Ambulance to Work Truck Conversion with Ryan Greene

Hi Ryan.

How's it going?

It's going great. How are you this sunny day?

Good. It's nice spring finally.

It is. Tell me, Ryan, about your business Kaniksu and what you do.

Yeah, happy to. So, Kaniksu is a local internet service provider. We're based in northern Idaho. We started out as what's called a fixed base wireless operator, which means that we install a little dish or antenna on the side of your house, and then that dish or antenna points to a tower that we have. Somewhere a few miles away, and then we can provide, you know, internet service that way. But as we started to grow, we, we started to realize that there was a great opportunity to do more than just wireless internet. So we started doing fiber as well. Fiber, the way we do it is we bury it all underground and but every connection point have go through and connect everything. And then we also use that we connect the to the house. We've got all different connection points that are a little bit tedious to to, to get up and running, but anyway, so we've been doing that now for about about five years. And we, we really enjoyed it, really the community.

And what got you started to create Kaniksu?

Kaniksu was a very selfish reason to get started. I wanted better internet for myself I couldn't find better internet myself and I read an article randomly, somebody me, not related starting an internet, but about a, a group in western washington orcas Island or San Juan Islands, me, who had done something very similar, but they'd done it as a co-op just to the neighbors get well, that seems like it could work. So I kind of looked into it and to make a long story kind of short. All the pieces kind of fell into place to kind of make this work. And I realized though, if I'm gonna go to all this trouble, kind of ought to be a business cause it's gonna a lot of, my time so I looked at how would I, how I business and started talking to the community and interest in the community to get better internet. And, and off, off we went. My, my crazy little story I like to tell is I put up some yard yard signs, just kind of to see how interested people were. It took me about 30 minutes to get these yard signs set the the community and they had it. So if you go to a website, you could sign up and say, I'm interested. I put the signs out and I go back to my computer and I look, and there was already two people that had signed up in the 30 minutes I was away. So clearly there was some interest, so,

Oh yeah. And for us, being in a small town, that's a lot interest already in 30 minutes.

And and over the course of about a week, and week and a half, I lose track of time We had about 90 to a hundred people. So we were, we were pretty enthused and excited about that.

Brilliant. Yeah. And we Kaniksu at our house and we love it.

Great.

Thank you much for creating this business.

You're welcome

Because absolutely right. a lot better than anything else available. So part of being an internet company, there. You like installing, digging, optic and putting the satellite, you know, up at people's homes. So you need a work truck do that. Can you tell us about what your needs were you were looking to get a work truck?

Yeah, so we knew we wanted to get into fiber optic business, and we knew, you know, when we're doing just the, the antenna installs, we can do with just regular pickup. an SUV utility vehicle be great, but when we're doing suddenly that changes a of different pieces and parts to, we of different tools and, biggest thing is we need to it climate controlled because the the, the temperature that you're doing this work at will really make a difference in terms of how it splices and also how how easy the material to work fiber strands, themselves like you work with. And so we we knew we wanted to something that work. A lot people use trailers. They'll use vans, but I'd heard people about using old ambulance thought, well, that, that might be kind of cool way to do it. But I never really gave it any serious thought. So we were we were looking at different sites for, or different places for equipment. And quite frankly, I was looking more at a bucket truck that we could use if we be putting wire on poles, et cetera. And we found at, at the same auction, we bought the, the bucket truck, we found a an ambulance. And we just kind of thought, well, we'll bid on it and see what happens. We had our, our limit and we wanted to see where it went and at ended up winners of the, of the ambulance. And it was really interesting when we went and picked it up I'd never driven an emergency vehicle. And they, they had a police presence there right outside the facility, and like am I supposed to be doing anything with this? So I stopped and I asked him, I said, should I be registering this? Do I need to do something different with the registration to make sure that I'm legal here? And he is like, Nope, have a good day. So I drove home and, you know, everything basically worked in there. We had the, the light bar, the sirens, all that stuff was still functional in the ambulance when we bought it. But of course it wasn't stuff that we necessarily needed, but it was fun, if you will, for a short period of time to kind of play with it so.

