Christopher Kiely revisits his career and his thinking about how equipment has changed over his working life.

So. Well, you know, it all started. I started my apprenticeship, I started as an auto mechanic, you know, loving cars as a kid. So I started my apprenticeship at 16 as soon as I could, as soon as I could drive. And I worked, you know, throughout high school. I, when I graduated high school I was a fourth year auto mechanic apprentice already. So you know, I worked on cars for a while and got tired of that. I sort of graduated into the big economic slump of the early 90s. So then you know, had a hard time finding any jobs that were decent and decided to go travel around a bit. I'm also, I love music. So my two big sort of passions in, in life that have stuck with me throughout my life are machines and music machines of, of various sizes and they've got bigger over the years. So I went from cars to trains and from trains to electric, you know, haul trucks.

And so two big things have got me through are, you know, I really love being a mechanic, you know, although I haven't been on the tools for years, been training mechanics for most my time. All the time that I spent at Hitachi, I spent longest time was about 12 years. Now I'm a little break and now I'm back consulting with Hitachi construction machinery, going all over supporting the large haul trucks, mining haul trucks. That's been sort of my main specialty the past two decades. And then making music and writing are two of my sort of.

Oh, I play well I guess, you know, my band, I play in like a grandpa punk rock band. You know, two thirds of us are, have grandkids so we're sort of loud and. But I really for myself I just enjoy playing improvised. Any sort of improvised music at this point is, is something I really love. Getting together with friends and just you know, pick a key. I've played for a long time. I started playing before I was apprentice so, so I started playing guitar when I was 13 and you know, now I'm 49. So even without being all that diligent at practicing, you know, 30 some odd years, you end up all right, you know, so I enjoy that. I play a lot of music and my whole basement is a recording studio and I have my friends over and we jam and do stuff and mess around. That's, that's a good, it's good stress relief for as much stress as I have, you know, so.

I have, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm back at it now. I took a few years off to work in an office and hated it. So back to getting on planes and going around the world. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know. Because I hated school. Right. Growing up I hated school. I graduated high school with almost 50% absenteeism. So I don't really know. I think it's just the sharing of ideas with people. You know, I like sharing ideas and I like the two way conversation of training. Actually being in a class, training, you know, it's going more towards webinars and stuff like that. But you can still get a bit of the two way. But I think it's mainly the sharing of ideas is with like minded individuals. You know, I love mechanics. You know, being of the brotherhood, we tend to think a certain way and be a certain way and, and, and I like being around those guys and, and I've, you know, I've started being around those guys and they're all older than me, you know, in 16. I was apprenticing with 30 and 40 year old guys, you know, and I just kind of fell in love with that.

Oh, they all, you know, the gruff exterior, but big softies in the middle typically.

Get to know them. They're some of the best friends you'll have. So, you know, I just like working with mechanics. Love, love working with the machines, you know, I really do. I'm a weird believer that machines have souls, you know, so, so part of

I do, I do very much.

Yes, that, that's the most rewarding thing is, is. And I've had it over these, you know, some of the. Because when I first went to Indonesia, for example, there was, you know, that was still, you know, 2006, the, the expat, the North American Aussie or, or you know, some maybe UK expat was still the way of the world. But that's changed, you know, that's something we can talk about as well. That's changed a lot. Now you have expats out of Indonesia and, and, and the Philippines are taking those jobs in Africa. And some of the guys that, you know, I, when I first did the first round of training in Indonesia, those guys became expats, making, you know, the big, big expat money in Africa and stuff like that, they weren't treated the same way. Now that's, you know, something that the mining companies maybe should answer for. You know, why do you treat the Western expats different than the Indonesian expats?

Africa. And in the Philippines, they still go bring a lot from the Philippines. I know once upon a time they did, they did.

Yeah.

Well, making everything more complicated in the notion that somehow you're making it more efficient.

They put computers and everything. I mean, even your horn has a computer in a car now. Right. Like even your horn used to be, used to be a relay and a fuse.

Oh yeah, probably not. Because Electromagnetic field, Electromagnetics too much won't even penetrate the, the field. Right.

Well, they don't understand the, you know, they don't understand what it takes to create a microchip.

