Slashing Fuel Consumption with a Two-in-One Turbocharger
Diving into escalating fuel costs and the solution that Switchblade Turbochargers bring.
Episode 286: We’re diving into the escalating fuel costs that plague the trucking industry and trickle down to consumer pricing with a special guest Dan McClave, president of Switchblade Turbochargers. Dan takes us through the unique approach that Switchblade has taken to solve these issues, and the innovative solution that promises to transform the industry.
We look at Switchblade’s revolutionary turbocharger, which eliminates turbo lag and dramatically enhances fuel economy, power, and oil life. This innovative design brings the benefits of both small and large turbos in one product. But don’t take it from him, the beautifully simple design has been road-tested by hundreds of very happy customers. Dan also shares his down-to-earth approach to technology in the trucking industry and reveals the future for Switchblade Turbochargers.
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Transcript of Episode
Jamie Irvine:
You are listening to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine, and this is the place where we have conversations that empower heavy-duty people.
When you think about the trucking industry and you think about the various challenges that it faces, one of the things that is so important is how do you control cost? It’s not just so that the fleets can make money, it’s really their contribution to society at large.
Think about it. If fleets can keep their costs down, they can keep their prices down, and that impacts things like inflation and the price that we pay everywhere from the pump ourselves to our grocery store, to clothing, to things that we want to buy just for ourselves. So this is a important issue, keeping costs down.
We’ve made this a subject that we’ve covered on The Heavy Duty Parts Report. Many times. I remember all the way back, one of the very first episodes we did was on cost per mile and looking at things instead of just looking at the purchase price, but looking at the total cost of operations.
So that’s been a continuous theme on the show. Today’s episode will be no different, and we’re going to talk about one of the trends that has been creating a lot of pain for fleets. It’s contributing to inflationary pressure, and we’re going to talk about one specific way we can address that problem. So my guest today is Dan McClave. He’s the President at Switchblade Turbochargers.
That gives you a hint as to what kind of product we’re going to talk about. Dan has spent the majority of his career in the automotive manufacturing and remanufacturing industry. That means him and I are kindred spirits on the reman side. He’s now the President at Switchblade Turbochargers and they serve the heavy-duty agricultural and industrial market.
So he’s now made the full shift to heavy-duty. He now is one of our heavy-duty people, and he is very proud of the company’s patented design on their turbocharger and what the company’s patented design actually does for reducing costs. So this is going to be a great episode. I’m really looking forward to it. Dan, welcome to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. So glad to have you here.
Dan McClave:
Jamie, thank you so much. I’m excited to be here.
Jamie Irvine:
Well, it’s been a while we have been planning this episode, so today is the day. Let’s get right into it. What is one of the big macro trends that is pushing up the costs of operations for commercial fleets?
Dan McClave:
Yeah, it’s a great question. I think the major trend, not just for fleets, but for you and I as individuals and everyone across the country is the price of fuel.
Even though there’s been a decline lately, I would say from maybe the summer months, over the past five to 10 years, fuel prices have just consistently increased and it’s impacting, again, you and I, but the fleets and owner operators, farmers, you name it, anyone that’s in the industrial heavy-duty industry, it’s a massive pain point for them.
Jamie Irvine:
Right, and I know when I was selling parts, I would talk to all the time about what their biggest cost centers were, and it was the drivers and it was fuel, tires, brakes, those kinds of things. So fuel always ranked in the top one to three costs that they had to contend with. What has been the impact on fleets as these fuel costs have consistently gone up?
I know where I am in Western Canada right now, diesel has been much more expensive than even gasoline. It’s crazy. As a kid, there was such a gap between gasoline prices and diesel prices like 30 years ago. And today where I live anyway, that has flipped, and to me that’s just unprecedented. So what does that do to a commercial fleet when that’s the situation?
Dan McClave:
Well, it’s a massive impact obviously to the commercial fleet because they have to keep their trucks running. They have to deliver goods and services to all of us throughout the country and across the world. But a lot of those costs unfortunately, get passed to you and I to the consumer or to the shop owner, whoever it is.
So that cost is impacting the fleets tremendously. And to their defense, they’re having to pass on a surcharge and now you have inflation. You have the economic state that we’re in, which I won’t get into, but the increase in the cost of fuel has just had ripple effects across this industry in a negative way.
Jamie Irvine:
I’ll get into it a little bit. We were just at the Technology and Maintenance Council’s fall meeting, and one of the big concerns that I heard from not only the fleets but also the manufacturers that supply products for them is look, where is the state of the economy going to take us?