That's brilliant. Did you need a commercial driver's license drive the ambulance?

Not this one. It's small enough that we could register it as just a, a well you could register it as a private vehicle, but since it's a business vehicle, we did register it as a commercial vehicle in Idaho. And the really, the biggest designation that that gave us is we could tow I wanna say was up to up to 26,000, have a total weight with towing of 26,000 pounds. We're certainly not gonna ever tow that much with it, but we kinda like the idea of having that flexibility that we could tow something behind it and not have to really worry about if we were reaching a certain threshold that the state have a problem.

So what kind of ambulance you have?

So what I have is a 1999 Ford F-450. So it's truck version of ford truck, basically super duty they do make an ambulance. I've seen one floating around That's a van version, but the truck is the one that has all the towing capability with it. It's just a base like XL or XLT so real basic inside, but that's all they they wanted anyway, we're box on the back anyway,

You tell me about what the ambulance, like the mileage and the hours and what you were looking at considering.

Yeah, so this is, when we bought it had about 98,000 miles on it. I don't remember the hours, but knew relatively high. From our perspective, we were with the higher hours because we knew most the time that vehicle gonna be sitting there idle without a whole lot of, load on the ambulances, you know, hurry get to scene, maybe put a mile or two or five miles on vehicle to get to to scene. may spend an hour or two idling they're. While they're taking whatever needs be done with medical situation. That perspective, it's been pretty good. Have had a few repairs that we've needed to do. But they were all things we were well within our risk threshold for, for being a, an auction purchase. As example, we had do glow plug replacement. We're soon going to have to do some transmission but we got such great deal at on it compared to what we would have paid for a, comparable vehicle, whether was an ambulance something else that we, we felt like those risks and those costs were, were worth it to us

You talked about the weight limit with the vehicle and being able to tow. How much equipment are you storing inside of the vehicle? Was it important that you'd be able to store a lot of weight inside the vehicle as well as towing.

Weight? Not so much. Most of what we're, we're storing in there is fairly light, it's volume that we're, we're more than anything, connectors, extra cable, some tools that we call enclosures, which is a waterproof box basically that goes in our little underground vault. That's that way keeping all the water out of the connectors that we've installed. It, it's things like that. We have some tools in there such as shovels and signs and ladders, but for the most part, I wouldn't, it's, it's not a whole lot of weight. Which lends itself well if we do want to tow because we've got more weight available for towing. But no, we, we really haven't had to do a whole lot with, with heavy, heavy equipment in the, in the ambulance itself. When we did our first project with the ambulance, we were still trying to figure things out and we have called a reel trailer. We put the fiber on of of trailer. And then you can spool We actually for a while were pulling that reel trailer with the ambulance and I have some pictures. It was a, a really funny sight to see an ambulance with that big reel trailer behind so.

That's so cool.

Yeah.

You put hitch to use already. You mentioned like climate control was really important. So the ambulance you won AC and heating like worked worked

For the most part. I mean, any vehicle that age and condition, there was gonna be some things that went wrong with it, and we knew that going into it. The AC technically worked, but it wasn't really working that well. We just basically recharged the, the refrigerant and I think had to do one thing. But yeah, it, it works really well now. It's especially nice in the summer when it's so hot out. I, I feel a little guilty at times if I'm in there working while my employee's outside because I can sit in the nice air conditioning while he's out there pulling cable or doing whatever outside.

From when you picked up the ambulance to, when you put it into like service what was your process for getting it ready to put to work?

