Burke Anders started working at a Phillips 66 filling station when he was a young man. Now he is the equipment manager at Columbia Country Club in Blythewood, SC. Anders spent many years traveling the Carolinas while working for Smith Turf and Irrigation, the Toro distributor for that area, as a mobile service technician. He has a wealth of knowledge on turf equipment.
Transcript
Trent Manning: 0:05
welcome to the reel turf techs podcast for the technician that wants to get reel follow along. As we talk to industry professionals and address hot topics that we all face along the way we’ll learn tips and tricks. I’m your host, Trent. Manning let’s have some Welcome to the real turf text podcast. Episode 86. Today, we’re talking to Burke Anders equipment manager at Columbia country club and Blockwood South Carolina. Columbia country club is a private 27 hole facility. And Burke is the loan technician in the shop. Let’s talk to Burke. welcome Burke to the Real Turf Text podcast. How you doing today?
Burke Andres: 0:48
I am great, Trent. Thanks for having me.
Trent Manning: 0:50
Thank you so much for being here. Tell us how you got into the turf industry.
Burke Andres: 0:55
Oh man. Boring story. uh, was a suit and tie briefcase kind of guy forever. Uh, up until about time I was 30 and, uh, the economy kind of crashed up in Northern Virginia. And so I tried to get my new wife and kids back down to the Carolinas, which is kind of where I’m from. And, uh, I knew that I didn’t wanna work in an office again. So before we, uh, when we had our last child, I decided to change career fields and started working on heavy equipment, tractors, trailers, stuff like that for about a year before we moved. and she had a mason. Contracting family business. Uh, so we ended up shutting that down, packing up everything. And she had a job down in North Carolina. And, uh, the only person I knew down in Eastern North Carolina, the Wilmington area, which is where he ended up moving, was I had a sister there and she was sending me newspapers. This is pre-internet.
Trent Manning: 1:52
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 1:53
And, uh, so I was getting ’em about a week late and I had an advertisement in there. I saw, for a golf course mechanic. Not a clue, to be honest with you. It’s a very hidden industry. Uh, I had, I had golfed before, but I’d never even seen a maintenance building, much less the equipment and the infrastructure involved in keeping a property like that up.
Trent Manning: 2:14
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 2:15
And, uh, so I, I answered a page basically is all we had back then. And so I was on my commute into Washington, DC. And, uh, I pulled off side the road, got on a pay fund, and I called Terry Warick down at Old Point in Hamstead, North Carolina. And I said, listen, I said, I, I just got your, your, your beep, so to speak. I, my wife already has a job down there. I’m moving down there in a month. So looking for work, uh, have you found anybody? I have to explain to him. I’m getting a paper a week late. And he said, well, I’ve talked to a couple of people, but, uh, I’m willing to talk to more. You know, I, I, he said, can you, where are you? And I told him I was in Northern Virginia and he said, well, can you come Saturday? And I said, yep. So I basically just, I said, I can’t come before Saturday. This is like a Wednesday or Thursday. I said, I just had the heads off of a van and I think the guy that took it apart ought to put it back together. So let me finish that job up and I’ll get there on Saturday. So I drove down Saturday. I spent, uh, maybe three hours with him. I walked through the garage and I see this board up there with all the employees names. And then I look into this huge garage full of equipment and he had a backhoe in there and some other things I was familiar with, but I didn’t know what any of these mowers were, you know? And after a little bit of talking with him, he says, so you think you can fix about anything in here? I said, yeah. He said, I’ll teach you the only thing that’s unique to golf course, which is the reels.
Trent Manning: 3:52
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 3:53
So I said, well, I’ll, I can do that. You’re gonna show me how to do it. That’s fine. So he hired me on the spot. I had scheduled a vacation and needed to move down. I said my first week will be X week. I forget what it was, somewhere around 1st of November. And he said, well, he said, I’m leaving the day after you’re gonna start on his vacation. So I showed up, met with him, gave me the keys to the shop, and then he’s gone for a week.
Trent Manning: 4:18
Wow. Okay.
Burke Andres: 4:20
First thing I do is I look at this backhoe and the guy’s out there trying to move it around and he’s trying to crank it and it keeps chirping the starter on the flywheel, I don’t know if you know this, but most engines stop in the same little clock position 90% of the time just from the compression and the engine. When you shut ’em off, they stopped there
Trent Manning: 4:39
right.
Burke Andres: 4:40
and I said, I think he needs a ring gear. So I went and got me a ring gear that week, separated his backhoe in this golf course garage, and, uh, had ring gear in, had the flywheel on the concrete. I had torch in there. I was getting ready to heat it up, and at the end of the day I said, well, I’ll get it tomorrow morning. Well, he beats me to work that next morning and he sees his backup split apart, and he’s like, what? In the It had no idea. Imagine that a, a golf course mechanic would do work like that. And I, he, he, he just lost his mind. He took my backhoe apart, you know, so I got that all back together. And, uh, he was a gentle, he’s a huge guy, but just a gentle ben of a guy. Turned out to be a really good friend. And, uh, he said, look, he said, I’ll let you spend all the time in the world you want learning this stuff. He showed me what he could about the reels. He, he pointed in the corner over there and said, there’s this little single blade grinder in there. I didn’t know what real grinding was at that point. And he said, Don’t worry. He said, these are our distributors. And he, he showed me this write up on the board of the distributor names and supplier names and at that time he had like seven hardware guys show up every month, five or six chemical guys show up every month. And he said, look, he said, these are your distributors. I didn’t know what distributor was. He said, you have any questions or problems you call these guys. And at the time they had a picture on the board on a cork board and it had a picture of Robert Short. Now Robert Short was one of the guys at STI I Smith Turf and Irrigation in Charlotte that taught me most of what I know about reels once I got into their schooling. And uh, it was asked Robert and it used to be asked George, I don’t know if you ever met George Dias, but George Dias
Trent Manning: 6:33
No.
Burke Andres: 6:33
was his predecessor. So at any rate, the reason I gravitated towards Toro was because they were the only ones that had a free help line. So I could call and say, look, you know, I’ve got this kind of issue going on, and they could walk me through in their head, you need to go to this full valve, remove this cap, sit, get this center, and screw setback. You know, and I’m like, holy cow. You know? So when it came time to get some formal training in turf equipment that’s where he sent me. So he sent me to Smith Turf and Irrigation in Charlotte, and I started going to some of the, Kohler update classes, bridges and Stratton update classes on generators and all sorts of weird stuff. But anything I could get, and when I say anything I could get, there was nothing.
Trent Manning: 7:20
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so what, back up just a little bit. What year was this?
Burke Andres: 7:25
I don’t want to tell you
Trent Manning: 7:26
Okay. All right.
Burke Andres: 7:28
by the time this interview’s finished, you’re gonna have a real good idea.
Trent Manning: 7:31
Okay. All right. That’s fine.
Burke Andres: 7:33
yeah, let’s just play that game. I can tell you it was pre-internet. I can tell you that our, our greens were being cut, cutting edge. Now three sixteens.
Trent Manning: 7:43
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Burke Andres: 7:45
Most people were pulling, pulling, fair, pulling gang units down in fairways.
Trent Manning: 7:50
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 7:51
there were no self-contained fairway units other than maybe a park master, if you want to call that a fairway unit.
Trent Manning: 7:57
right?
Burke Andres: 7:58
Some ancient stuff. We were using 1970s trap rakes,
Trent Manning: 8:03
Yep.
Burke Andres: 8:03
And old GM three s with the cable steering,
Trent Manning: 8:07
Okay.
Burke Andres: 8:08
big, big wide steering wheels. So that’s the equipment I cut my teeth on.
Trent Manning: 8:12
Okay.
Burke Andres: 8:13
And uh, so I go to the very first class at Snitch Irrigation, and it is a Foley representative a demonstration with Steve Hamilton. That’s a different Steve Hamilton from a DUNS club down in Myrle Beach.
Trent Manning: 8:27
Okay. Yep.
Burke Andres: 8:28
Steve Hamilton’s superintendent, this is Steve Hamilton in Charlotte. I’ve known both those guys for forever.
Trent Manning: 8:34
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 8:35
Anyway, they’re showing me and demonstrating this big six 50 and fully enclosed, fully automated grinder.
Trent Manning: 8:42
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 8:43
And he says, what kind of grinders do you have in your shop? And I’m like, I don’t know. I hadn’t even dusted it off. I have no idea. You know, what a waste of time. It was great to see the technology and everything that was there. but there was nothing they could possibly teach me about grinding. He was teaching us how to use his machine
Trent Manning: 8:58
Right,
Burke Andres: 8:59
and that was the only kind of things we had access to. It was very difficult. So, another little quirk about the times, I had about four, maybe five different sets of bearings up on the wall, not even in bags. I had set four set, 14 set sixes, set sixteens, and there was another set. And they’re just sitting there on hooks on a peg board
Trent Manning: 9:24
Okay.
Burke Andres: 9:24
everything. They would fit every reel, they would fit rollers, everything. This is a time when everybody just single blade grinded. If you had a grinder
Trent Manning: 9:34
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 9:35
and you would lap in your surface head, and I remember a superintendent from a neighboring golf course came over, uh, right shortly after I started and. He starts on the weekend and starts taking apart the gang unit, evidently every winter. That was a routine because to grind the reel at that time, you had to take the reel out of frame
Trent Manning: 9:55
Oh, okay. and so
Burke Andres: 9:57
had to put it the reel into points to center it, and then you centered it edge to edge with threaded rod and nuts.
