Engineered To Lift

From Phone Call to Serial Plate
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Naveen: [00:00:00] One of the biggest names in aerial lifts, Genie Terex, just decided the whole market wasn't worth staying in because of the cyclicality. We also build aerial work platforms, but we didn't flinch. That cyclicality does not bother us. In this episode, we'll let you know why that is isn't a contradiction, and then the two machines that we are building to solve two unique problems.

Welcome to the next episode. Today, I have with us Tim, who's our sales director, who joined our team... When is that, Tim?

Tim: April 2025.

Naveen: Last April. Yeah, last April. And then from day one, he's been firing on all cylinders. I'll [00:01:00] let him introduce himself, a little bit of the background, and then how his journey to- Bailey came about to be?

Tim: Oh, uh, thank you, Naveen, for having me on. Yeah, it's been, it's been interesting. I, um, me and Naveen met actually at a pretty interesting kind of scenario. I was just getting out of the Army. I was in Ranger Regiment for about seven years, and, uh, was trying to figure out how to do sales and kinda learn the whole aspect of it.

And, uh, I was funny enough selling these coffee chews. I won't, I won't name the brand just for his sake, but, uh- ... I was at this, uh, aviation trade show. I can't remember- Yeah ... which one it was.

Naveen: MR, um-

Tim: Was it MRO? Yeah. Maybe it was... It was some type of MRO- Yeah, MRO Americas ... for aviation. Yeah, probably. That might've been it, yeah.

Naveen: Yeah.

Tim: And, uh, we were actually right across from each other on a booth. And actually, we had, I don't know, our booth was super popular. Everybody wanted their little candy coffee chew. It was pretty funny.

Naveen: Yeah. The, the, the show was, like, mainly towards operators- Yeah ... looking at heavy equipment, [00:02:00] and then the booth that Tim was in, that was the only one that had, like, very decent candy.

Every, "Ooh- ... piece of candy. Ooh, piece of candy." And then he was talking to each and everyone who approached with a smile on his face.

Tim: Yeah. It, it, it was a busy day. A- and, and I made, uh, I would definitely say I made a lot of sales. People were buying o- on the website right then and there.

But, uh, I, I noticed, you know, I gave over... I think I went over to you first. I handed you, you know, I tried handing you a coffee chew. Yeah, yeah. You didn't even want one. You were- You, you were like, "Nah, nah." But, uh, you know, so, yeah.

Naveen: I wanted more than the coffee

Tim: chew. Yeah. Yeah, so what was it?

Like, uh, near the end of the day, you walked over. Yeah. You introduced yourself, and pretty much just straight up asked me if I wanted the job.

Naveen: Yeah.

Tim: You know, I tried playing it cool at the time because, you know- ... uh, I didn't know Naveen that too well then. I was just like- ... "Oh, yeah. Well, if the pay is right."

You know, that kinda, you know. But, uh, yeah, it, it actually worked out great. We, um, we started talking. We, it was a great experience. I, um, uh, so funny enough stuff, if you ever follow me on LinkedIn, I even put a [00:03:00] post about it, 'cause I, we've never really even had an interview. We never had-

Naveen: Yeah ...

Tim: I never had to show my resume.

It probably wouldn't have looked good enough for the position at the time. But-

Naveen: I don't know. The, the philosophy, right? It's to hire for attitude, and then y- hire for attitude, and then we can teach them aptitude. That is how implementing in person looks like in real life, so.

Tim: Yeah. And I, and I appreciate the opportunity, and it's been great since then.

But, uh, yeah, I, I joined in around, uh, it was late April, and had a lot to learn. But, uh, you know, Naveen has helped me along the way. The whole team has helped me along the way, and, I, I couldn't be, uh, more excited to be here and continuing the journey with Bailey Crane,

Naveen: trick question, Tim.

What is the biggest thing you sold in that trade show?

Tim: Oh probably about 20 bucks worth. Yourself. Yourself.

Naveen: You sold yourself.

Tim: Yeah. Yeah.

Naveen: It's been a, it's been a great journey so far. Tim has helped us tremendously to improve the sales arm [00:04:00] of the organization. So now let's get back to the show. I began with talking about the market itself.

Terex, the parent company of Genie, they announced their exit from Ariel sale or spinoff. Genie is merging with the REV Group. So their, in their press release, they said, "Reduce exposure to cyclical end markets." When you look at their quarterly earnings in Q3 of '25, their revenue was 537 millions, down by about 13%.

