00:00:04 · Neil C. Hughes
[00:00:04] S0: What does it take to electrify a truck that stops a thousand times a day, lifts containers, and still has to finish its route. Well, most of us put the trash outside and then just... Let's be honest, we expect it to disappear. But behind that routine sits an engineering and logistics problem involving vehicles, charging, drivers, and the people sharing their streets. Well, today on Tech Talks Daily, I'm delighted to be joined by Brett Rogers, vice president of operations technology at Republic Services. And we're gonna discuss why electric refuse trucks need energy calculations, calculations that include the equipment behind the cab, and also understand why charges must be ready before the vehicles arrive and how route selection impacts deployment. And Brett will also explain how camera systems, spoken alerts, driver coaching can all use technology together to support safer operations. So if you're interested in technology that has to prove itself outside of a demo, Oh, hopefully, this conversation will give you a look at the decisions behind the service that we only notice when it fails. So the next time you go out to take out the trash, I'm hoping you will remember this episode every single week. But seriously, let me introduce you to Brett now. So thank you for joining me on the show today. Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do?
00:01:37 · Brett Rogers, Neil C. Hughes
[00:01:37] S1: Yep. So I'm Brett Rogers. I'm the vice president of operations technology at Republic Services. And for a little background, Republic Services is one of the biggest environmental services companies in The United States. And so... And also we reach out into Canada. But for reference, we're about 42,000 employees spread across a thousand locations across the country, and we operate a fleet of about 18,000 trucks. And that continues to grow every single year, so it's a pretty large fleet. The way to look at it, we're touching about 5,000,000 customers a day because our trucks are rolling through residential streets, commercialized sites, industrial sites. And so we have a large customer base and a lot of work to do as a result. My main responsibility is really looking at innovative technologies in order to better serve our customers, make our drivers' communities safer, as well as really help us achieve our sustainability goals. [00:02:30] S0: Wow. It's an incredible scale that we're talking about here. And I was looking at your origin story or background, etcetera. And I'm curious, moving from automotive development into large waste and recycling fleet, a huge fleet there, what was it surprised you most about deploying this technology in an always or always on industrial operation?
00:02:51 · Brett Rogers
[00:02:51] S1: Oh, yeah. It's quite a bit different. And so, you know, my my whole background's been in... Basically, so I'm a mechanical and energy systems engineer. And so I started out my career at Toyota working on the Prius program, then General Motors working on the Volt and Volt programs. Went over and worked at Cruise, which is fully autonomous vehicle operations before coming to Republic Services. And I kinda make this joke is that no one plans to work in this industry when when you start out your career. Yeah. It's something that you don't think about. It's... Because when when you think about, you know, refuse and trash, the biggest thing you want is to get rid of it. And so, you know, you you roll it out to the side of the street, and then you just expect it to be gone in the morning. And so then you don't put a little thought into, hey. What all goes into, you know, getting this trash removed? And so when I joined Republic Services, especially coming from, you know, autonomous vehicle land, I'm like, nothing's more complicated than autonomous vehicles. If I can figure that out, you know, just picking up the trash and disposing it, it's easy. I came over here. I I was shocked. The the complexity and the logistics that is required to actually pick up the trash, pick up the recycle, and do something with it is extremely complex, which is also why it's really, really fun. But I say all that because when the industry is always on, you know, people notice. If you pull your trash out to the street and it doesn't get picked up, you're not happy. You don't care how it disappears. You just want it to disappear. So coming over here, it's really important for... To focus on people, processes, and technology, the whole gamut. And so when automotive development, we're really focused on building a really good product for customers. And so we're looking at technology that our customers wanna buy and utilize. When coming over to Republic Services, it's a full operation. So now I'm not just focused on the vehicle. I'm not just focused on a particular set of technology. I'm looking at all all these things combined in order to better serve our customers and make our drivers' lives easier. And so it... There's some similarities between the two as far as, like, hey. Advanced technology, safety technology, sustainability technology is transferable.
