High-Tech Harvest: Transforming Orchards with Drone Technology

Welcome to Branching Out Growing Together.

The podcast that brings you inspiring stories

from people ready to take old steps,

grow new opportunities, and transform their land

or careers into something extraordinary.

Hosted by Melanie Jones,

each episode features farmers, entrepreneurs and visionaries,

sharing their journeys of discovery and growth,

whether you're dreaming of starting your own farm

or looking for new ways to cultivate success,

you're in the right place.

It's time to branch out and grow together.

Today on Branching Out, growing together,

I'm talking with Caleb Cantor,

president and founder of Arrow Ag,

and a double degree mechanical engineer

with both a BS and MS from the University of Kentucky.

Caleb was born and raised in Hodginville, Kentucky,

grew up in the middle of agriculture,

and now uses cutting-edge drone technology

to support local growers across the region.

He has been working with drones since 2013,

and has watched them evolve from kids' toys

into serious, industrial-grade tools

that can transform how we manage fields, orchards

and hard-to-reach acres.

When he's not leading Arrow Ag,

Caleb serves as the youth pastor at Parkway Baptist Church,

and as an assistant wrestling coach at LaRue County High School,

pouring into the next generation both on and off the mat.

He's also a dad who loves to travel with his family,

backpack, and sneak in some fly-fishing when he can.

Caleb brings together engineering, faith,

and a genuine heart for farmers,

and I'm excited to explore how his work with drones

can help modernize chestnut production

and specialty crops across the country.

Thank you so much for taking time

to join the branching out, growing together podcast.

First off, thank you for having me.

Appreciate it.

Absolutely.

So I'd like the audience to know that we met

at the Kentucky Fruit and Vegetable Conference,

and there were a lot of people there,

but your drone was by far the coolest thing there.

So we're gonna talk about drone technology for farming,

and I think meeting at an event like that

just encourages all of us to get out and about

and meet the people in our environment

and our neighborhood and all that.

So thank you for setting all that stuff up

and introducing it.

Okay, so the very first question I want to talk about

is this idea of a toy versus a tool.

I mean, we have a little drone,

and it's fun for us to play with it,

but we're going into a different world.

So the question here is that

well, you've been flying these since 2013, right?

Yeah, not spray drones, particularly,

but drones in general, yes, yeah.

Absolutely.

And so I guess you have watched them really advance

from a toy to an industrial machine.

So just tell us, like let's say that one of our listeners

is a 50 or six year old man, woman, whatever,

and they're thinking about, well,

I think drones are just like we're gonna get our grandkids

or our kids to play with.

What's going on with them?

Yeah, so it's come so far.

I mean, I remember back in the day as a kid

on Christmas getting a little styrofoam air hogs plain

and throwing it up in the air and flying around

till I hit a tree and then it was gone.

And I mean, they were cheap and they were just disposable

because the control systems were very rudimentary.

Things were still progressing.

And I've kind of seen that all process.

So as I got into college,

I was working with a lab at University of Kentucky

doing designing and building drones.

We also use some commercial drones too.

And just over that time,

seeing the stability and the control systems change

and then the payload abilities and things

to be able to carry more weight and instrumentation

and systems that were actually useful,

that all kind of happened fairly quickly.

And really the main driver in that was the battery technology.

So really the main driver was going with the,

from the old like lead acid type batteries

to like a nickel battery to now the lithium ion battery

which is kind of industry standard.

And that was really the main driver

what made drones be more useful and more beneficial

or capable is that lighter, more energy dense battery.

And in all reality, it's the electric car industry

that is really pioneered that

and made that available for everything else, right?

And so it really wasn't until the last couple of years

that you had a drone capable of lifting as much weight

at a reasonable cost with an electric power system.

Yes, that is, that's fantastic.

In fact this morning I was reading an article

about electric cars in Waymo

and I recently retired and I had a client

that was one of the leaders in driverless cars.