I wish I could say I had a really scientific process or a really well thought out process. But it was really, I, I guess the best way to say this is we bought this as we were starting our very first fiber. project. And so we were kind of winging everything as we went. We, we knew we wanted to use the ambulance, I guess, before we even bought it. The very first thing we did is we kind of sat in and looked at it and said, okay, yeah, this seems like this would be comfortable enough. It has enough space in it that we could use the the bench to work on. on. But then the next thing we did after that is look at, okay, what. Needed to be repaired to make it usable immediately. As an example, we had to replace all four Yes, four batteries in the ambulance. We had to replace the alternator alternators, excuse me. then we up need to put it. And, and then we also wanted to make sure it was legal. We wanted to take advantage of the, the lights that it had, not the light bar, but the other lights around it. But the problem was, is to be legal. We couldn't be flashing red lights. And so we had to go and figure out who made the light lens covers buy some that were amber instead, and replace all of them with Amber. And then we also went through and disabled a few things that we were concerned about potentially being a problem such as the siren. It's fun to play with, yes, but but I didn't want that. Somebody bumping that in the middle of the street, and it suddenly going off and either scaring people or people complaining we using them incorrectly. So, just said to be safe, we were gonna dis, disconnect these things. Beyond that, there were a couple other real minor things that we wanted to look is you know, what tools did we wanna put in there? But for the most part it was about let's go out there and try this. We, we we did our very first enclosure vault and we realized we don't have a really good way to secure the cable so it's not flapping all around. And so we We went out and we bought ice so we could put, you know, mount that mounted that in there. But it was just a lot of trial and error.

How long was it from when you picked it up to when it went out on its first job?

About four months. Most of that was not because of a lot of prep work for the ambulance, it was more of we were just, like I said, getting started. A lot of the underground digging. It happened during those four months and by the time we were ready to start using it, a lot of the underground. So I wanna say we probably start, u started using it. We bought it in July and we were probably using it consistently by late October and into November.

And you mentioned replacing four batteries. I'm imagining they were pretty big. Mm-hmm. Like hefty batteries. So tell me more about like what the power situation is like and how you're using it. For tools.

Yeah. Yeah. That's one of the biggest reasons that we wanted to buy the ambulance when we saw it. It has I think it's, it's three different locations in the ambulance where we can plug in AC power, so there's an inverter in there and it can run I, I, I wanna say it's running 2000, either 1500 or 2000 watts of power. Not to get too technical or geek out here, but that's essentially essentially a home is gonna be gonna be, gonna be 1500 or 2000 watts. And so we felt like we could run virtually we would need to in there. Whereas, you know, most of the time when you take an in and plug it into your, your car truck, you're gonna be lucky able to be able to power a laptop off of it or a computer off of it. And so the power, and so we, you know, we have equipment we're trying to charge. We have few times, sometimes we using in some cases we're, we're we're drilling. and we, you know, it's, it's a variety of different tools we may be using. And having the versatility of the, the power really nice. nice. So

Have you ever, like, through the process of working on a job run out of power in the ambulance, like drain the

No, we, we do keep the ambulance running whenever we're, we're working in there. Just so we don't have to worry about that. You could make an argument that you don't have to do that. It's got what's called an isolator in between the. The two sets of batteries. So in theory, I could run the, the house or the cabin batteries completely dead, but still start the vehicle up afterwards. But I just, I've always worried that we're be burning them up too quickly and and so just seems more prudent just to keep it running all the time. And for for the most part that's been fine. The trickiest thing that we've run into is there's an occasion where we've had to do something late at night, emergency repair, whatever. And we just try to be aware of the fact that we have neighbors who may be to sleep. And and we've even had one case neighbor complain about the diesel. But overall's it's not really been a problem.

We're in in north Idaho. We get snow. How has it been through the winter driving?

That's that's gonna be the one area that I wish it was different. It is just a two-wheel drive. It is a dually. Once we put new tires on it handled a lot better in the snow, surprisingly well in the snow. However, we, we do keep chains in there and with the chains on, it's fine. It's just, a pain sometimes to put the chains on. And especially if you're, if you're transitioning a lot between pavement and, and, snow or ice. But it does make us a little bit nervous. One of the roads as an example, I'm sure you're quite familiar with, is very steep. And the hill generally we can get up, but we're always a little nervous about going back down just because of sliding. And so it does cause us to be a little bit more cautious about how we're using the winter. winter For the most part, we're not doing a lot of construction in the winter, so it's not been a big deal. It's really been more about if we have to do any maintenance or repairs.