00:05:00 · Brett Rogers, Neil C. Hughes
But as far as actually operationalizing this and making sure it's the best thing we do for our customers and the best thing we do for our drivers, you know, that... That's a challenge, and that's been really fun to go and tackle. [00:05:13] S0: And before talking about the solution and everything, I'd love to make everybody listening aware of some of the challenges that you must be dealing with here, especially around EVs and tech enabled safety, especially on a fleet of this size, 18,000. There's a huge health and safety remit, I would imagine there. So tell me a bit more about the the challenges around EVs and tech enabled safety.
00:05:36 · Brett Rogers
[00:05:36] S1: Yeah. So on EVs, really as an industry, it's in its infancy. So when I first came over to Republic Services, there weren't many EV class a refuse trucks on the road. And so we really had to look from the ground up at what do we need? What do we need to be successful in order to go to zero tailpipe emissions in our trucks? Because for reference, the majority of our fleet are diesel trucks. We also have renewable gas trucks out there, about 20%, 25% of our fleet in order to reduce emissions. And EV is really that next step for emissions reduction, but it has to work because it's an always on business. We have to go execute our jobs. We have to make sure our drivers have the right tools to do so. And so when we looked at the EVs, it was really about how do we make these trucks our one for one swap with our diesel trucks? And so that goes as far as, hey, making sure we have the right performance, making sure that the ergonomics and the functionality of the trucks are transferable. But, you know, the hottest topic, especially, you know, five years ago, was range. Are these trucks gonna have enough range to actually service our customers? And so we spent a lot of time understanding power draw. And so understanding, hey. How much energy is actually used to propel the vehicle at different speeds, different terrains, different climates? But then also, if you think about a refuse truck, and this is one of the more exciting things that I didn't think about in a short journey in the industry, we basically have, like, a robot on the back of a chassis. You know? It's all those bodies. They have that arm that comes out and picks up the cans. And so you gotta think about, hey. How much energy does that take? And then understand the body power draw, the chassis power draw, combine it all together, understanding the different climates, the terrains. And what we've been able to do on our side is actually create eight range estimators or power draw estimators for our company in particular, and then we can feed in different types of EVs into that model. And we know where these trucks work and how to do one for one truck swaps on the fly. And so when it came to EV, those were the big challenges on the truck. Then there's also challenges on the charger side. And so especially five years ago, now the scope has changed a little bit.
00:07:44 · Brett Rogers
There's lot of data centers out there that we're competing with. But as far as getting power, what we have to do is make sure that we have chargers in the ground before the trucks show up. And so it sounds like a simple concept, but you basically need to know where trucks work two years before you need the trucks so you can kick off the utility conversations, the design, the construction of the chargers to make sure that we're able to charge the trucks. And that's been a fun challenge as well. And so far, we've had a 100% success rate as far as having charges in the ground and operational before trucks show up. That... That's kind of the EV side of the fence. When it comes to safety, I originally came over to here to really focus on EV, but saw a bunch of opportunities on how to leverage technology as far as telematics and adding advanced safety features, especially from the autonomous vehicle industry. You know, they're using all different types of sensors. They have cameras, LIDAR. They have radar systems on their vehicles. And then even probably in your personal vehicle, you're used to, like, a bird's eye view around the... Your vehicle so you can see 306 degree around you. I hopped in some of our refuse trucks, and all they had was a backup camera. And these trucks are huge. And so I'm getting in the truck, and I'm on private property. I don't have a CDL, so I can drive on public roads. But so I I get in a truck, and I'm like, it was hard to drive. It's hard to see around. And I'm thinking our our drivers are amazing. Our drivers are very good, but wouldn't it be nice if they had this common tools that we have in, you know, a a vehicle that can buy off the lot? And And so we started looking at technology, which started out with just a a three sixty bird's eye view. So now our drivers can see 360 degrees around the vehicle while they're driving in neighborhoods. So these are the same trucks that are driving through our residential neighborhoods, our commercial neighborhoods. And if you think about it, on the commercial side, those are our our dumpsters that are outside of, you know, like, your grocery stores or your fast food chain, and they're going in and out with a lot of people traffic around them. So we wanna make sure our drivers can see around them really well, but we also want our drivers focused on driving.