, that's what you plan for, is an opportunity comes along. You've got to jump at it and do your best to try to make it work. Make changes. Yes, absolutely. The first one, we made a lot of changes from the first, with the help of Saskatchewan Research Council as well. So that's one of these success stories. And because that diversified my company, the people that were most familiar with the technology and the the companies that use the technology they're they're sold

and they're faithful and and there's no competition in in that market at all so it's it's been a very good development project for us well after that story that's a fantastic story and i just i can't get over you you got to recognize opportunities opportunity, obviously. But they say, you know, I ain't got something else for us. Well, maybe. Well, we need it tomorrow. Oh. Well, I'll see what I can do. Well, you work 24 hours straight to put in something that you go. Everybody's laughing at. But who cares? Yeah. I mean, you recognize the opportunity. If I got these guys sitting here, they got time. They're actually going to use it. And maybe there's something here that we can do that can just lock it in. Oh, it was a miracle. It really was. That was in my life, you know, just simply. miracle that how how it all evolved really was that's amazing well i don't know how i don't know where to go from there way this has been highly enjoyable uh we're going on i don't know hour and a half hour and change um is there anything else that you want to bring up i know we've talked a lot about your company a lot about your younger years a little bit about your traveling uh is there anything else

that you want to discuss? Well, I guess when you're in a person of my position or my mentality, you know, I'm probably going to work until the day that I die. And I'm always looking for opportunities. I do volunteer work now a lot of volunteer work for the Sandy Beach Regional Park. You know, I'm a doer. Something comes up that needs to be done while they look. at me and I get out there and do it.

You know, that's just nature of the beast. I've been very lucky to have the people that I've worked with, my employees. I was always one, first guy at the office in the morning, seeing everybody off to their field jobs and positions and then the last guy at night to leave and to welcome everybody in. And all those employees, they became my best friends. they're still employees, but they were my best friends. And to this day, I have people walking up to me on the street and thanking me for, for, you know, helping them out.

I was a very firm believer in the trades. I'm a firm believer in sponsoring the employees to get training and to get certification in the trades, electricians, gas fitters, welders, and design folk, and so on. I sponsor all those people. And also I've been a firm believer, and I think it really helps with the local perception of your company, is if you help from a community standpoint. I've always been a firm believer in sponsoring good charities. for an example, the Thorpe Recovery Center in Lloydminster,

it helps people that are in distress and people that need help. That's what their job is. And I've always been a big supporter of the Thorpe. I've been a big supporter of the community college, for an example, sponsored several of the laboratories and shops and so on. I've been a big sponsor of the Boys and Girls Club of North Battleford. You know, and I'm talking, you know, I'm talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars that we've been able to, because we've been financially solid, we've been able to support them. And I receive a lot of gratitude from the local communities for that, for that.

And that's what you work for, you know, is to help out the community, really. That's what you work for. The employees and the community is the most important in my eyes to any company. Well, I don't know where to go from there. That's awesome. I appreciate, Wayne, you coming on and sharing a bit about your journey and some stories from it. And there's lots more that we never touched on. But anyway, we've hit the highlights.

Well, I appreciate it, Wayne. Thanks for letting me come and pick your brain. One last story. One last story. When the industry changed to, the petroleum industry changed. to having environmental secondary containment around oil tank. So every above ground oil tank

has to have a secondary containment system around it for spill, in the event of a spill. So that outdated my gridhog machine technology, but if you can't beat them join them, I started manufacturing secondary containment. Thinking there's a big market, it's a good product to manufacture, it's repetitive, and so on.

So I started manufacturing. We'd come up with the design. design. We started manufacturing that technology. And in order to do it more efficiently, I put in, or I, I researched a what's called a roll forming machine. And what that machine is, is you buy the raw material in big coils, 30,000 pound coils. And this machine rolls it out. It processes this sheet metal that comes in a coil, punches holes, makes bends, makes cuts, and so on, to make the panels that we used for secondary containment. So we were building them by hand,

and then I got the idea we needed to put it in a roll-form machine. So I inquired about North America, and the machine was going to cost me $1.8 million to buy this one machine, to roll-form secondary containment panels. So I thought, well, to be honorable to Canadians, I thought, well, I would try to have it built in Canada. So I went to Toronto, research Toronto, found one company in Toronto that could build this machine for me.

