Episode 258: How a motor control center defines tunnel reliability with Troy Huisman

Welcome back to Watchtalk, everyone. The Car Wash Podcast, I'm your host, Rich DiPolo and joining me today we have Troy Heisman, founder of Superior Control. Troy is so great to see you and thanks for doing this interview with Car Wash dot com. Yep, no problem. Yeah, I'm glad to be here. Yeah, topic I've written about in the past a few times for professional car washing and detailing magazine, Cole often referred to you as the brains of the car wash operation and that's controllers and specifically the control system is what we're here to discuss today, Troy. You know, it's something that operators rely on heavily, but maybe not too many are completely familiar with the ins and the outs of the control system. So I wanted to get you on the program to answer some frequently asked questions and I know your company Superior Control serves many industries and not just car wash. So when you look at this car wash market, Troy from from an outside perspective, what gaps or problems did you see in the car wash world when you first notice that maybe inspired you to to enter the space? Yeah, I mean, when I when I first did this, this goes back quite a ways. I would say probably about 20 years ago is when I first stepped foot into the back room of a car wash tunnel. And as I was walking through a one thing I recognized really quickly was the technology was all very old that was being used. And and so in the industrial control world, I also quickly learned that that that in the industrial control, the technology is also lagging even behind consumer technology. So like right now we can, you know, we've got our cell phones and we got AI and all this stuff, right? And the industrial control technology is is lagging in that it doesn't quite have those same capabilities and features and and even more so what's lagging behind the control, industrial control is the car wash industry where they're at with stuff. And so it's almost like there's this like 20 to 30 year gap between what, you know, is being implemented in the car wash versus what is actually available in the marketplace. And so that was one of the things I saw immediately that was like, Oh man, like you walk into this back room and you feel like you're like, you know, like you walk into one of the original computers. Like it's all the whole room is a computer, you know, it's all the relays and all that kind of stuff. And like, you know, that's what it kind of felt like when when kind of peeking behind the curtain in a back room of a car wash, it was like, man, this is all technology is some really good opportunities to upgrade this new use newer systems, less expensive, smaller, more reliable, all that sort of thing, you know, like increasing the throughput of the tunnel is obviously, you know, what the car wash owners really, really need and want. And so upgrading that older technology and newer technology is one of the areas we came across that was big opportunity. Yeah, that's a big of opportunity. So when you started speaking with operators initially, when you first entered space and saw this older new tech or older technology, what inefficiencies or common issues, did you help open their eyes to that that maybe they didn't realize were issues before you stepped into their building? I would say, I mean, a part of it is replacement parts. Like, and I know we're talking about tunnel controllers, but also we do a lot with MCCs as well. And so in the motor control centers, there's a lot of older motor starter technology that was used. It's come a long way in the last 20 years. But, you know, there's less and less that I'm seeing now. But, you know, use the older technology, use like a bake a light material is like a really brittle plastic and really expensive, hard to find. And so, you know, by upgrading those types of components and using different components like that, it allows the operators to then be able to get source and get parts quickly and get up and running much faster because there's the availability of some of those parts. And so, yeah, that was definitely one of the areas that we came in. We're like, wow, that's, you know, that's a big area that helps them to save money and increase their throughput. You know, we often say at the magazine, sure, that no two car washes are the same. So I understand like a custom solution or a custom control panel is something that that you see is valuable for car wash operators. So how can a custom solution improve reliability, responsiveness, and really long-term performance? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I definitely see that same thing. Like, there's no two tunnels out of the same. Even when you have a larger operation going on where they have, you know, if they're up in the hundreds of washes nationwide, I don't know that I've ever actually even in that situation seen two tunnels that are identical. There's always something that's a little bit different. They're improving in some way. They're changing something. And, and yeah, so, so having having the, you know, ton of control system as well as the motor control system, all those things like, you know, being customized to fit their needs is obviously huge, you know, and so, you know, particularly like with also the owners and operators are all different as well as distribution, right? So distributors are all very different from each other and how they operate. And so what we do is we come in and we go, okay, you know, how do you guys operate as a business? You know, what do you guys need? What do you look for? And what are the things that are going to help you succeed and empower you to be able to have the competence to service your customers? And, and we've noticed that that when we take that approach as opposed to like, you know, hey, this is our MCC design, conceptually, it's essentially the same for all of their customers. They don't really, you know, like sure, it's great. They have a factory and they make widgets, right? But like, we're going to take going and take the time to get to know the customer and go, look, we're going to get