Jared Flinn:
You're listening to the Boat Floats podcast, your number one resource for everything. Bolt, freight trucking. Hey guys, Jared Flynn with the Bulk Loads podcast. Got Tyler in here with me.
Tyler:
What's going on?
Jared Flinn:
Merry Christmas.
Tyler:
Merry Christmas.
Jared Flinn:
I know different people are going to be listening to this at different times, but it's Christmas week when we're airing this.
Tyler:
The best time of the year.
Jared Flinn:
The best time of the year besides fourth of July.
Dominic Antonini:
Yeah.
Jared Flinn:
But I always have to say this. I come with a little grump because it's crazy with logistics. I know that there's guys making deliveries obviously in our industry with delivering the feed mills, animals still got to eat. So guys are trying to get all those routed. So it's always. And my listeners, I guarantee they're listening this, they're shaking their head yes. This is like always a tough time of year trying to make because you got to either stack up deliveries or deliver on the dates or right after. So even the traders say so.
Jared Flinn:
But Merry Christmas to you out there. Hopefully things go smooth and hopefully you make it home in time to be with the family and relax with them.
Tyler:
Awesome.
Jared Flinn:
So real quick, I did like, man, I was trying to get this ramped up earlier because I wanted to get this in the stockings of our members kids.
Tyler:
Oh yeah.
Jared Flinn:
But the semi Sam book or excuse me, the semi Sam coloring book is now out and available. This is free of charge. If you would like one, just drop down in the comments section, we'll send you one. But we had requests over the past couple years that we should do this for the kids to color in. But it's just got images of some of our different books and storylines, all of our characters. It's real simple to to color in I guess nothing complicated on this. So if you would like one of these semi Sam coloring books for to give to your kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, friends, anybody that can value of it. And we have a boxes of these.
Jared Flinn:
They're really, they're not that expensive. We would love to gift them to you free of charge. Comment down below. We'll get these in the mail. Hopefully you can still get them out during the holiday season as a gift for the kids. And who doesn't love to color, man? Yeah, we know winter time's coming up, you're gonna be cooped up inside. Why not get one of these coloring book to give the kids to color and yeah, maybe come up with some new designs on some of these characters and send them back to us and we can incorporate them in future books.
Tyler:
Yeah. And if your kids are coloring in this book, we'd ask that you just post it and tag us. Post. Post their drawings and tag us on. On any social platform. Or if you don't want to post on socials, just email it in. We'd love to see it. We think it's awesome.
Jared Flinn:
My son, last night, he was coloring my youngest son one of these, but he made the tractor like he had like almost stripes on it. He had like orange with like black stripes. And he's like, hey, what do you think about this, dad? So some pretty creative tractor design.
Tyler:
Yeah, yeah.
Jared Flinn:
So awesome.
Tyler:
Did you include the Dot character?
Jared Flinn:
He is in there. Mr. Dot.
Tyler:
All right. Yeah, that one's going to be black. All black or xed out sad faces on.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah, no, we're just kidding about that. Yeah, there's Mr. Dot right there.
Tyler:
There you go.
Jared Flinn:
So cool. Awesome. Well, what, did you have something else before we get started with our guest.
Tyler:
We'Ll go ahead and do the truck feature. Oh, yeah, we have Ann Curry with Left Lane Leasing out of Hillsdale, Michigan and has been a member with us since the beginning of this year. So super cool. Really cool truck too. And location. I want you, if you recognize this location, you know where this is, drop down in the comments and let us know.
Jared Flinn:
I'm guessing somewhere in Kansas, obviously the Sunflower State, so. But yeah, somebody drop down, tell us exactly where this is. I'd be really curious.
Tyler:
Yeah, really cool truck. Thanks, Ann, for sending this in, as always. If you want your truck to be featured on our podcast and social media, just send it to us. You can send it to us on any of our social platforms or you can simply email it to us, podcast, bulk loads.com or get a hold of us anyway. You can even text to us. Definitely. Just get it to us and we'll be happy to share it.
Jared Flinn:
Awesome. Cool. Well, moving into the show today, I'm going to bring on Dominic Antonini. He is with Wilkins Trailer. We have one of their models here that actually they sent to us as a gift for coming on the show. If you don't know who they are. Large Walking Floor Trailer company. And I didn't realize.
