Hello and welcome to another episode of the Transportation Exchange podcast presented by Rush Truck Centres of Canada. I'm your host, Jason Cuddy, and on today's episode we welcome Bryan Gerber, who oversees the Isuzu product line, here with us at Rush. Bryan welcome to the podcast.
Bryan Gerber:Thanks, nice to be here finally, on behalf of Isuzu.
Jason Cuddy:Part of the sweet spot of why this truck works so well compared to some of the OEM's, and we'll get into kind of each of the different lines, but basically it's design. This is a cab over design, so these things are incredibly nimble, right. It's very unique to this product compared to everything else that at least Rush carries. So maybe kind of walk us through what you're seeing, as you've taken over kind of the product line of you know the you know, the surprisingness of operating the vehicle, but also kind of just where it fits in in the marketplace.
Bryan Gerber:Well it is. It's kind of a strange sensation when you get into one of these. After you know I've been in the industry for roughly 25 years, never really had a whole lot to do with the medium or light duty segment. So you know, for instance, a few weeks ago I was moving trucks around the yard just to kind of clean up the lineup a little bit, and I had more fun that day moving Isuzu trucks around because it's a strange feeling if you haven't been in a cab over.
Bryan Gerber:I mean, I grew up with that. When I was a kid my dad was a truck driver and often drove those old Astro cabovers and whatnot. So I was, I'm used to it. But you know, sitting in there driving you're actually slightly ahead of the front axle, so when you're parking pulling up to a curb you can actually pull the thing right up over the curb and you can see it in your front, ahead of the front axle. So from a maneuverability standpoint, especially in a city like Toronto or the.
Bryan Gerber:GTA surrounding areas, this truck is ideal. Like if you're running a standard conventional four by two medium duty truck. If weight isn't an issue, you're crazy not to look at these trucks. Yeah, even with the weight standard, like our, our bread and butter is the NRR diesel. It's a 19. 5 GVW truck, so you can get 10, 11,000 pounds of payload on that, which you know if you're, you know, moving around a skid steer loader or appliances or any of that stuff you're easily going to have enough, yeah.
Jason Cuddy:Yeah, yeah, and that final mile too right, like a lot of that, is where these trucks fit in. Well, you're into the city and you can picture it driving in. You know, in a major urban center, you're at a set of lights in a cab over you can see, like you said, right in the crosswalk right in front of you and traditional conventional, someone could be crossing in front of your hood and they'll cross right up against it and you won't see them.
Jason Cuddy:Right. So from a safety point of view, from an operator point of view, the field of view you have in this, in this truck, as you're driving is, is phenomenal.
Bryan Gerber:Yeah, I think they say it's something like eight feet, and I don't know exactly how that's measured but, it's basically from the driver's eye.
Bryan Gerber:Sitting in the seat, you can see eight feet out in front of the truck to the pavement, which is just unbelievable. Like you can, and leaning forward, you can see right out in front of the truck. So visibility second to none. And, quite frankly, there's not a whole lot of say competition for a truck like this. Really, you're coming down to the pickup trucks the 550 Ford's or the, the Dodges, and you know, typically they'll have a similar GVW, correct. As a NRR say Yep, it's a bigger footprint. Bigger footprint, you're going to have more maneuverability and because the low BBC on these trucks, you can put a bigger box on the back as well.
Jason Cuddy:Yeah, and so when you talk about that, I mean look at where it kind of competes in that world and the different product lines. There's basically three different products within the Isuzu offering. Maybe walk us through what they are.
Bryan Gerber:Yeah, so there's actually more than three, there's probably six or seven, but they really step up between GVW's very tight. So we've kind of focused on three different model sizes. So the NPR- HD has a max GVW of 14,500. In a lot of cases that's plenty for what this market is doing.
Bryan Gerber:I think people have kind of got into the idea that they need to to overdo it in terms of their capacity. But by and large, you know, six or 8,000 pounds of payload is generally going to do it. So that's an NPR. Comes in a gas or a diesel, yep. The next size up, which is probably our bread and butter, is the NRR. It's in both a gas and a diesel and it has a 19,500 GVW. That's kind of the sweet spot because there you can get the landscapers.