How bad could a potential downturn be this time around. We see things going in the wrong direction, right? Tonnage is down, demand is down, costs are up. That’s a tough market for fleets to be able to operate at a profitable level when you’ve got everything going, what’s seemingly in the wrong direction.
Dan McClave:
Right exactly. And it is going in the wrong direction. So there has to be some relief. Again, I think prices for diesel fuel have come down a little bit, but if you look at the overall trend over the last 10, 15, 20 years, it’s a net negative in terms of higher pricing for these fleets. And again, for the consumer, we have to fill up our gas tanks as well. So it’s a pain point for everyone, but especially fleets and the heavy-duty market.
Jamie Irvine:
And I think when you’re on the parts side of the business, you’re limited to parts to offer solutions to fleets. I mean, there’s not a lot we can do about macroeconomics, geopolitics and demographic conversion. Those things are what they are, and there’s not even a lot that we can do when it comes to some of those other inflationary costs.
But as parts people, one thing we can do is we can turn and look at our own products. Before we actually talk about your specific products, tell me a little bit about the culture at your company and the way of thinking that you and your team at Switchblade Turbochargers has kind of brought to creating a solution.
Dan McClave:
That’s a great question, again, Jamie, and thank you again for having me on the podcast. The culture at Switchblade, and I partnered recently this past year with Jim Blaylock, who’s the founder and the inventor of the Switchblade Turbo. But Jim has been in business since 1980.
He has been remanufacturing and repairing turbos since that time and has developed a better product. So his years and years of seeing the product that’s been on the market, the failure rates, the failure modes, what’s been happening, he just was driven to produce a better product.
So he is a wonderful human being, a wonderful man. Everybody in the industry knows him. I’ve known him for 15 years. We just have recently reconnected and decided to partner together on this product. So he just runs an honest business. I am privileged and honored to just be partnering with him to try to get this product to more people.
Jamie Irvine:
Well, I’ve met him in person at HDAW actually this year, earlier this year, and I can attest to that. His passion for this industry is really contagious. How has that impacted the other people that work at your company?
Dan McClave:
They’re all striving for excellence. Jim is in Baxter Spring, Kansas. I’m just outside of Philadelphia, but I go there very often and they are all just striving for excellence.
They just want this to be successful, and they’re impacted as well by the problem we’re discussing. So they know they’re sitting on a solution, which is why we’ve partnered together to kind of match our skill sets to get this product to the market in a bigger way.
Jamie Irvine:
You got to have the right combination of people. That is absolutely true. There are so many really great products out there that they need something more to be able to get them out to more people and have a bigger impact. And I think that’s very exciting that you have partnered and come together.
So what are you doing from a culture perspective, from a leadership perspective in your company to add something in addition to what Jim brings to the table?
Dan McClave:
Well, my background, Jamie, was with Cardone Industry. So a family owned, privately held business. I worked there for 20 years. We did everything with the customer in mind.
My background there was engineering, which went into product development, operations, was fortunate to do an international assignment in Belgium for about five or six years. And Jim and I, again, we met 15 years ago through our relationships at Cardone when we were getting into turbos. And just like you’ve met him this past year, immediately when you meet Jim, you feel like you’ve known him for 20 years.
So when we reconnected again, it was just matching his skillset, his passion for the industry, with my background of growing businesses and improving products and leveraging connections that I’ve been fortunate and blessed to have over the past 30 years.
Jamie Irvine:
One of the things that I’ve seen in my career, I’ve seen this done well, and I’ve seen this done poorly. So let me lay out the poorly edition of that, then you tell me what you’re doing differently.
One of the dangers, I think, is you can sit around in a boardroom for a very long time and you can sit around a couple tables with engineers and you can come up with what you feel to be truly great ideas. But if you fail to involve the customer in that conversation and get their feedback, you can miss the mark by a wide margin. So what are you doing to ensure that doesn’t happen?
Dan McClave:
Well, we have an incredible customer base and we have a lot of people. If you just go on YouTube and Google Switchblade Turbochargers, you’ll see a lot of positive testimonies. And Jim has just worked with customers throughout the years as he’s developed this product and he’s nailed it. I mean, this thing works. We have, this is not a conceptual idea in a lab somewhere.
There’s product in the field and happy customers saving dollars on fuel. So the testimonial really would be, don’t listen to me, don’t listen to Jim, talk to the customers, talk to people that he’s partnered with and have been using his product and continue to use his product. He’s an honest man. He does what he says he is going to do. And again, that’s another reason why Jim and I wanted to connect and be together.