to know your needs and actually modify something to fit your needs as opposed to you trying to fit our needs. And so I think that that's where, you know, we've found a lot of successes is being able to get to know each individual customer and then provide for them what it is that they, you know, they want because, you know, you get one operator, he might be a tinkering cat type, you know, he's one or two, three, three locations, you know, and he's like, I want to get in there and change it myself. And, you know, it's like, he doesn't need that, you know, that super expensive motor control system or tunnel control system. He just needs something that's going to wash his cars. But when you got this multi operator chains, you know, like they need, they need the insight. They need the technology that sends them reports and they get data and, and things like that. And so, yeah, it's just a matter of just like getting to know the individuals and understand what their needs are. And that helps them then, you know, increase their efficiencies in their throughput, because if they're, if they're trying to use a product, they don't, they don't need, they're trying to fit a, you know, a square peg into a circle hole, they're going to be fighting that thing all the time. And instead of the headache and nobody wants that. Yeah, such an important point to make Troy, obviously, are the operator community as a whole is so unique. And I'm sure this is in other markets, but they're just in various stages. No two car washes are the same in terms of temperature and the factor that that result or affect clean dry and shiny. But even the operators themselves, like you said, you know, some are just happy with the one or two locations they have. And then there are others that, you know, have corporate back private equity, back to partners and sponsors. And they need that information line item by line item. They want all the this insight and, and it's critical for them to see. So, you know, as you mentioned, some are hands on some of more hands off. So as automation has accelerated across the car wash industry, where do you see it automation that is having the biggest impact inside the tunnel today? Are there any functions or features that are still kind of being underutilized by operators? Yeah, I mean, there's so much. I mean, it's I think it could be overwhelming for a thickly with smaller operators, the amount of functionality that there is available. But I think that, and I'm going to kind of lean on more of the motor control center side of it than the tunnel control side. As I feel like there's a lot of technology that's being used in a motor control center that is not being utilized effectively. So for example, this, there's a there was a buzz word of VFDs, right? And they everybody was talking about adding VFDs on all their stuff and that's going to save them energy and it's going to do this in that. And as people started implementing those systems, it was like, great, you got the hardware in place, but is the software actually doing, you know, programmed in such a way that's actually going to save you money because you can control VFD in a way to save you money, and you can control it in a way that acts just like a motor starter would. And you have zero cost savings or energy savings on on that side of things. So, so the thing that always surprises me is when I go into, you know, some of the bigger operators, they have all these VFDs in and none of them are programmed to save in them any energy. They, they still have air gates on their blowers and they have VFDs, which I'm a full supporter of air gates. They save energy as well. But like, not having the VFD program to reduce its speed in between vehicles or go into an idle mode or, you know, ramp up slowly, all those things like those things all save energy and, and, you know, nine times out of ten, I'm like, your systems aren't even programmed. Sure, you have to write hardware, and it's very, very expensive hardware, but you're not getting what you're supposed to be getting out of it. It's, it's wow, it blows me away. Yeah, certainly want to take advantage of everything, especially I hear as a water is going to become a bigger issue in this industry. Things like resource savings, energy savings, water savings, you know, if operators aren't feeling the effects of these things nowadays, surely in the future, it's going to be a bigger and bigger demand to kind of reduce some of the some of these or, or maybe emphasize some of these savings. But, you know, later on in this interview, try what I do want to talk about the future of all this, but just to have, you know, we've been having a conversation here for a few minutes and I can't think of another conversation I've had where AI and artificial intelligence hasn't already predominantly taking over the conversation. So I'll just try to insert a quick AI question and hear for you Troy, but where's the biggest impact AI is having today in the control system area of the tunnel car wash? Are you seeing any big effects yet or is it more possibilities of the AI integration? Yeah, I mean, the possibilities for AI are endless. I mean, you know, car wash industry outside of the industry, like it's endless and even within the industry, I have not seen it successfully in millennia yet, but I think that where AI could be most useful is by monitoring equipment. I think there's people are starting to monitor their equipment and car washes. The issue is it does, there's a larger capital expense up front for having the equipment to be able to simply monitor what's happening. But the information that's being produced and integrating that then with an AI interface that is then able to start like intelligently like trending. So for example, you know, we, you know, every, I mean, it's like every so often you might lose a blow or something like that and you're monitoring current, you're monitoring voltage, all those things, right? Over time, AI is going to learn like, oh, when we start seeing these voltage and current trends, we know that that motor is going to go bad on this day at this time. Like that's, that's the power that