Bryan Gerber:Like I said earlier, you can pull a bobcat or something onto the back, something with some weight. You can fit a number of mowers, trimmers, whatever you need in the back and you can go up to a 20 foot box on that. So that's probably the bread and butter model. The challenge now is, I think people are trying to rethinking gas or diesel. We can get into that later, but over the last, say, year to the NRR, diesel, which is the sweet spot, has been a little harder to get. So we've got more people that have been looking at the gas and, quite frankly, for this market segment there's no reason why you shouldn't be looking at a gas.
Jason Cuddy:And then when we go back to who kind of is purchasing these. Traditionally, again it's a smaller fleet, so it's not like they have a fleet of other diesel vehicles. So as everyone knows, with the diesel you've got different after treatment systems and after. There's other touch points that you know. If you're not a truck person by nature, you know it's a bit more challenging from the maintenance side. You know a bit more to learn different. More cost may be more downtime.
Jason Cuddy:So by going with a gas option it's more familiar to what you may be driving back and forth to work already you know, less, less maintenance items to worry about as far as running it, and maybe just a little bit easier just to just incorporate into your everyday business offerings potentially.
Bryan Gerber:Absolutely, Absolutely. And you know when you get into the maintenance side of things as well, you can put in maintenance programs together with these trucks.
Bryan Gerber:So if you're a non truck person, this is a fantastic option for you because you can essentially be covered for five years, basically bumper to bumper, in terms of not only your component coverages but towing and also also maintenance programs. So you can kind of pre schedule your maintenance programs at the time of purchase and this truck is basically covered for you. Yeah, so yeah. And then the last segment is the F series. So the FVR goes up to a 30,000 pound GVW. That is an air brake truck that comes through the US. So you need a Z-endorsement to operate it.
Bryan Gerber:The others, you don't you keep it under the 19.5 and you're going to be fine with just a regular license. But you do need a CDL to drive the F series. But you know it's a worthy competitor to any medium duty truck. You know small dumps, any of that stuff. The FVR, especially in a city like Toronto, it's worth looking at because you get into some of these downtown construction projects and they're a nightmare to get down there with a big conventional truck, whereas you can do some of that job with a medium duty. In fact, you know, on a kind of an side note I had doing a renovation at home right now and had one of these junk companies come in, which is my new favorite thing, because they clear out all this stuff you don't want to touch.
Bryan Gerber:But these guys come in and they show up in an NPR HD Isuzu and they've got it loaded up with appliances and all this stuff. It's amazing they pack those things tight and they can get in anywhere with them.
Jason Cuddy:So that's good point. I mean, when you get back to the F, the FVR series, it's again. It's still a cab over, right? So for a city use, or if you need that a little bit longer body, some guys again, you don't necessarily need to wait, but if you're cubing up before you're weighing out and you can get a bigger body and 20 feet on that too, which is nice, so you can get that big footprint of a 24 26 foot body without the huge footprint of a conventional truck, right?
Bryan Gerber:So yeah, and you can go right up to a 30, 30 foot body on a 248 inch wheelbase FVR, which is huge.
Bryan Gerber:I mean typically, if you're buying, say, a typical four by two medium truck, you're going to keep body size to 24 26 feet but because your overall length is tighter here in your maneuverability you can go up to a 30 foot box without you know being too concerned. I just had a couple sent out for us. We've got them with 26 foot boxes on. We went a little bit smaller with lift gates. But yeah, we're trying to get these things upfitted and so people can actually take a look at them and see that when they're looking, not thinking maybe in a cab over, right, and that's often what happens there in the sale process with something else and they look at a cab over and it's just, it's a no brainer.
Jason Cuddy:Yeah, no, for sure, it definitely makes sense. And we you double it on briefly, but you know there's the gas versus diesel, versus the new powertrain which is electric. Maybe we'll kind of walk through where Isuzu plays and kind of you know what we see there. You double it a bit on gas. Maybe we'll dig in a bit more and kind of you know, find a sweet spot for gas. It's maybe in a commercial vehicle, isn't the go to thought of for fuel.
Bryan Gerber:Yeah, for the, for the you know fleet of trucks, that mainly into the higher class trucks where they're running diesel engines. Yeah, it makes sense to have a diesel but quite frankly, running around the city you're not going to get a ton of the benefits out of the diesel that you're going in. Quite frankly, the, the 350 horsepower gas in the NRR, in the N series, has the same torque rating as what the diesel does.
