industry SECRET to Salt & Brine: pricing, equipment, rates and more

you use a is this right a third of the salt so you legitimately cut your salt usage back by 60 to 70 percent right and we're going to learn exactly how this works plus we're going to learn pricing we're going to show you all of the equipment we're going to show you the entire operation behind this so these units are around thirty thousand dollars as they sit for this unit correct yep okay and you told me off camera that this unit will pay for itself in one to two applications at the rate that you guys apply yep so the way we we look at that Roi is possible so let's summarize how you price out your liquid de-icing it's three to seven dollars per gallon correct on pre-treat you do 40 gallons and that's before the storm then you plow post treat you do double or 80 gallons per acre so what is our range yeah good morning good evening good afternoon you guys we got a pretty special show for you today because this we're going to be talking about the future of ice control we're at a company called vsi and these guys have a very unique story ten years ago they stopped using granulars for their ice control and switched completely to a liquid solution and there's some changes coming down the pipeline that you guys should be aware of but we're going to meet one of the guys that's the brainchild behind this thing his name is Jordan and he is right here Jordan how are you buddy good to see you good to see you so 10 years ago vsi stopped using granulars entirely and you were one of the very first people in the industry to switch to a brine solution yeah why yeah great question so our snow Contracting division which is based out of Mankato yeah um we we're trying to look for ways to differentiate ourselves we're a pretty small company Mankato is not a huge Market but big enough uh at the time we just had a couple guys couple trucks real small operation how can we attract some of these bigger clients in town liquids are one of the ways that we decided we try to do that is go with an all liquid program less mess on their property less tracking their buildings so we started testing some liquids and had really good results as a result of having good results with those liquids in our contracting business eventually in 2014 we started vsi we're sort of manufacturing this equipment that we were using in our snow business okay but one of the things that these guys need to know is that you use a is this right a third of the salt so you legitimately cut your salt usage back by 60 to 70 percent right versus by just going with the brine solution versus the guys that are out throwing granulars and rocks down everywhere and we're going to learn exactly how this works plus we're going to learn pricing we're going to show you all of the equipment we're going to show you the entire operation behind the scenes okay so where do we go from here the pricing what just tell me tell me a little bit about how do you even figure out how to price this stuff up because you were the first in the industry so what did you find right yeah so we kept it really simple in fact we had the same concerns and challenges year one we didn't want our clients to experience a a pain of turning over the type of service we're providing so we kept our price in the exact same we were pricing by the job by the application we continued doing that with our liquids so the price we were charging for our granular applications we carried over into our liquid applications the good news for us as a contractor is it costs less to apply liquid applications so we were just making more margin that way but it kept things very simple and succinct for our clients so if I'm understanding this right when you use a liquid you're using 60 to 70 percent less material so you were saving on the same materials but you're charging the customer the same and the material itself will go a lot further so when you fill up your truck to go out and do liquid de-icing you're not making all of those return trip tips so your productivity probably went up astronomically at that point yeah we're able to Service uh uh you know again we were very small when we were using Salters we only had one Salter but we were able to do the work in about a third of the time with the liquid equipment versus the salting equipment that we had at the time so now even with the size of operation now being a lot bigger than it was we can do a fairly large portfolio with only three or four spray trucks okay and you do no granulars no at all don't own a salt spreader we have a few videos or we have a tailgate Salter just for testing we do not own a salt spreader for actual use in our business and you cover 5 million square feet yep approximately okay so it's now it's no little operation and you cover five million square feet with four pickup trucks uh they're actually a little bit bigger so we do have two pickup truck units um we also have a uh like a 25 999 dump truck or a flatbed truck so it's a just under CDL size and then we have an F450 so that 25.99 999 truck the F450 and then the two pickup units okay so let's dive into the pricing how do you price out liquid de-icing yeah so every Market's going to be a little bit different we do have some in-depth resources that we can share with you guys but in a nutshell what we see throughout all of the snow belt North America that's US and Canada is between three and seven dollars a gallon applied now that's a huge range and the reason the range is so big is because every Market's different different labor rates different cost of materials but another big thing is the number of events you have each year so here in southern Minnesota we have 30 to 40 deicing events a year in a market like St Louis they might only have five to ten well to service five to ten they still have the same number of equipment the same amount of overhead the same number of Staff same number of trucks but they only could use a five to ten times so their cost per application is much higher there than it is in a market like this so that's why there's such a big price range difference on that the other big difference is the size site if you're going to spray in a bank parking lot it only uses 80 gallons we're going to charge a lot more per gallon than we are on a 30 Acre Site that that uses a lot more obviously in a single trip what is that price range again uh three to seven dollars per gallon applied so that's labor materials everything but three to seven dollars per gallon how far does a gallon go yeah so when we're pre-treating typically we're looking at about 40 gallons per acre um when we're