Jamie Irvine:
Alright, well, we’re going to take a quick break. When we get back from the break, we’re going to dig into exactly what is different about your turbochargers, the impact it has on fuel economy and how people can take advantage of this great product will be right back.
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Jamie Irvine:
We’re back from our break and before the break, Dan, we were talking about the challenges facing the trucking industry, specifically rising costs related to fuel, related to diesel, and the impact that has not just on fleets, but on people in general, society at large because of the contribution to inflationary costs.
So Dan, your company has looked at turbochargers as an opportunity to not only provide a high quality product, but a product that works differently and that creates a better result. So let’s walk through that product. What makes your turbocharger different than a turbocharger I would get elsewhere in the market?
Dan McClave:
Yeah, so Jamie, the difference here with our turbo compared to what’s on the market today is we’ve essentially created two turbos in one. To keep it very, very simple, there is one additional moving part in the turbine housing of the turbo that at start or at rest, it’s a small turbo.
There’s an internal moving part that chokes off or closes off and makes the turbo a smaller diameter than original. So that eliminates turbo lag, it aggressively gets more air pressure into the turbine housing, which then spools the turbine wheel much faster. So you have faster takeoff and then at top speed, that internal part opens up, and now you have a larger turbo as you’re going down the road at top speed.
So it’s really the best of both worlds. Not to get too technical, but we have basically, the boost pressure is higher than the back pressure of the turbo. And if you talk with anyone in the industry, that’s unheard of, but we found a way, a very, very simple, easy way to achieve this.
Jamie Irvine:
That’s awesome. It’s an intriguing concept to me. Tell me more about that.
Dan McClave:
If you ask anyone in the turbo world, what do I need for faster boost and elimination of turbo lag? Well, you need a small turbine housing at start, but at top end speed, that doesn’t work well. At top end, you need a larger turbo housing. Well, with our design, we’ve been able to achieve both in the same turbo.
So that internal vein is closed at rest and creates a small turbo, it spools up a lot faster. And then when we get to speed, that vein opens up and now we have a larger turbo than the original. So that’s what gets the boost and the back pressure to be equal instead of a two to one ratio.
Jamie Irvine:
What role did being a remanufacturer and doing failure analysis, that’s one thing I know when you’re in the reman business, you get to see a lot of cores. So you get to do failure analysis, and that often leads to innovation. So what role did being a remanufacturer all these years play in developing this different approach to a turbocharger?
Dan McClave:
Yeah, so the one main thing that we’ve noticed, there’s a lot of internal moving parts in the turbine housing of a turbo. What we’ve been able to do has been to eliminate all of those. So it’s a much, much simpler design than the original design that’s out there. A lot of the VGT turbos that are running around.
And we just thought there’s got to be an easier, simpler, better way. And again, we’ve just been able to come up with a way to, at rest, make the turbine housing smaller, and then at top speed, our turbo is a little bit larger than the original. So it’s essentially an upgrade to the existing OE turbo system that’s on any vehicle right now.
Jamie Irvine:
So if you know anything about ICE vehicles and how they run, if you get more oxygen, more fuel, you get more power. How does this translate into lower or better fuel economy? Lower fuel consumption?
Dan McClave:
Well, it’s increasing the boost pressure and decreasing back pressure. So we’ve a completely eliminated turbo lag. So a lot of applications that are a lot of start and stop, take trash trucks, for example, or things like that where it’s a lot of stop and start, you’re losing fuel initially.
So our design basically burns fuel more efficiently than the existing system. So that boost pressure to back pressure relationship, evening it up and making it actually a one-to-one ratio instead of a two-to-one ratio is really the secret sauce and the way that we’ve been able to achieve these fuel improvements.
Jamie Irvine:
So modern diesel engines are pretty complex pieces of really engineering marvel. Really, when you think about it. There’s a lot of things to go wrong in an engine. So as you change these different specs based on the upgrade to the turbo, how did you, from an engineering perspective, handle any of the potential issues of changing the parameters of how the turbo operates? Did you run into any trouble? And if you did, how did you deal with it?
Dan McClave:
Yeah, I think Jamie, we’re actually making it, we’re boiling it down and making it simpler. It is a one-to-one exchange from the original design of a turbo that’s on an engine to our design. So we’re simply getting more air into the engine at a higher rate than what has been achieved before. And that’s resulting in, again, better improvements in fuel efficiency. And another improvement that we haven’t really talked about yet has been extended oil life.
So the black smoke that you’re seeing come out of a stack of a truck or of a piece of agricultural equipment that’s just unburnt fuel, our turbo eliminates that virtually 90%. So we have, again, a lot of customers that have posted videos of a stack spewing out black smoke and side by side a stack with a switchblade turbo on it, spewing out 90% to almost a hundred percent less. So the environmental impact of this is massive as well.