Full year was 14.5% down. But I guess the data center demand did not is not in high gear by then. So all the data center projects were in the process of getting permanent, finding the sites and everything.

Tim: Yeah.

Naveen: When you look at Q4, it ticked back up. Revenue was up 7%, orders were up 50%. That's how cyclical things work.

When it [00:05:00] softens, rental houses replace instead of expand, Terex said to themselves, that's the tell. When we compare and contrast this with the others, JLG and Skyjack, JLG is fine. They have a backlog or about 2 billion, so North America's strong, onshoring. We see all of that products coming here. Skyjack tripled their boom capacity.

They're coming in huge with their booms. Aerials are dying, aren't dying. The commodity end is a, is a grind. So where we sit when all of these cyclical projects come through, we sit in the niche manufacturing space. When they need a machine to solve a unique problem, that's when they start their journey.

Who else can we find? They hopefully encounter Bailey's on their first search, and then they give us a call. Tim, could you speak a little bit about in the sales, how do you encounter those customers? They don't know what they're exactly looking for. They give us a call because they see we have done some [00:06:00] interesting sol- stuff and solved some cool problems.

Tim: Yeah. I think, uh, most of our customers find us by accident, I'd say. Yeah. They're doing a simple Google search. They have no idea what they're actually looking for. Um, a lot of times, you know, depending on if it's the actual company, if it's like, let's say, you know, a big aerospace company or something like that, or one of the big, uh, data center builders, you know, they'll, they'll do their search.

But then a lot of times we also get the third party, all the rental houses coming in, 'cause they also have no idea what these customers are looking for. Yeah. Yeah. You know? And so they'll do a Google search, and we'll come up, and they'll see one of our projects, and they'll give us a call, or they, you know, they'll put in an input on our website, and they're just like, "Do you have any idea what the heck this is?"

You know? Exactly. And that's where we come in, and, and a lot of times they're so surprised that we know exactly what they're looking for-

Naveen: Yeah ...

Tim: or that we have a solution that we can do, build for them, or we have a way move forward for them. They're just like, "I've been looking for months."

Naveen: Yeah.

Tim: You know? And so, that's how, that's how a lot of it [00:07:00] happens. Um- Yeah ... you know, it's, it's usually just like you accidentally run into us, and then we're there to support you.

Naveen: Yeah. We, we... They usually are like, "I don't know how to solve this problem." They're surprised that somebody is out there who's been down this road, and then who has all the right Lego blocks that can be their solution.

Tim: Yeah.

Naveen: They come across usually through a Google search. That's also we're trying to hone in what we should put in our SEO to do the catch all that nobody does. So if anybody, any of the listeners have any ideas, I'll be, I'll be glad to get your help. So usually they're trying to lift a very heavy object, usually the constraints play in, very heavy object over a certain distance, but they're limited by how much capacity they have in the hallways.

There, that is one of the things. So given those constraints, then we can come up with a solution. We recently came across somebody from u- energy company, right? An energy company trying to [00:08:00] do that.

Tim: It's a, a branch of one of the big, really big, uh, automotive builders here in the United States. Yep, yep. They have an energy branch.

They reached out to us picking up motors is what they're trying to do. Yeah,

Naveen: yeah.

Tim: And they only have five feet width. They don't have the space to be able to bring in a full crane. They don't have the overhead ability to bring in- Capacity, yep ... you know, nothing like that. So, they need something that's unique- Yeah

and that has to be able to reach, you know, 40 feet and only be five feet wide. It's, it takes a lot of engineering. It takes a lot of time and skill to do that, but, we're the ones they, that they came to, and we can help them,

Naveen: some of the things we get surprised over in these calls are we might sometimes think equipment might be, because of the custom nature, it might be on the expensive side but sometimes what we hear from the customers is, "This is a cheaper option.

If not for this, we have to tear down the building," or Modify the sequence of events, how we do it. We have to put this in place and put the building that is gonna cost [00:09:00] like in orders of magnitude more. Your machine will save us money. So whenever you're approaching a niche manufacturer, approach it with the mindset that this could be solving a problem that you have, you don't have to modify anything else in your project plan.

Tim: Yeah. I mean, we had, we have the big, the big steel company that we're doing that for.

