Ep204 - Inside Bushman Fridges with Tommy Stockdale

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Transcript

Lauren 0:06

Hi folks and welcome to this noise camping show with Ben and Lauren. How are you going, Ben?

SPEAKER_02 0:10

Good, how are you?

Lauren 0:12

Thank you. Um, before we get into it today, don't forget to subscribe wherever you're listening to your podcast, be at YouTube or your favourite podcast app, um, or also uh Spotify now too, and jump into our Facebook group Snoys Camping Banter, where we talk everything camping and uh outdoors and podcast and you're relayed and all that.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Whatever you want.

Lauren 0:33

Whatever you want, really.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Give it a try.

Lauren 0:35

Um, so today we've got uh uh interview with um a guest from Bushman Fridges, which is very exciting because we have done a couple of fridges in the past, like fridge brands in the past, and we've always uh wanted to get Bushman's on board and we've finally sort of got everything aligned, um, which is uh great news.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Bushman's kind of that quiet achiever brand, it just is out there, it's got this really good reputation behind it. Uh we just we kind of look at our warehouse and go, Oh, we we need more bushman fridges, we keep selling through them, but it yeah, it doesn't it's not quite as in your face. But the uh I'm excited to talk today to I guess because the the quality and the reputation and kind of the community around Bushman Fridges is pretty strong.

Lauren 1:18

Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. And I think if you've got a product that does well but it's it's there's no like song and dance and fireworks about it. You know it does well for a reason.

SPEAKER_03 1:28

Yeah, yeah.

Lauren 1:30

So uh with uh all that said, uh thanks for joining us, Tommy.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Pleasure. Pleasure. Thanks, Ben. Thanks, Laura.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

Good to have you. Yeah, we tried to line this up for a while now. Glad we we managed to get things sorted out. Um you're in in Melbourne at the moment, which is a bit grey apparently over there.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Yeah, it's a little it's a little grey and drizzly, but you know, it can change in a minute. So it might be beautiful this afternoon.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

That's Melbourne for you, right? Four seasons in one day.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

Hey um, Tommy, we've had your fridges in our range. Uh, I've been at Snowies for well over a decade. Bushman's always been in the range as far as I can remember, always been a reliable brand. Um, you're uh been at the core of it for a long time. But let's throw to you. Tell us a little bit about you, your background qualifications, how long you've been at um how long you've been at Bushman's?

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Yeah. So I've been at Bushman for 11 years now, since uh January 2015. Um in terms of qualifications, I'm more of a life skills person. Uh I did complete year 12. Uh, got my VCE certificate. I wouldn't say I did very well at all. And um the next five or six years, I just did a whole league of different types of jobs. I did some sales jobs. I worked on a cattle station actually for six months in Queensland, which was great, riding motorbikes all day. Um went overseas in my early 20s, where I met my now wife. So I kind of met her when I was 23 years old. She was only 21, we're still together, which is awesome. When I came back, I actually fell into starting a business. I started a Labour Hire Company for the printing industry, which is a little bit left field. So I ran that for about 10 years. We had an office in Melbourne. I moved to Sydney, actually opened an office up in Sydney. And that was a it was a good small business. Uh, it got quite big towards the end, and I ended up probably spending more of my time doing OHS and legal and IT and systems, and it I probably probably got to the size where I didn't really enjoy it as much as I did when it was smaller. And I sold that when I was about 35. I thought, oh, here we go, I'm gonna have all this time off, it's gonna be great. And I think I got to about six weeks of of not having a job. And I remember getting up in the morning thinking, what am I gonna do today? Um, so it was it wasn't you know as amazing as what I probably thought. Oh, you know, being semi-retired will be will be amazing. I'll have all this free time. But um, yeah, I was still in my mid-30s. So I actually went up to Bushman, which is five minutes up the road from my house, and I've known Gary Cottman, who's started the business, and his son Paul since I was two years old. I lived next door to them when I was when I was uh when I was young. And I just went up and said, Hey, can I can I have a job? How about how about you hire me as just a salesperson? I'll drive around the country and I'll I'll go to every town in Australia, every major town in Australia, and I'll visit every camping, fishing, four-wheel drive, um, autoelectrical store in the country. And I did. It took me about a year.

