Reinventing the Hubcap: How XTRACTOR Protects Fleets
The Hub Corp’s XTRACTOR™ hubcap redefines wheel-end protection with built-in oil filtration that reduces contamination, lowers costs, and boosts fleet efficiency.
Episode 356: In this episode of The Heavy Duty Parts Report, host Jamie Irvine sits down with Chris Miller, President of The Hub Corp, to discuss the launch of their groundbreaking XTRACTOR™ hubcap. Unlike traditional hubcaps that simply seal the wheel end, the XTRACTOR™ introduces a built-in multi-stage magnetic and mesh oil filtration system designed to actively remove contaminants from hub oil.
Chris explains how dirty hub oil leads to premature wear, reduced fuel efficiency, and costly downtime, particularly for small fleets. By combining advanced filtration with a patent-pending HexThread™ cartridge for easier servicing, The Hub Corp aims to lower total cost of operation and extend component life. This conversation highlights how innovation in even the smallest parts can have a massive impact on fleet performance and profitability.
Links
Sponsors of this Episode
The Hub Corp: Introducing the new standard in wheel-end protection: The Hub Corp’s revolutionary XTRACTOR™. The only line of heavy-duty hub caps with a built-in 3-Stage Magnetic Oil Filter that safeguards critical axle components under extreme loads for longer. And with the patent-pending HexThread™ cartridge, the XTRACTOR makes hub oil servicing and inspections faster, easier, and cleaner. The Hub Corp: Challenge The Standard. Visit TheHubCorp.com to learn more and join the waitlist.
Fullbay: Fullbay is built for the heavy-duty world, giving your operation the tools to keep your fleet or independent repair shop running. Features like streamlined scheduling, real-time inventory tracking, technician efficiency insights, and detailed reports are how Fullbay helps shops reduce downtime and keep your vehicles on the road where they belong. Check out Fullbay.com/power to maximize your shop’s productivity.
GenAlpha: Equip360 by GenAlpha helps manufacturers and distributors grow their parts sales and make life easier for their customers. With real-time insights into inventory, pricing, and order tracking, it keeps customers coming back. Plus, it saves time by automating routine tasks and making repeat purchases simple. Explore Equip360 at GenAlpha.com.
Disclaimer: This content and description may contain affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, The Heavy Duty Parts Report may receive a commission.
Transcript of Episode
Jamie Irvine
Welcome to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine. And in this episode, we are going to talk about a brand new product that is coming to the market very soon. I’m very excited about this. To help me talk about what this product is, what it’s going to accomplish for the trucking industry, why it’s even needed at all, I am very excited to introduce you to Chris Miller, President of the Hub Corp. Chris, welcome to The Heavy Duty Parts Report, very happy to have you here.
Chris Miller
Jamie, thanks so much. Glad to be here.
Jamie Irvine
One of the constant themes that we talk about on The Heavy Duty Parts Report is strategies for lowering total cost of operation for commercial trucking fleets. We understand that the trucking industry really is the backbone of society, and it plays such an important role in not only making sure that we have all the things that we need, but also that our way of life is supported, all the things we get to enjoy. really most of those things come on a truck. So I’m really excited to talk to you about what the Hub Corp is doing, the products it’s developing, because I think our missions are aligned where we’re trying to help fleets lower their total costs. Let’s kind of get into that subject though, and talk about a hidden cost that fleets experience that maybe they’re not really thinking about.