pulse treating typically we're looking at between 80 and 100 gallons per acre so pre-treating is before the snow full shooting's after the snow okay so give me those two again one more time yep 40 gallons per acre for pre-treating okay double that to 80 for post treating or up to 100 or even a little bit more um if there's a lot of snowpack or residuals so how you do your business is you pre-treat yep then you plow yep and then you post tree correct and no rock salt shall ever be laid down in between there because you had a very interesting stat that stopped me in my tracks and that was the cost per ton of damage that salt does and this is not something you guys came up with this is something that's in the industry tell me what that is tell me those numbers yeah so these this is where it's really important for us as contractors to educate our clients the important Consulting a company here in Minnesota has done a lot of research on this they run the smart salting program for the mpca they've shown that each ton of salt applied causes between eight hundred and three thousand dollars of damage long-term damage to each property so when you put down one ton of salt that costs your client between 800 and three thousand dollars in long-term infrastructure damage and damage so we're talking about payment damage yup asphalt underground structural steel Turf Landscaping rugs carpet flooring inside the building door jambs revolving doors anything that corrosion can ruin is what we're talking about with that staff and you're saying that with liquid de-icing you don't get that because your boots aren't picking the granulars up and carrying them with because once you apply that it stays where it was meant to be put and it doesn't go where it's not supposed to be so that's one big thing yes you're absolutely correct it does stay where you put it a lot better okay but another factor is that you're just using so much less salt so because we're reducing our chlorides by 30 to 75 depending on how much you're implementing with liquids if you're just doing pre-treating you're talking about 30 assault savings that's still substantial if you're talking about pre-treating and most trading now we're talking about 60 to 75 savings on salt the actual tonnage of salt saved is even more impactful than the fact that we're using it in liquid form we need to maybe break this down into its simplest measures so these guys can understand why you have why you're using so much less material because when you you're using the same material you're using the same salt but not in its granular form you're pre-mixing it you're diluting it you're getting it into a concentrate and then that allows you to control exactly how much material goes in a spot in versus where if a granular falls on a countertop then that granular has to melt and you don't know what the concentration is you don't know what's going to happen is this am I understand correctly yeah so when you spread salt all you're doing is making salt right on the ground when that salt hits snow and ice and make salt rain on the ground yep by applying salt brine directly we're skipping that phase change and we can use a lot less salt scientifically it only takes 150 to 200 pounds of salt per acre to get safe bear Pavement in normal conditions most contractors are applying between 800 and 1000 pounds per acre because we need those granules of salt this close together not this far apart if they're this far apart those puddles spreading on the ground take too long we don't get safe pavement fast enough we have slip and Falls we have issues and unhappy clients by applying the puddle directly to the pavement we're applying that 80 to 100 gallons per acre a little over two pounds of salt per gallon that puts us right in the proper range of 160 to 200 pounds of salt per acre and that's how you get the cost savings and okay and to do this you get guys had to build your own equipment because when you started liquid de-icing wasn't even there but now there's inklings that salt control the salt itself is going to become regulated right there's no way to remove it it's not going to break down over time it's just going to stay chloride forever and go wherever that water goes our work has led to Public Works Crews calibrating their spreaders they use a lot less salt and many have switched to pre-treating roads with brine a liquid that's about 30 percent salt it can actually be a lot more effective we have seen organizations reduce their salt use by 70 when they've switched to using liquid is the news or about 10 sidewalk squares and more doesn't necessarily work any better and nothing works below 15 degrees and no two she says to check the ingredients on any ice melt they may be listed as environmentally friendly or pet safe but if they contain chloride at all they really aren't they don't today have some alternative product that we can just switch to that will you know magically get rid of our snow and ice and not have negative half the time just for the environment so uh the advice in addition to using assault sparingly is to get better equipment too this goes for homeowners to scrape more what I didn't catch was she's the head of the mpca the Minnesota Pollution Control agency and this is they're they're coming for us regulations coming it's already in certain states in the Northeast Minnesota is a kind of a front runner in the midwest to start some some legislation I think in the next 10 years we'll see salt regulated just like fertilizer and herbicide it'll require licensing log books all kinds of stuff that we don't want to deal with so let's try to be responsible and help slow down that regulation because we don't necessarily want it either but it's coming because of how much salt is going into the environment and because it only takes one teaspoon of salt to permanently pollute five gallons of water so think about one teaspoon is five gallons a hopper full of salt is millions of gallons of water that pollutes when you put down that salt so reducing salt is important drinking water is important lakes and streams are important there's a lot of things there a lot of other drivers towards liquid are that um you know again this eight hundred three thousand dollars per ton of salt applied these large corporations own this real estate they don't want that long-term damage on their properties they want to reduce salt on their properties too because they're actually paying more money in long-term infrastructure costs than they are paying their snow pound director to apply the salt so let's reduce the salt as much as possible so let's summarize how you price out your