Bryan Gerber:The 215 horsepower diesel, so you're still going to get similar power. The nice thing is, if it's a, if it's a customer who's not into trucks, it's going to be very similar to their automotive vehicle. So they don't have to worry about things like DPFs or diesel exhaust fluid and topping that stuff up. You know it's a bit of a different beast.
Bryan Gerber:The diesel guy won't be worried about that. But it can be a little uncomfortable for the person not used to that. Sure, and you know, quite frankly, the N-Series has a very automotive feel to it. Yeah, you get into the F-Series truck and it feels like a truck. You know, it's beefier, it's heavy, it's got a bigger rubber on it, so it feels like a truck, whereas that N-Series class the NPR, the NRR you can be completely inexperienced, get in this truck and drive it around and feel comfortable in it.
Jason Cuddy:Yeah, that's a good point. And then coming soon I mean it'll be a while until we kind of maybe see it here at the dealership but recently announced anyways from Isuzu is the electric, the NRR electric, we'll touch a little bit on kind of what that looks like, that you know people can get into eventually.
Bryan Gerber:Yeah, I mean, a great place to look at the NRR electric is on the Isuzu North America YouTube channel. They've got some great videos, some walkarounds they break the truck down. There's a lot of neat options on this truck and you can, depending on how fast you want to charge this truck and how far you need it to go, you can choose select different battery pack sizes. So you know that's going to have two things. One, it's going to affect your route distance.
Jason Cuddy:Right.
Bryan Gerber:But if you're in a return to base route in the city and you're not putting on a lot of kilometers, it's, you probably don't need the full nine pack battery pack, because I think they can go from either a four battery pack right up to a nine yeah, which I think the nine pack. I think it's rated at 250 miles or something like that. It's pretty decent it is. It is, but you and I were talking earlier and I think this market segment was ideally made for an electric truck.
Jason Cuddy:Yeah.
Bryan Gerber:You know where electric shines is when you're in a start-stop operation, where it can have regenerative braking and it can take advantage of the electrical system. A line haul in an electric truck we're just not there yet. No, but these trucks, you know 95% of their usage is you're not running from, you know, Windsor to Montreal with one of these. You're running around the city, whether it's Kitchener, Waterloo, it's Toronto, it's Oshawa, wherever that is. Yeah, you're in city, you're lots of stops and starts, so it thrives in that scenario. And then, really, you're going to adjust your battery packs based on what kind of payload you need.
Jason Cuddy:Yeah, it makes sense. And what I know from previous lives where you know guys had early editions of hybrids, you know, and the kind of the bread trucks that you see ripping around the intention was to kind of get to this, because it's the final mile, you're not putting many miles on you know, but the engine was running all day.
Jason Cuddy:So the hybrid idea was to take somewhere and turn off the engine. Obviously, you know, from exhaust all that you know was refined but but now it's fully electric. But the nice part of this, compared to those old school kind of first generation one, is for driver comfort. And the, noise is huge. You can hear more, you can, you know, the visibility is still the same, obviously. But the big one was the HVAC system.
Jason Cuddy:Heating, air conditioning works perfectly fine on electric vehicle when you had these hybrid units, or if you have a diesel one now, you shut it off, you can't idle. So in the winter you shut it off, you hop back in. It's freezing, the truck never gets warm enough to get comfortable or in the summer never gets cool enough to be comfortable. Now with this electric you can do your start, stop, start, stop and maintain the temperature inside. So just driver comfort alone will be great. But the nice part with the Isuzu lineup the way they've done compared to some of the other OEMs is that offering of battery packs where it's not like, hey, it's this or that and that's it. You can really fine tune your application and you know it's just kind of coming to market with it. It's got the new cab. We'll talk about that too.
Bryan Gerber:Yeah, that's exciting.
Jason Cuddy:But it's, you know it's. So it'll be a while till we see it, but it'll be interesting. I think to your point, this is where the electric really shines in an application as it gets rolled out into the industry. This is the final mile is definitely home for it.
Bryan Gerber:Yeah, the smaller stuff, I mean it's, it's, it's almost more like the automotive side. It's really taken off, but you're not really seeing it in the heavy trucks. Yeah, we're just not quite there yet. I mean, you know there's talk about the charging stations and all that. I don't think that's as big of an issue right now as range. And then you've got the early adopters. When you get to your second stage right now and you see this in the automotive industry right now, the early adopters are coming around to trade ends and what's happened in five years is the technologies advance so fast. So so you know, that's kind of critical too. So we're kind of getting there with the electric truck. I think that I think it's going to be a winner. It's starting to get released right now.