Chris Miller
So I’m gonna invite you to do a little thought experiment with me, let’s shrink ourselves to be microscopic. And let’s dive into the wheel end, okay? So think about it. You’ve got a hubcap and that’s a cap on the end of the wheel end. And then you’ve got a whole mess of stuff behind it, right? It’s absolute mayhem behind there. Parts are flying at tremendously high speed. Imagine if you’re microscopic, you see metals and lubricants are mixing and spinning and rotating and temperatures are blazing. And so in this environment, there’s a lot of things that have to go right. And if something goes wrong, it can be catastrophic really quickly. So what we’ve identified is there’s this threat that’s always kind of latent behind that hubcap. And it’s something that goes largely unseen and largely not in our conscious awareness for most people. And that threat is contamination. First of all, let’s think about it. A hubcap’s primary purpose is to seal the wheel end, keep the bad stuff out and keep the oil in. If we didn’t need to keep bad stuff out, then we’d probably have some other way to cap that up. But we know that the bad stuff getting in is a threat. And so we’ve done a lot of things in engineering to try to find a way to keep the particulate contaminants and things from finding their way inside the wheel end. So if we don’t do that, think about like this, particles start to build up, and then they don’t disappear. They stay in circulation. They start grinding on bearings and seals. And when hub oil becomes an abrasive slurry, you’re introducing parasitic drag, which eats away at fuel efficiency. You’re accelerating parts wear, which means decreased performance and more frequent unplanned parts replacement. So in short, dirty hub oil is potentially lighting dollars on fire. So again, most people think of a hubcap as a simple plug, something that holds oil in, keeps the bad stuff out. And for decades, that’s how it’s been. And it’s been completely acceptable for most people. But for us, we want to challenge standard conventions. We know that a lot of owner operators that we’ve talked to don’t even know what brand hubcaps they’re using. And so we’re bringing something interesting and new to this space that addresses a problem that everyone deals with, but no one acknowledges.
Jamie Irvine
What would you say is the impact on things like uptime, maintenance cost, and overall fleet performance when our hub oil gets to that, like you said, that slurry of contaminants and it’s doing all those bad things inside of our wheel end?
Chris Miller
Sure. So there’s a lot of different ways we can slice and dice it, but the primary mechanics are relatively simple. Oil in most systems are filtered. Because the oil is used as a lubricant, and when the lubricant is free of contaminants, all the other parts function better. So when oil gets dirty, you can imagine bad stuff starts to happen. So in the example of the wheel end here that we’re talking about, when the oil gets dirty, everything has to work harder. It creates pitting and scoring on bearings that once those are there, those bearings are never going to be more efficient than they were prior to that damage and abrasion. So they’re only going to be worse off. When you have more bearing friction and damage, the bearings run hotter, which means you’re pushing them toward the edges of their specifications of their performance, including the other parts around it, like seals. They’re running harder. They’re starting to wear out faster. All these things start to snowball into this effect, where they eventually turn into unexpected service events. Even fuel economy can take a hit because extra drag can add up over thousands of miles. It’s kind of like a death by a thousand cuts. It all traces back to this contamination.
Jamie Irvine
Why would you say that this situation has persisted so long before someone like your company comes along and tries to challenge that status quo?
Chris Miller
Most people don’t think about hubcaps. I mean, they’ve not thought about it as something that can be a performance-driving part. It’s kind of a necessary evil. So hubcaps, in this sense, they’ve always been treated as commodities. It’s generally a low-cost part if you look at your bill of materials across your entire rig. You don’t think about it a whole lot. And because of this mindset, we’ve generally come to accept that premature wear, and wear on the wheel and parts, that’s just kind of the cost of doing business. And so we like to think nobody really stepped back and said, wait, why are we allowing the contaminants to circulate endlessly? Until now, nobody’s really invested in solving this problem. And that’s where we saw a pretty unique opportunity.
Jamie Irvine
So I want to kind of drill down a little bit further on the economic consequences of ignoring the problem of having contaminants in our hub oil. So what is that economic consequence?