AI has to offer us. And so imagine your system instead of it, you know, you, you having a failure and you got to shut down your tunnel, your system is like, hey, you're going to have a failure on this date and it's actually accurate. It's not trying to sell you something. You know, it's not trying to sell you a service or whatever. Having a system that actually tells you like, hey, you might want to get that motor on order for your vacuum producer because I'm starting to see some things that actually represent when this other vacuum failed over in some other part of the world, you know, or whatever, you know, or other, you know, it's going to, it's going to consolidate all that data and use all that data as like this superhuman brain that is able to see everything, right? So over time, we're going to see a lot of intelligence into that sort of thing within the car wash industry. And so now you're going to be able to like have zero downtime. You're going to be like, oh, this is going to, this is going to fail tomorrow at 10 o'clock. Well, guess what? After closing tonight, we're going to replace it during closing hours. Cool. We're never down. We replace it, you know, we're not. And we also can trust that the information we're being told isn't from some, you know, sales guy that's trying to, you know, make a sale on a $10,000 dollar motor or whatever. Right, right. Like, this is like, this, that's, that's powerful to me. That's exciting to me because like, you give that power to the end user and they're able to then rest at ease and comfort knowing, like, I'm going to get the information that I need that isn't biased by, by an individual, you know. And so, yeah, that's, I don't know. As you can tell, I'm a little passionate about that because I'm just super excited about where this is going to go. I'm sure any operator out there who's listening to zero downtime and no disruptions to flow or anything like that, they're going to be pretty optimistic and happy to live that reality in the future as well. But all right. So, I want to know that we've talked a little bit about the future. Let's talk about car washes that have partnered with superior control and up their game in the tunnel with a great control system. Can you share any real world examples where superior control may be redesigned or upgraded a panel and delivered measurable increases and throughput and uptime for an operator? Yeah, I mean, do I have a time for a little bit of a story? Absolutely. Sure. Great. So, there was one of the, one of the first guys I ever did business with in the car wash industry was actually a bit of a criminal. Okay, that's some way to start a story. So, and some of the people that I know in the industry know exactly who I'm talking about, but I'm just going to call him Bob. Okay. And so, if I know any Bob's out there, or, you know, if you're listening, I'm not talking about you, Bob. I'm talking about the, the Bob of this story. It's not, not actually a guy named Bob. So, don't worry, Bob. Your secrets are safe with me. Fair enough. But anyway, so, so I met this guy and he walked me into a tunnel and we were looking at some of the stuff, you know, typical stuff, you know, old technology using, you know, ancient parts that seem like they're from the 70s. And, you know, I get, I get to know this guy and, and eventually, I find out that he's, he's connected to somebody that was part of the point shaving scandal years ago in college basketball. I'm not going to say which college because I might, you know, specify I loved it too much. But there were, there were a couple of times and doing business with him, where I was just kind of like, you know, but I mean, in the end, he was, he was a decent guy. Well, I shouldn't say that because like ultimately I ended up having to basically fire him as a customer because he stopped paying his bill, but that's a whole other story. So we're dealing with this guy, Bob, right? And he's walking me through this stuff. And yeah, it's just typical old technology. And, and he's like, what can we do better? You know, and, and he was, he was a part of a distribution team too. So it was, we were working through the, the distributor. And so they kind of had their equipment set that they, they wanted and, and some of the key features and, and so we were able to kind of walk through everything and like, give him a price that, you know, like, in this, in this particular situation, we didn't really know like, like how some of the stuff are structured in terms of list pricing and discounts and, you know, stuff like that. We're just like, hey, this is our price for your products, you know, like to our sale price to you. We're not going to, you know, go out and retail market this thing. And anyway, so I ultimately ended up saving. I'm like, I want to say like 40% of off of what they were currently paying. And so they had like, you know, really deep margins on, on their product and moving forward. And it was a smaller package. And it gave them all the information they needed. And back then, this was before some of these information sort of stuff that that's been coming out. And so it had some indicator lights on it and things like that. But in the end, that actually helped them to be able to troubleshoot things a lot quicker. They could send their team out and they're like, oh, this is what, you know, there's a low level on this particular piece of equipment or whatever it is, you know. And, yeah, and we, you know, we really satisfied them in that way. And I had to learn to listen the hard way that the car wash industry, you know, historically attracted a lot of criminals. Like right, with all cash basis, right? I mean, no, there's no secret. But, you know, there were criminals that got involved in the car wash industry for that very purpose, you know, laundering money or whatever it is. And so I think that that some of that culture within the car wash industry still like, you know, was sort of permeated through even in the early 2000s, you know, is when I entered the industry. And so I think that might have been a part of what I experienced there. And I had to learn that lesson the hard