SPEAKER_03 4:50

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

And uh that was in 2015. It was an amazing experience, you know, just to just to get out to some really distant places. Um and then I've I came back into the office in 2016, and business was sort of starting to get a little bit better after that work. And yeah, for the last 10 years I've been there and I love it. I love every day. I I wake up Mondays and I'm like, oh, it's Monday, thank goodness I can go to work. Um, you know, we've got a really nice team of people, and and we just do lots of the little things right. Like we I think getting the little things right in business is is should be easy, and that's all we focus on, you know, like just having good products, answering the phone, returning emails, helping customers, um, just all the basic little things. And that's what we focus on. And then the the business has grown a lot in the last 10 years. We're probably 15 times bigger now than we were when I started, but we're still at a nice small size where we know I answer the phones, um, talk to customers every day, you know, doing tech support and and helping them choose fridges and after sales support. And there's four owners in the business, we all answer the phone. So it's kind of it's like a small, a small business that we just we just punch, we just punch a bit harder than our weight category.

Lauren 6:15

Um I reckon we can probably relate to that, right? Like lots of people think snowies is massive, but it's like actually, no, we're a family business and we've actually got a very small team here, really, that sort of runs the whole place nationally. And it's like people always put us to the line with BCF and Anachondra and stuff. It's like we're not we're not that at all.

SPEAKER_02 6:37

So yeah, I can uh maybe that's why the it's worked so well in our shop because uh so much what you say resonates with what we try to achieve here with just yeah, pick pick up the customer calls, let's pick up the phone and answer it and actually have a person in the business speak to them. Yeah, it goes a long way.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

So um a real person. That's one of the reasons we love snowies, you know, it's it it yeah, you're right. There's a lot of synergy between the businesses, and you know, the fact you guys have a really good online presence, but it's supported by bricks and mortar. You know, you've got your store in Adelaide and one in Brisbane, and uh it's just nice to have you know the actual capability to show people products and talk them through it, and then they also have the opportunity to purchase online. There's a lot of online-only businesses, and it's you just don't get that same technical understanding um of the products because they're not surrounded by the products all day.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

Yeah, yeah, and can't hard to compare um side by side in functionality, which is a big thing in some of your fridges. Um, the business itself, Bushman Fridges, is it 1982? I think is the date I found somewhere. Is that when it all started, or was it before that?

SPEAKER_01 7:57

It was 1982, which is a long time ago. Um, I would have been five years old, uh, giving away my age at that at that stage. And Gary was was running it basically from his house, which was next door to ours, and he was importing gas fridges from Brazil. They were called consul, C-O-N-S U L, Consul gas fridges. And um, so that was the original business. And it we imported gas fridges up until 2022. Um, the sales every year just got a bit less and less. As all the mining companies went out to rural towns during the 80s and 90s, they took power out with them. A lot of these places didn't have power. Um, so gas fridges were were a really big product in the 80s and 90s. Um, not so much for caravans or RVs, but for people living off-grid. Um, and then it just slowly sort of dwindled and dwindled to the point where I think in 2022 we sold three or four hundred of them. Um, and we got to the point where we just couldn't, you know, we just couldn't get it to work anymore financially. So we stopped selling gas fridges. We still keep all the parts. We've got parts in our warehouse fridges we stopped selling 25 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 9:13

All right.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Yeah, yeah. Just in case customers need something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

And I found somewhere the name Overlander. Is that is it was it somewhere Bushman was was called Overlander initially? Is it what's the story behind that?

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Yes, initially, the first 12 volt fridge that Gary built was called Overlander and only for about 12 months.

SPEAKER_04 9:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

And uh then he registered the the Bushman name and the Bushman URL, so bushman.com.au. So Gary was was quite ahead of his time with all of that, uh, which has worked out great for the business. Um but yeah, that was potentially 25 years ago.

SPEAKER_04 10:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

The original Bushman fridge. And the interesting thing is if the tooling for that fridge, we've refreshed it, but it's identical to the one we sell now.