Jared Flinn:
So a couple months ago, Fred and I were on a trip out in western Kansas. We made a big circle up through north central Kansas and we're coming back down through Stockton. I look over to the left, I was like, wait, there's Wilkins Trailers right there. And I guess it didn't dawn on me. I. I've heard of them. I knew them. And you know, prior to that.
Jared Flinn:
We were up in Pennsylvania where a lot of these trailers are. There's a lot of walking for trailers. So we saw these all and yeah, so it all kind of matched up, but drove by, saw the trailers. I was like, oh my gosh. So kind of just sparked interest to bring them onto the podcast. So Dominic comes on today and just gives a little brief history about Wilkins trailer. I know we have members that pull these trailers and I know that they have great relationships with Wilkins and they, they pull a lot of them. So they are beautiful, beautiful trails.
Jared Flinn:
You see them going up and down the hike.
Tyler:
Yeah, they're good looking. Also, this is a little bit of shorter episode till the end. Garrett has actually included a compilation of just what kind of bulk loads has been doing over the past year. So if you kind of want to see a year wrap up of what we've been doing inside, keep watching till the end and you'll be able to see that.
Jared Flinn:
Cool. With that said, here's my conversation with Dominic Antognini of Wilkins Trailer. Dominic, thanks for joining the Bulkaloos podcast.
Dominic Antonini:
Absolutely. Thanks for having me on.
Jared Flinn:
Well, we are super excited to have Wilkins Manufacturing on. And I told you a little bit of the story before, but I got to start this. Like, it's just very odd or ironic. I was out in western Kansas last month and we were driving, we were up in Phillipsburg, Kansas and we were driving south on 183 to Hayes. I look over to the left, I was like, well, there's Wilkins Manufacturing walking four trailers. I had. I mean, I knew that you guys were up in the area, but I just, at that time we drove past there and I saw, saw you all and, and then just not too long ago, I was in Pennsylvania with some customers and we were not too far from Bethel, Pennsylvania, where you guys have another location and was talking to customers that love your all's trailers. And here we are.
Jared Flinn:
So it was just ironic that we've been. I've been seeing Wilkins a lot and finally get you guys on the podcast. So thank you.
Dominic Antonini:
Thank you. Well, that, that makes us feel good that you're seeing a lot of Wilkins. That's definitely, definitely good to hear. You're definitely going to see a lot of Wilkins. They're going to stand out from other trailers big time. I mean, we build custom from the ground up. I mean, beautiful trailers, especially in Pennsylvania. You're going to see a lot of custom builds in Pennsylvania.
Dominic Antonini:
So.
Jared Flinn:
Hey guys, Jared Flynn here. Many of you all may know, may not know, but we started Bulk Insurance Group two years ago and man, it has been growing phenomenally. But I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk more about why we started we started Bulk Insurance Group to create an insurance agency insurance company specifically for bulk carriers. There's no other companies out there that focus on bulk carriers. I had this idea years ago that man, we have a group of carriers different than out there. But the problem is insurance companies today, they want bulk carriers with general freight, with fan freight, with reefer freight and flatbed freight. And we know that bulk carriers are different and insurance should be provided differently to them.
Jared Flinn:
So that's why Bulk Insurance Group was created. So I know right now insurance, it's going up, premiums going up. We would love the opportunity to look at your quote and see if we can help you out with that. We know people are sticker shocked at renewal time. Man, give us a chance to look at over. I know insurance can be a pain to switch over man, let us just see if there's something we can do if there's savings that can be made or maybe policies or different coverages that you don't have or maybe you have and you don't need. So man, reach out to one of our representatives at Bulk Insurance Group. You can go to Bulk Loads.
Jared Flinn:
There's an insurance tab. We'll put the links in the notes here below. Thank you and God bless. But I guess it all started in, in western Kansas. Stockton, Kansas. Can you talk, I mean walk us back and tell us the story of how Wilkins got started.
Dominic Antonini:
Yeah. So basically they started out in a 50 by 100 shed in Goodland, Kansas. And back in the 90s, was it 90? 90, sorry, 70. 76. I'm sorry 73. And then basically, you know they started out there and, and then after that we, we over here in Rooks county we ended up putting up a shop here which is where we're at now. And, and this is where our manufacturing plan is. So we manufacture all of our trailers here.