And it was going to cost me $1.8 million, and it was going to be a 12-month delivery. And they needed $600,000 as a down payment to get started. So we did a deal, gave them $600,000. It was going to be a 12-month delivery. I kept in contact with them. And how I did that, I would fly to Toronto. I'd leave Lloyd Minster at 3 o'clock in the morning, catch a 6 o'clock flight out of Edmonton, fly to Toronto, get to Toronto by noon Toronto time.

I would tour their shop, visit, get back on the plane by 5 o'clock Toronto time, get back to Edmonton, drive home, get back at midnight, and that'd be at work the next morning. That's how I was checking on it, man. And a year come and gone, the machine wasn't done. And I said, look, you guys, what's going on? Well, we underbid it, we need more money. By that time, I'd give them just under a million dollars by that time.

and the machine wasn't done. So how much more money do you need? I asked them, well, we need another 400,000 to finish the machine off. So, and what do you do? They had me. So I had to pay them an extra 400 grand. And then they said it's going to be six more months. So five months came.

I was checking on them. Six months came, came and went, the machine wasn't done. So then I went down to Toronto. I flew down there, kind of cranky, walked into the shop, started taking pictures. and the owner of this place, he came out and he seen me taking pictures, because I knew I was going to get into the courts, and I was going to try to get that machine out of there so as I could finish it ourselves, back here in Alberta.

So he seen me taking pictures, he knew what I was doing. He came at me, he run at me, and he was not a big guy, and I'm fairly big, he came at me, running me, so I didn't punch him, but I grabbed them and threw him on the floor, threw him down. And then all of a sudden the police showed up. So the police showed up. He was messed up. And so they arrested me and put me in jail in Toronto.

And they arrested him too, though. So the rest of both of us. And so I was in jail in Toronto just for the afternoon. And then I promised him I would behave. And so they let me go. And I got back to Lloyd Minster here and got the courts involved. I got a court order to get the machine out of his facility. We loaded the machine up.

I went back down. We loaded the machine up, transported it to Lloyd Minster, and finished it ourselves. And so that's how things can go sometimes. Finish it ourselves. The machine's still working at this day. So that's how things can go sometimes. The best planning sometimes doesn't work out as planned. That was one of the only time I've ever been in jail.

I want you to know that. Oh man, that's that is one, that's a ride. Yeah, that was quite a story. Anyway, thanks again for inviting me out here and really enjoyed sitting down with you. Well, I hope you can, yeah, hope you like my information. It's, it's been quite a life that I've led. Absolutely. Well, thanks again.

Okay. Thank you, sir. Hey, folks. Thanks for joining us today. If you just stumbled on the show, please click subscribe. Then scroll to the bottom. and rate and leave a review. I promise it helps.

Remember, every Monday and Wednesday, we will have a new guest sitting down to share their story. The Sean Newman podcast is available for free on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever else you get your podcast fix. Until next time. Hey, Kainers. You can hear in the background what tomorrow is going to bring. Tomorrow is going to bring the round table,

and it was a rather heated spectacle. There was a few extra bodies in the room, and we had a lot of fun, and I hope you tune in tomorrow for Monday. Brothers Roundtable Playoff Preview. It's a lot of fun, and they're all staring at me right now, why I'm doing this while they're talking. Well, you kind of get a feel for what's coming for tomorrow. And if you're the champ, I assume you'll be at work tomorrow,

but who knows, maybe you're taking a leave of absence to swing those clubs, all right? We'll catch the rest of you Monday. Have a great one, guys, and like I say, catch up to you tomorrow. Thank you.