And I think things like that also,

I wanted to mention that I was at a construction conference

and I was just blown away at the number of robots

that are taking over projects.

So I was thinking, you know, it's part of its trust too,

like especially flying something, it's fantastic.

That's not a reveal when your $20 foam plane flies into a tree

but when you're $40,000 or a spray drone flies into a tree,

that's the big deal.

Yeah, you don't want to do that.

So how is the tech now compared to the hobbies?

Like the, it's software also, right?

Yeah, it's completely different.

I mean, there are completely different classes

because typically like the hobbyist, the aircraft

you were looking at were controlled completely manually

at required skill from the pilot.

And that was kind of the point, right?

Like it was to be fun, to be enjoyable for you

to have that skill where now it's all about efficiency

and being effective in your operation

and in reality the equipment that we're using,

the drones that we're using for spraying

and seeding purposes are entirely autonomous.

Like there are very few times that I even have to control

and fly the drone by hand.

Like it's almost all automated where I'm drawing a field boundary

and then telling the drone where I want to fly

and then just click and go and letting it take off

and get to that area and start operating over that area.

Well, okay, so I've got so many questions here.

I'm gonna skip around a little bit

but we have our Chestnut Farm EBB Farms here in Western Kentucky.

And so my husband Brad had a question.

One of them was like, do you fly them at a certain level

and the terrain goes up and down

or is there mapping technology that you're using?

When you say, hey, this is our 50 acres here,

how does that part work?

Yeah, so with their orterger with your tree crop

it's gonna be a little different than like a row crop like corn.

A lot of times you guys are on steeper terrain

but with the new drones we're flying,

it's really not an issue.

We've found some incredibly steep terrain.

We did a trial on Kudzu out in Eastern Kentucky

a couple of months ago and they were straight up mountains

with trees up in them and we're going up the sides

of the trees and over and it was unbelievable

to see what the drone could do on its own.

Yeah, however, there are some options

using like a smaller drone, like a normal photography drone

where you can go map and take pictures

and you can see some really cool stuff like plant health

like you can do NDVI data, you could see

if you had a drier area or some wetter area

or things like that that you might want to manage

for other with other resources too.

But you can import that data into a software

that they can stitch together a 3D map

so then you can load that into the drone to fly it.

It just kind of depends on what drone

and what system you're using.

The new ones that we have have no problem at all.

If you just lay out a 2D area following any of that terrain

up and over trees, it has no problem at all doing that.

Basically the way that it works for us

is we would draw that 2D area around your grove of trees

and then we would set a height

and we want to stay above the surface

which may be the tree canopy, it may be the ground

depending on what time you're spraying a year maybe.

And basically it would just follow whatever terrain,

whatever trees were in front,

it would go up and down over those.

And that's really thanks to this new company

we're working with, the E.A. Vision drones.

They were actually designed for tree growers.

They were designed for that industry overseas.

And the way they're doing that so well

is they're utilizing a wide art technology

that they will see so much farther out

and see much smaller obstacles consistently.

And so terrain following and obstacle avoidance

on these drones is really, really incredible.

Yeah, it's almost science fiction if you haven't seen them.

And we see them flying around here

not for orchards at this point,

but other soybean and whatever they're spraying.

And it's just one of those things that's still pretty new.

Are flying them as tricky as people think?

No, yeah, that's what I was saying.

I realistically, the skill involved,

like if you hand me an old hobbyist airplane,

I'll crash it in five minutes.

I cannot fly those, I'm terrible pilot.

I tell everyone that.

But when it comes to these drones,

like I said, they're so automated most of the time,

but then even when you do need to take over,

it's all got stabilization.

Where if you let go of the sticks,

it's gonna stop where it's at.

It doesn't just fall, right?

If there's no like management to keep it in the air,

like if you get yourself in trouble,

you just let go, take a second to think

and then get it out of the situation.

It doesn't need to be in, right?