Chris Miller
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s no surprise that a single wheel end failure or some sort of an unplanned downtime incident can cost thousands. And it can completely blow up a week or a month or that can snowball if it’s across multiple rigs that happen to run into a similar problem at the same time across a small private fleet. So then you also add in other small impacts like lost fuel efficiency, again, from increased parasitic drag, rolling friction in your bearing system. That’s hundreds of dollars. Maybe it’s thousands if you talk about a fleet of 10 or 20 trucks. So big fleets definitely going to feel it just because they have massive scale, but they might be able to ride it out. They have enough in their P&L, they got enough wiggle room, maybe they can get by without really addressing it. But for small fleets, I mean, they’re going to feel it the most because again, they could be oftentimes just a couple downtime incidents away from making or breaking a month. And so a breakdown can mean a missed delivery, it can mean a lost contract, and they’ve got this always increasing pressure on their balance sheets. That’s something that we’re trying to help them avoid. And so for a part that they already have on their trucks and trailers, this little added assurance that we’re doing a little bit something extra, without you having to consciously even think about it, should bring a little bit of peace of mind that they’re doing more to make their parts go further.
Jamie Irvine
It’s time to hear from our sponsors. We’ll be right back.
The Hub Corp: Lowering total cost of operation involves looking at critical components that you put on your commercial vehicles and making sure that you are making the best selection for your application. With all of that in mind, I want to introduce you to the new standard in wheel end protection.
The Hub Corp’s revolutionary Xtractor. Now what I like about this product, it’s the only line of hubcaps that comes with a built in three stage magnetic oil filter, and this is a safeguard for your critical wheel end components. In addition to that, it is actually a serviceable component on your vehicle now and so it has a patent pending hex thread cartridge and the Xtractor makes hub oil servicing really simple and easy. And guess what? If you’re not servicing that hub oil regularly, you are going to have premature failure of key components. It’s just the way it works. So I highly encourage you to get on the wait list today. You can do that by heading over to the hubcorp.com.
Check it out. Get on the wait list and you will get the most up-to-date information about when this product is available and also some price discounts that you won’t get anywhere else. So go visit thehubcorp.com today.
Fullbay: It’s not just fleets and owner operators that need to look at their total cost of operation and find tools that help them with their business. If you’re running a repair shop, then you need tools to streamline your operations and that’s why I recommend Fullbay. Now Fullbay has features like streamline scheduling, real time inventory tracking, technician, efficiency, insights and detailed report on exactly every aspect of the business that you need to be paying attention to make sure that your repair shop is running as efficiently as possible. And what does this mean for you?
Well, it means in the end that Fullbay is the very tool that’s going to help you reduce downtime and make your shop more efficient, keeping the vehicles that you service on the road where they belong. Check out fullbay.com/power to maximize your shops productivity today. That’s fullbay.com/power.
GenAlpha: Manufacturers and distributors are a key component in the supply chain, and they play a vital role in keeping trucks and trailers rolling. I’d like to introduce you to Equip360 by GenAlpha. This platform helps manufacturers and distributors grow their part sales, but more importantly it helps them make their customers lives easier, and that’s so important. With real time insights into inventory pricing and order tracking, it’s going to keep your customers coming back.
Plus, it saves time by automating routine tasks and making repeat purchases simple. I encourage you to explore Equip360 at genalpha.com GENalpha.com. Check it out today.
We’re back from our break. Make sure you go and check out the links in our show notes to all of our sponsors. OK, let’s get back to this episode. What are fleet maintenance managers doing right now? Walk me through what the status quo is. If they’re not addressing it, at least in the way that you think the Hub Corp can help them address it, what are they doing up until now? What’s been the status quo?
Chris Miller
So every fleet’s got its own established preventative maintenance schedules for a wheel-end service. If you look at some of the literature published by manufacturers and part suppliers, it ranges, and no one gets really specific about how frequently you should do X, Y, or Z. I’ve seen ranges from 100,000 miles, you should do a visual inspection of your hubcaps. If you see something awry, maybe you pop those things off and do a little deeper dive. And if you don’t like a dent on it, maybe you replace it. So it’s a little bit wishy-washy, and we’re not getting a lot of really clear direction for from, again, from the parts suppliers and the manufacturers. So that’s the preventative maintenance side. Now, there has been some work done on the product development itself. For example, a number of hubcaps and other parts in the powertrain, they use magnets to pull out the wear materials, the wear particles that show up.
Jamie Irvine
You mean like a magnetic plug, for example, in the hubcap?