Trent Manning: 10:05
okay,
Burke Andres: 10:06
That was how you got it close.
Trent Manning: 10:09
well,
Burke Andres: 10:09
you did it one blade at a time.
Trent Manning: 10:11
I’ve heard everybody talk about, yeah, the single blade real grinder, but so that just ground a relief and then You
Burke Andres: 10:20
You do a hundred percent relief and then you lap in your eggs. Right? Then you hook it up to a lap in machine and you would lap in your eggs and when you sent it out, 12 foot rooster tails. I mean, it’s just beautiful
Trent Manning: 10:32
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Burke Andres: 10:33
after they drug it with the reels and g through a gravel parking lot, of
Trent Manning: 10:37
Right, right.
Burke Andres: 10:38
But those were times when the, uh, The metallurgy, so to speak. The, the bearing and race would take a set. So when you had to pull ’em down, you had to keep ’em together. This bearing ran in this race, this bearing, ran in this race. I go in there and he’s got all the bearings on one piece of plywood, all the races on another. He’s got ’em all everywhere. And I just by lost my mind and I’m like, well, good luck being dependable. We’re gonna put it back together the best we can. So that was my first set of reels and the first type of reels that are ever ground. There were no spin grinders. Keep in mind that I’m in a small little hamlet of Hamstead, North Carolina that has three golf courses all from the seventies, I think maybe. And one of ’em doesn’t even have a mechanic. The other one had a mechanic that was, uh, he just got outta the Marine Corps. I don’t know really what his background was, but it wasn’t. Really quote a professional mechanic. I, I was the only guy that I knew that really had any mechanical background doing what I was doing. And so I tried to get to know others close by. And so I got to know Gene Co. Gene Collins down in Wilmington, uh, at Cape Fear and a few others down in Wilmington area. And we got kind of a relationship going between the golf course techs where, you know, look, I need a rear roller for a 3,100. I’ll order one. Can I have one for this weekend? He would grab one off the shelf, give it to me, and I just, when I got it in, I’d return it. The GMs didn’t like that. The superintendents didn’t like that, but we were gonna do what we had to do
Trent Manning: 12:16
Yeah. Well, good for y’all.
Burke Andres: 12:18
Yeah. And that’s all we had, to be honest with you. So I insisted, you know, right from the get-go, seeing the shortcomings of that position and that industry. Of what needed to happen. I said, one, we need an educational track. I had heard that there was a Lake City College down in Florida and that there was nothing local. There was only one certifying body. It used to be O P E and then it became O P E I, uh, and then eventually E E T C, engine Equipment Training Council. And they’re very outdoor power equipment oriented. But that’s all we had.
Trent Manning: 12:57
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 12:58
So I went ahead and, uh, got ahold of them. I said, you know, we couldn’t afford, lemme tell you, I was making $7 and 50 cents an hour as a mechanic
Trent Manning: 13:10
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 13:11
raising a family of four.
Trent Manning: 13:13
Yeah. Unbelievable.
Burke Andres: 13:15
Yeah. So that gives you some kind of idea of the time period. I went to Old Point Golf and Country Club, which is my first course. Was there two or three years? Then I shifted over for $2 an hour more over to Belvedere Plantation. They had just been bought by a couple of new owners, and they immediately commenced to putting in an affluent water system. They had dump trucks and bulldozers and through all sorts of money into this place. So I went through that construction and that rebuild, and I was working at that time for my second superintendent, who was Alan Jarvis. last I talked to Alan, I think he was at Granddaddy down in Myrtle Beach.
Trent Manning: 13:55
Okay.
Burke Andres: 13:56
Yeah, I think he’s, he’s probably still there, but he had an assistant working for him named Alan Smith. They call ’em aj. And then they decided they were gonna build another golf course. Uh, Randy Blaton out of Wilmington, uh, had sold his family’s, his father’s family’s heating and air conditioning business, and he decided he wanted to be a golf course owner and he gonna build a golf. So he broke ground, gonna be a link style course. AJ went over there to become his superintendent and took me with him.
Trent Manning: 14:26
Okay.
Burke Andres: 14:27
So there have now gotta grow in. So it’s first in, last out for years. It, you know, at at least two years before we even thought about opening on about the third year. I think we’re getting ready to open. Every EM ought to do that once. Fair warning. Do it when you’re young.
Trent Manning: 14:46
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yep.
Burke Andres: 14:48
I could, I could never do it at my age at this point. Uh, you need to do it in your thirties, so I did the grow in, and right before we Mark Clark approached me and said, look, he said, we’re expanding our mobile fleet. At that time, Smith Turf and Irrigation had Walt Sizemore and Mark Clark. Walt was outta Charlotte. Mark was outta Charleston. And they were wanting to bring on a third guy.
Trent Manning: 15:13
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 15:14
He said, here, call Bob Bell. Tell him who you are. Tell him I recommended you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, I ended up getting in touch with Bruce Barton. Bruce Barton was the new head of the service division. And so I had to meet with him first and he evidently walked through the garage and asked Walt and some of the other senior guys said, you know, have you ever heard of this Burke Anders fella? And Walt’s like, I’ve never heard of it. And I think Mark spoke up and said, well, he is got a full fleet of Torah. And I said, so if you haven’t heard of him, he must know what he’s doing, It’s,
Trent Manning: 15:46
yeah. Yeah. Good
Burke Andres: 15:46
he’s not calling you at all. So I, I can tell you, he’s got a nice full set of Toros, so he’s doing okay. So I’m up there on a Saturday. Again, I love interviewing on Saturday. I show up, I met with Bob Bell, met with Bruce Barton, and the owner, Wayne Smith, popped in, said hello, got to meet me a little bit. He didn’t just happen to be there. He came in on a Saturday to meet a prospective new employee. That’s what kind of company they are. They’re a fourth generation family run fits. And, uh, absolutely the highlight of my career, spending the time with them, they, they really do treat you like family. and I was concerned. I only had about eight or nine years experience in turf equipment. And I looked at Bruce and I said, Bruce, I said, what if I can’t do this job? You know, what if I fail? He said, we’re not gonna let you fail.
Trent Manning: 16:40
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 16:40
And he said, we’ll put the horsepower behind you, and right out the box. He said, we’re gonna send you to every educational thing we possibly can because it’s important you think about this. I’m a mobile guy and I’m the guy that’s got to have the answers. By the time they call me either one, it’s under warranty and they don’t wanna be bothered with it. It’s my obligation to go in there and make ’em happy. Okay. Half of my jobs at that point were customer pay. Where you got an EM that’s been working on something and it may not be a Toro, it might be a Jacobson Greens king, but he’s been working on something for a week and can’t figure it out. So they call a warranty guy in there and I don’t mind. I don’t care what I’m working on, I’ll fix anything. So most of the time you’re the hero, but you gotta realize I didn’t have any idea of the scope and breadth of that career field nationwide, much less worldwide.
Trent Manning: 17:35
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
Burke Andres: 17:36
everybody out there was like me and I’m rolling in on technicians that have been doing what I’ve been doing for eight to 10 years, for 25 years. And I think when I started I had nothing. What did these guys have?
Trent Manning: 17:50
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Burke Andres: 17:52
You know? So I, I, I act like the old man and I that I started with nothing. But those guys really started with nothing.
Trent Manning: 17:58
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 17:59
I’ve met a few of them and they’re talking about using the, the rim of a 55 gallon drum as 11 table. I mean,
Trent Manning: 18:07
Oh,
Burke Andres: 18:07
do what you do what you gotta do, right?
Trent Manning: 18:10
Yeah. Yep.
Burke Andres: 18:11
So Bruce, my, my boss at Smith there said, you have to be able to hold your own with technicians with two and three times your experience. I gotta make sure that you know more than they do.
Trent Manning: 18:23
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 18:24
And so he immediately put us on the fast track through, uh, factory education and continuing education. And he had it at the time. Which encompassed both the irrigation side and the turf equipment side cause called STI University. And that was where the, the big wigs at the distributorship would put on customer appreciation events. They would bring in end users, which is what I call all of us, uh, the guys that end up with the equipment and end up with the irrigation installs. They bring them in, maybe take ’em to a NASCAR race, do some golf. So I showcased some of the irrigation stuff, run through some training on diagnosing your irrigation systems and with the equipment side. So we started going to that kind of stuff. After two or three years we had blossomed up to about seven guys, seven mobile guys.
Trent Manning: 19:11
Okay.
Burke Andres: 19:12
And uh, then one day Bruce comes to me and says, uh, I’d like for you to teach an electrical class for. At Charlotte for the end users, the equipment matches. And I said, well, okay, I can do that. So I stopped by what is then a Barnes and Noble again, this is practically pre-internet, you know, So I stopped by a Barnes and Noble and I get a basic electrical book. It’s basically a electrician’s book for an apprentice, somebody who wants to be an electrician. And it, I got through about the first 16, 20 pages and I was already beyond anything we ever experienced. So all I needed was the fundamentals, molecular theory, OMS law, that kind of stuff.