Bryan Gerber:I think where you'll see the initial trucks go was probably into California where they deal with carbon EPA a little bit more stringent than what we deal with here, but we'll start seeing it here, probably later in this year, into 2025. Toronto, the GTA, is a fantastic market for it, oh for sure. So, but you know there's other factors involved too that's going to make it viable, like government incentives and whatnot to help subsidize the cost, because, quite frankly, with electrical right now, we still need that subsidy.
Jason Cuddy:Yes, I agree, yeah, to make sense for a lot of customers, so, and a lot of it's going obviously to Municipal and governments you know where there's the need for it in order to take some mandates but, you know, for the final mile customers, I think with the right rebates now I think it starts to make sense.
Bryan Gerber:Yeah, exactly I think it's going to be. We're not there yet, but in the future it's going to be probably driving the bulk of our sales. In fact, with government mandates coming, it's going to have to Exactly, so it's not really a matter of if it's when Exactly?
Jason Cuddy:And, in the interim, to keep to your, your, your diesel or gas vehicles running. Isuzu has a different program that a lot of other OEMs don't really offer and it's their PSMP right. Their preventive service maintenance program, I believe is the title, but basically it's its prepaid maintenance program. They walk us through, kind of what, what that is and that's again unique to Isuzu.
Bryan Gerber:Yeah, they have. I think it's four different options that you can choose and it really comes down to the depth of the service that you want to get. You know they'll change oil, they'll grease fittings, they'll do all your regular maintenance and basically what you do is well, you know the guys buying this truck, as we talked about earlier, they aren't necessarily truck people, so they're not going to have a shop. They likely don't have their own mechanics. They don't want to be doing their own oil changes and services and all that stuff and, quite frankly, with the complexity of the trucks today, I don't think most people want to do that. So what we do is we roll a PSMP program in right from the start where we preschedule your services and again, it just depends on how in depth you want to get. We can customize them to whatever you're looking for and then we'll roll that. You can roll it right into your financing if you want, quite frankly, and you're locked in at today's rates, which is kind of nice.
Jason Cuddy:Yeah.
Bryan Gerber:So that we can have you know the other thing, which is kind of on the side you're covered for two years of oil changes. So you buy an Isuzu and the coverage is outstanding. So for the first two years your oil changes are free. So it gives you more of the reason to come back to your dealer.
Jason Cuddy:Yeah, and on top of that their warranties from all, especially on the diesel side. You've got a base three year with an extended five that's included on the diesel and also includes towing.
Bryan Gerber:Yes.
Jason Cuddy:So to your point, over a five year term with a preventative service maintenance program. So you have your maintenance coverage after your two years of oil changes, plus all your warranty. It's almost like having a full service lease. Well, it is On an on an own vehicle.
Bryan Gerber:It is. It's fantastic for that guy that, like I said, isn't a truck person. They can get in, they can have full coverage really for five years. Your base vehicle warranties here are three years. I believe. It's three years unlimited. But then you can add on from, I believe on the gas it's $600 and you can extend your warranties out to five years. It's ridiculous, but on the diesels they're actually throwing that in. So you get that full coverage to five years. But then the other thing that's remarkable about Isuzu is the towing coverage. So you get your three years towing but if you extend your warranty out to five years you get towing coverage for a full five years, which is phenomenal. So it's towing to the nearest to Isuzu dealer. But that kind of coverage I mean, if you're worried about piece of mind you're not a truck person, you're a little worried about the truck this has got you covered for five years. So it's really remarkable to the truck business. Again, it's almost more like an automotive program.
Jason Cuddy:Yes, and I guess, as we talked on briefly, is you know. So all that's happening behind the scenes and right now the next thing coming down the line is the new cab. So the electric is going to kind of be the first adaptation of the new cab. But you know it's. It's not all changes to these trucks over the last handful of years, but this seems to be a very kind of significant change in design.
Bryan Gerber:It is. So it's more than just a cab refresh. It's a full cab redesign and it actually is starting with the NRR series. So that's been one of the reasons that we've had a bit of a slower trickle of NRRs coming in. We want more stock of NRRs coming in, but it's the first to receive the full new cab redesign. So typically in these type of launches you have a ramp up procedure. So that's what's happening right now.