Chris Miller
Exactly. So a magnetic plug, or sometimes you’ll see them in the screw that’s in the fill drain port, they’ll put a little magnet in there so it kind of sits down in the body of the hubcap a little bit. And that’s great. Magnets are going to pull out like the wear particles. But the reality is it’s not only magnetic particles that show up inside hub oil. As much as we like to think that a hubcap and it’s sealed create a perfectly sealed environment, we’ve never broken a hubcap off of a wheel end and done an oil analysis that has shown perfectly clean oil, not only from the metallic side, but also from silicates and things from road dust that are making their way into the wheeling system. They’re just not perfectly sealed. And that’s okay. That’s no fault of anybody. That’s just the nature of the beast. And so road dust is often found in high concentrations, and these particle sizes are often pretty large. So on top of that, you might also get from some aging parts, you might have rust from hubs or spindles or bearings, and then even the seals themselves, they start to wear over time. And so all of these little shavings and things that aren’t magnetically attracted, well, they are magnetically attracted, but they bind to the detergents and the dispersants that are in hub oil and create these little encapsulated oxide particles that magnets actually can’t attract. What you have is this free flow of particles that the magnets aren’t capturing, and they’re just flowing around endlessly, causing the same type of damage you’re trying to prevent with the magnets. It’s a half solution. It gets us almost there, but there’s still this unaddressed part that we’re trying to tackle.
Jamie Irvine
Okay, so that leads us to the introduction of the HubCorp’s product. Now, you’re calling it Xtractor. Tell us the story of that moment, that aha moment where it’s like, something needs to change here.
Chris Miller
So we’ve been in discussions with fleets and owner operators for a long, long time. And we were asking them, tell us about your wheel end maintenance. Tell us about your hub oil. Tell us about your hubcaps. And the thing, like the pervasive pattern that we saw over and over is that they didn’t really know what was going on behind the hubcap. They just kind of deal with failures as they come. Again, it’s just the cost of doing business. Parts fail and you replace them, that’s fine. At the same time, we see all these numerous reports from, again, parts manufacturers and even peer-reviewed publications like from SAE and government-commissioned reports on fuel efficiency studies and all sorts of research that are saying particle contamination is a primary culprit of bearing failures and bearing loss of performance, this hard particle contamination. And so we had this disconnect. It kind of led to this spark. Most people aren’t really thinking too much about their hubcaps, yet this is a problem that is happening over and over and over, and there’s plenty of research that proves it. And so we set out to make a product that better protects the wheel end, allows you to keep really not thinking about it. have to change your habits at all. Just keep not thinking about it, but use a better part. It’s going to be better protected. And it’s literally, it’s a no-brainer because you don’t have to think about it.
Jamie Irvine
Okay, so let’s go into the specifics of what makes the Xtractor different than any other hubcap on the market.
Chris Miller
All right, so I’ve got an extractor right here in my hands. What this is, this is a hubcap for a trailer axle. You can look at the parts interchange, but this is similar to like a 4009 or other similar parts from the other manufacturers. Those are just for cost-reference purposes. On the front of it, we’ve got our blue plug and we have this hex plate, which is kinda this hexagonal shape. And you can actually thread the front of this thing off. and expose the body of the hubcap. So this is a pretty novel design. We can talk a little bit about why we’re doing this. On the backside of this cartridge here, you can see there’s a mesh filter. And I’ll kind of move it around in here. You can see some glinting and sparkling. There’s magnets inside of that filter. But you can also see there’s this mesh, and it’s multiple layers of different mesh sizes. So these are the two primary things that we’ve done here with the expected. So let’s explain, let’s talk about what we’re trying to accomplish here.