SPEAKER_04 10:12

Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

So if you have that fridge and you need a part, you can buy it from us and it'll fit.

Lauren 10:20

It is actually a common question that comes up sometimes. It's like, why does this fridge look like it's from 30 years ago? Whereas all of these other fridges look really swish. Like, where's the res I don't know if you've got this somewhere else in the list, Benji, but like the resistance to changing the aesthetics of the fridge, like where is that decision come from?

SPEAKER_01 10:46

Yeah, it's it's just our philosophy of keeping things simple. And you know, we we like the idea that if you've got a fridge that's 20 years old and you need a part that it's still gonna fit from the current model. Um, and that fridge works amazing, and there just hasn't been a need for us to change it. The the design of it was right from the start. Um, we've tweaked little things over the time, you know. As we've learned, we've made little changes to internal components and um some of the electronics and stuff, but it it's still it's still reverse compatible plug and play with the original fridge. And it does look a bit 70s, people are like, oh, it looks so 70s. Um and we're like, yeah, but you know, we could we could release a a newer version that might look fancier, you know, maybe it has Bluetooth and it has Wi-Fi, um and it has a you know dairy compartment on the top, but it all those things are failure points. And you know, we actually disassembled a fridge from another brand a couple of years ago. We thought, let's have a look, and we we pulled it apart and we the amount of wiring that was in it, it it kind of looked like an aircraft wiring loom. Um I think there were five circuit boards in the fridge. You know, there was one there was one for Bluetooth, one for Wi-Fi, one for the fridge, one for the thermostat, and one for the control panel, plus there's one on the driver, so there were six. And if any one of those stop working, the fridge doesn't work. Uh and we were just in shock. We were like, wow, okay, well, let's just keep doing it the way we do it because um we've only got one control panel in that fridge, and if it if it fails, you just get another one from us and unplug it and plug back in and away you go.

SPEAKER_02 12:43

So if you just got that one wiring length, for people who don't know, the Bushman fridge control panel is is I don't know if old school is the right word to use, but it is like a click-push button. It's got all the functionality there, but it doesn't have this fancy kind of like little screen where you've got you know one button that does everything and you've got to scroll through menus and stuff. It's just it's got, I don't know, not many buttons on it, right? But it if you need if something happens with that unit, you just replace that. Is there just that one right wiring loom then that goes to that control panel? Is that all you've got in your fridge?

SPEAKER_01 13:15

It's the only right, it's the only one. That's it. And you can unplug it and plug a new one in in about 15 minutes. Okay. Um, and we can express post it anywhere in Australia, and it'll be there in a couple of days. The thing with the buttons, too, like uh the modern way to do it is you have you know, like a plastic sticker covering the buttons, and you know, you just push, it's like smooth and you push it. But the but the more you push it, the buttons start to wear off over time. And you know, if you've had a fridge for five or ten years, you can't you can't read the buttons anymore. Um, so we're just sort of like, you know, the one we've got works and it's reliable. Um, and our customers love it. The customers that that understand that fridge, it's probably the most underrated camping fridge in Australia, and a lot of very experienced, um, you know, proper outback people that spend you know weeks in deserts and do really serious off-roading um would use that fridge and because they understand how it works, but it's quite difficult to sell because it has a um it's got an extension kit that comes with it, and there's no other fridge that has anything like it. So it's a challenge. People really need to see it in person. It's a challenge to sell online because the concept is is new. Um, and the easier way to sell portable fridges is to have a 40 litre, a 50 litre, a 60 litre, and a 70 litre, and people pick the size that they're after. Whereas this fridge is 35 litres as a base fridge, and then there's an extension collar that sits on top. So you first your normal lid slides off, the extension collar slides on, that's another 10 litres. And then there's a a domed lid that comes as well, which just slides on, and that's another 7 litres. So you end up with a 52-litre camping fridge. And there's a couple of benefits to that. The the first one is that you can, by adjusting the size, you can use it in 35 litres, which is quite small and really efficient day to day. And then if you go away for a weekend or a camping trip, you increase the size from 35 up to 52 litres, and then you've got a slightly bigger fridge that takes up more space, but when you get home, you can you can revert it back to 35 litres.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

Is that is that like the original Bushman fridge? Because it's your chest one that we're talking about. It's a it's a it's a brown fridge, and this is the one that I guess typically looks like it's yeah, the 70s one or whatever. Yeah, it's not with the you know the fancy sort of sleek looks. Um but it it's it's is that was that the original design? Like is that uh how it's been uh since it came out?