Like I said, I built other types of drones.

I built a little racing drone one time

and I can't keep it in the air.

I spend more time working on them than I do fly.

Okay, that's good.

So it's this is specialized knowledge at some point

and just like driverless cars,

they'll be more and more education coming.

But is there for our listeners

that aren't say in the Kentucky or Ohio area,

are do you service and support growers everywhere

or is there an organization that we can tap into?

We do.

So we're a dealer for a larger network of drones.

We have, for the most part,

been pretty focused on the Kentucky area,

but we are growing rapidly

and are actively adding dealers all the way across the country.

I'm actually flying out tomorrow to Portland, Oregon

to meet one of our new dealers.

And so we're growing as rapidly as we can.

We're adding dealers all over the place.

If we don't have a dealer where someone is,

we are very good at remote support.

We've done that all over the place and can do that well.

But we're actively looking for dealers in those areas also.

And so as soon as we see a larger demand in the area,

then we would be looking to add a dealer in that location,

for sure.

Okay, good.

Well, we'll put all of your contact information

in the show notes and everything.

Okay, so then when we talk to you at the show,

we talked about purchasing,

or I don't know that you said renting,

but also having the service provided.

What are the options for farmers?

Yeah, so realistically,

your renting is not a great option

because of all the liability that goes into operating the drones

and they are extremely expensive,

and there are risks associated.

And then the legality piece of it makes it really difficult.

Really, you have two options is to purchase your own unit

or to contract somebody like us to come spray.

And so we do both.

We do sales of the drones,

as well as a contracting service.

Out last year alone, we sprayed, or 2025,

we sprayed 21,000 acres with these spray drones

across Kentucky.

And now we stay fairly local.

For that, we typically don't travel very far,

especially not in our mid-summer,

like primary spraying season.

Yeah.

But there are spray don't operators all over the country now.

If we're not close enough to you, somebody is,

and generally we know people close enough.

So if we can't get to you,

but you don't want to, you're not ready to purchase a drone,

we can usually connect you with someone

that can come to it for you, right?

Okay, yeah.

So we're happy to do that.

So spraying is a service is an option,

but then also purchasing a drone,

I think is a great option that a lot of people tend to think

maybe doesn't work for them.

And then in reality, really what it is,

a lot of people consider the drone for one purpose, right?

For corn growers, they think about it

for their fund to sign up.

But the drone is so much more universally,

like, being able to be used than that, right?

It can do so many more things.

It can do herbicide spraying,

you can do insecticide spraying,

you can do fungicides, you can do seed spreading

or fertilizer spreading

or really whatever you want to do,

even for you chestnut growers,

you could drop baskets down.

If you got really hard to reach plots,

you could drop baskets down

and fly out baskets of chestnuts at it.

The guy in Oregon, we're going to see,

they fly Christmas trees out with these drones.

They hook up Christmas trees

and fly them out of their fields

out to where they want to drop them.

It's just crazy that the number of things you can do

with this is pretty awesome.

I know you guys with corn that even use it for pollinating,

those fields have grown up and fly it over just

to forest pollination and things like that.

It's a really universal tool that can be extremely helpful

for even more than just your agriculture.

I use it on my own farm for land management.

I've got a river bottom field that's inaccessible

and being able to go down there and clean that up

so in more desirable, like native species

from the seed spreader,

all just with the drone,

I never even have to get over there

with a tractor or a silencer or anything.

And it's just a really universal tool for what it is.

No, that is phenomenal.

It's just like robot vacuums.

I have three now because I can't live without them.

I think we might get there, you know?

Okay, so I didn't mention that you've got a BS

and an MS in mechanical engineering.

So you're a pretty smart cookie.

I guess we kind of covered that when you're meeting

with a new customer for the first time on their land,

you're using technology tools to set up how

you're gonna go about accomplishing whatever it is,

seeding or spraying.