Jamie Irvine
Right, so just before we move on to that, for those listening on the podcast version, this hubcap is really unique because normally when you think of your normal hubcap, right, it’s a cast aluminum part. You’ve got that sight glass, you’ve got the breather plug. We’re all familiar with that, but it was so interesting to watch you, Chris, actually unthread the cap and have this really interesting looking cartridge that is kind of unique. We’ve never seen that before in hubcaps. So this is brand new way of thinking about it and taking the magnet side from it, the magnetic side of it, and adding this layer of filtration, that’s what’s really unique about it. But it’s also the ability to just take that cartridge off. And I know we’re going to get into more details about why that’s important. But for those listening, if you really want to get a visual, of course, we’ll have links to the website so you can see it. But go over and watch the video version on YouTube of this episode so you can get a real good visual. Okay, sorry, Chris, go ahead.
Chris Miller
Okay, so the first, the Xtractor is a first of its kind hubcap with a built in multi-stage oil filter. Other hubcaps generally try to keep contaminants out and hold oil in, but none of them are perfect. Ours goes a step further, acknowledging that this imperfection exists, and we’re actually going to filter out the contaminants that inevitably make their way inside the wheel end system. So on top of that, we also have designed the hubcap with easy service with this hex thread front access cartridge. This lets users and mechanics easily access and inspect and change hub oil without having to uninstall the entire hubcap body from the hub itself, thereby preserving the flange gaskets that’s there and removing the need to scrape off that flange gasket and then replace it when you go to reinstall your hubcap. So again, it allows you to service it in place and put it back on.
Jamie Irvine
That extra step of active filtration while in service, I think that’s what’s really unique and got my attention. What kind of steps did you take in the development of this product from an engineering perspective, from a testing perspective, to say, okay, we have this theory that we can improve the hubcap, that we can actually do this. How did you go from that to real data that supports this position that the hubcap needs to have this active filtration happening?
Chris Miller
Yeah, excellent. So again, we had this thesis that if you keep oil cleaner, the entire operation is going to run more smoothly. And I think that’s pretty well founded as we see oil filtration on all sorts of other industrial applications, even outside of heavy-duty trucking, right? So what we wanted to start with is first, what are the size of the contaminants that are showing up inside the oil bath? How do we effectively filter those out? Okay, well, some of those contaminants aren’t metallic. What are we gonna do? Magnets aren’t gonna get those, how do we get those out? And so we started playing with different mesh sizes. Okay. One layer of mesh is not enough. How about two layers? Nope. How about three layers? Nope. How about four layers of mesh? And we kept testing and iterating on this filtration design to get to a place where we’re pretty happy. We’ll talk about some of the numbers later of how much particulate reduction we’re seeing, but it’s significant. Significant enough that we felt this is worthy of bringing to market, of showing to people, because this can have quite a dramatic impact on helping you achieve the spec lifespan of the components that you’re putting on your wheel end. So that’s the filter, okay? We also wanted to build the entire hubcap in its body from the best materials we could for this application. I’m fully aware you can buy a four pack of hubcaps on Amazon for like 30 bucks, right? And we’ve bought them. And you know what? They fit. and they’ll probably stay on, but they are paper thin. They barely hold up to impact. And if I were running my own trucking business and I had $10,000 of parts on my axle, I don’t know that I would want a $5 hubcap being the thing that I want to use as my first line of defense of keeping all that stuff safe. There’s always going to be that cost down option, really super, super cheap. And we’re not aiming to be on the other end of the spectrum either. We’re not trying to gouge anybody paying hundreds of dollars for a hubcap. That’s just not market competitive. So we can talk about that a little bit later.
Jamie Irvine
Well, you kind of already touched on one of my questions on what should people care about, but I agree with you. And I’ve been preaching this for literally decades now, the investment in high quality parts, yes, the purchase price is higher of those parts than those, you know, cheaper alternatives, but what it does to your bottom line in the long run and how it lowers your total cost of operation is an absolutely critical thing to understand when operating a fleet. Let’s talk a little bit about who the best customer is for this and again, the things that they need to care about for them to really, for it to make sense to switch to your product.