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Uh yeah, exactly the same. Exactly the same.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

And how long is that one the design from the start? Like are we talking a fridge that's 30, 40 years old, that design, or when did that sort of come out?

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Uh yeah, it would be uh a bit over 25 years old. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:20

That's awesome.

Lauren 16:20

Do you ever have like you mentioned just before about how it can be quite difficult to sell because it's it is a very unique product, and so you have to sort of be really understand how it works to understand the the benefits of it. Because a lot of people like for a fridge investing in a in a car fridge, it's a it's a big investment. And so it's like, oh well, I think how what's a capacity fridge do I need is probably one of the biggest questions we get, right? Um, because you don't want to go too big and then it's like you you've got this like massive, expensive fridge and you don't utilize it, and then you don't want to go too small and then have to be carninesky around and everything, right? Does a question ever come up about whether or not the aesthetics of it prevent you from being competitive with the other space? Like in that, would people just look at it and write it off and not even give it a second chance just because it doesn't look modern?

SPEAKER_01 17:12

Probably. Yeah, I think there'd be a little bit of that too. Um but at the same time, it it it some people love it, like it's a super rugged um built fridge, and you can when you see one in person, you can see it. Um, you know, the build quality of it. And we do little things that that are kind of unique, like we so the cabinets on those fridges now are electro-plated, so we dip them after they're assembled. So they're marine grade electro-plated.

SPEAKER_03 17:47

Right.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Um so like you could which is really overkill for a fridge, but it just it just means that you know if you wanted to use it in a marine environment or something, it it's just it's not gonna rust. Yeah, right. So it's um electroplated before we powder coat it, which is kind of awesome. But it is a very it's a rugged fridge.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

Is this the um the most recent update we've seen with your HD range? Is that was that part of that? Moving is it heavy HD for heavy duty? Is that what you you called it?

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Yeah, so we released a new well an updated version of of all of our uh fridges in the last couple of months, and they're the heavy duty series. So we made tweaks to construction and some components internally. There's some styling changes too for some of the fridges, but it was more about probably things that you can't see, which is often the way we go about it. So we use a a special compressor from from C COP, which is the original Danfoss, the original uh Austrian company that's been making DC compressors longer than anybody since the 50s. And in our opinion, they make the best compressors in the world. We've we've always used them. Um to give you an idea on how good they are. Like we've we would have sold, let me do some quick maths, maybe a hundred thousand fridges uh with those compressors in them. And if you came and had a look in our uh spares department, we'd probably keep three or four on the shelf.

SPEAKER_04 19:28

Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

So that's that's how reliable they are. And um and then we found out last year that C COP had released a heavy-duty version. So they designed this for the North American trucking industry where they run trucks 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, they don't stop. And so they had a requirement for a compressor that was even stronger, that can handle you know high heat and a lot of vibrations over a long period of time. So we tested those and yeah, they work great. Uh same kind of capacity as the ones we were using previously. So we use them in all our fridges now, and we provide a seven-year compressor warranty on them as well.

SPEAKER_04 20:07

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Look at times we think we could probably provide a 20-year compressor warranty, but um you know, when when you start going that far out, things can get tricky with with paperwork and that sort of stuff too. But yeah, that we just want people to think if they buy a bushman fridge, it's gonna last a long time.

SPEAKER_02 20:23

Yeah, awesome. Let's take a step back to your uh um your your chess fridge with the different zones. Uh question people often have is sorry, let me reword that. There's a free fridges out there that have two zones, a freezer and a fridge, or both fridge, or both freezer, with a barrier down the middle. Clearly a definition between where you put your ice creams and where you put your your you know your your fruit and veg. Yours is one zone, but you still claim you can use it as both. Can you just brief on that for those who are interested in how that works?