So do you bring, like obviously the engineering

and the logistical part,

but also help with the chemicals or seed,

like how in depth do you get?

So it really just depends on the customer for us

in our spraying service.

Most of our work we do in our spraying services

done through like co-ops,

because we don't provide chemical sales.

It's not something we've done.

We do work direct with farmers or with growers occasionally.

And we can do that perfectly fine.

It's not a problem, but I don't pretend

that I'm an expert in chemicals, right?

I don't pretend that I'm an expert in crop issues

or crop disease, right?

I rely on agronomists that I've built

really good relationships with

to provide my customers with that level of information.

Now I've learned a lot.

I absolutely have learned a lot

in the past couple of years of doing it.

But I don't pretend to be an expert, right?

I like to let the people that are experts voice their opinion

on what should be sprayed and when should be sprayed

and what's actually going on there.

And we just provide the expertise on utilizing

the drone equipment to get that chemical on there

as well as it can be put down, right?

Okay, that's right.

And is there anything tricky say corn versus chestnut trees

as far as the application or knowing how to do that?

I wouldn't say tricky.

I mean, it's definitely,

that you're gonna have a little bit different approach.

When we fly corn, it's low and it's as fast as we can go

and we're trying to cover thousands of acres

and it's just as fast as you can do everything efficiently

with the chestnuts, I think it's gonna be really different

because you're talking about a much smaller area typically.

And then I think as far as like how you're trying to cover

what that plant just looks like physically, right?

Like I think with chestnut trees,

you're gonna wanna be flying slower,

you're gonna be flying higher volumes probably

and probably smaller droplet sizes.

So you can be more fogging that tree as opposed

to just dispersing the chemical on it.

Like we do with the corn.

And I think in reality, swath with or flight speed

is not gonna be nearly as much of a factor

when it comes to flying the chestnut trees as opposed

to like a large road crop field would be.

And so it's just a different approach.

I think the drone still works great for both cases.

Like I said, we fly a lot of corn,

so we believe that's our primary market.

But those specialty applications, I think,

is where it really makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, for sure.

And maybe for a lot of the growers,

it's smaller pieces of land.

And but I was thinking the other day,

there are co-ops that have in Michigan 40 or 50 members

that could be something for it.

So the other part of this, the many listeners know

the chestnut industry is really, really growing.

So although there are many orchards,

or let's say some orchards that are big

that have large, large trees,

most of the orchards are still pre-commercial, smaller.

And so they would need to kind of group up

to get services, I would think, because it might be.

But either way, as those trees start to grow

and really mature, I think it's gonna be a market chestnut.

It's gonna be a fantastic market for a drone technology

in spring.

So it'll be interested to kind of see how that comes along.

I was wondering what your day-to-day life looks like

as far as work goes.

My day-to-day is all over the place.

I never know what I'm doing

and I wake up in the morning.

So our business is fairly split, like pretty 50-50,

I would say we're growing much quicker,

more quickly in the sales side than we are in the service side,

although we have some really large customers now

in the service side that we are really prioritizing on.

And so realistically, I'm more involved with our sales team

than our service team.

I have some really awesome people on my team

that run that service side a little more autonomously.

And so I'm less involved there.

But typically it's us either working on equipment here

in the shop that people brought in that needs repairs,

maintenance, diner, communicating with customers,

existing customers, or future customers

about developing technology or for me a lot of what I'm doing now

for me personally is working on locating new dealers,

right, and getting that set up too.

Where does it work?

Too many extra curriculars to count, I would say.

Yeah, we get to talk about that.

I caught you the other day, you were going into wrestling,

which I thought maybe you were a wrestler,

but you're not specifically wrestling.

I'm not wrestling anymore or no.

What tell us about?

I mean, it's always interesting to learn about people's lives,

what kind of things do you do?

Yeah, so I grew up wrestling and playing football.

And I coach football for a few years,

actually don't do that anymore now.