Chris Miller
Sure. Honestly, my thought is any heavy-duty truck or trailer, any fleet benefits from cleaner hub oil. You’re not going to be any worse off for having cleaner oil than dirty oil, right? But we’re anticipating that the biggest impact will likely be for high mileage fleets or heavy haulers. These operations, they push their equipment really hard, run really long hours, really heavy loads, and they can really stand to benefit from contamination control and the ease of service at maintenance time since they tend to do it more frequently.
Jamie Irvine
Okay, so we’ve kind of talked about the overall solution, the problem, the solution. Let’s get into a few more details. So Chris, walk me through the main differences with Xtractor, again, let’s just start from the beginning, from installation through to this new level of service that can be done with Xtractor that can’t be done with these other hubcaps. Walk me through that.
Chris Miller
Sure. So the good thing to know is if you can install a standard hubcap, you can install the Xtractor. Nothing’s changed. It’s same bolt pattern, same type of bolt, grade eight bolts, all the same. When we sell it, we ship it as a complete kit. So you get the entire hubcap with the filter cartridge on it, with the premium flange gasket and the flange bolts. So it’s an entire aftermarket kit ready to go. You can swap it out in just a few minutes using your common tools. So installation’s really straightforward, really easy. What makes the Xtractor interesting is from day one, you get this filtration benefit. The filter, it’s kind of shaped like a donut. It has a hole in the middle and it’s a ring. And this filter actually sits down inside the oil bath. So as the splash lubrication system is operating, the oil flows through multiple layers of the mesh and the magnets trap the particulates. Then the hole in the center allows oil to flow freely if the filter ever gets really gummed up. And then when it comes time for service, you unscrew the front, the hex thread cartridge. We have a tool. It’s a wrench. You put it on there and you unscrew that cartridge. The oil drains out quickly out the front. Unlike maybe a standard fill drain port, you have to make sure it’s at the bottom because it all has to gravity flow out the bottom. If you stop your wheel and that port’s at the top, well, now you got to rotate your wheel to get it to the bottom. This, you screw it off the front and it literally flows out the front. It also comes out of the wheel well, a little bit more than where the fill drain port is. And so it’s easier to get a catch basin underneath it to catch your oil. So the whole maintenance process feels a little bit, has a little bit more of a user experience design with it. It just makes it a little simpler. So you can remove the hex thread cartridge, the oil drains out quickly. And if you want, you can remove the filter and you can clean it out and then you can reinstall it and use that part again. If you don’t really wanna spend the couple minutes of disassembling the cartridge, you can just put a whole new cartridge on your existing hubcap body, torque it down, refill your hub oil, and you’re good to go. So unless you’re gonna do like a deep wheel end service where you actually do need to take the entire hubcap off to access, you know, your torque nut and everything back behind there. You don’t have to take the hubcap body off. You don’t have to back out your flange bolts, break and scrape the gasket off, and then reinstall it when you put a new cap back on. That all stays. So when you’re doing an oil service, it’s really, really fast. We timed ourselves. We’re saying it’s a three-minute service. We’ve done it in under 90 seconds.
Jamie Irvine
For somebody who’s interested in looking at this solution, what kind of data have you received from the early tests with fleets that supports the value proposition of the product?
Chris Miller
So our fleet trials are showing significantly reduced particle counts when we do hub oil sampling, upwards of 70 to 80% reductions in particles, both ferrous contaminants and non-metallic particulates. That translates, or what that does is that validates that our filter is doing a really good job of pulling out the contaminants that make their way into that wheel end. Though, of course, we’re still testing. I mean, we’re a young company, but we’re expecting that as more and more trucks and trailers use the Xtractor, we’ll gather more and more hard data that shows reduced rolling friction in the bearings. that reduces where parts wear, that keeps temperatures lower, that extends seal life and hub oil life, and it helps with fuel economy. So only good could come from keeping hub oil cleaner. And we expect we’ll get more and more data to show that as we go.
Jamie Irvine
So the data that you do have right now, though, what kinds of real dollars are we talking about? So, okay, it’s like, great, you made my hub oil 70 to 80% less contaminants. So what? What does that actually translate into? Do you have any information or dollars that some of the testing fleets have experienced so you can kind of quantify the impact of this product?