Trent Manning: 19:55
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 19:56
So I took that and I started teaching electrical class. Then they had the wise decision, of sending us to factory training, primarily just the mobile. He would send the best that they, the best that distributors have is the mobile team because they’re almost purely a hundred percent diagnostic. most if you want a crack technician, you don’t need to find an old fart that’s been sitting in a cave at one shop with his equipment and his tools on the wall. If you want a guy that has a, a wide breadth of knowledge and experience, you gotta get ahold of a row guy. Even if he’s only road on the road for one year or three years. That ramps him up to about 10 years experience almost instantly because you’re seeing so much of, such a variety of things, uh, that you get really, really good at going to the problem and going through a process. And I’ve always told people that it doesn’t matter what you’re working on, whether it’s a vacuum cleaner or a space shuttle,
Trent Manning: 21:01
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 21:02
process is the same and they get me in trouble. You know, I, I feel like the guy in the SL blade, you know, you walk up there and I ain’t got no gas. Well, I go in there and the guy’s having trouble with the unit and I said, did you check the gas? Did you check the oil? Did you check the belt temp? You know, and yes, yeah, I did this, that and the other. I’m like, and I check it behind them. I said, look, I, no offense, but if I don’t do it and I don’t validate it, I can’t go to step two into step three, into step four. Cause my first two steps are garbage. I can’t validate that. So it gets you in hot water once in a while,
Trent Manning: 21:37
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 21:38
but you have to stick to your guns. You have to nut. A lot of times I’ll get a phone call. I’m going down the road. Five hours of my day is windshield time, and so I’m fixing machines going down the road.
Trent Manning: 21:51
Oh yeah. Yep.
Burke Andres: 21:52
And a guy will get on the phone and he’ll say, yeah, this is Steve. Can you be a little more specific? I’ve got like 15 Steves in my phone, right?
Trent Manning: 22:01
Uhhuh
Burke Andres: 22:03
So I figure out who they are and they, I’ve done this, this, I’ve been trying this. I just slow down. What are we working on? they tell me the unit, well, I’ve done this, this, all right, what was the original problem? And I backed them up and I said, look, did you work on it prior to the issue that you’re having right now? What did you do to it? So I have to get in my mind what machine they’re working on, what they did to it before they started having a problem. And then what the problem probably was to begin with without thinking about and without hearing what all they done to it. Then I can get to the questions. Did you check this? Did you check this? Yeah. I’ve got 12 volts. What’d you? Yeah. Charge your battery. Excuse me. I got 12 volts. Well, what’d you test it with? A test light. So, okay, put AEM multi meter on it. Alright, I got 12 volts. All right, charge your battery. But I’ve got 12 vols. I said it’s about 75%. Charge your battery
Trent Manning: 23:02
Uhhuh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. For sure. Yep.
Burke Andres: 23:07
at the factory. They, they teach us to go where the work’s being done. In other words, if I’m having a, cut issue with a right front rotary on a big trim unit, they tell you to go to the deck motor and look for the right flow. Are you getting what you’re supposed to be getting there? If you are, it’s bad motor.
Trent Manning: 23:31
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 23:32
If you’re not work upstream. And there’s, there’s a process to that. And the reason you do that is, is multiple, but. The main reason is the components at the end of the line are less expensive than the components at the front of the line,
Trent Manning: 23:47
That’s true. Yep.
Burke Andres: 23:48
you know, so you’re working your way through a motor, through lines, through valves, solar valves, monoblocks. Then eventually to the pump. And the pump, all it’s doing is producing flow.
Trent Manning: 23:59
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 24:00
Guy call me and say, I want you to come pressure test my Greens Mart. No. Do I need to flow test your greens mart or are you having a specific problem? Well, I just wanna make sure it’s a hundred percent. Well, it wasn’t a hundred percent when it was new.
Trent Manning: 24:12
right? Yeah. Yeah.
Burke Andres: 24:14
It was doing about 98% efficient at best because it’s using some of that flow for cooling. It’s using some of that flow for lubrication. Not all the fluid that goes out of a pump or even goes into a pump is doing output at all. It’s being used for other functions. So it’s a matter of the lesser, the worst component. Maybe you try and identify and straighten that out with electrical. They tell you to do the same thing, go where the problem is at the end and work backwards. I never do, I do the opposite. I start at the battery because a very high percentage of them are connection and battery voltage issues.
Trent Manning: 24:55
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 24:55
So I always start with the good power source and I work the opposite direction with the electrical contrary to their, their teaching.
Trent Manning: 25:03
Right, right, right. Yeah. No, that makes sense.
Burke Andres: 25:06
So Smith turf turns around and says, well, I want all of our row guys to pass the four basic E E T C tests before we’re gonna send you to factory training. Now the factories take on this, they’re willing to go to the expense and time to train distributor technicians. They will let an EM go as part of a package. They’ll take you up to Toro and it’s a meet and greet. They show you their paint facility. They, you know, they show you how they make the reels, that kind of stuff. It’s not near what the distributor techs go through.
Trent Manning: 25:37
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 25:38
So in order for them to, their idea is they’ll teach distributor technicians and they leave it to the distributor technicians to pass that knowledge out to the field. Then they can’t possibly train end user equipment mechanics, they can’t. Uh, so you had to get all four, you had to pass all four of the basics, electric hydraulic real technology, and I forget what the fourth one was.
Trent Manning: 26:06
engines.
Burke Andres: 26:07
like seven or eight disciplines. The problem with that is I’m a little OC D about being a perfectionist. And I said, well, if you’re gonna make me take four of ’em, taking all of ’em. So I went through all of ’em, got all seven, and got a master E E T C certification,
Trent Manning: 26:21
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 26:21
and now I’m going to factory schools. That is an education. The value in that is, They don’t have to teach you how to read electrical schematics. They don’t have to teach you how to lead hydraulic schematics.
Trent Manning: 26:34
Right, right, right. Yep.
Burke Andres: 26:36
They can immediately jump into very high level training. If we have time, I’ll go into some of the sprayer training that I went through. It’s that,
Trent Manning: 26:44
to hear that for
Burke Andres: 26:45
that was, that was an adventure. At any rate, all of our mobile guys had to pass those to get to the factory school. And any shop guys, shop foreman and head head technicians, they had to pass them to get into the factory school. So if they wanted to advance, that’s what they had to do. And he made it where even the regular technicians, the new technicians had to at least attempt them, because I don’t, shouldn’t have to tell you this. I probably got a three quarter inch thick file of certifications.
Trent Manning: 27:14
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 27:15
That’s not valuable to me at all.
Trent Manning: 27:17
right, right.
Burke Andres: 27:18
It was a learning process, studying for those tests where you get the value.
Trent Manning: 27:24
Yes, exactly right.
Burke Andres: 27:26
I learned how much I did not know about two strokes,
Trent Manning: 27:30
Oh,
Burke Andres: 27:31
just studying for the two stroke test.
Trent Manning: 27:33
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 27:33
no idea. There were so many different configurations of a two stroke. I said, this is ought to be baby food. This would be piece of cake. And oddly enough, I considered electrical my weak point. And so I studied really hard for it and I did the, I got the best score on the electrical of all the other tests that I took because I put the effort into it.
Trent Manning: 27:52
when you were talking about teaching electrical. And I think that that teaches you more about any subject, because you gotta teach it, so you’re going to know, know all the ins and outs.
Burke Andres: 28:06
It’s like learning piano as an instrument. It, he helps you with any instrument once you know the piano well, electrical’s kind of that way.
Trent Manning: 28:15
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 28:15
And I remember pre-op in a class one time on the early ttac sessions, I was doing an electrical class. And you gotta realize that, well, I, I’m gonna tell you this first. When I started looking for material to present graphics and PowerPoint slides or whatever I could get at the time, you know, where I found that material on molecular theory, neutrons, protons, electrons, that kind of stuff.
Trent Manning: 28:39
no idea.
Burke Andres: 28:40
My middle son was a teacher and he turned me onto a teacher’s resource website.
Trent Manning: 28:45
Oh, okay.
Burke Andres: 28:46
I found it in fifth grade curriculum.
Trent Manning: 28:49
Uhhuh. Yep.
Burke Andres: 28:51
That’s how long it had been since these 40 year old technicians had seen electrons, neutrons and protons
Trent Manning: 28:57
Right, right. Yeah.
Burke Andres: 28:59
so I immediately start off a class like that and I’m explaining to ’em that, you know, the tiniest things that we possibly can’t see, you know, electrons, neutrons, protons, going through the periodic table. To the biggest things that we can’t possibly imagine so far away. Celestial bodies, moons, and planets and solar systems. So they’re all governed by the same physics. And I see pre-op in the back of the class going, wow, It’s
Trent Manning: 29:29
That’s awesome.
Burke Andres: 29:30
it like, wow. So I love teaching that. when I moved to Orangeburg, I got invited to every church in the area.
Trent Manning: 29:39
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 29:40
They’re just the nicest people out here in the middle of the country. Have you ever been invited to a church and the pastor stand up and say, well, I want you to stand up and give the guy next to you a hug. That kind of stuff always made me feel kind of uncomfortable. I tell people, if you fall asleep in my class, that’s what’s gonna happen.
Trent Manning: 29:59
Ah, okay. Yeah, yeah.
Burke Andres: 30:00
I haven’t lost anybody yet.
Trent Manning: 30:02
I
Burke Andres: 30:02
So I, I, I try and keep people engaged in all that. And I’ve been in front of some pretty big groups. I did a landscape supply show one year with Randy Gilchrist, another master tech formerly a Virginia turf. And we were supposed to go to Roanoke and put on a sprayer calibration class. And I said, all right, Randy, I’ll write the program and give you the PowerPoint and uh, you present it. He said, okay. So we get up there and he takes one look at this crowd. We go into this convention hall and there’s 210 landscape supply, hur and all this other people in there. He freezes like a rock.