way that in the car wash industry, you got to get, you got to get your money upfront before, before you deliver. Otherwise, you may not ever get paid. I can neither confirm or deny these, these accusations. But yes, certainly not the first time I've heard of some bizarre requests out there. I mean, a lot has changed. There's a three-large change. The cash business is obviously not as prominent. They, you know, with the, I've been a pay stations and memberships like that. That was a game changer. Those two things in the industry changed the game like it probably in the biggest way in car wash history. You know, like having having those two components because now you're not dealing with cash basis. You're essentially a lot of the quote unquote criminal activity started to subside. There's still some bad apples out there. But nowadays I feel like there's a lot more good people in the car wash industry than there was at least when I first entered. Or sure. So if you do have a customer, a new customer, a Troy, can you walk me through, like say, it reaches car wash, right? I come to you as a person that doesn't really have an advanced control system at my car wash. What's kind of the timeline? How fast can you get me to savings once I have the conversation with you? What's needed hardware, software? What's that? I have any downtime. What can you tell me about the process to get me up and running, I guess? Yeah, yeah. No, I love that. So there's another example that a story I want to share. There was a customer. So we're based in Phoenix, Arizona. We had a customer that called us that they just started their, their scaling, right? So they're like, hey, we're, we're just kind of like getting started. We actually bought four locations in Texas. And, and we need to, you know, rehab all the equipment and then which also means the motor controls and tunnel controls are also going to be needed to be replaced. And so the interesting thing was in that particular instance, I happened to be going to Texas like the next week. And I was like, I was like, hey, can you send me the addresses of all these locations? And they're like, sure, you know, so they send me the addresses. And I'm like, man, this is like, if I, if I took a loop around, around this Texas area, it's probably only about an hour drive time from start to finish to hit all four locations. I tell them, I said, hey, do you mind if I just walk through your tunnel and, you know, walk through the equipment room and jot down some notes? And they're like, yeah, that'd be great. You know, like, we have, we have a list of all the things that, you know, we're going to swap. We'll give you that as well. And then everything else is going to stay. So I'm like, cool. So I walk through the whole tunnel. I walk through every, every, you know, motor horse power, all the voltages, got it all, talked to him a little bit about like installing air gates for the blowers, as well as potentially some VFDs and things like that. And so there was actually, was it three or four? I think it was four. Anyway, so we walked through all the locations, got them all done, gave them a proposal within probably a week after I walked the site. And so in two weeks time, they really didn't even have to provide me with much information. I was able to give them that price. They were ready to pull the trigger. And so that's obviously a big factor is like, hey, you know, whenever you get your deposit money and your, you know, your contract in place, and that's when we can get things started, right? From there, it, it was, it took, what was it? I think six to eight weeks on the first delivery. And then they wanted to stagger every two weeks for the other ones. And so we were able to ship the first one out in a six to eight week time frame, then another two weeks later, ship the next one, no two weeks later, ship the next one. And then once they got those, the equipment showed up on site, they had installers that were able to, you know, do it all. And they had their own construction timelines that they were following. So, you know, I guess in that particular case, it was about two, two months to three month time window, from the first conversation to when things were up and running. And now, you know, obviously a lot has changed, you know, that particular story happened pre-COVID. I think we've recovered for the most part from from a lot of that that went on all the shenanigans then. But yeah, that's that's a pretty typical situation for us where we, you know, gets to know the customer, go out, take care of things, and then they start to realize those savings, you know, right, like right when they get the equipment installed. So, yeah. And any special training or any special specialized knowledge somebody needs to maintain and kind of read these systems to improve efficiencies. You know, not necessarily, I mean, it depends, that's an, it depends answer. The customer, right? Like, like, if the customer has a team in place, a maintenance team in place, an installing team in place, there's really no training that has to happen. I mean, I'll spend time with customers for, you know, for about an hour or two on startup and just talk a little bit about the system. They might have a few questions here and there, but it's all pretty self-explanatory, you know, especially with like with the systems that we try to put in with with touchscreens and HMI's, the user interface is really a critical part for us, where we want to make sure that customer is able to navigate it. Like, like, I mean, we've got our cell phones, right? Like, you don't need a user manual on how to use your cell phone. You know, that's the approach we take when we design our systems. It's like, we're giving them a very complex machine. And so we don't want them to have to go through a really big learning curve and training process in order to use our product. So we're going to design it in a way that makes it intuitive and makes it easy to use. So there's very minimal training that that's required. Now, you know, I'm not sure about your experience. I don't know. Have you ever been in a tunnel controller or an MCC or wired up