I'm just coaching wrestling.

I just had two daughters.

I've got a two and a half year old and almost one year old.

So that keeps me busy enough.

And then I'm a youth pastor at a local church here,

pretty large church.

And so that keeps me busy there too.

And so between coaching wrestling and youth pastor

and my girls and my business,

I'm pretty swamped.

I just built a house on a general contractor on the side,

I guess as well.

But yeah, well, and I think we talked about,

maybe you should become a Chestnut farmer too.

Yeah, I should.

I know I got a couple of acres here

and I could put some trees out there

and I think it would be pretty cool.

Yeah, yeah, that's great.

I mean, really you're a change agent in an industry

and that's a fun place to be.

Okay, let's see here.

So you're Arrow Ag, right?

That's the name of the company.

And you were the first drone company in Kentucky

to get licensed, is that correct?

And so how difficult is that process for somebody?

Yeah, so it's definitely not an easy process.

It's not like a one click on a form to get signed up.

It's definitely a pretty thorough process.

I will say it has gotten substantially easier

since we did it.

Like I said, we were the first company to say

to Kentucky to do it.

I was working with the Louisville Fisdo with the FAA

and basically they had to come down

and do multiple evaluations.

I had a new flight test with them

and it was just a really extensive process.

It took me six months to get.

Yeah, how long ago, how long ago was that like, like, say?

That was in 2022.

I applied in early January, 2022 and got it on June 30th

was when my approval came through

and I sprayed my first job on July 1st.

And so it was a nick of time that that came back in

and it took a lot of coaching from me to get it back

in that amount of time.

But it has changed substantially.

It's much easier now than done it many times.

It actually doesn't even go through the Louisville office anymore.

It all goes to the federal branch,

which is a good and bad thing.

A good thing because they've done a bunch of them a bad thing

because it's hard to get in touch with them.

And so we actually sell with most drones that we sell.

We sell an FAA consultant package to help people get legal

because we think that's extremely important.

It is definitely an important thing.

If you're going to be flying these drones,

especially for a commercial type operation,

you absolutely want to be legal operating them.

And there are a lot of people out there with drones

that are not legal and it is a dangerous thing

for the industry as a whole, basically.

Yeah, that makes total sense.

But the new process, like I said,

it's gotten much easier.

We tell people now it really depends on what time of year

and just kind of what the backlog is.

But 12 to 14 weeks is pretty standard.

There's quite a bit you have to do.

Our FAA package will help you through that.

But it does still take some involvement

and some effort on the part of the purchaser

to get that all completed.

Well, I mean, that makes sense.

And I was thinking too,

maybe the, as the drones continue advance,

maybe it makes it even easier,

but I don't know that for sure.

Okay, so we talked about like the terrain,

the slopes and everything, that's no problem.

What about fueling?

How does that work?

So like recharging, do you mean?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so recharging, yep.

Yeah, so the drones are fully electric.

There's no gasoline motor on the drones at all.

Initially, when I got into drones,

if you wanted any type of endurance,

you had to have gasoline.

And that was a problem

because small gas motors just,

they don't tend to be extremely reliable, right?

And so with this battery improvement

is when things were able to become electric

and still keep the right endurance

or the right amount of payload.

And so the J-150, the E-AVision J-150,

which is our flagship model right now

that we're representing,

has a 45,000 milliamp hour battery.

So it is a huge, huge battery.

It weighs 45 pounds.

And it's ran by a charger.

I just posted a video on our Facebook,

actually kind of doing a deep dive on the charger,

but it's a 12,500 watt charger,

which is a massive amount of power.

It's hard to find a generator large enough to run this.

The way that we actually do it,

is we run two pretty large generators.

And that gives us some redundancy

that we want when we're out in the field.

Because things go wrong,

you have to plan on things to go wrong.

Basically, you have to plan on things to break

and things to fail if you want to be successful.