Trent Manning: 30:37
Wow.
Burke Andres: 30:38
And he’s like, I can’t do this. I said, gimme that mic. So he gives, he gives me a wireless mic and I’m like a motivational speaker just bouncing around.
Trent Manning: 30:47
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 30:48
a grand old time with it. Really did. So I have no problem speaking in front of people. I’m doing something still to this day. I’ve been outta the distributorship world since 2015, but to this day, I get calls weekly about sprayer issues cuz that seemed to be my strength.
Trent Manning: 31:05
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 31:05
then again, something I thought I was weak in, I studied hard for, so that’s kind of just gravitated to sprayers. But I’m doing a sports trip manager’s group, at Firefly Stadium in December, and I said, how long do I have? He said, 45 minutes. I said, I can’t introduce myself in 45 minutes.
Trent Manning: 31:20
Mm-hmm. I would believe that because just for the listeners, I asked you one question and we’ve been going 35.
Burke Andres: 31:29
Right? See you, you’re not gonna get to talk Trent. You’re not gonna
Trent Manning: 31:33
totally get it. And that’s fine. That’s fine. I’m having a blast here.
Burke Andres: 31:38
All the mobile guys had nicknames and, uh, Walt was the Tasmanian devil because he would just come in and rip, rip and be done.
Trent Manning: 31:47
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 31:47
Got another guy, James Walker, uh, we call him oh oh seven. He is a, another gentle Ben of a guy, just very, you would think he’s a California hippie if you just walked up on him. He’s very soft spoken, long hair and a beard. Very agreeable. Nice guy. He kind of reminds me of Shaggy, you know,
Trent Manning: 32:07
Okay. Yep.
Burke Andres: 32:08
but he, uh, he’ll come, go to the unit, fix it, leave the card on the unit, get back in his van and leave. And then the customer’s calling that afternoon like, is James coming today or not? And they’re like, hang on a minute. And they call him. He’s already been there, you know, he’s, he’s, he’s in and out, quiet as the devil. Well, my nickname was a professor
Trent Manning: 32:32
Okay.
Burke Andres: 32:33
I became, I became the teacher, uh, in oh seven. They promoted me to a training position. And gave me the helm of the turf division side of Smith Turf or STI University.
Trent Manning: 32:45
Wow. That’s
Burke Andres: 32:46
So I handled the training for all of our 40 technicians, distributor technicians. And we, at that time, we had 13 mobile van total
Trent Manning: 32:55
Wow. Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 32:56
was right at the peak of our mobile fleet. And part of that included a ride around with the other mobile guys. I’m not teaching them how to turn wrenches. I’m teaching ’em how to be a mobile guy,
Trent Manning: 33:07
Yeah. Yeah.
Burke Andres: 33:08
how to, how to take notes, how to do paperwork, how to meet and greet, that kind of stuff. I thoroughly enjoyed that almost as much as I loved teaching. I would teach full-time if there was money in it.
Trent Manning: 33:20
Right,
Burke Andres: 33:20
It’s just, I just can’t find a way to make a living at it.
Trent Manning: 33:23
Mm-hmm. No, not much money in it. Well, tell us, do you, do you relief, grind, you’re, you’re
Burke Andres: 33:30
Yeah. You’re getting to your questions now. Oh. Oh, no. Oh, no.
Trent Manning: 33:35
Yep. I’m gonna sidetrack you and uh, we’re
Burke Andres: 33:37
All right. Do our relief grind. Not anymore,
Trent Manning: 33:40
Not anymore. Okay. Why’d you.
Burke Andres: 33:42
because they started milling relief into the construction of the blades.
Trent Manning: 33:47
Okay.
Burke Andres: 33:48
Now this is another one of those conversations I’ve heard you have with other technicians and, uh, that I wanted to chime in in the middle of your conversation. And it wasn’t live. It was pretty frustrating. Back in the day, you had to everybody relief ground because that’s all we did was single blade relief. We talked about that. And a few guys came out with spin grinders because it had to be more accurate. When you start powering them at 2000 and 3000 RPMs,
Trent Manning: 34:14
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 34:15
you have to be very accurate. You can’t have a high blade here and there. So they started spin, grinding, and you’re still making blades out of a thick quarter inch stock.
Trent Manning: 34:25
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 34:27
It wasn’t milled down at all. So when you got it from the factory, when the factory manufactured it, they would mill a relief in it, not mill it. They would grind a relief in it, then paint it and send you the reel. Once that relief wore off, you had to reestablish that relief cuz it was way too thick. Okay?
Trent Manning: 34:45
Yep.
Burke Andres: 34:46
Then somewhere about mid two thousands, they started milling their stock with a thin down edge about a quarter inch deep during the construction. So that told me there, that the manufacturer was perfectly fine. That amount of landing area, it’s already milled down and then you start getting 13, 14, 15 blade reels. You, you can’t get fingers in there in relief grind. Now there’s no reason in the world to relief. So I stopped relieving greens reels first.
Trent Manning: 35:16
mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 35:18
and then I got on some of the bigger reels. Even the bigger reels had milled blades in them. And the guys at the factory, listen, if you want, I am by far way down the list of experienced equipment managers. What I do know is what the manufacturers suggest. I know what Foley stance is on it. I know what Toro’s stance is on it. The only thing about that is you have to consider the source. So why would Toro tell me one thing and Foley tell me something slightly different?
Trent Manning: 35:50
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 35:50
at what they have vested in it. Toro is after horsepower reduction so that they can have less friction. Put a unit out there that costs a little bit less because it’s got a little bit smaller motor in it because it’s a little less horsepower requirements to turn the reels. That’s why they want a small landing edge. Foley wants you to grind all the time. They want you to use their grinders, they want you to do that relief grind. They set me up. Um, the best example I can tell you, I’m, this is going way off of your subject. You’re asking about relief, grinding.
Trent Manning: 36:23
That’s okay.
Burke Andres: 36:25
Let’s very quickly go to why you want to consider the source. The best example of that is an electric utility vehicle manufacturer, like club car or Toro will tell you when you use that vehicle for 20, 30 minutes, first thing in the morning to do your little rounds, you come back for your cup of coffee, plug that puppy back in. That drives a Trojan Battery guide nuts because from the manufacturer’s standpoint, they want you to have the best performance and the greatest experience of that vehicle possible. They don’t care about the proper maintenance of the batteries in that vehicle. They care about you enjoying that vehicle. The Trojan guy says, oh no, do not maintenance, charge a deep cycle battery, run it until it starts to limp, then plug it in and forget about it till tomorrow.
Trent Manning: 37:12
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 37:13
So you’ve got two different recommendations for one piece of equipment coming from a different angle.
Trent Manning: 37:19
Yeah. Yeah. It was the same thing with tire pressure.
Burke Andres: 37:22
Right,
Trent Manning: 37:23
You know, they, they don’t do that for the tire’s sake. They do it for the ride or the mow or whatever it might be.
Burke Andres: 37:31
that’s right. So, no, I don’t relieve grind anymore. Bed knife angles was another one that I, I wanted to chime in on. All right, go on to the next question. I don’t relieve grind anymore because there’s no difference in quality of cut. I’m as durable as the best ones out there. I heard one guy, uh, on your group talking about burner grinders giving you a minimal relief.
Trent Manning: 37:54
Yeah.
Burke Andres: 37:54
It’s impact grinding. The only relief difference you get. All right. Think about the amount of wear on a stone going from the left side of the stone to the right side of the stone. Yeah. Is it hitting a little lighter on the end of it? Probably. Cause you’ve worn that stone very slightly.
Trent Manning: 38:10
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 38:10
All right. Maybe, maybe. a little bit. All right. Now you have a split second from that blade hitting that stone. And the theory is that you hit it so hard in the beginning, you take a little more off than the trailing edge.
Trent Manning: 38:26
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 38:27
How much relief can that possibly be?
Trent Manning: 38:30
why don’t, I mean, I’ve actually seen it before, you know, after you go out and mow and you can see, you know, a vis visible difference,
Burke Andres: 38:39
Where it’s not touching the back of the blade.
Trent Manning: 38:42
where it’s not touching the back of the blade, but it’s gotta be less than a thousandths, maybe two
Burke Andres: 38:48
Yeah. That’s that’s gonna wear away in one green.
Trent Manning: 38:52
right? Yeah, exactly.
Burke Andres: 38:53
is, it’s gone. It’s gone. So why even, why even just just say no, I don’t, relief. You don’t need the relief. If you, back lapping is a process that you ascribe to. Yeah. It gives the back lapping compound a place to hang on and re back into your reel. But I, I, I can tell you another horror story. I had a guy that had three fairway units. He had no grinders. He back lapped his units to death. And when the end of the three year lease came up, he had to replace all 15 reels
Trent Manning: 39:26
Hmm.
Burke Andres: 39:26
just from back lapping because he would back lap for an hour and a half or so a day. If, I can’t knock it out in 60 seconds, I need to put it on the grinder. You know,
Trent Manning: 39:38
Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s, that’s true.
Burke Andres: 39:40
And, and, and one of your other guys did say that, uh, a lot of people don’t understand the process of back clapping and. There is so much of our industry, there’s not a right way and a wrong way. It’s very subjective. And I’m not saying that.