Chris Miller
Sure. So there’s this really interesting report published by the SAE. You can look at it. I think we have it linked on our website. They talk about parasitic drag. And they attribute 6% to 8% of parasitic drag to the powertrain or the drivetrain in your truck and trailer. Parasitic drag is how much efficiency you’re getting lost in the power that you’re putting out to try to get your fuel efficiency. What kind of elements or things are counteracting that that are stealing your fuel efficiency. So again, 6% to 8% for the powertrain. Now, bearings are a hugely important component of that powertrain. when they have rolling friction, you’re they’re creating drag, so if removing the particulates results in a 10 to 20% increase in rolling efficiency in the bearings. That could translate to hundreds of dollars a year across a single truck and trailer. Multiply that across a fleet, and you can be looking at tens of thousands of dollars a year in regained fuel efficiency by keeping your hub oil cleaner.
Jamie Irvine
I love that. So when I was selling parts, Chris, one of my favorite things to do is when I found a product like this that I could prove would improve the overall, or reduce rather, the overall cost. I used to do it, I’d do the math in of the customer. And I would establish the per unit savings. And then I would look around the yard and I would say, and how many units do you have? And you could see the wheels turning in the person’s mind as they’re doing the math, like $700 a year times 300 units. Oh my goodness, that’s a lot of money, right? So that’s fantastic. So I think we have good scientific data here and external studies that you’re looking to that really validate what you’re doing. Plus you have the data that you’ve collected from your own tests, which is going to continue over time. So anybody listening to this, this is worth your consideration. This is something that if you are selling parts, and you care about your customers and you want to help them lower their total cost of operation, or if you’re responsible for a commercial vehicle or a fleet, This is worth your time and consideration. Can you tell me what the reaction was to this data when you were running this test?
Chris Miller
It was a little bit of validation. We did some fun stuff. We got out on social media pretty early talking about this thesis that we had about removing hub oil contamination and that translating into performance benefits. And so much, as you expect on social media, so much of it is so quick to dog that idea. Everyone wants to resist change. They did all the things that you would expect. Ah, we’ve been using the same hubcaps for 60 years. Why do we need something different? I’m like, well, I mean, a fax machine worked. Why did we need e-mail? Come on. Times change. Innovation happens. We should be celebrating something that can do something better for you, especially if we’re not trying to overcharge for it, or this is some extraneous part that you don’t need. This is something that every truck and trailer uses. And we’re just trying to make that part better.
Jamie Irvine
I know that when you were conducting this test with your initial fleet, the initial test, and you’re conducting more than the one test right now, but tell me the story of the catastrophic failure that was avoided and the reaction of the owner of that fleet when that happened.
Chris Miller
Yeah, so it was really interesting. We changed out the steer axle hubcaps. I think they had the OEMs on them, the plastic ones, I don’t know which manufacturer they were. We changed them out and then we sent them on their way, again, just not thinking about their hubcaps the way they usually do. After about 15,000 miles, we said, Hey, we’re trying to stay close to them. We want to make sure everything’s going right. We’re checking up with them. They said, yeah, we took the thing off and we saw this huge metal shavings inside there. The magnet really grabbed a whole bunch of stuff and the filter was gummed up with a bunch of other stuff as well. We’re like, well normally you’re not going to get really big stuff unless something recently broke, right? Something recently sheared off. Because again, if you think about it, something big breaks and it grinds around it, it pulverizes it into a tiny fine dust. So this is a recent break. And we said, maybe you should… actually sidelined that one for a little bit, get it into the shop and take a look at that. And they pulled the thing off and they had bearings and braces were on the brink of a catastrophic failure. And so they were able to get ahead of that before it became a roadside problem.