SPEAKER_01 21:01

Yeah, I can. The best the best way to understand this is just uh jump on our YouTube channel. We've got a video on there, it goes about five minutes that talks through it. Um it's if if a customer's after a chest fridge that has a separate freezer, so they could run it at minus 15 or minus 18 and a separate fridge section, and that's their requirement, they they need that minus you know 15 in the freezer, then this isn't the right fridge. They they'd need to buy a drill zone fridge, or they'd need to have um two fridges. So one they'd run as a fridge and one they would run as a freezer if they need a significant amount of freezer and fridge space. Um the slight downside to that is to get a good size chest fridge that has a you know, let's say a 30 litre fridge compartment and a 30 litre freezer compartment. It's a big fridge.

SPEAKER_04 22:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

And you know, you would know from what's in your showroom. They take up a lot of space. They often don't look so big when they're in the showroom, but then if you take it home and you put it in the back of your car, it's like, oh um, I've taken up half of the rear of my car, or you put it on the back seat, and it takes up three-quarters of the back seat.

SPEAKER_03 22:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:22

And they use a lot of power and they're very heavy. Um, so they do have their application, probably in a slide out, say, um, camper where you've got a kitchen and you can slide it out so you're not moving the fridge around, you're not having to, you know, the space isn't an issue in the back of your four-wheel drive or your car. In that scenario, they work really well. Um, but for general camping and you know, day-to-day use and four-wheel driving, the dual zones get very big. So we we made the decision probably seven or eight years ago. We actually looked at building a dual zone fridge or a bigger version of that original Bushman fridge, and we decided that we would invest more time into uprights, and that was when we released the DCX series. Um, so for for viewers who don't know, there's a um four different size little upright fridges from 50 litre up to 130 litres, and they're basically fridge only, they have a little freezer in them, which is more just for you know ice packs and ice cubes and those sort of things, but they're they're predominantly fridge. And then for customers who need a deep freezer, so and that's either going to be ice cream, because ice cream really needs at least minus 15, ideally minus 18, or they're fishing and they want to freeze fish fillets, or if they're freezing um products for for weeks at a time, then you would need a deep freezer. So we we have a draw fridge which also works as a deep freezer that'll run minus 18 in 45 degrees ambient. It's it's crazy. Um yeah, it's unbelievable, really. And and that gives customers the option to say, I do need a dedicated freezer, and then I will have that as a dedicated freezer, which is only 30 litres, so it's small, it's a good size for a freezer, and then they can have another fridge which would which doesn't have to be as big then, um, that they can use as their fridge when they're camping. And then when it comes to day-to-day, they probably turn the draw freezer off and then they just run their smaller fridge. So what from our perspective, we think you know, that's the way a lot of our customers are going. So we focus more on you know small and medium-sized fridges rather than really big chest fridges.

SPEAKER_03 24:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

Um it's just a it's just a point of difference, I suppose. I mean, we do we do have Bushman customers that are like, oh, we love an an 80-litre chest fridge, but um that they're sort of uh few and far between.

SPEAKER_02 25:00

For those who you jump online, I think look at that video because that does explain it very well. But basically the premise is that at the bottom it stays colder than at the top. So you put your frozen stuff at the bottom and it's it's probably a good system, I think, because you can start with your um a bit of planning is what you need, just to start with the frozen stuff on the bottom, and then as you need it, it moves up in the fridge and then it's defrosted by the time you need to use it, and you can just keep cycling through. But um, for those who are questioning it, it does work for frozen as well. You've just got to manage uh how you how you use the fridge. Um you touched on it a bit before. Uh oh, sorry, you go, Tommy.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

No, you're right. I didn't I I got distracted and didn't answer your original question.