Trent Manning: 39:53
Yeah. And there’s,
Burke Andres: 39:54
I’m not saying that. I know, I know the best way to do something. Uh, I know the way the manufacturer recommends you do things. That’s not necessarily the best way. And you might have a bang up idea. And that’s why I became what I thought was a very successful teacher, because I was being around a hundreds or so technicians every year, I would scoop up those tips and tricks and get these ideas from y’all.
Trent Manning: 40:21
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 40:22
And then when I’d show up at the TAC seminar, this regurgitate that
Trent Manning: 40:26
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 40:27
I was just a vessel basically. So my education came from y’all, probably more so than the manufacturers and the suppliers and all that kinda stuff I learned from y’all, to be honest with you.
Trent Manning: 40:40
when you can’t argue with, a person’s method if it works for them in their facility.
Burke Andres: 40:47
Right, right.
Trent Manning: 40:48
like, you know, do, do, do whatever you want to do.
Burke Andres: 40:51
well, my, my
Trent Manning: 40:52
what your favorite tool is.
Burke Andres: 40:54
this one’s been work, work to death. It’s got to be not just my phone, but the camera on my phone.
Trent Manning: 41:01
Okay?
Burke Andres: 41:03
Well, it, it enables me to look at a list of supplies on the whiteboard. I’m getting ready to go shopping, click.
Trent Manning: 41:09
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 41:10
If I can’t read a model and serial number up under the unit, click blow it up. I can read it.
Trent Manning: 41:16
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 41:16
Even more so than the light on the back of my phone. I use that camera multiple times every day. But digital photography in general just kind of changed my life cause I’m an instant gratification type.
Trent Manning: 41:28
Mm-hmm. Nothing wrong with
Burke Andres: 41:30
I’ve got somewhere in this house, I’ve got a shoebox full of undeveloped film that’s probably 30 years old, and it’s so nice to be able to just, yep. I think I’ll save that one. No, I’m not gonna save that one and get the instant picture right there.
Trent Manning: 41:43
Right there. Way better than a Polaroid.
Burke Andres: 41:46
Yep, yep. All right. I’m gonna let you go through your questions and quit drifting. I am bad about that. So I apologize. You did slot six hours for this conversation,
Trent Manning: 41:55
Yes. This is gonna be, uh, the one and only six hour interview we got going here what’s the strangest thing you’ve seen at
Burke Andres: 42:02
Oh my gosh. Well, I can name a few. I came upon a 5700, 300 gallon sprayer
Trent Manning: 42:09
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 42:10
floating in a pond.
Trent Manning: 42:11
Okay. Yep. That, that,
Burke Andres: 42:14
The air in the tank was holding it up. You know,
Trent Manning: 42:17
Yeah, yeah,
Burke Andres: 42:18
that was it. Uh, I mean, pro-con control and everything submerged. They’re, they’re throwing a gas hook at it, trying to pull it out.
Trent Manning: 42:25
Wow.
Burke Andres: 42:25
I had a technician from Tennessee send me a picture of that same type of sprayer, 300 gallon, where the tank had been completely collapsed, looked like a tree had fallen on, and it was probably 130 degrees in the sun there in Tennessee that day. And he sends the picture out to all his mobile guys and said, what causes this? And I’m like, A tree, you know the idea. Well, come to find out what happened is the superintendent had done a spray. He is on his second rinse of water. He’s got his booms out and he’s spraying, sitting still cleaning the sprayer out. He goes inside, fixing himself a cup of coffee. The vent on top of the tank fell on, on the lid. And that pump sucked that tank flat cuz it couldn’t suck in any air. Yeah, I’ve seen that.
Trent Manning: 43:14
That
Burke Andres: 43:15
all time. Craziest thing, my first golf course, I told you we were using old 1970s trap rakes, Toro version one lung kohlers. To, to, to, to, to, to, to, well we had a guy there that was probably 30 years old, but I don’t know if he had an accident or he was born that way. But he was about a 16 year old mentally and he had a stuttering issue. I don’t know if it was related or not, but the curious thing was that he had a tendency of going off in the woods and falling asleep on a golf cart.
Trent Manning: 43:48
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 43:49
Come to find out he was a DJ at night out on Tops Island and when he was a dj. Never miss a beat. No stutter, no nothing.
Trent Manning: 43:58
Hmm.
Burke Andres: 43:58
So he’s up all night being a dj. He comes into the golf course and he did have a tendency to kind of fall asleep here and there, and we kinda laughed it off. It was just kind of cute after a while, well one day he’s out there on 16 in the middle of a bright white trap on that one lung Kohler trap break and some golfers are coming through. So instead of exit the trap and shut his unit off, he let it sit there and just idle in the middle of this trap, and it’s probably a hundred degrees. He falls asleep on a running trap rate.
Trent Manning: 44:30
Wow. Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 44:33
Four sets of golfers came through. The last set were the owners
Trent Manning: 44:38
Mm-hmm. I didn’t go too good.
Burke Andres: 44:41
He fell asleep on a running trap break. That was, that was probably the craziest,
Trent Manning: 44:45
That is a, yep. That is a crazy story. What do you do to relax or find your balance?
Burke Andres: 44:51
the same thing I do for. I spin, rented.
Trent Manning: 44:54
okay.
Burke Andres: 44:55
I ha I have 27 motors on this property between tractors, tillers, log, splitters, gators, zero turns. I got motorcycle. I’ve got, I’m always working on something because I’m just that kind of guy. I’m sure you are too, where you’re singularly focused.
Trent Manning: 45:15
Yep.
Burke Andres: 45:15
when I am concentrating on something, I don’t care if it’s a vacuum cleaner or a medicine chest. If I’m working on something, I’m singularly focused and I’m not thinking about anything else.
Trent Manning: 45:26
Yeah. Yeah. No, it, it can be therapeutic.
Burke Andres: 45:29
That’s what I do for rela relaxation.
Trent Manning: 45:32
What’s, uh, one of your pet peeves around the shop?
Burke Andres: 45:36
Several. One is straps and cords laying around Tangled. When I get done with a ratchet strap, you know, it was me that put it up. Cause it’s all wound up and tucked. I don’t leave extension cords lying around. I don’t leave air hoses lying around. And another one that a lot of you guys have talked about is parking in the middle of my entrance bay
Trent Manning: 45:56
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 45:57
where I can’t get my equipment in and out.
Trent Manning: 45:59
right?
Burke Andres: 46:00
Yep. Just, just not thinking. And I, I think the, the worst for me, I used to be, I had a temper, believe it or not, I wasn’t always a nice guy that I am now. And, uh, I threw a wrench one time that bounced back and during near kill me, it bounced off of a, bounced off of a plywood wall and it had enough spring in it to come back, get me the hit. I got to realizing that you’re best off not fussing at an operator for an accident Because then they’re not gonna come tell you something’s wrong. I you gotta get their confidence and just say, Hey, you know, they don’t break down in here. Everything’s cool. Don’t worry about it. You’re not the first one to run into a bridge piling or whatever. When I see a guy monkeying on a piece of equipment doing wheelies or trying to jump logs or whatever it is, when they’re, when they’re monkeying with a piece of equipment that, that burns me, that burns me. They have no idea how dangerous that is.
Trent Manning: 46:56
Yeah. No, it is. And Yeah. there’s no, no excuse for it.
Burke Andres: 47:00
No, I don’t. I don’t, I don’t. And when they, when they crank up a unit with the trawler wide them,
Trent Manning: 47:06
Oh,
Burke Andres: 47:07
alright, right. Go out there to your motorcycle. Twist that throttle and crank that bitch.
Trent Manning: 47:12
Right, right,
Burke Andres: 47:13
Oh no. Why wouldn’t you do that? Well, why are you doing it to my equipment? You know?
Trent Manning: 47:18
Yeah, same thing with your car. Hold the pedal down. Fired up. That was a good one. I like that one.
Burke Andres: 47:24
Yep.
Trent Manning: 47:25
Do you have a mentor in the industry? Sounds like maybe a few.
Burke Andres: 47:28
Yeah. Most of the guys we started T TAC with bill Ledford, Greg Womble I love all those guys to death. Back to my original story I say we had nothing. Uh, I was at a show, the first trade show ever went to actually, and they were having a round table for technicians actually at the trade show floor in a little room off the. And Rex Floyd was chairing it. And while Bill from Greenville tr Tractor was there at the time, I don’t remember if Bill Ledford was there or not. I know Mark Clark was there. Walt Semore was supposed to be there, and he had some kind of issue where he couldn’t show up. I had only been with Smith for months,
Trent Manning: 48:11
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 48:12
and so I had to come in and fill in for walls. I told you when I started Smith Turf, I had like eight years experience.
Trent Manning: 48:18
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 48:18
Now I’m on a panel in front of other technicians for the first time, and that was the meeting that they all took a vote and decided to form Ttac.
Trent Manning: 48:28
Ah, okay. Awesome.
Burke Andres: 48:31
Yep.
Trent Manning: 48:31
Very, very cool.
Burke Andres: 48:33
Yep. And so I’m, I was considered a founding member from, from that point on. And the way we structured it, Was that the most experienced guys, I’ll tell you are the row guys and distributor level technicians because we’re the only guys with factory training.
Trent Manning: 48:49
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 48:50
So we said, all right, well we need to be the guys to come up with the curriculum and the classes and the program. And there were, there were few ground rules. One is that no distributor technician was gonna serve on the actual board. We wanted it to be the technician’s association.
Trent Manning: 49:07
right?