anything? I personally, I have not. I stick to the pen in the paper. So it might be a little differently to get you up to speed on something, but you might be able to set some some of the touch screen parameters and make sense of all that. But but when you start opening cabinets and stuff, that's where, you know, obviously a technician is somebody that's that's needed for things like that. Sounds good. So it sounds like for if you have the right setup and the right people, it's a pretty plug-and-play situation. As long as you're not doing any nefarious or criminal activity, it's crazy to install and get up and running with. But, you know, we talked about this a little bit earlier in the conversation, Troy. And obviously, wash sites are becoming more connected and certainly control panels are evolving. How are control panels evolving to integrate more data and more remote diagnostics and predictive insights? What role will smart panels play in the future? Let's say the next three to five years here. Yeah. I mean, you know, as I was saying before with the advent of AI, I think that there's going to be a lot of advancements. And as this information is collected and we get historic data in the AI models, you know, that's that's really going to be a huge impact. I also want to talk a little bit about something that's not necessarily tunnel control or motor control system related, but that I'm still waiting for to happen in the car wash industry. I'm still waiting for an equipment revolution. So rather than top brushes, wraps, blowers, you know, arches with chemicals spraying out. Rather than that, I've been waiting for robots to take over the tunnel. I can't wait for that time that when that happens because that's going to be so much fun. I mean, you know, and really a lot of the technology is there. I think one of the things that one of the I think barriers that entry for robots right now is is some of the the environmental issues in an existing tunnel environment, like there's a lot of water, a lot of chemicals, a lot of moisture, a lot of that kind of stuff floating around in the air that's in a enclosed tunnel. And so robots have, you know, IP ratings, I go up to like IP67, but the IP67 when it's exposed to a car wash environment, which I think is very different than other corrosive environments, industrial environments that they're involved in, they seem to break down. Like even with LED lights, you know, even IP67 will have a tendency to break down. I'm not saying it always does, but it can, it can tend to break down. And so I'm just, I like said, I'm just like really waiting for that day where somebody's like, you know what, I'm going to build a tunnel and it's not going to have any equipment in it at all. It's going to be all robots. Wouldn't that be interesting, right? We just wrapped up our our December issue of PCND magazine and there was an advertisement in it that that was promoting a robotic solution. So those days might be coming sooner rather than later Troy. We'll have to wait and say you're right. All right, so looking ahead, are you outside of robotics, right? And fewer mischievous people in the industry, let's say we're emerging technologies or trends, whether they be in systems, automation, safety, tunnel intelligence. What, what emerging trends or technologies do you see having the biggest impact on how operators both build and manage tunnels? That's a question because I, I believe in the next 10 to 15 years, I believe that cars as we know it will not be what they are, which will change the car washing industry in a big way. Yes, there will still be cars on the roads. Yes, there will still be cars needing car washes. But the way that we move around as humans around the world is going to change drastically. And particularly because of the advent of AI, I mean drones have already been before AI have been something that have been being developed and automated in ways that to me just don't make any sense just because somebody weighs smarter than me designed them. But I did recently see that there is essentially a human sized drone you can actually pay to ride in in Las Vegas right now. And so like is that on is that on the ground or in the air? No, in the air in the air. Wow. So you can actually personal transportation your own aviation. That's like you remember the Jetsons, right? Of course. How about that? And you were saying yeast is currently available in Los Angeles right now. You can buy one for $250,000. Is that all? Okay. But like the first car, like you know, what is it? You know, Ford Henry Ford, everybody was like, you're crazy. Nobody's going to be able to afford this thing. You know, that's crazy. What are you doing? He's like, no, I'm on a mission. I got a vision. Everybody's going to be driving these things in the entire country. And here we are driving cars around like nobody, nobody's business, right? Nobody even thinks about it. But Henry Ford, when he came up with that idea, he thought everybody was, you know, everybody else thought he was crazy. And now here we are, you know, looking at a $250,000 personal drone. And I guarantee you in X 10, 15 years mark my words. We're going to be flying drones around. That'd be something. I'm sure a lot of people were doing this interview here during the holiday season. Actually, I'm thanks giving week. And I'm sure a lot of people wish they had a personal drone to fly them from point A to point B is they're dealing with cancellations and delays in the airport. So all right, 10 to 15 years. That I'll mark it on my calendar, Troy. And I'll have to check back with you then. So I appreciate you taking some time with me today to walk me through some of the things that a superior control has been involved in in the market and where you see the control system playing apart in the tunnel car wash and maybe where it's going to play a role in the future and what that looks like. So certainly appreciate you taking some time during this holiday season to do this interview with carwash.com Troy. Yeah, it's my pleasure. I loved it. This was great. I hope to be invited back. It was a too much of a nerd. Yeah, but I really try. Take care.