And so we have some redundancy by doing that,

and we're able to keep up really fast.

And so the 12,500 watt charger

is able to charge the batteries

most of the time in about seven, eight minutes.

That's actually about how fast it takes to empty your tank,

most of the time, too.

Yeah.

Obviously that fluctuates based on how many gallons per acre

or how fast you're flying and things like that.

But for the most part,

the charger is able to keep up

and charge the battery at the same time it drains.

Yeah, okay.

That makes sense.

It's a generator all day.

You want a good set of headphones, for sure,

because it gets pretty loud out there.

But you run in generators all day,

and constantly you have one battery flying,

one battery charging, one battery cooling,

constantly throughout the entire day.

Okay.

Do you all have a preference

or is there a trend in the industry

versus owning versus service?

Like, do you guys have a favorite?

Or as far as on the drone?

Yeah, on providing the service

to the farmer versus selling them.

Yeah.

Realistically, we're fine with both the customer application

market that we're in the service side

of that customer application is kind of the trade name.

It's an extremely successful business.

I mean, we are happy to do that.

I will say, I think, overall,

the industry is trending towards more end user ownership,

because I know it doesn't sound like it.

We talk about it drone,

and I tell you, it's $40,000, $45,000 drone.

It doesn't sound cheap,

but in terms of farm equipment and sprayers,

that's cheap, right?

That's really, really cheap.

And so I think as a whole,

the industry is trending towards more growers

owning their own equipment,

because they are so universal in their show,

can be used for so many different purposes.

As people are starting to realize,

they are very efficient tools,

and not just toys anymore.

I think more and more people are opting

to purchase their own equipment to do that themselves, for sure.

Yeah, maybe even like in the Chestnut world,

where people might have 50 or 100 acres,

or even 200, that's pretty small.

And so there's the ability, I think, to share amongst growers, too,

you know, if we were to buy more.

Or even offer services to some of your local farmers, too.

I know you're probably pretty busy in the summer,

but you can pay off the ROI on a spray drone

is tremendously short.

And it is extremely short.

In general, we tell people you should be able

to triple the value of the drone in one year,

with your spraying commercially, right?

Yes, yes.

At a normal spray rates,

we're charging $15, $16 an acre to spray.

And so it does not take many acres to spray

to pay off that drone purchase.

Okay, and is there just say ballpark, nationally,

and stuff?

Are there minimum size?

Like say, you came out, we have 100 acres.

It's probably not just $18 an acre.

Like just to give growers a sense.

The 100 acres would be plenty,

but you're probably going to be asking me

to do 10 gallons an acre, right?

Or five gallons an acre or whatever.

Where normally we're doing two gallons an acre, right?

And so our per acre costs for something like Chestnut trees,

where we're doing a lot higher volume,

it's going to be quite a bit different.

Okay, now it's not going to be absurdly more expensive,

but it is going to be quite a bit different

than what it would be for like a two gallon per acre row crop.

Okay, what we'll probably do is have you come out

and let's put together an example

so we can share with the group, with the group.

Okay, I see or was reading about your ministry and faith

and I think it's always pretty cool

to bring that up in a conversation because it's important.

So does your work in your church and with the youth

and everything, does that slide over into your business

of your ethics and stuff?

Like yeah, absolutely more than you would think.

I know there's tons of time, especially in spray season

where people have something breaking or going wrong

and just that type of like service mentality, right?

Like that customer first mentality

of like being able to drop whatever it is I'm doing

and make them a priority has gotten us a long ways

and has bought us a lot of return business too.

I know there were multiple times this year

that I was meeting people in my shop at 11 p.m.

and fixing the drone and sending them home at 2 a.m.

so they could go spray the next morning, right?

And just making like pretty much we do whatever it takes

to get our customers back in the air as fast as we can.

And as far as training and support,

just the way that we try to treat people.

It's all based on our biblical values

and I would say that's our entire team.