Burke Andres: 49:08
We’re gonna be the advisory council and we’re gonna start off as the teachers, because we have the resources, we have the backing of our distributorships.
Trent Manning: 49:17
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 49:18
So s t I provided me with a PowerPoint projector. Toro provided me with slides and PowerPoint presentations. I wrote my own curriculum and eventually I was writing my own books and printing them for the classroom editions type stuff. And so we were doing all the classes and seminars at Ttac as a fledging. I think our first meeting we had 40 some odd, maybe 47 technicians. What you are doing today is so next level
Trent Manning: 49:45
Oh, well thank you for that.
Burke Andres: 49:46
we could not have imagined the technology and the reach that you have today.
Trent Manning: 49:54
Mm-hmm. true. Yep.
Burke Andres: 49:56
All we wanted to do is give the guys something other than a sales pitch on a trade show floor.
Trent Manning: 50:03
Right, right, right.
Burke Andres: 50:05
So one technicians or distributor techs can’t serve on the board. We don’t want it to turn into a trade show environment. Yes, we had a few local vendors SWEPCO and J R m and some others that have supported us from day one. And yeah, we let them come out there and put up a table. In the lobby before the conference so they can showcase some of the things that they have. They don’t get up there and give a presentation, but I have to tell you why not. Cause we had one of ’em on Lubrications and or lubricants and oils in that audience is Al Sign from Swepco. He is an authority. Why not tap that authority and get him out there to explain to the whole group the what is and what if
Trent Manning: 50:54
Yeah.
Burke Andres: 50:54
lubricants and oils, you know? So we’re tapping each other and eventually we got a hold of Eric Duncanson
Trent Manning: 51:01
Uhhuh.
Burke Andres: 51:01
we got a hold of pre-op and we kind of work them into the fold and talk them into doing some classes and some presentation and tried to kind of pass the torch onto the membership that were not distributor technicians. All the while trying to still provide, presentation material and support to those guys so that we could kind of fade away and let the plane take off like it did. and man, have you guys grown it? Holy cow.
Trent Manning: 51:30
Oh, it’s, yeah, it’s incredible. And I’m, I take no credit whatsoever for that. I think my last one was last year, but I was blown away
Burke Andres: 51:39
Well, I’ve been to everyone except I missed four of the last six for various reasons.
Trent Manning: 51:45
mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 51:46
And so I did, I didn’t go for two years during the pandemic because I refused to wear a mask. I, the first year I missed, I was calling on a friend of mine who just lost his wife in a motorcycle accident, so I had to go spend some time with him. The next year I had my motorcycle accident and then Covid hit. So I missed four years in a row. And then I did go back. I didn’t actually go to TAC last year. But I did go to Spring Ma and do something for the sports surf managers group. This year I’m registered and I will be back down there and nobody’s gonna even know who I am at this point.
Trent Manning: 52:18
Yeah. No. Awesome. I look
Burke Andres: 52:20
I could fade right into them. Yep. I’m just gonna fade in
Trent Manning: 52:24
What technician would you like to work with for a day?
Burke Andres: 52:27
my teachers, most of the product development guys up in Minneapolis.
Trent Manning: 52:32
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 52:33
Yeah. Cuz they, they, you think I can tell some stories? Those guys can tell some stories.
Trent Manning: 52:37
Oh, I’m sure. I’m
Burke Andres: 52:39
Uh, most of ’em have heavy ag backgrounds or engineers in their own Right. To, watch those guys. Jim Netton was one of those guys.
Trent Manning: 52:47
Oh yeah. Yep.
Burke Andres: 52:48
I, I was in electrical class with Jim Ned one time. Uh, he was putting on the class and. He followed up with me in the field at Long Bay one time, and Jim Ned, and I don’t know if you’ve met him,
Trent Manning: 52:59
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. I
Burke Andres: 53:01
he’s kind of a small guy. I mean, he is, he’s not six foot tall. I saw him reach down and grab a 3,100 reel with one hand and just up on the bench, and I’m like, holy cow, this guy’s pretty, pretty strong for such a little hella, you know?
Trent Manning: 53:15
Heck yeah.
Burke Andres: 53:16
Yep. But he, he’s an impressive individual. Uh, a lot of background. And I am truly just, I was kind of an arrogant guy when I first started getting on the road because I felt like, look, this is the material they’ve given me. This is the way the machine’s supposed to be. Don’t argue with me. Just do what we need to do. and a lot of guys were turned off by that, I’m sure. they just didn’t know me.
Trent Manning: 53:43
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 53:44
I, I hate that. Because now I see the struggles that those guys have gone through and the frustration and how welcome I was at the time and didn’t realize it. They just wanted help.
Trent Manning: 54:02
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yep.
Burke Andres: 54:04
And I, I always tried to nurture the EM relationship because at the, well when I started, the equipment managers didn’t have anything to say about the equipment that was being ordered. But that soon changed about the mid two thousands, they started considering, maintenance requirements and dependability and cost of ownership, that kind of stuff. So the technician had more to say about it. and I would never throw a mechanic under the bus. He’s got to be my ally. And if it ever came and I got put in this position an awful lot. where they would have a, and I got probably my strongest point other than sprayers, is identifying quality of cut issues and after cut appearance issues.
Trent Manning: 54:51
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 54:52
And most of the time it’s a agronomy solution, not a machine
Trent Manning: 54:57
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 54:58
Now, there are things we can do to the reels to hide the deficient practice or the problem that he’s experiencing right now. We can, we can change roller configurations, we can add, or we can change heights of rumors and until he gets his verta cutting done and verification done or whatever, it’s, he’s got to do to address a particular condition he’s got. But it’s never all one or all the other.
Trent Manning: 55:21
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 55:22
And superintendents do not want to share with, or they don’t want to hear that, uh, they got an issue.
Trent Manning: 55:29
Right.
Burke Andres: 55:31
And so they would put me in that position where I didn’t have any skin in the game. I could be honest with the guy and say, look, I’m seeing some fetch over here. Or I see you’ve got this going on. I know you’ve got a tournament going on, or you don’t have a tournament going on. This is what I think we can do to the reels, to, to mask your situation or to help your situation. Uh, and they put me in that position an awful lot. But
Trent Manning: 55:55
Yep. That’s
Burke Andres: 55:56
it, is what it is.
Trent Manning: 55:58
part of working on that distributor’s side.
Burke Andres: 56:00
It’s, it’s never all one or the other. It’s always a combination and it’s, it’s, you gotta have that communication. You know, some of my superintendents or some of the best friends I’ve had in my life,
Trent Manning: 56:11
Oh yeah. Yeah. Yep. No, and that’s amazing how small this industry is really when you look at it and how everybody knows everybody, and you can make some really good friendships out of the deal.
Burke Andres: 56:23
I used to think that I’ve been so lucky that the superintendents that I’ve worked with were so good at what they did.
Trent Manning: 56:31
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 56:31
I used to always brag on my superintendent, man, that guy can grow some grass. Over the years, I’ve come to realize all them guys can grow some grass. They’re all very good at what they do,
Trent Manning: 56:42
Yeah, yeah. No, there’s a reason they’re there.
Burke Andres: 56:44
Right,
Trent Manning: 56:45
And, well, another guest I had on, he brought it up and I don’t know that I’d ever really thought about it, but if you look at our job, it’s can be pretty simple. Not that it’s easy or don’t take me the wrong way there, but we can look at something and say, okay, that police broke. I need to replace it. You know? I mean, we can come up with a solution pretty quick where a superintendent looks at the, the grass and says, Hmm, I think it may be this. I’m gonna spray this and then I’m gonna wait 14 days and see if it’s
Burke Andres: 57:19
And hope Mother Nature reveals herself to me, right?
Trent Manning: 57:23
And I thought that was, that was a good point. He.
Burke Andres: 57:25
We have a distinct advantage over their career field, uh, because a machine doesn’t fix itself and it will always continue to do the same thing it’s been doing until we make a change. I don’t have Mother Nature to deal with.
Trent Manning: 57:39
Right.
Burke Andres: 57:40
know, we, we have some distinct advantages over that particular career field.
Trent Manning: 57:44
We all have new year’s resolutions. And if yours is to run a more efficient shop in 2023 or stay on top of preventive maintenance. You have to check out ASB task tracker. Or there’s keeping track of labor monitoring equipment. Or providing insight when assets need to be replaced. Task tracker is a full service. Application where superintendents, technicians and crew. Can’t communicate throughout the day. All while providing real-time information. On where money is being spent. Stop by booth 5, 5, 5 of the GCSA show. To check it out. Or visit. ISB task tracker.com. To schedule a demo. Let’s get back to that episode.
58:29
Get ready for tips and tricks.
Trent Manning: 58:33
What kinda tips and tricks you wanna share with us? Anything
Burke Andres: 58:37
what? Well, yeah. Two things. One is with process and the other is just a little trick I learned. With process, when you’re looking at something that’s causing a problem, let’s say I’ve got. One reel maybe isn’t spooling up to full speed like it’s supposed to. Occasionally when I go to look at a problem, you have to duplicate that symptom. I don’t know how many times you have, but I can not count the number of times that I have fixed something inadvertently and not know what I did to fix it
Trent Manning: 59:09
Oh yeah. Yep,
Burke Andres: 59:10
and not been able to confirm if it’s really fixed or not,
Trent Manning: 59:13
yep. And that’s one of the worst feelings I think
Burke Andres: 59:16
right. So you got to duplicate the symptom in order. If a guy tells me that a unit’s running hot, the first thing I’m gonna do is go out there and heat it up.