SPEAKER_02 25:40

This is good.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

No, you're right. So it's um the cooling element in the fridge is in is in the the lower section of the chest fridge, and um it comes with with three baskets that stack up on top of each other. So if you set the fridge at about minus five, then the lower the lowest quarter of the fridge will be around minus five. The middle of the fridge will sit around um one or two degrees, and then the top basket sits at about six or seven. So you can with pre-frozen items, let's say you're going camping for you know a week, um, you can put your pre-frozen goods right in the bottom, your uh things like dairy and cold meats in the middle basket, and then at the top you put your fruit and veggies, and that way they won't freeze because you don't want to have frozen banana or tomatoes or lettuce. It doesn't work very well. Um, and then it gives you the ability that that the things in the bottom will will keep frozen. I mean, it's not ideal for it's not for long-term storage. You wouldn't want to have um you know chicken sitting at minus five for you know two months at a time. But generally, if you're going camping, it's short-term stuff anyway. We have very few customers that would go more than a week without going past the store and being able to restock.

SPEAKER_03 27:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Um the most extreme is is usually two weeks. And you know, the majority of people that can, probably like myself, you're camping and you're somewhere you know near a store. Um so you can sort of top up as you go.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

Yeah. That won't um I guess you'd have to use it predominantly as a freezer or really ramp the temperature down if people are expecting to catch fish and freeze the fillets, they'd want to be setting at more than minus five. Like you couldn't put something in the bottom with a set at minus five and expect it to freeze. Not very quickly, anyway. It's gonna use chew through a lot of power, is that right?

SPEAKER_01 27:42

Yeah, it'll it'll at that temperature it'll freeze um you know, like lean meat and you know, ice cubes and those sort of things. The hardest things to freeze are always ice cream, which needs really you know close to minus 18, bread, which has a very low water content. And um zuoper dupers. Yeah, bread's very hard to freeze.

SPEAKER_03 28:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:02

Um, but again, you know, do you need to freeze bread? And for how for how long do you need to freeze bread? Um that's really just for as long as whatever the gap is in between um stores that you're going to.

SPEAKER_02 28:19

Can I uh you touched on a bit before? I want to talk about efficiency because when 12-volt fridges come in people start researching it, they jump online and uh research 12-volt fridges and fridge efficiency uh always comes into play. It's a bit like how many litres per hundred K you get out of your car, everyone's claiming theirs is the best. The truth is from my scenario, and I'm interested in your take on this, that there's uh so many variables attached to that. Um most fridges are bit around about the same, but can you talk to that with Bushman? Like, is there something that you do to make yours more efficient, or are we kind of all on a pretty level playing field there?

SPEAKER_01 28:59

Yeah, there are a a couple of things that really help a low power fridge be efficient. And the I'll I'll go through them because there's a few. Um the most common would be airflow to the compressor. So all the all the heat from inside the fridge gets extracted and it ends up at the compressor, and then there's a component called a condenser or a heat exchanger, which is like uh it's a black tubular grid as a fan on it, and that's blowing the heat away from that compressor area. So the most important thing with a low-power fridge is to have free airflow to the compressor area, and the better the airflow, the more efficient the fridge will work. So we talk to customers about this a lot. Um that that's that's number one. And the second thing which we see more now with four-wheel drive canopies, which we which has only really become an issue in four-wheel drive canopies, is radiant heat. Um so a canopy can get very hot and they're sealed, and the roof of a canopy is like uh it's like a little oven. So if you've got your fridge in there and your canopy doesn't have a rooftop tent or it doesn't have any insulation in it, on a hot sunny day in a in a black canopy, most of them are dark. If you put your hand on the the inside of the ceiling, you can't keep your hand on it. That's how hot it is. Um it's in the 50s plus, and and that heat just radiates onto your fridge and it's working against itself. So for canopies, uh the big one is either if you have a rooftop tent that solves that problem because it insulates the ceiling, or you would want to put insulation inside the paneling on the ceiling. And you know, if I was doing one myself, I'd have it in the walls as well. Uh, it cuts the heat down dramatically and it just gives your fridge the best chance to work efficiently so to get cold enough and to not use too much power. That they're really the main two things. We we do some things a little bit different. So we use for the heat exchanger on our fridge, we use a wire-on-tube style. And for listeners that are more my age, you might remember your grandparents or your parents would have like an old Calvinator fridge. Yeah, and when it stopped working, it went out to the shed and it became a beer fridge, and um, and it's probably still running now, even though it was 40 years old or 50 years old. And and one of the reasons they work so well is they have uh an external heat exchanger. So on the back of the fridge, there's this big black wire and tube grid, and that's where the heat goes. And that was the way fridges were made a long time ago. It was actually the best way to make them because the heat has can get all the way around that, or the air gets all around the way around that heat exchanger, so it gets rid of the heat a lot easier. So we use wire-on-tube heat exchangers in all of our fridges. Um, from the littlest roadie 15 litre right up to the 225-liter upright caravan fridge, they all use wire-on-tube heat exchangers.