Dominic Antonini:
We've got part sales and service, we've got Tarps Unlimited, our tarp shop. And then obviously Bethel, Pennsylvania we've got part sales and service.
Jared Flinn:
Nice. So I guess for me and you know I've been in the industry now around 20 years, did a lot of moving a lot of grain out of Kansas I guess. I don't think of when I think of Kansas, I think of a lot of hopper trailers. As far as bulk commodities, I mean I know there's tankers and all that but why, why Goodland Kansas or out there. Why. Why did you all start with walking floor trailers?
Dominic Antonini:
Well, it started off with Art Wilkins and Keith Foster. They. They kind of pioneered that together. And, you know, it was. They started off here in Kansas. I mean, that's obviously, that's where, you know, Art artists from this area. So the Wilkins family. So that's kind of how it started out here, you know, and, you know, you know how farmers are, man, they get together and.
Dominic Antonini:
And, you know, they start thinking of different ways to unload things and. And move commodities and whatnot around. So that's kind of how that started. But, you know, it just kind of grew from there and just, you know, obviously we've got a lot of. A lot of farming in this area, you know, a lot of, you know, obviously, like Iowa, Nebraska. Well, and even Missouri and all over the place, but mainly in this area, you know, so.
Jared Flinn:
And I don't even know the. I mean, I know there's different makes or different brands of walking four trailers, but were there other ones already out on the market or did actually Art and Keith kind of create the walking floor type model?
Dominic Antonini:
Well, Keith, Keith. Keith is actually the one that kind of started coming up with the hydraulic portion of it, the power unit, if that's what you want to call it, drive unit. Art was the first one to incorporate in the. I believe they were conversions of dry vans is how they started out. So they actually put the hydraulics into the dry vans and the, the floor slats and the subflooring and stuff like that. So that's kind of how that started out.
Jared Flinn:
So. And then again, we just talked. I've been on the road, but I was in P.A. but I mean, you guys, these trailers are. You guys sell them all over the United States. Boy. I mean, where are the most of these trailers, I guess run? Or do you all see the most. Most of them purchased.
Jared Flinn:
What areas?
Dominic Antonini:
I would say most. Mostly they're. They're all over the place, to be honest with you. So I would say that right now our biggest area is going to be in the Iowa, Nebraska area and obviously in Pennsylvania, but I'd say Iowa, Nebraska.
Jared Flinn:
So. Okay, let's. If you don't mind, I'm going to kind of talk about, I mean, the trailer itself, walking floors, and just for those, because we have subscribers from all over. A lot of people know what walking floors are. But if you don't mind just talking about the mechanics of the walk and floor trailer, what it does, and really who are the people or companies, trucking companies are Pulling walking floors and the materials and products that are coming that are being hauled on them.
Dominic Antonini:
So you're going to get a lot of, you know, they're going to haul a lot of different commodities, a lot of, you know, mulch feed, you know, shavings, litter, compost, I mean palletized freight for backhauls. As far as operation goes. Basically, you know, if you have a two line wet kit on your, on your semi, then you're gonna, you know, you're gonna run it off of that. And basically it's all hydraulically driven. You know, you've got your, your power unit, you've got your floor slats. Every third slat moves underneath the load and they all come back at the same time. That's kind of what pushes it out of the back. They're gonna be open top trailers with tarp.
Dominic Antonini:
So top load trailers. So.
Jared Flinn:
Okay, and I guess what I'm thinking about, you got different bulk trailers and a lot of our guys know the hoppers. But like, why would someone want to really be using a walking floor? I mean I was even in Idaho a couple months ago. I see there's some walking boards up there, a lot more belt trailers. I mean a lot of guys hauling potatoes and stuff. But would be the advantage of a walking floor over some of these other trailers, specifically like a belt trailer that's got a movable floor as well.