You know, go, go look at, go look at the life cycle. Energy consumption, number one. Every microchip needs be made in the clean room. So if you know anything about vacuums and the energy required to pull vacuums because that's why you need to make a clean room. And how many pumps that takes, how many filters that takes. And then you realize that, you know, we've gone from a car that was, you know, I think we probably should have stopped with the Datsun 210. You know, the Datsun 210 got about 40 miles per gallon. Right. You know, totally repairable. You probably could have built like a decent machine shop. Probably could have built most parts on there. Right. And instead we had this notion that fuel injection and, and, and going from one coil to six coils.

Well, what's, you know, that's a lot of copper now, you know, so what I look at from an old school mechanics point of view because I, you know, there were still cars with plugs and points when I started. The Hyundai's still had plugs and points when I started on some other, you know, lottas and stuff like that.

You know, but, and then now what you have for a car which is essentially a very climate all electronic living room on wheels and you want me as the mechanic that views now this very disposable product, you know, 10 years, and it's, you know, 10 years, 200,000 kilometers. The engineering is amazing at that, you know, of being able to cost control that and life cycle control that. And you went from repairable products to disposable products in the name of efficiency and somehow being better for the world. And I don't, you know, that's to me as somebody on the inside that's worked on this stuff for 30 years. That's the big scam that I kind of see.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, I mean there's less repair and maintenance to do as well, you know, I mean that, that is one thing that they have accomplished. Now, not so much on cars because cars have this unusual thing where the dealer network is dependent on you coming in 8,000 kilometers, you know, and changing your oil. But in industries that have demanded longer maintenance cycles, you know, you can go 70,000 km in a modern diesel engine without changing the oil. You can go, you could do that in your car too.

No, no, they needed, they needed way more maintenance than that. But that's where we seem to have substituted, you know, maintenance somehow. Got a bad word. It was a bad word. And maintenance free. I mean, you saw it first with the batteries, right? First they have maintenance free batteries. Well, no, they're disposable batteries. Batteries. You know, and what you realized when you used to have the old lead acid batteries that just make sure you're topping them up and keep them, you know, and check them and maybe have to add some electrolyte, you know, every, every few years or whatever, but those old lead acid batteries would last decades. And then they replace them with maintenance free batteries and you realized after about five years, you know, seven max, the thing dies on you. And then what do you do? You know, you just.

Well, you know, they, they tend to short out in the equipment world or, or depending on where they are. What you see is a lot of charging issues. They overheat. You know, that's the real. What's the failure. They overheated.

Yeah, yeah, that's why I said a lot of them short out. They get, you know, damaged. They can't take the vibrations. And this is why, you know, I'm very skeptical about putting large drivetrain batteries into any sort of haul truck. I'm just.

no, it puts a lot of pressure on a, I mean sort of a system that doesn't even exist. Right. Go go look at what you're paying for your, your home hydro, what we call hydro and your electricity, we call it hydro here because so much of it is hydro, hydro powered which isn't even true anymore. But you look at what you're paying for your electricity and then imagine, I mean what they've already done to on highway trucks is they've basically made it impossible. You're going to have to, on highway trucks are going to have to be hydrogen or electric by the end of the decade. Okay, well they're going to be buying the same power that you need to run your dishwasher and to run your stove. There's no, there's no secondary grid that these things are going to plug into. Yep. So if you, if you think you're going to have a bunch of. First you can put the.

On highway trucks and all of the trucks that are now delivering our food are all going to start charging overnight on our grid. You know, where are the prices going to go? How are we even going to provide that? It's all getting a little cart before horse to this old mechanic.

Yeah, in what? Right.

I think that is going to be the way of the future for most vehicles. I think that the day of walking into the dealer and perusing in any dealer, whether it's on highway Trucks, equipment, motorcycles, everything. It's, it's over. You're not, you're not going to have the ability. You're going to purchase it mainly online.

Yeah, I think so. It's. It has been shrinking. The old Euclid trucks. So if you look, you know, Hitachi bought Euclid trucks and the old Euclid trucks were. I mean they were the original off highway truck. At one point in time, back in the 50s and 60s, off highway trucks were called yukes.

Yeah, that and, and Mac, I think that's right early Max. But Mac never went really international, you know, and then Cat got into the business and I mean it's a very interesting. If anybody is interested, you know, it has all sorts of class action lawsuits and everything. But the history of the haul truck is a very. It's an interesting history with a bunch of companies. You know, Euclid was bought by all sorts of people over the years. General Motors, Mercedes, Volvo, Clark, Michigan, all sorts of people owned them. But those old, original Euclid mechanical trucks, you know, the R32s and stuff like that and R85s, we would still get calls, you know, 30 years later. You know. Do you have batteries for the. They ran on very simple ecu.