Trent Manning: 59:24
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 59:25
If I can’t duplicate it, I’ll never know if it’s fixed. So I make it, do it, make its problem, show itself repeatedly. If you can’t do that, don’t even try and fix it.
Trent Manning: 59:37
Right.
Burke Andres: 59:37
you can’t do that, it’s not a problem. And think about it. If I can’t make it get hot, it ain’t getting hot. You know? And sometimes in that discovery process, you may find it’s got a faulty temperature sensor,
Trent Manning: 59:50
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 59:50
it may register hot, you put your gun on it and it says it’s 190 degrees. It’s not hot.
Trent Manning: 59:55
right?
Burke Andres: 59:57
So that’s process. Duplicate the symptom before you even start to work on. Another thing is don’t be in a hurry. Be deliberate. That’s where you’ll get hurt. Be deliberate when I get done with assembling an engine or even just changing a starter, any little process that I get done with because I was a mobile guy, I have a tendency to collect all my tools, wipe ’em down, put ’em up, put everything back in the van before I even go back and turn the can. I’m that confident in what I just did.
Trent Manning: 1:00:29
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 1:00:30
You need to be that confident. Take your time. You won’t skip a step. If you’re worried about speed, then do it 40 times. If you do it right 40 times, you’ll get fast.
Trent Manning: 1:00:43
Oh yeah. Yep.
Burke Andres: 1:00:45
But don’t ever do it wrong to be fast, so you do it right. It takes a guy tell me, oh, I can do five fairway units in four hours. Great, proud of you.
Trent Manning: 1:00:56
Right.
Burke Andres: 1:00:57
Did you grease every fitting? Did you check the real inplay? Did you? There’s no way in the world that you can do it as thoroughly as somebody who took their time. If you’re focused on speed, take your time and if you do it right with the right steps and the right process, every time, after the time that fourth and fifth one gets to you, you’ll be quick.
Trent Manning: 1:01:20
right, right.
Burke Andres: 1:01:21
And you’ll be safe.
Trent Manning: 1:01:22
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 1:01:23
The other trick I ran into this problem solving thing when I was snapping tines off of Weedman. I was working for University of South Carolina and they have a weedman and he runs these 12 to 14 inch needle ts.
Trent Manning: 1:01:35
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 1:01:37
They have a tendency to snap off in that head. It’s a blind hole
Trent Manning: 1:01:42
Oh,
Burke Andres: 1:01:43
cuz they just go up in the hole and you pinch ball, locks it into a dimple. So you snap it off. Now you got a piece of hard and a steel in there that you can’t drill out.
Trent Manning: 1:01:51
Yeah.
Burke Andres: 1:01:52
So how do you get it out?
Trent Manning: 1:01:54
I don’t
Burke Andres: 1:01:54
what you know. You know how heat affects metals. You know how hydraulics works. You know how electrical works. So I had this idea. I took the locking bolt out and I filled the hole with grease. And then I screwed the bolt back in.
Trent Manning: 1:02:13
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 1:02:14
Then I unscrewed it and I filled it with grease again. And then I took a three, a 10 pack and go and I push it in really quick and it hydraulically just pushed.
Trent Manning: 1:02:24
Oh, nice. Yeah,
Burke Andres: 1:02:25
Pushed that tipt right out. You just used hydraulics. I learned that back in the seventies, getting pilot bushings out of the back of flywheels and engines. Before they had bearings, they had bushings, and so you had to change that pilot bushing anytime you change the transmission or clutch. And that’s the only way you can get a bushing outta the back of a crank, is to fill the hole with grease, hit it with a dowel and it pops right out.
Trent Manning: 1:02:48
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 1:02:49
So that was my solution for that.
Trent Manning: 1:02:52
that’s a good idea. I like it. Yeah. I’d seen the pilot busing, of course I learnt from an old, old guy and, uh, he’d showed me that trick
Burke Andres: 1:03:01
I first started turning wrenches at a Phillips 66 station in high school. At a gas station in Rock Hill and this old Vietnam vet fella, he probably was Korean War vet fella, smoked these little short stubby camels and taught me how to change water pumps and put new brushes in alternators.
Trent Manning: 1:03:22
Mm. Yep. Don’t have to worry about that anymore, do you?
Burke Andres: 1:03:25
Yeah, I’m, I’m old school.
Trent Manning: 1:03:26
Yep. Nothing wrong with that at all. Well, what else do you wanna talk about? I think we covered a
Burke Andres: 1:03:32
Don’t get me started. Well one more story. The sprayer class that I went to at Toro it was their first sprayer class and the idea was to teach us how to go back and teach equipment managers how to talk the same language as a spray tech,
Trent Manning: 1:03:49
mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 1:03:50
tech can come in or a superintendent can come in and say, man, my rate’s. Or my pressure’s not where it needs to be. We need to learn how to translate that language into something we can do for them. We also need to know that if we have a line blow and we put a little union in there that necks it down and put it back together, that now we’ve just changed the restriction in that line and we’re gonna change the output downstream. So we need to know that if we rebuild something or we do a repair, we need to know how to put that sprayer back together to his specifications. The way we found it.
Trent Manning: 1:04:22
right?
Burke Andres: 1:04:23
So they took us to a sprayer school, 16 of us. I had technicians from Australia, Canada, all over the world in here. There was 16 of us, and the first day was all technical shop, mathematics, geometry ratios, fractions, that kind of crap. We had to learn how to pace off square footage, you know, that kind of stuff. Right?
Trent Manning: 1:04:43
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 1:04:45
the next day was all chemistry. and P p E and mixing. So we, they, they brought us a tray of half a dozen household chemicals and we were in groups of four and they said, you’re all gonna mix the same amount of each of these things, but in a different order. And so we mixed them all up and we got four different results just because we mixed them in a different order. The one, I don’t know a lot about chemistry, but I can tell you this, when you take two things and bond them together, they become something entirely different.
Trent Manning: 1:05:15
Mm-hmm. right?
Burke Andres: 1:05:17
and this not gonna react like either of them, a standalone would react. So, so that was that lesson. So then the final day, they take us out in the field and they got four different sprayers out there. One was a workman with a, a spray tank on the back of it. One was a full blown 5700, 1 was a 1250, and I think they had a 1750. But anyway, they broke them. and we had teams of four out there. We had to fix the sprayer, figure out what was wrong with it. They put toothpicks in nozzles, they put this, did anything in the world, so we had to fix the sprayer, validate it, and calibrate it as a team.
Trent Manning: 1:05:53
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 1:05:54
Then we had to measure out. They took their new brand, new line painter, and they did a bunch of strange shapes out in this park. We had to go out there and figure out what the square footage was.
Trent Manning: 1:06:04
Wow. Okay.
Burke Andres: 1:06:05
Here comes the geometry, right? So we figured out what the square footage was. Then we had to go and do an application. So we had to go to a table. We had to verify what the capability of the sprayer was. If that sprayer was only capable of a maximum of 50 gallons per minute or 50 gallons an acre, we had to figure out. How much active ingredient we needed for the application for our square footage, how much carrier we needed to add to it so that our total volume equaled a perfect spray in one pass, and we had to have 10 gallons left over and the person that had the closest to 10 gallons left over won the, the, the prize
Trent Manning: 1:06:48
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 1:06:49
technicians had to do this. I don’t know of another equipment manager that’s been through that.
Trent Manning: 1:06:55
No, no, I agree with that.
Burke Andres: 1:06:58
yeah. Uh, my first superintendent kept the keys to his sprayer on his belt loop. Nobody touched his sprayer. And even right now I’ve got a 1750 sprayer, completely torn apart. The pump internal bearings, rods, everything’s out of it, and I’m waiting on parts to put it back together. My superintendent’s on pins and needles,
Trent Manning: 1:07:15
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 1:07:16
he does not like having his sprayer down for any amount of
Trent Manning: 1:07:19
Right. And you’re going into fall and probably not needing to spray a whole lot.
Burke Andres: 1:07:23
Yeah. So we did this, uh, 16 of us. Since it was a new program, they did not have a test for us to take. So they said, we’ll send you the test electronically, and you’ll have to get your boss or somebody to proctor the test for you, and you’ll do in a laptop. So I met my boss at a hotel in Wilmington. He drove down, we booted up his laptop. He downloaded the test, and I took this test. Three months after I left this class in Minneapolis, everybody failed,
Trent Manning: 1:07:53
Wow. Okay.
Burke Andres: 1:07:54
including one of the instructors.
Trent Manning: 1:07:56
Huh?
Burke Andres: 1:07:57
So they had to rewrite the test. That’s the only test that I have ever failed In recent memory,
Trent Manning: 1:08:04
Hmm
Burke Andres: 1:08:04
I was, I was destroyed. I’m like, I can’t believe this. This did not happen. And in front of my boss.
Trent Manning: 1:08:12
mm-hmm. So was
Burke Andres: 1:08:14
So come to come to find out all 16 of them, or I don’t know that 16 of them actually took the test, however many there were. I know there were at least eight or nine of them actually took the test and failed. So did one of the instructors. So they had to rewrite the test. So three months later they finally come back. So at six months after that course, I finally took the test online and passed it. But that was still not the last test. I think the last class, I don’t know what the last class I went to was, but it was the last one I had to have to get the master’s certification and it Toro had just started that pilot program with a sprayer class. And I had been there once or twice a year for the next three or four years, and I was on my last class. And so was Dave Lere up in Maine and Randy Gilchrist in Virginia. So when we finished the test, we all hit the button pretty much at the same time. So we all got certificate number one as being the first Touro master technician.