Naveen: Yeah. Right.

Tim: And you know, they have a whole dock right there on the Mississippi where they need to get people in and out. So it's either replace the whole dock-

Naveen: Yeah ...

Tim: Exponential- All right ... amount of money that they're gonna have to do- Right.

At least $15 million ... or

Naveen: get a- Yeah ...

Tim: yeah, or get a special lift that can do that, and that's something we're helping them with as well. Yeah.

Naveen: Yeah. So th- that's where we play in. In this episode, we're gonna talk about two custom compact handlers we're building to solve some unique problems. One is a CH1 that's a, that's a base machine.

It's supposed to pick up using what? A magnetic?

Tim: Well, the custom one's gonna be a n- a magnetic, Okay ... attachment, right? To pick up steel. Uh, because it's [00:10:00] also a branch of the same exact steel company that we're working with. I see.

Naveen: I see.

Tim: Yeah. Um, but they need something that's small that can pick up steel because they have, you know, safety standards in their facility that, two people can't be picking up more than 100 pounds, or one person can't pick up more than 50 pounds.

So something that's maneuverable and small to do that for them- Mm-hmm ... will save them so much time and manpower.

Naveen: Yeah So when they, when the steel company approached to us, they're looking for something unique, but we already have this machine doing other things. We are designing a custom attachment to solve their problem.

Have we already spoken with their engineering team or not yet?

Tim: Well, they don't really have an engineering team, to be honest. You know, not to be working on this project with us. It's mostly their production manager who requested this. I see. We are actually today be doing a, a overview of, we designed it, we, we built it to what they requested, and now they are going to take the time with us to ensure that it is what they want.

And that's what we always do with all of our custom [00:11:00] units is take the time with our customers after we've done the initial design work to ensure that it's what they want before we build it, and if we need to adjust it, we will.

Naveen: That was not the philosophy of the company before I overtook. Whenever we are approaching these custom projects, it's a all or nothing proposition where the customer is coming to us sometimes for the first time.

They might not have all the pieces that they're trying to do. They don't wanna initiate the project, but by the time they have all the pieces on their end, it might be a little bit late of where we need to be in the project. So one of the things that we did recently was break up the project into a feasibility study where we take up all the requirements, discuss with you initially, and then give you the concept of how it will work.

Once the feasibility study is done, you get a report, finalized report that you can keep, and then the project might hit a pause where you're going through approvals. That is, if you're going through the approvals, then you get all the approvals based on the outputs of the concept phase we [00:12:00] went through, and then you can initiate the whole project knowing full confident that we will be able to build this machine.

That has helped us with this company, correct?

Tim: Uh, yes, actually

Naveen: That's for a different project, actually. You're

Tim: right. Well, no we actually did the same thing with this project to a certain extent.

Naveen: Okay.

Tim: Um, both of them, you know, they- like I said, they're two different branches of the same company. That is something that we started doing to help these, these companies because, this is something that they care about.

This is something that they wanna make sure that it could be perfect. You know, they're gonna spend this money, they're gonna spend this time, these resources to do this. We wanna make sure that we're taking care of these companies so that they understand that, you know, it's not just, give us your money and then you'll get what you get.

You know, we're gonna take the time to sit down with you and give you the white glove approach if you will, on a custom unit because, you know, this is important to your operations and we will ensure before we ship this unit that it is exactly what you want.

Naveen: So given the long [00:13:00] sales cycle that we have, this is also the pointer to other small organizations that are trying to do this, niche companies, whether you're...

whatever space you're in. Break up the project into multiple phases. Do an initial phase where that the approvals can be at the very local level. They can go through the concept phase and, uh, they can use the outputs to get approval for the bigger project. This has worked very well so far for about three of our projects, and then this is an approach.

Sometimes projects might end at the concept phase. The customer is happy. We thoroughly discussed the solution. We ruled it out because of these reasons, and then we are not afraid to do that. If this does not work for you, we don't want you to go with the whole solution and then be not satisfied at the end.

That's not where- what we're here for. So that is the CH1 with the magnetic attachment Incidentally, at the same time, given the engineering to auto space that we operate in, we also have [00:14:00] CH6, which is a bigger capacity machine. The numbers after CH compact handler indicate capacity. This is CH6SP, is special purpose.

Yes. Could you talk a little bit about that one?