You know, and they would run until the batteries died in the ecu. And the guys would be like, you know, we need new batteries for these issues. We had to remember that was one of the first things when I first started at Hitachi. We had to go and find new batteries that we could put in these ECU's and put out a service is on how to. Just, just so those trucks just ran forever. There was, you know, they were all mechanical except for a basic, you know, electronic control unit. Mainly just look at hydraulic function.

Yes, electronic control unit. You got it.

Yeah, yeah. Maintenance, Maintenance is, is. It's a nice notion in mining, but everything is second to production. Everything.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, well and then it all depends. You know there nobody's ever honest with themselves in life cycle. I've been in these life cycle. We're going to keep the truck for 10 years. Okay, you're going to keep the truck for 10 years and then what? You're going to go out and you're going to get, you know, you have a hundred of them after 10 years and then. Okay, well you're going to have to get new financing to replace those. Well, we'll, we'll keep these ones going for another five and then it's another five after that. And then you're at where, you know, I was at just at mine in Indonesia and it's like, well we're going to rebuild these and get another 10 years out of them. So you're looking 20 year really is what, is what. You know a lot of the life cycle can be on these products if you want it to be.

But it's becoming more difficult to extend the life of the high, the high tech trucks, you know, because Siemens doesn't really support the drive system anymore.

So you know we could, but you know it, it gets harder to, to rebuild the, the trucks that are the, the high tech trucks because well, we don't have that anymore. That's been superseded by now we're on AC3 instead of AC2 and you can't get those parts.

Yeah.

Well, you know the old Euclid's, you know, we saw some 500000 hours in Africa and stuff. I've been to China where they had old R170s which is some of the original GE trucks, which a lot of that. So like I said about the drive systems, the old DC drive systems, you could build most of that stuff locally. You know, it was just contactors and resistors and stuff. There wasn't IGBTs and all these very fancy inverter switches and stuff in the DC trucks. So the Chinese could keep those DC trucks running with almost like no help from us. I'd go there and I'd be like, how old are these trucks?

And they had jerry rigged a bunch of stuff together, keep them running and you know, they were swapping in will fit parts on the drive system that they had, you know, created and reverse engineered locally and stuff. And that level of technology was maintainable and repairable almost until the frame just, you know, rotted right out on you.

Yeah, you see that a lot. I always laugh. I, I have some, you know, on, on LinkedIn and stuff. A lot of the African guys, African mechanics and Indonesia mechanics and you know, a lot of these trucks, you know, they'll, they'll take picture of the Gu. Congo in front of this truck. It says Arnold Machinery on it. Well, Arnold Machinery is a dealer and you know. Yeah, out in Utah, you know, it's like. And that was originally sold to somebody and then all these weird. I was looking at rebuilding some trucks as a project out of the Congo and I mean they were just from all over and how they ended up in the Congo. International machine used machine trade, you know, it's quite amazing where, where they'll end up.

They need encouragement in, in secondary education to be mechanics.

You know, if you want to go to. Because you know, I go back to my, my day and so when I went through high school it was the old basic general and advanced paths. You streamed basic life skills. You're going to go learn how to push a button on an assembly line somewhere. General was, you know, you're going to college and you're going to get some, you know, college diploma or trade or something. And then advanced was, was university and I took all advanced courses except for my electives which are mainly shop class because I like shop class. And even back, I mean this was the late 80s, early 90s and they were like, why are you doing this? You should, oh, there's, there's my cat. You should just, you know, you should just go to university.

You know, I said no, I'm gonna go trade school. And they're like why? You know, why? You know, are you kidding? Me, you know, at 15, I knew why better than the, than the counselors. So there's been this thing against, especially in Western cultures, you know, Western countries of, you know, if you're not going to university, you've somehow failed your family, you know, that you got to go to university if that's what you're capable of. And really, you know, I was capable of going to university, but I like fixing things. That's been a message to support young people and, and, and we need to, I mean, I would blow up secondary education if I could. I would totally change the way we teach our kids.

It's not true.

Yeah, yeah.

No.

I got paid to go to school.