Yeah. I was curious because I've seen you up on the side when we still have snow and I'm like, wow, we seem pretty good at that ambulance up

Yeah, yeah. We, we generally also wait on a day where it's clear, we know gonna snow. And we wait till the county has sanded the road so that have some traction. And like I said, overall it's done really especially since we've new on. With it being as heavy as it is, does give us bit traction. But I would be lying if I said we never got it stuck. So

Yeah. with an ambulance ambulance is quite a large vehicle. You've got, you know, more weight in the back. How has it been when you have gotten stuck to get it? out of there?

We've only got it stuck once. Let, let me be very clear. It's not a, it's not a a, a serial or habitual thing for us. But it really wasn't that bad. We just used the little, the extra ooph of our one ton truck to help pull it, you know, between what little traction we could get from the ambulance and, and then the, the one ton pickup truck, it really wasn't that get out. get out. But we've also, like I tried to be pretty, pretty cautious about where we take it overall. Yeah, it, it's always been surprising to me because the ambulance served most life in Burlington, Vermont, and I would've would've assumed a like Vermont would likely single vehicle. They they must do a job in Vermont. of, of plowing and clear. clear.

I'm gonna guess it was probably also driven on asphalt roads, not the dirt roads that we've got here. It's gonna be guess.

I'm sure so, yeah.

Yeah does your ambulance have a sink or water?

No. And I'm kind grateful about that one. One thing I don't, we don't really necessarily need, it would be nice times to wash our hands, but I would rather not have to deal with potential maintenance issues come from the extra features. So I'm, I'm, so, no, we don't, we that in there that in there.

What is one of the features that you love the most about the ambulance as a work truck?

I think one of the biggest things that's been really nice for us is all the lights, and I don't mean the flashing lights, but it's got a bunch of what they call scene lights. And so it's just basically you can really illuminate, especially at dark the area around where you're working. And so what we end up doing is you know, especially fall or spring when it's not quite. Light late enough in the day. We, we can turn on those scene lights and we can see around us, open up our, our vaults and pull out the equipment. We can see how much water we've got in there that we're gonna be sticking our hand in, whatever it may be. And you know, it really gives us a good work area that we can, we can use. Those few times we've had emergency repairs as well. You know, we're fixing it whether it's day or night. And so having that, That area to be safer and just be able to see what we're doing has been really amazing to have.

And these lights were they, Like the same ones that were installed when you picked up the ambulance, or did you have to modify the, the lights at all?

No, they were the same lights that were there when we installed it or when we picked it up. It's it's, it's, yeah. Anyway, the same ones that there and they, they're just surprisingly bright So

Fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have any like tips or advice to people that are looking purchasing an ambulance as a work truck for what they should consider while they're looking at ambulances.

Biggest thing is you can do a walkthrough of it. Look for signs of rust. Ours. I believe mostly all aluminum embodied the the, box itself is but you really see lot of underneath looking at the the condition of, of vehicle, you know, is, is it water environment or salt environment during the winter? You know, just for those types of things. the ambulance, we didn't know it the time, but found the service records in there and the, the the fire that had, had impeccable records. And kind of made me realize we did a rough tallying. I, I wish I could remember right what that was, of the dollar amount that they on maintenance for that vehicle over the life that it. And I, I take little I, I wanna say around $120,000 in maintenance that they spent on that vehicle. Now that Is, was reassuring and I guess maybe the best word I come up that we weren't going to necessarily find lot of major issues. Typically when you find an that has maintained a vehicle that they're catching a lot of things before they, they've been neglected to the point where they need a lot of

Wonderful. Thank you so much, Ryan.

You're welcome.

For sharing. your story it's been really cool to hear.

You're welcome.