Bryan Gerber:We've got a number of them on order that we're expecting to see probably into May, which will be the full new cab design. So the cab it's just they've changed some of the air and dynamics and improved the cross flow of air on the on the cab, but they've kind of still stuck to the traditional Isuzu look. It's got some new headlights, a new bumper inside the cab, a new plush interior steering wheels change the cab stack or the center stack has changed. So you know the cab has been changed from the ground up. It's extremely comfortable, but more than anything, the looks are stunning. So it's a great looking truck. I'm excited to get some in stock here.
Jason Cuddy:Nice. And then one thing we didn't talk about as we you know, we talked about that some of the technology and the safety features and just the drivability is they have an incredible ADAS system, which is their safety system, which, you know, given the visibility out of, out of the cab over, still good, but still has some unique features that help even protect the pedestrians and outside world a little bit more.
Bryan Gerber:Absolutely Well. They actually have two driver interactive systems. One is simply just a passive system so you can add that kind of aftermarket where it'll just kind of buzz and beep if you're going outside the lines, whereas the full ADAS system, which is your fully integrated system, you know it interacts with the steering, the brakes, everything so it'll actually pull you back into the lane. It has adaptive cruise, so you set your cruise, say, at 100 kilometers an hour, but you come up onto another car, it'll maintain your steering distance A lot of these things that you're seeing in new cars. Right, if you see it in your car, it's probably available on a truck.
Jason Cuddy:Yeah.
Bryan Gerber:One of the great systems that they have on this truck, though, as part of the ADAS system, is when you're sitting at a stop light, there's a sensor in the truck, so if something steps in front of the cab now we already have great visibility, but if something steps in front of the cab or you have a car pulls in front of you, you hit the throttle to leave after a stop. It'll actually take away the power from the throttle If it senses something in front of you. It may be a car stop. That was supposed to. It's just a safety feature which you know. Operating in the city with these trucks, you know you're downtown Toronto you've got bikes.
Bryan Gerber:you've got cars. You've got people walking like I don't like driving my car downtown, much less one of these. So that ADAS system is something that really can protect you, and it's not standard from the factory. We don't order it standard on all of our stock trucks, but we are seeing you see a significantly bigger uptake of it in our orders.
Jason Cuddy:Yeah, and it makes sense. I think you've seen that with fleets on all levels, so starting to it's starting to be a bit more common, I think for the longest time it was. We'll look at it. What's the option cost? But I'm seeing a lot more fleets, especially on the passive stuff, significantly being added on, just as a driver aid to help them. But you know, but a feature like that is just, you know, from a safety point of view, you can see it just getting adopted as we carry on.
Bryan Gerber:Yeah, it's becoming almost standard on class A trucks. Most of the fleets, for insurance reasons, are putting on their trucks and I think people are just getting used to it Like it doesn't bother me. In my own car it has the lane, lane, keep, assist and all these features that kind of help you out.
Bryan Gerber:You can get a little bit lazy, but yeah they're fantastic features Once you start using them in a truck like this, and the last thing any small business needs is to get into a bad accident where they're liable. So right systems like these. You know you have one instant where they help you out and it's paid for itself.
Jason Cuddy:That's a good point. No, all good points. So again we want to thank you, come in and give us an overview of kind of, you know, Russia's footprint with the Isuzu product line, but also just the product line in general. I think we touched on a lot of key points and things. That is, a lot of great information on the Isuzu website.
Jason Cuddy:As far as all the you know, the in depth information that people may be looking for. A lot of videos, walkarounds, all that's there, so definitely check it out and then reach out to us for any additional information.
Bryan Gerber:Yeah, for sure, and you know, on our website we're making a point to put pictures of the actual trucks up with the bodies on them as they're upfitted. You know what we've got in stock and, like I mentioned earlier, the Isuzu commercial trucks YouTube channel is fantastic. It's got pretty much anything you want to know about an Isuzu product. You know we've got a great sales force as well. Any one of them can answer any questions.
Jason Cuddy:Excellent. Well, hey, that concludes this episode. I do want to thank Bryan for taking time to join us and to catch up on past episodes. Check out transportationexchangepodcast. ca. And until next time. Thanks for listening.