I, I'd worked enough. I'd worked every day after school from, you know, time I was 16. Like I said, that was basically grade 11. So grade 11, 12, 13. I worked every day after school full time. In the summers I worked Saturdays, nine, eight, nine hours on Saturday. So by the time I, when I, when it's time to go to school, I just went on unemployment. Yeah, I mean, I didn't even know because I was still, I was just a kid and I was just going to go to school and then I go there and I realize I'm in, you know, this trades program with a bunch of people that are there on, you know, government retraining programs and all this stuff. And okay, you know, I just needed my schooling. And then one of the first weeks, the guy comes in and he shows you how to fill out your unemployment card. And I'm like, hold on, what you mean I'm going to get paid? Like, you know, my parents are paying my rent. Right.

You know, because my parents paid for my sister to go to School. So they paid for, you know, part of my trade school. So for me, I came out, I was making money to go to trade school.

I think, you know, I think there should be less sitting in one spot, getting lectured to. Right. I hated school for that. I was not a good student. I can look back on all my report cards if Christopher just applied himself. Well, I'm applying myself to other stuff. Like, I'm not interested in what you want me to apply myself to. And I don't think we allow for a variety of learning styles about variety of interests, a variety of just natural skill sets to exist in our education system. You know, and we need to, and they, they give it lip service here. You know, you see it now especially because there's a huge shortage, of course, and the industry is starting to worry about maybe industry's getting with it. But industry hasn't done themselves any favors and getting mechanics either. Let's be honest and go, go further.

Yeah, skilled, you know, I'd call it skilled trades. And, and you know, whether you're a nurse is still, it's a trade, you know, you, you, you vie for and go make a living as, as, as a nurse. It's, you know, these are things that are important. And I think in the skilled trades, they put a lot of lip service to it, especially still now. But, you know, they, they close all the auto shops in, in high schools. So while you're going, oh, there's this massive skilled trade shortage and blah, blah, blah, and oh my God, well, we'll give a bunch of, you know, Ontario government, you know, advertising, trying to encourage young ladies to become welders or whatever. But is there a welding shop in their high school?

Not anymore. Right.

And now you don't have either.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, it's a tough. Right. We, they say one thing, but then we, we structure things for the other.

Well, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm a perfect example of that. I'm highly specialized at this point, you know. Right. I'm based, I'm not just a mechanic, but I'm sort of mechanic on one, one brand of one particular type of equipment, you know, but that's, that's worked,

For sure it is, yeah.

Well, I think that's, you know, the world's becoming a smaller place and how much, how much automation and robotics are going to make that even smaller.

Right. You know, who, who got the doctor there? Right.

I think, you know, I, I think almost everything's too complicated for society now. You know, there's, there's an interesting you know, going to my hand to maybe some of my counterculture here. But, you know, Terence McKenna, who's become more of a household name, you know, at least since when I read him in the 90s, right, to go to the, you had to go to the funky bookstore to find them. But, you know, he, he had, he had the, the complexity theory, right, where he said the world's just going to get increasingly, increasingly complex. And I think he's right, you know, in a lot of different ways. And the complexity is going to be for no real reason except for complexity's sake, you know, and I worry about that. I don't know if that's necessarily. I think there is some very good use for our complexity. But then I look, like I said with cars, like, what did we really achieve by putting a computer on your horn, you know?

Yeah. People like their freedom, you know, and people don't like to be on rails, although we kind of are, but they like the illusion that we're not, you

Where does freedom rank on that?

I think that's one of the main things that you're going to have to, that the corporation is going to have to do is flatten their hierarchy to keep these kids interested because you're not going to be able to progress them through the companies as fast as they want to go. That's, that's the big complaint. You always hear they want to be VP. Okay, well, get rid of the VPs. Get rid of the VPs.

I've worked for VPs. I've never needed one. I mean that.

You know, with you, you know, I've never needed a vp. Most of them have been nothing. But you know, if anything they've, they've hindered what the people working there have actually tried to do. So flatten the hierarchy. So when these kids come in, it's not like, well, I need to be, you know, I'm climbing the ladder because, yeah, they're going to be, want to be at the top of the ladder in one year and if they're not, they're going to leave. So get rid of the ladder. You know, I think that's one of the things. And I just don't think that type of, of command and control, I think is the word you used in a conversation we had back that command and control method of management, of hierarchy is going to work with young kids at all.

Not the smart ones.

Don't care. Yeah, it's, I mean, that's kind of, you know about that anyways.

Yeah, I don't think that's normal.