I'm really fortunate and blessed to have a team

that is extremely invested in their faith

and take that very seriously.

And so I think it's awesome when you get to work

with people like that.

But then even more so the youth group specifically,

I have a joke that I have a never ending labor force

because we always send out ground group people

with our pilots and so I have a youth group

and a wrestling team full of kids that are on a list

asking me to go work with us because we pay them pretty well

and it's a pretty easy job.

So they love it and I get to use them all the time

and give them some, let them make some money with us too.

So that is wonderful and setting an example

of how to run a business which is,

which we need a lot more of, you know, and I love that too.

So if, let's talk about like mistakes maybe that you've made

that you can share with our listeners

that they would avoid, first they should call you.

But after that, like what are some things that you might have done

that you'd do differently looking back?

Yeah, when I read that, I read that question

I was thinking about it, I really think

the best example is crashing, right?

I know it's like the hot taboo topic

when you're talking about drones, but like I crashed,

I started with a T30 and my first crash was on my first job.

Okay, so I learned so quickly what not to do, right?

And I think I tell everyone that my drones,

crashing is a part of it.

Like do not buy a drone thinking it's never gonna crash.

It's going to happen.

Now it doesn't happen a lot, right?

Especially once you get better and you know what you're doing.

It's not like it's happening every day

or even every week or at all.

Like it, I know we can go a whole season

and not have a crash.

Now that we know what we're doing a little better,

but the reason I say this is it's not the end of the world,

right? Like when I crashed,

I just quit my engineering job, I was full time.

I was like, oh man, like I need to go get my job back.

Like I don't know what's going on, I was so upset.

And I ended up costing me $1,000 to fix the drone.

And I was like, the worst part was that I missed two days of spring.

I had another 500 acres I was going to do there.

I didn't get to do it.

And that was more money than it cost to fix the drone.

So the downtime is the worst part, right?

But I tell everyone like when you crash,

you're going to think it's in the world,

you're going to think the drone's done, it's not.

We can fix almost anything.

We can get it usually in a day.

They're really easy to work on.

They're relatively cheap to repair in comparison

to other equipment that you might have.

So I think crashing is a big one,

but then there's so much other stuff to you.

And that's one thing we take pride in is like,

we're not just a sales company.

Like I'm not going to just throw a specs book at you

and say, hey, here's the drone, send me a check, right?

Like I go with people through every step.

Like we talk about their setup for their equipment.

Even if it's not stuff we're a seller,

if they want to make their own,

like we'll help them figure out what they want

and what they need.

And then as far as once they get the drone,

my phone is always available.

I give everyone my cell phone number.

They can text me and call me.

And I'm happy to talk through their issues with them

and help them keep things working well, right?

And so I tell everyone,

everyone's biggest question is what drone should I get?

And I tell everyone that it's the does not matter, right?

And reality is, as long as you're buying one of the major players

in the market, they're all pretty good.

I do think what we offer is probably the best,

but what matters more is the service,

like buying from the right person,

because that's the most important thing.

If you buy from the wrong person,

you're going to be up a creek without a paddle pretty soon, right?

Yeah, it's absolutely true.

And my nephew owns a golf cart business in South Carolina.

And so he has so many people that bring in carts

from overseas that no one can work on.

There are no parts.

And so, you know, buying that right,

like you said, buying what you would recommend,

but more important is to have someone in your back pocket

that when it does crash, you can get it fixed.

So that I think that's huge value that you all bring.

Okay, so just lastly,

is there any other thing that you would like to add,

like a value about your business

or just something people should reach out to

or anything I didn't kind of ask you?

I guess the only thing I mentioned a little bit

just about the ROI and understanding,

like I think a lot of people,

when they try to justify purchasing a drone,

they look at the one application, right?

Like which for you all,

it's going to probably be like an insecticide application, right?

And I think it's easy to look at that

and I think that's the only,

it's going to be your only return on investment.