Tim: Yeah. So we had a canning company actually reach out to us. Um, they've been dealing with a lot of safety issues with not being able to get to certain pieces of equipment with what they have. They, they're having guys, like, step over these really far reaches, like, where they could drop down, you know, 20 feet, but just to go get a piece of, of equipment.

And if they had one of our units, one of our compact handlers is what they originally thought, "Hey, this would be so much safer." Because we take the time to talk to them and not just get them a basic unit, 'cause we, we obviously like, like Naveen said, we have, you know, the CH1, the CH6, CH4, all these different, like, types of base units, if you will.

We learned that they actually need to get farther and pick up heavier equipment than what their original capacity of the CH6 was. So with this one, we [00:15:00] are... Well, that's why it has the SP on it, special purpose. We're taking the time to engineer it, to do customization of this base unit to be able to pick up, um, you know, like for example, one of the things they need to pick up is 950 pounds at 14 and a half feet, right?

So-

Naveen: Mm. I see ...

Tim: our base unit, is not rated for that. We'd have- Mm ... to do add counterweight, we have to do testing for it and everything like that to ensure that it's safe and meets their requirements so that they didn't just get this base unit and not be able to do what they bought it for.

So we talked with them, we spent the time with them, and that's kind of, like, an example. They have a couple different things that they need this unit to do, mostly to do with the capacity itself, so we're raising the capacity, adding counterweight to it, doing the testing, make sure it's safe, doing all that testing that they would be doing there in-house before it ships.

Naveen: So ANSI standards, whatever, whatever they need to put, if they need to put, let's say for the sake of argument, 1,000 pounds, we test it with 1,500 or something. I don't know the multiplication factor. Our engineers can better speak to it. [00:16:00] But we follow the ANSI standards, whatever is necessary. We do all the testing before we send this machine out.

Yeah.

Tim: Yeah. It would always be 150% that we test-

Naveen: Okay ...

Tim: before it goes out.

Naveen: And then the thought process is if this works out for their one facility, they wanna use it at their other facilities, correct?

Tim: Yeah. Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. Because, um, this is a pretty big company here in North America. They have multiple sites, uh, and they're all dealing with the same issue.

So after they, they get this custom unit and they test it and it works how they want the thought is to order, you know, anywhere from six to maybe even eight of these units to make sure that they have a good safety standard all the way across the board

Naveen: So the engineering we spend on the first unit, you g-get a little bit of economies of scale when we use the same design for multiple of these units.

So whenever you're approach- you're approaching us, you're not literally starting from scratch. If we can use some of our existing machines to repurpose them to solve your problem, that's when we will [00:17:00] propose and then tell you that, "Hey, we have an existing machine that falls a little bit short of what you want.

Let us do development, and then we can make the, make the machine solve your exact problem that you're looking for That is generally how we approach things. So given the compact handlers, these two compact handlers and other custom machines we are doing, given the cyclicality of Genie, what are you seeing in the market, Tim?

So how will you answer that as, I don't... I mean, there is cyclicality when people go on vacations in the summer, so there'll be a little bit of a less amount of calls, but then as soon as they're back, they're all trying to finish whatever they planned for. And then September 30th being the end of the fiscal year for the federal government, we get a lot of these in this time also.

So just to speak to a little bit of the cyclicality. There is cyclicality in ours, but the small drop in summer vacations kind of thing.

Tim: Throughout the year, there's, there's certain times that there are these drops that we [00:18:00] experience. Uh, every company does. I mean, it, it's even, you know, even if you're selling, basic units you'll feel these as like, you'll have points in like, like we just experienced July.

It was a little bit slower than usual.

Naveen: Talking about every company, imagine Apple, right? When they're about to release a new iPhone, the previous two months you can see there is definite dip in cyclicality for there. If somebody like Apple cannot avoid it, please continue.

Tim: Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, they're, everyone's going to experience that.

And so, y- we'll go through the periods where there is a, there is a dip. But, you know, one of the biggest things that, that comes in is we're dealing with so many of these really big companies that are t- either working with the federal government or tied into the federal government. So after you have your little bit of vacation time, everyone's back and they're, and they're just trying to put in orders as fast as possible.

So we usually see our busiest times near the end of the year, September, October. Those are always slammed for us because we're, the government's trying to put in [00:19:00] orders as fast as possible, and then we get a lot of the third-party people who are working with the government as well coming in. Yeah. So we get...