Dominic Antonini:
Well, if you're, if you're talking about the belt trailer and the walking floor, if you're talking about the advantages of that, you know, with, with our belt trailers, for instance, our wide belts, we have the largest volume belt on the market. So you're gonna haul more load, you're gonna have a better clean out, you're gonna have a faster unload time, you're going to do away with the end dumps. So you're not going to have to worry about, you know, your, your end dumps tipping over. You're going to get in tighter spaces, you're going to be able to unload clean out. As far as if, you know, we got some guys that haul litter and they'll back haul grain. So the clean out on that, you know, on our belts is superior. Obviously the capacity, like I say, you know, we've got a large capacity, high volume trailer. As far as the walking floors go.
Dominic Antonini:
The advantage to those, you're going to get more capacity out of the walking floor, you're going to get a little bit lighter. Like I say, you're going to be able to haul palletized freight. Got A lot of guys that haul commodities and then they'll load pallets, you know, pallets of salt or, or anything else and really, you know, there's no need for docking. So I mean you can, you know, if you got a skid steer or anything like that, you can walk it to the back and unload it or walk it forward on a walking floor. So yeah, that's the advantage there. So.
Jared Flinn:
And you, you're just talking about this a little bit ago and want to talk about so specifically in your all's manufacturing plant, what all different trailers are you all producing? Because I saw on your website there's like different, like it looked like there was five or six different models and makes.
Dominic Antonini:
Well, we've got, we've got our walking floors and then we've got our, our belt trailer. So we've got our extreme wide belt trailer and then we've got our, our walking floors. So. But we build custom. So I mean you're talking different sizes, you know, side heights, different suspension settings depending on what commodity you're hauling. I mean we can, we can, we can build it for you. So.
Jared Flinn:
Nice. Yeah, well, and I guess talking about just the, the company itself, like have you all seen really growth in the walking floor trailer market over the past couple years or is it about to stay the same? I just think about like man, I mean we're in agriculture, bulk commodities. We're seeing more and more of these ethanol plants come up. Just the more demand for the, these bulk commodity trailers. But I didn't know kind of how. What do you all see in the market as far as trailer demand?
Dominic Antonini:
Well, I mean you know, it's got its ups and downs just like everything else, you know, I mean that's, it's hard to predict something like that. But we stay strong. We have stayed strong and we'll continue to grow. I mean we're not going anywhere. And, and it's, it's definitely, it's definitely busier at certain times obviously, but we stay, we stay plenty busy. Here's the thing. We're, we're manufactured direct so we're not, you know, we don't have satellite dealers, you know, so and we're a family owned business. We're, you know, we're not, we're not like some of the other bigger guys but we've been here, you know, longer than, than all of them.
Dominic Antonini:
So. And we, we stay plenty busy. So.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah. Awesome. Was the. Again I talked to you, I was out there in Pennsylvania, not too far from Bethel. What started that? That facility out there to be a second branch.
Dominic Antonini:
Well, we saw the demand out there. Mulch is big out there. You know, we saw the demand and, and the location, you know, worked for, for what we'd wanted and we put it out there and it's been very successful and we've, you know, we've gained a lot of traction out there and we're growing all the time.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah. Awesome. Let's move on and talk about you mentioned earlier in the podcast. But also besides the, the trailers, you all have tarps unlimited. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Dominic Antonini:
Yeah. So we build all of our tarps in house 18 and 22 ounce material. All of our upper and lower straps for our ratchet and cables. We've got all different colors. You know, obviously mostly, mostly black is what we, what we make. But we build all of our stock tarps here also. You can order them and we can direct ship them to you.
Jared Flinn:
As far as tarps goes, strictly just walking forward. You guys make tarps for other commodity trailers?
Dominic Antonini:
Absolutely. We've got, we've got hoppers in here all the time. We've got grain carts, you name it. I mean we, we cover them all, buddy. So.
Jared Flinn:
And I assume that a lot of times those they, I mean those are custom made for different, those trailers or.
Dominic Antonini:
Absolutely. Yeah. We just measure the pocket length and the dropped on it and, and we can get it covered up. I mean if you can bring it in here or if you get measurements for us, we can. You know we've done, we've even done boat covers. I mean we've had a lot of different custom things that we've done. But yeah, we can. Anything that needs a tarp on it, we can, we can sure make one.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah. Awesome. Cool. I think that's all I got on this end. Dominic, man. Man, appreciate you guys coming on. And yeah, it was just been ironic that I've been seeing your All's name out there on the road like coming past your All's facility. But yeah, again we know that uh, a lot of our customers use Wilkins and love your All's products and trailers.