But I think you really need to open your horizons

and think about the other things you could be doing

with it also, right?

Because there's a lot you can be doing to control,

like not desirable weeds and things or,

or like I said, transporting things.

It's got an entire lift kit that goes with it, right?

Or spreading seed and even putting in hay

or wheat fields or everything underneath the trees.

I don't know if you guys do a cover crop or anything.

Yeah, there's definitely a trend of that

to help with the soil, you know?

And you're mentioning the katsu or whatever it was

on the side of the hill where you're able to go

and kind of look at the tree tops

and just, you know, I can see the different applications

as the trees get bigger.

So yeah, that's it.

The only other thing I would mention

is just as our business,

we actually are kind of expanding beyond just spray drones.

I mean, spray drones are definitely our main seller

and our main product.

But we also are offering like autonomous lawn mowers,

auto steer kits, we have thermal imaging drones,

we have other small like enterprise level drones

if you wanted to do like the plant health mapping

or stuff like that, right?

We have all those options out there

and are doing a lot more as we continue to expand.

And if there was a room full of people

that are kind of in farming and not necessarily tapped

into tech and all how far on the horizon are we?

Like are we here at the beginning of using drone technology

or a lot of people actually know about it?

Yeah, I think we're farther, farther into it than you think.

I think drones are pretty much a,

at least in the road crop industry,

drones are pretty much a widely accepted thing now.

Like there is very little hesitancy

about whether or not drones work like that.

That's pretty much a proven fact.

There are millions and millions of acres

being sprayed by spray drones now.

We're pretty well into the application.

It's not an R&D thing anymore.

Like it is a very successfully proven method

of spraying and spreading in America even in.

And I would say internationally,

I think they're leaving a little bit ahead of us

because of our, make sense.

Our legality with the FAA kind of makes us a slower adopter

of stuff like this.

But all of that trickles down usually one year later to us.

And so I think we are very pretty far down that path actually.

And like I said, I think we're not very far

from seeing just about every rower utilizing their own drone.

Especially as we see,

the larger operators have used units

because that's another thing we do

is we sell used drones too.

So more affordable things that may be one year, two years old

that that person wants to upgrade to the newer version

because they want the larger capacity or the faster speeds.

And so then for someone that wants a more affordable option,

we're able to usually offer something to them there.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Is it just like one-on-one relationship

or is there a marketplace or anything like that?

And typically for us, it's a one-on-one thing.

We have a customer that calls us asking for a drone

and as we get in conversation there,

their budget's a little lower than what a new drone would be.

Then we're able to match them up with one of our older customers

or someone that had called us with a used drone

and kind of helped them sell that off

so that they can afford to upgrade essentially.

Yeah, there's also, I should mention this too,

we have another drone that actually just came out,

I've talked about the J150 a lot because that's our big drone,

but the J70 is the counterpart to the J150,

which is a 12 gallon tank.

I don't have one yet, so I haven't got to measure the capacity

but a 12 gallon tank, but it is very similar to the J150.

And as a much lower price point,

you're looking for a minimum quote on that,

you're looking at about 27,000.

So it's substantially cheaper on that regard, even just that.

Yeah, and then we'll create a blog that goes with this podcast

so if you send me some images, we can include it there

and just get the message out

because I know some Chestnut growers are utilizing drone technology,

but there's also a lot that I know that aren't.

Yeah, we have sold one drone to a Chestnut

grower up over an easter again,

talking to you actually.

Okay, well, good.

Well, let's get you some more business.

We love that.

Well, Caleb, thank you again then

and we'll get this out to our audience as soon as we can

and you have a safe flight out to Oregon,

I guess, hopefully the weather's okay.

For sure.

I think it's gonna be okay.

We got ice on the ground still right now, but.

Us too, too much of it.

But anyway, all right, we have a great rest of your day

and thanks again.

Awesome, thank you.

It was great talking to you.

Thank you for having me.