Jamie Irvine
So normally what would’ve happened, though, is that there would’ve been the failure. The truck would’ve been on the side of the road and they would’ve had to react to that. But because the Xtractor was installed, they were able to remove that cartridge, do the inspection, and get ahead of this catastrophic failure that would have led to unplanned downtime and all the costs associated with that. So that’s the whole point. And that’s the shift in thinking that has to happen if you’re going to get the full benefit of this product is to move from that reactive, which we’ve been doing for decades, to that proactive, which then we know lowers total cost of operation. So I think that’s a fantastic story that really drives home the point. Let’s shift in our conversation for a moment. So how do you plan on bringing the Xtractor to market? How do people get their hands on the product?
Chris Miller
Our plan is to get it to people any way they prefer to buy it. So we’re taking the multi-channel approach. Of course, you can buy it on our own website, but more importantly, we’re building a robust network of distributors. We know that fleets and buyers really trust and rely on their established buying channels. And so we’re trying to develop really strong distributor partnerships as a key part of our strategy. You buy however you prefer.
Jamie Irvine
That sometimes makes distributors a little nervous. when there’s an omnichannel kind of distribution model, you have a plan to really support your distributors and make sure that they are in a position to sell the product competitively and to make margin. So that’s good. I know that you’ve got all that in place, but is it closed or is there still lots of opportunity for distributors who are interested to get involved?
Chris Miller
Oh, there’s absolutely opportunity where we’re actively onboarding new distributors. We would love to meet and talk with anyone that’s supplying and supporting local fleets. That’s where we’re at. Again, we’re a small, scrappy operation right now, and we can’t do it without your support. And we know this part is going to make a huge difference, and we’re looking for your hands in helping us make that happen.
Jamie Irvine
Okay, you might be a small, scrappy company, but you’ve done a lot of work to provide your distributors with support. So what kind of support does the Hub Corp offer its distribution?
Chris Miller
So we’re trying to give them everything they need to win. We’ve got training, technical resources, marketing kits, co-branding options. We have in-store retail displays if you have a storefront and people come in and buy. We want to give our partners everything they need for success.
Jamie Irvine
Okay, fantastic. So for listeners who want early access, if you’re listening to this when this episode first drops in 2025, late 2025, and they want early access, how can they take advantage of some presale discounts not found anywhere else?
Chris Miller
So the easiest way is to just go to our website, thehubcorp.com, and click the button that says join the wait list. That’s where we’ll be announcing availability and the launch time promotions.
Jamie Irvine
Okay, great. And if you’re listening to this in 2026 or beyond, where would they go to either, again, buy it online or find a distributor?
Chris Miller
So again, check out our website, thehubcorp.com. You can visit our online store or our list of all of our major distribution partners. By then, the Xtractor should be widely available through the established channels.
Jamie Irvine
Okay, perfect. So I’ll make sure that links are in the show notes. we’ve talked about a lot of stuff today, Chris. If there’s one thing that you just want to leave the audience with, what’s that one thing they have to remember about our conversation today?
Chris Miller
If you don’t think about hubcaps very often, that’s okay. That’s normal. We don’t want you to necessarily think about hubcaps a whole lot more. What we do want you to remember is that The Xtractor transforms the hubcap from a passive component to an active protection system. It’s a small part, but it has a measurable impact on performance, longevity, and the overall cost per mile. So your trucks, they’re already running hubcaps. If you don’t know what brand they are, check out the Hub Corp. Give the Xtractor a try.
Jamie Irvine
Fantastic. You’ve been listening to The Heavy Duty Parts Report where you get to hear about awesome, innovative products like this first. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine. We’ve been talking with Chris Miller, President of the Hub Corp. If you want to learn more about the Xtractor, head over to thehubcorp.com. Again, links are in all of the show notes, both on the audio and video version of this episode. Chris, thank you so much for being on The Heavy Duty Parts Report.
Chris Miller
Thanks, Jamie.
Jamie Irvine
And thank you for listening and watching The Heavy Duty Parts Report. We couldn’t do this without your ongoing support. As always, I want to end this episode with the encouragement to be heavy duty.