liquid de-icing it's three to seven dollars per gallon correct on pre-treat you do 40 gallons and that's before the storm then you plow post treat you do double or 80 gallons per acre so what is our range yeah so 120 to 280 per acre for pre-treat uh 240 to 560 per acre Upholstery and that depends on how big your lot is and your Market if we're doing 30 to 40 events per year so we can charge less if you're doing less and you still have that overhead of the equipment that took to pay for well then you have to charge more so you'd be on the higher range of that scale so now Jordan's going to take us out to the shop he's going to introduce us to David and David is going to introduce us to the equipment and how you actually use it so Jordan you actually helped found the company with David right yep okay and guys this is David David how you doing fantastic and you're going to show show us the equipment that you guys have developed so when you were in the baby stages of trying to figure this stuff out you had prototypes built but you've had 10 years of refining this and now you guys and boss have teamed up to make this available to everybody out there correct is that right we can't gloss over this boss actually now owns vsi so the distribution Network that boss uses for all their snow plows and all their other snowy equipment becomes available to customers of vsi so that means you can order parts through boss you can get have service done you can have all of those things that you've come to depend on by having a large distribution network is now available for these parts meaning you're not depending on two guys out in the middle of Minnesota to ship you your part if Heaven forbids something happens to a piece of your equipment you can get it from your local us dealer okay so this is the setup right here so what you're going to see here is our 305 gallon model and this is the Legacy Series so our highest performing equipment that we we currently manufacture one thing really cool that we've done is everything on the back here the power head unit the control box the plumbing is identical through our entire Legacy line so what's really nice there is the power bundle the 305 all of those units are the same up through our 1600 gallon which is our largest skid Mount unit so you have these all just set up so we could see them this is the this is the brains of the unit right here correct and then you can couple that with a 500 gallon tank or 300 gallon tank depending on what your application is right let me actually go all the way up to 1600 for a full skid Mount unit and the power bundle is kind of the filler model where we can connect any size tank to it that we want so if we have higher capacity three thousand four thousand gallon tanks this unit here is able to be connected to that that tank and perform all the same functions as our as our regular sprayer models and this does not connect to a truck correct so the entire system is Wireless what's really nice there is we're able to set the unit in strap it down and pull it out at any point in time with no wiring going to the truck so if the truck breaks down you just lift it out exactly you can put it in any other truck and you can go and this is controlled via two ways yep so we have the the first smart connected which is an app on your phone available for iOS or Android and what's nice about this is we don't have any in-cap controller right so any operator at any point in time can run the equipment and it can be in any truck so as we open up the app here you can see that we are able to connect via Bluetooth and now we have full control over our sprayer and we've integrated a lot of nice features and we have light bars we have strobes um and then what you'll see here is the main main control page so we have our automatic rate control where we set the application rate per acre um okay this is where it gets really good no no no this gets really really really good because I don't like apps you show me a smartphone app that just means that I got to worry about my phone being charged up you have a remote control that if the your phone doesn't work so let's just get that right out of the way but your this app will actually control the application rate to the speed you're driving so you can't screw up correct yep freaking mind-blowing if you guys do salt or ice control or what have you that means when you go faster the pump kicks in faster when you slow down and you come to a stop it just turns out exactly we're going to show you some really cool I get goosebumps over there the entire idea is that we can put any operator in the truck and the system will do all of the work for you so we're able to be incredibly repeatable incredibly accurate with the systems now with this technology and to the point where you also time stamp the Lots you know exactly where where when the application has been done you can show how many gallons were used on the lot and the only reason I point this out is if you are a ice control contractor lawsuits become a big part of it absolutely and you need to protect yourself and this is a viable record and people have actually used this to to do that correct they have yep they've used it to show proof of work in court what we've really done with the systems through our experience as contractors is we put every single element of design into what we needed the equipment to do for us so we have a lot of cool features that you know you don't see in other equipment because it's valuable to us as contractors because you were ice Control Contractors you weren't a manufacturer you built this just because you needed it for yourself right okay now as we look at this I want I want the good and the bad okay this unit right here compared to a granular spreader is going to cost you how much so when we look at a model like this we're about uh three times the cost two to three times the cost of a regular v-box spreader but if we're really not comparing Apples to Apples in the equipment just due to all the tracking features and everything thing that we have built into these systems currently as far as performance goes we are far outperforming any vbac spreaders we have full control over our spray width with the three lane Booms that we have here on the systems themselves and what that allows us to do is independently control where we are putting down the products so with the vbox spreader we're using the spinner rate to control our spread pattern but with this system we're able to control our left middle and right booms all simultaneously so as far as performance goes on this system we will always be far superior to the v-back…