That's our busiest time of the year, I'd always say. Mid-year is slow for everybody, but-

Naveen: Yeah, everybody goes on vacation.

Tim: Yeah.

Naveen: It's not just everybody. Even one person in the whole approval chain, there's 12 signatures- Uh ... one person is on vacation, the rest of the signature's waiting. By the time the next person in line has to sign it, that person is on vacation, so.

Oh,

Tim: that's just, yeah, that, that's the pain of long lead cycles with these big companies. You will... One person can mess up the entire process. Company will say, "Hey, I want this. I want this next month."

Naveen: Yep.

Tim: But I won't get the PO till two months after they ask for it. Yeah,

Naveen: after when they needed the equipment, so.

Tim: Yeah. Yeah. So that's just how it is, unfortunately. But-

Naveen: Yeah. So with these two machines, we're open for more. If there's anything that you need, have a unique problem that you're trying to solve, a lift as far as it, it's in our name, Engineered Access and Lifting. When you [00:20:00] need access and you need to lift something, we can engineer the right solution for you So Tim, so federal government fiscal year ends in September 30th.

That's when they rush. You and me were both in the Army, so we know that a little bit even though we didn't work in logistics. But given we've touched upon long sales cycle, when do these inquiries usually start?

Tim: Ugh. That's a tough question- Yeah. ... uh, in the sense that it varies so much. I have seen- So that's

Naveen: the standard MBA answer.

After MBA graduation- Yeah ... if you learn any two words- ... it's like, it depends. It depends. Yeah. That- that's it. So continue, please. Yeah. It,

Tim: It does. It... Because, you know, I have had, I've only been here a year and a half now, I think. Yeah,

Naveen: yeah.

Tim: And I have just recently closed deals that I got within the first month-

of me, um, I mean, just, you know, the whole year and, and some change will sometimes go before these deals to come through, and, uh, it, it's just such a long lead cycle. You don't know. But I'd say a [00:21:00] lot of times whenever we're getting all these POs are coming in in September and October, we got those initial inquiry in January, February.

Naveen: February. Okay.

Tim: Um, you know, so I'd say the average for, like, you're dealing with the big aerospace or the federal government, average lead time's probably for to actually get the order, six months to a year.

Naveen: Okay. Uh, that, that's helpful context for listeners, so. So if you want your machine, we might give you a PO, uh, immediately, but there's, like, other pending sales orders that might come in at the same time.

So whenever we give you a quote, that's why in our quotes that we give you, as of, we specifically put that date. Our lead time is as of that date. By the time we get your PO, and then if some other POs come in, they could be a little bit different. We try to work as best as possible to meet the date that we gave you.

But please understand that sometimes other POs and supply chain issues might bump this.

Tim: Another thing to think about, which we [00:22:00] had, we dealt with for some of our orders, is that because we're dealing with, big aerospace companies and the federal government, they have I'm trying to remember the- Rated Yeah, rated where-

Naveen: Yeah,

Tim: rated contracts

well, yeah, so we actually have to put their... Even if, let's say your order came in, say, August, and we're building it midway and we're, and then September hits and, you know, the federal government gives us a PO that tells us that, "Oh, your order is no longer first in place." Even though you were before them, the government forces us, we are legally bound to have to put that order before yours.

And, and it's frustrating, I understand, especially for, like, the smaller companies that relying on us. We do everything we can, but also be, uh, understand that there are companies that we're working with that have s- you know, a lot of sway and that we can't control. That, they could have been last place, but they are now putting first because-

Naveen: They give a D-1- Yeah

rated contract-

Tim: Yeah ...

Naveen: that is critical to national security, and then we cannot let them [00:23:00] wait just because of the rated, rated nature of that contract. Yeah. With that, that brings us to the close of this episode. Tim, thank you for joining. So Tim will be joining occasionally with me on these episodes. We will have a dedicated episode for Tim to how after transitioning out of the military, sales could be one of the options.

Because in the military, I'm sure Tim can speak better than me to it, but I'll save that for the full episode, how you can sell yourself to everybody else because you've sold yourself to the government already.

Tim: Yeah, sold our soul. I was gonna ...

Naveen: Yeah, I know, right? Yeah. Sold our firstborn.

Tim: Stay informed, stay protected