Trent Manning: 1:09:14
Oh, wow. That’s so cool. That was really awesome. Congratulations. That was something else.
Burke Andres: 1:09:21
That and about three 50 will get me a cup of coffee.
Trent Manning: 1:09:24
Uh, yeah. Yeah. That’s right. Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 1:09:26
Like I say, it’s not the certification that means anything to me. It’s, it’s the learning process to get that certification that really is, you know, and that brings me full circle back around the T tac, uh, if you’re fairly new to it, uh, welcome aboard.
Trent Manning: 1:09:42
Well,
Burke Andres: 1:09:43
I am so proud of what they’ve grown it into and that doesn’t mean that I had anything to do with it. Because it’s possible to be proud of something that you really didn’t have much to do with. Like, I’m proud of my country,
Trent Manning: 1:09:55
Oh, right. Yep.
Burke Andres: 1:09:56
you know, that doesn’t mean that it’s my accomplishment of mine. That’s like being proud of my children’s accomplishment. I didn’t have anything to do with that. I’m proud for them, so to speak. And, and that’s kind of the way I feel about T Tac, that those of us that started it, I’m sure we hoped that it would grow into something worthwhile. We had no clue that it would be what it has become. Y’all are just so ne you are just so next level, especially with this podcast routine. You have the potential to do things that we could not even dream, to be honest with you.
Trent Manning: 1:10:33
Well, we we’re gonna need more ideas. We gotta get more education out there
Burke Andres: 1:10:38
man. I, I wish, I wish, yeah, I wish there were, and I, I know a few guys that are former master techs with me that are doing training full-time. Mark Luffy is one of them.
Trent Manning: 1:10:48
Okay. Yep. Yep.
Burke Andres: 1:10:50
I’ve known Mark for many, many years. And he is, he is pretty much full-time training now, and he’s found a way to make a decent living at it.
Trent Manning: 1:10:57
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 1:10:57
So I know it can be done. I just don’t know if I got that much energy in me for that, to be honest with you. I think I’ll just keep being a guest speaker here and there and contribute where I can contribute. I think I’ve still got something to give.
Trent Manning: 1:11:10
I’m gonna have to get Mark on too. He’s a, he’s an excellent one.
Burke Andres: 1:11:14
yeah, smart guy.
Trent Manning: 1:11:16
Yeah. Yeah. Really
Burke Andres: 1:11:17
guy. I, I think he’s, he’s one of those in my list of guys I’d like to spend a day with
Trent Manning: 1:11:23
Mm-hmm. Yeah, for
Burke Andres: 1:11:25
and he’s, he’s his, he’s as much into sprayers as I am, that’s saying something.
Trent Manning: 1:11:29
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, when I met him up at Rhode Island, he, uh, talked about sprayers a little bit, but he also talked about the Procore six 40. and he could tell you every single thing that’s had happened to us six forty eight since this birth
Burke Andres: 1:11:48
Right. And, and I’m almost the opposite with the 6 48 because I consider that, you know, once in a while a manufacturer will hit a home run.
Trent Manning: 1:11:55
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 1:11:56
And I judge that by what do I work on the least? And I work on six 40 eights less than anything they’ve got.
Trent Manning: 1:12:04
No, no, I, I agree with that. And I’m not, you know, nothing wrong with the machine at all, but I was just
Burke Andres: 1:12:10
Well, they just put all, they just put all the others on the sideline.
Trent Manning: 1:12:14
yeah, no, they
Burke Andres: 1:12:15
they’re like, they’re like the jacuzzi of hot tubs, man. Everybody says, is it, is it like a Procore, you know,
Trent Manning: 1:12:21
yeah. Yeah,
Burke Andres: 1:12:23
they’re the industry standard, you know? That’s just tremendous.
Trent Manning: 1:12:26
yeah. I don’t, I heard, uh, I don’t know, it was a superintendent that said it to a John Deere salesman. He said if, uh, that John Deere 800. If you could, uh, paint a 6 48 green, he would buy it or you know, I mean something like that. Basically saying, don’t bring anything out here unless it’s a 6 48 to verify my greens, and it is very true.
Burke Andres: 1:12:49
Well, they came up with a way to get a little wider swath to do it quietly and with speed, uh, with very little compromise of whole quality.
Trent Manning: 1:12:58
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 1:13:00
That’s the trifecta right
Trent Manning: 1:13:01
Yeah. Yeah. No, they hit on home run for sure. Were you ready for some rapid fire questions?
Burke Andres: 1:13:12
sure.
Trent Manning: 1:13:14
What’s your favorite movie?
Burke Andres: 1:13:15
I like anything manly, man. Anything. John Wayne, Robert Mitchem,
Trent Manning: 1:13:19
Okay.
Burke Andres: 1:13:20
some Clint Eastwood. Uh, I guess more recent stuff. I’d have to say Cinderella man.
Trent Manning: 1:13:29
Okay. I hadn’t seen that one. I’ll have to check it.
Burke Andres: 1:13:31
Cinderella man is Russell Crow depression era. A true story about. Boxer New
Trent Manning: 1:13:38
Mm. Okay.
Burke Andres: 1:13:40
One of the guys that he goes up against is Max Bayer, who was the headway champion at the time. Cause a lot of people don’t realize that. That’s Max Bayer Jr’s father, max Bayer Jr. Being Jeff Row.
Trent Manning: 1:13:53
Oh, okay. Huh?
Burke Andres: 1:13:55
yeah, so this is a true story of him. The thing I remember about the movie most is Russell Crow’s character does some of the probably most realistic boxing scenes ever filmed that weren’t an actual boxing match. I mean a, a cinematography. They were so realistic and he did such a good portrayal as a boxer. I, I just was, that’s one of my favorites. And I’m a big Renzo worker fan.
Trent Manning: 1:14:22
Okay. Yep. Nothing wrong with that either.
Burke Andres: 1:14:25
Yep.
Trent Manning: 1:14:25
What would be your last meal?
Burke Andres: 1:14:27
Easy mashed potatoes, gravy,
Trent Manning: 1:14:30
All right. I love it
Burke Andres: 1:14:31
roast beef. I don’t wanna stay roast beef mash Potatoe Grove
Trent Manning: 1:14:36
love it. What are you most proud of?
Burke Andres: 1:14:39
back to my previous. You can be proud of something that you had little to do with
Trent Manning: 1:14:43
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 1:14:44
when nine 11 hit. Uh, my boys were of age and I could not imagine my sons stepping up to the plate as that generation did. I am so proud of our Iraqi war vets,
Trent Manning: 1:15:00
Mm-hmm.
Burke Andres: 1:15:01
of how they answered the call, the way they performed and the way they stood up like men and women. I didn’t think that generation had it in them. And boy did they prove me wrong.
Trent Manning: 1:15:13
They were signing up left and right.
Burke Andres: 1:15:15
Yes, sir.
Trent Manning: 1:15:16
Yeah.
Burke Andres: 1:15:17
They all did us.
Trent Manning: 1:15:19
Mm-hmm. for
Burke Andres: 1:15:20
I think that’s, that’s what I’m most proud of.
Trent Manning: 1:15:23
No, that was awesome. That was a really good one. All right.
Burke Andres: 1:15:26
That’s it,
Trent Manning: 1:15:27
it. Let’s wrap it up.
Burke Andres: 1:15:29
man. Did, did I go over
Trent Manning: 1:15:32
No, no. Tell, tell the listeners how they can get ahold of you
Burke Andres: 1:15:35
Well, I, I avoided, all social media forever. I’m still not a member of Twitter. That may change now that Elon Musk has taken over. I understand all of y’all are on Twitter now, so if I wanna stay in the fold, I guess I’m gonna have to come on board. Uh, I am on Facebook now because I had to, because I have a, uh, a stump grinding business and I needed to be able to manage that page and et cetera, et cetera. But really the only way to get me is with my email, uh, and a phone number. My email, strangely enough, is the Toro.
Trent Manning: 1:16:08
The Toro man gmail.com.
Burke Andres: 1:16:11
Yep.
Trent Manning: 1:16:12
All right.
Burke Andres: 1:16:13
Nope. That’s what they called me forever, so I’m just, they say, oh, it’s a Toro, man.
Trent Manning: 1:16:18
Yep, that’s good. That was a good one. Yep. Thank you so much for being on. That’s been a pleasure and I’ve really enjoyed it.
Burke Andres: 1:16:27
Well, it’s the first. It was really great. Thanks for having me.
Trent Manning: 1:16:31
I hope you enjoyed hearing from Burke. One amazing guy. So knowledgeable. If you’re coming to. Orlando. For a conference and trade show. I would like to personally invite you to a meet up we’re having at old reds. Is there close to the convention center. And it’ll be seven o’clock Sunday night. And I would like to see you all there. And make sure you get a sticker from me. No matter if you might get there. See me on the trade show floor, come to one of the classes. I’m so excited about conference and show. It’s going to be a really, really fun time. And I hope to see you there. Until next time see you bye thank you so much for listening to the Reel turf techs podcast. I hope you learned something today. Don’t forget to subscribe. If you have any topics you’d like to discuss, or you’d like to be a guest, find us on Twitter at Reel turf techs.