Jamie Irvine:
Yeah, that’s a measurable difference if it’s 90%. The trend of the last few years in the trucking industry with the actual technology on trucks has been trending towards increased complexity, your company seems to be going against the grain. Tell me more about why you’re taking this more simplistic approach.
Dan McClave:
So Jamie, we have seen a lot of, being a remanufacturer, we’ve seen the complexity in these parts, the failure modes. I mean, it’s just plain and simple. I think the more moving parts you have, the more potential for problems. So we’ve the opposite approach and have been fortunate to come up with a very, very simple design that, again, we show people and they understand how and why it works.
They’re just surprised with how simple it is, and they almost will say, that’s it? I said, well, yeah, that’s it. Why complicate something that works? So it was something that we’ve just come across and are very happy and proud to say that it is a more simple design than traditional.
Jamie Irvine:
So when I have a truck and I’ve got a turbocharger with an actuator on it, and it’s time for that turbocharger to be changed, I order a Switchblade. What do I do with my core?
Dan McClave:
You can return it to us. We have a remanufacturing industry repair industry as well. You could keep it yourself. I mean, we don’t require that you send it back to us because the Switchblade Turbo is a brand new product. It’s not a remanufactured product from a core. So to kind of clarify that issue, so this is a product that we are tooling up, we’re producing it in the U.S..
We’re very proud to say that it will always stay in the US as well, but it’s a brand new unit if you choose and want to send that core back to us again, we wouldn’t say no to it. We wouldn’t turn it down, but it’s not a requirement at all.
Jamie Irvine:
Do you have a core buyback program in place?
Dan McClave:
We do. Yep.
Jamie Irvine:
Fantastic. Well, it’s good because we don’t want those cores just to go to waste. We don’t want them to end up in a landfill. Remanufacturing is also an additional part of sustainability because it’s a real measurable way of keeping things out of landfills and not requiring as much raw materials to reproduce a working product that can go back out into the market.
So I think that’s great. What is maybe one of the real tangible stories of a fleet or an end user that you know of that bought this product, upgraded their turbo, and then got tangible results. Could you give us a case study, if you will?
Dan McClave:
Sure, yeah. We have a handful. We have actually many. One person that’s in our revised and updated marketing literature and on our website is a guy named Otto Hildebrand of Bloom Recyclers. He’s in Ogden, Utah. And I had the pleasure of visiting with Otto last year, and he put a Switchblade on his ’93 Peterbilt. It’s an old Cat 3406 engine. And in his words, not mine, it is the best running truck he has now in his fleet. He went from 4.1 miles per gallon to 5.8 overnight.
Jamie Irvine:
That’s not insignificant.
Dan McClave:
It’s not insignificant. Overall, the engine is running better, the truck is running better, so the fuel savings are there. He has, I think eight or nine trucks in his fleet, and we’re on a path to just keep changing them over for him. But again, he’s one of many customers that we have that have been talking about the improvements of the Switchblade Turbo.
Jamie Irvine:
And how do you go to market? Do you have a network of distributors and dealerships that are selling your product or are you going direct to consumer? How does that work?
Dan McClave:
Yeah, right now it’s been, and it always has been direct to consumer. So we’re selling the end user. I mentioned our revised and updated website. We now have the ability to purchase a product on our website, whereas we never had before. And the reason I really got involved in Switchblade is to expand the market and start selling distributors and start selling larger fleets.
Jamie Irvine:
So you’re moving into pioneering this with distribution.
Dan McClave:
Absolutely.
Jamie Irvine:
Fantastic. Well, there’s lots to talk about there that we can have further conversations on because that’s a great way to go to market.
And there’s lots of companies who are pioneering really new products that are exciting and that have a big impact, and then they realize after a period of time that adding a distribution side to their business and managing that so that there isn’t channel conflict is a great way of really rounding out the business and getting it into the hands of more people who really need this solution. Right?
Dan McClave:
Yeah, exactly.
Jamie Irvine:
You’ve been listening to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine, and we’ve been speaking with Dan McClave, the President at Switchblade Turbochargers. And again, if you want to learn more about this innovative product, go to switchbladeturbo.com.
Dan, thank you so much for being on The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I hope that you’ll come back and talk to us more about the products that you are developing, and hopefully you’ll have some more great stories of people who are getting the full benefit of a Switchblade Turbo.
Dan McClave:
I definitely will. Jamie, thank you so much for having me on.