I know.

Well, exactly. And you should really. You know, we already have a guaranteed annual income in Ontario for the disabled. Okay. So it's called odsp. And is your guaranteed annual income for the most needy people in our society, the disabled. And what does that income provide you? Provides you a life of abject poverty. That's what it provides you. And if you want to make any more, well, then they're going to take your ODSP away. So people need to understand UBI systems are already in place, and most people that are on them are at the total whim of authority that they barely even have any control or even notion of where this authority comes from. It's mainly bureaucrats. It's not even people you vote for, really. And then they're guaranteed income that barely pays their rent anymore. Okay, so that's the UBI that I see.

So if you want to convince me I need to be get on board the ubi, then why don't you take better care of the people that currently have ubi and once I see us better taking care of the people that currently have ubiquitous. Because they're out there. They're the disabled. They've been on UBI for a long time. We don't call it that. We call it other things. Disability, pensions, whatever. They are suffering and they are having a very, very hard time not falling through the cracks because they're totally dependent on government, you know?

And. And good luck getting it.

I'm not trying to trigger anybody.

Well, you know, I. I love a guy. Now, now we've talked a bit. I'm a big fan. My dad, because he knew I didn't like reading a lot of the books, he got me into the Beat Poets way back when. Mainly Kerouac. Right. And Dharma Bums. You know, he mentions, he talks about this guy, gives him a different name in the book, I can't remember, but the Beat poets got me into two people that I. That I still hold sort of very true to my. What I am and what. I think one is Alan Watts. And I don't know if, you know, Alan Watts is the old. He's called spiritual entertainer Alan Watts. He used to give, you know, big. He used to give talks on his. On his boat out in Sausalito. Just hippie talks. You'd hear everybody coughing in the background while he's talking about Zen Buddhism and all this stuff.

It's a beautiful part of the world. And if you haven't listened to Alan Watts, listen to Alan Watts. YouTube is full of Alan Watts. And I put them on when I'm cooking. But he was once talking and he said. He said institutions are run for the benefit of the staff, period. And when he said that, I was just like, oh, my God, that's like the most succinct. Just like. And he said it just. Matter of fact, I'm not even going to listen to anybody argue with. True institutions are run for the benefit of the staff and mainly not the frontline staff, mainly administration staff. And that's what you see is happening to our healthcare systems, is what's happening to our universities. Most of our institutions have been corrupted from within by the own staff to do nothing but represent the staff. I mean, our bureaucrats and our governments. You know what we are going to do about that as a society when all of our faith in our institutions has been lost?

I don't know. Build new ones, I would hope. But we're so divided.

It. I mean, may you live in interesting times. Right.

Yeah, yeah. It's a curse.

Yeah. You know, but I'm hopeful in, in. I'm also very hopeful just in like humanity in the end, you know, there's the mister. There's the old Mr. Rogers. You know, look for the helpers. Right.

Yeah.

No, they don't. And they don't understand. There's a lot of people with the two things that I can buy is they don't understand mechanics. They don't know mining.

They don't know where all their stuff comes from.

He's.

Yeah, I follow him on LinkedIn.

Does he? Yeah, I don't watch his show much. I don't watch television.

Right? Call it something different. Yeah, yeah.

I do. I got, I got another one that I'm working on this week. So sort of, I got maybe a little two or three follow ups to that one I just wrote.

And as you said, the one as you were talking about a little review of 2022. So this next one's going to get into telling people a little bit where I'm, where I'm at and why, why do I think this way now?

Just, you know, keep reading if you're reading, you know, and I would like everybody to, if you can do one thing for me and it, and you know, and try to make things easier and better in the world. It's just, just listen more than you talk. You know, I, as I sit here and talk everybody's ear off. No, I think it's time everybody, everybody needs, everybody needs to get on to, you know, listening and trying to understand your fellow man a little bit better and a little bit of empathy and a little bit of understanding.

Yeah. And let's stop all arguing about stuff that they want us arguing about and start looking for solutions because I think we need solutions. And yeah, pointing out what soldiers wrong and pointing out all the problems is, you know, it's part of it. And I guess you need to wake people up. But you know, I'm really kind of past waking people up. If people aren't woken up that, you know, things need to change a little bit in this world, then, you know, I'm just going to let them stay asleep while I look for solutions.

interested in talking to the people that want solutions and I would encourage others to do that as well.