Jared Flinn:
Talk very highly on them. So the name is very reputable in the market. So man, appreciate you guys taking the time and coming on the Boatloads podcast.
Dominic Antonini:
Absolutely. Thanks for having us man. And you know, if I may, I'd like, you know, I'd encourage everybody to you know, check us out on Facebook. We share a lot of our custom trailers on there. Give us a shot at 1-800-Wilkins. We would be loving you know, we'd love to talk to you and you know, check us out at our website, WilkinsUSA.com awesome.
Jared Flinn:
Cool. Dominic, thanks for coming on. Appreciate it.
Dominic Antonini:
Thank you sir. Appreciate you.
Jared Flinn:
Thank you Dominic for coming onto the show. We know it was a shorter, sweeter podcast, but just gave you all a little bit flavor about Wilkins if you never heard of them. And all their contact information will be below if you wanted to reach out to them, I think. Are they coming to the conference?
Tyler:
Yeah, hopefully we'll be able to get them there. Yeah, I think. Yeah, they would definitely see a lot of fruit from it.
Jared Flinn:
So speaking of bulk freight conference is coming up. It's getting closer. We're getting things more put together. Actually the lady from the conference center was in this last week. Got to meet her and what's anything.
Tyler:
New or yeah, even she sounded super stoked. We're going to have the entire bulk freight industry down in Branson, Missouri. I'm, I'm getting excited. We have the agenda out right now. You can go look at it. Bulk Freight Conference.com. you can get your tickets there as well. We want to make sure that you book your hotel rooms as well.
Tyler:
The hotels are filling up quick so make sure and go do that. We have a special rate that we partner with the Hilton so you get 50% off your hotel rooms. It's going to be a great time.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah, awesome. I, when I was traveling a couple stops members, they already bought their tickets. So make sure, get your tickets bought. It's going to be an awesome event. I think people are buying or even people are reserving the rooms even earlier to make a whole week out of it. It's going to be family friendly. Um, so make sure get your tickets bought, get reserved, make plans right now before it gets too late.
Tyler:
Yeah, and we're getting a lot of sponsors as well. So you can check out the sponsors on the, the conference website or if you'd like to be a sponsor, definitely get ahold of us. You can email us conferenceolkwoods.com or podcastoklids.com and we'd love to get you involved somehow.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah, especially if you're. I know people watching this. Maybe there's other trailer manufacturers out there that want to be a part of it. Get a hold of us, reach out to Tyler. There are still open sponsorship opportunities.
Tyler:
It's an easy way to get your name out there, get brand recognition. I mean it's a no brainer. Yeah, it really is. And we have all kinds of levels to, to fake people's budgets. So we definitely can work with you.
Jared Flinn:
Okay, cool. Well, we don't want to talk too much. We want to. Garrett has put together this ending video. I am going to say a quick prayer as we always do at every everyone and then we'll move into the video. But you want to stay. If you're listening to this, you may want to jump over to YouTube to watch. But you know, we've been doing so much content.
Jared Flinn:
Videos, photos, guys traveling all over the country, conferences. We took some of our the highlight videos and images from this past year and just put them together in this. It's kind of a little tribute, little Christmas deal. We want you to watch it. So let me pray real quick and then we'll turn the video on. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this Christmas week. Lord, we really just lift you up and know this. This week is about you and no one el and it's about you coming to this earth and being born so that we may have a savior, so we may be forgiven for all of our past, present and future sins.
Jared Flinn:
Lord, I pray for that individual out there listening to this right now that doesn't know you, Lord. That I pray, Lord, that they just seek you out more, Lord. That they want to know more, Lord. That. That, Lord, you are a real God, Lord. That. That you came to this earth, you were a real person, Lord. That they, Lord, through the chaos and suffering, Lord, that they just have an inclination to learn more about you, Lord, I pray for that one individual listening for that.
Jared Flinn:
So, Lord, be over all of our members this season, Lord. Give them peace and relaxation through this time with their family members. And Lord, we thank you for this upcoming year your heavenly and precious name. Amen. Lord. As we said just before, stay with us through this Watch this video make sure and share and and subscribe if you haven't subscribed. And here is our ending video.