SPEAKER_03 32:25

Right.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

And they're more expensive and they take up more space, but they work better. And yeah, if you look on the back of our big upright caravan fridges, you'll see a big wire-on-tube black grid on the back, just it's like the old Calvinator. Um, and we love them because you know it gives the fridge the best chance to be as efficient as possible. And there's there's also one other benefit with them that they don't you don't get any dust or fluff buildup on them. So the alternative type of heat exchanger to use is like a little car radiator, and they're often about this big. And they'll be on the back of the fridge and they'll have a fan bolted to them, and they're just blowing air straight through. And they work, they work well, but the fins are flat and they build up dust and fluff over time, and then as it builds up, they don't work as efficiently as they used to. So that's um yeah, that's a reason why we don't use them and we stick to the old school type. So hopefully that answers the question a little bit about um you know how to get your fridge to run most efficiently, which is definitely ventilation and radiant heat, and then some of the things we do a little bit differently, which is the condenser that we use.

SPEAKER_02 33:41

Yeah, okay. And the insulation is all is there much difference in in insulation? I'm assuming cheaper brands are gonna cut corners, but most of the brands like yours are gonna be doing it in a better way.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

All the all the insulin insulation is generally the same. Um, so it's like a closed cell insulation. It goes in and there's a liquid and expands. The the thicker the insulation, the more efficient the fridge will be. The downside is the thicker the insulation, the smaller the internal volume of the fridge is compared to the outside size. Uh, so it's about trying to get just the right amount of insulation um that's gonna enable the fridge to be efficient, but not cutting down too much on the internal volume. And a fridge that um really shows that well is our our draw fridge freezer. So it's it's quite a big, quite a big unit. Uh it's over 800 mils deep, um, 440 mils wide, 310 mils tall. So it's quite big, but the inside storage tub is only 25 litres. And the reason that's so small is the insulation's three inches thick the whole way around. And the reason we did that is to create a proper deep freezer. I'll tell you a little story. We've we've got a um we've got a climate pod at work. Uh so it's like a little insulated room, and uh we can adjust the temperature in there. We have like lab grade testing equipment that we use to to test our lab fridges, or we can test customers' fridges if they're having issues. So when we when we did the first sample on this draw fridge, we put it in there and uh we thought, oh, we'll test it at 43 degrees because that's international tropical rated. So put in at 43, things minus 18. We're like, oh, this is good. So let's crank it up as hot as it goes, which is 50. So we've got this, we've got this fridge in there at 50 degrees, and um, it was running flat out without stopping, and after a couple of days it was still running at minus 16 degrees.

SPEAKER_04 35:56

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 35:57

That's insulation. Yeah. Um, yeah, so that that that's that thing's an absolute rocker. So we we have like a little advertising campaign going, you know, ice cream in The Simpsons. Um which and and customers love it. Like I I love ice cream. We have some customers that are like, it's really important for me to have ice cream. I'm like, I get it. Totally get it.

Lauren 36:20

Especially if it's 50 degrees. Oh yeah. Yeah, it's right. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:26

Um your upright fridges have been really popular uh since they came out. Um interested in your take on use case for chest versus upright. Is one more efficient than the other? Um, if a customer comes in and says, I need a fridge, I've got, I don't know, whatever vehicle. What should I um give me some guidance on which direction I should go? What would be your take on that?

SPEAKER_01 36:52

It's a good question. Um, and one we get quite a lot. Uh generally a chest fridge is more efficient than an upright. The primary reason being that a chest fridge is actually a chest freezer, whereas an upright fridge is a fridge. So being a chest freezer, if you're using it as a fridge, this is let's say it's the original Bushman, it'll go down to you know minus 12 or minus 15. If you're running that at two degrees, it's very easy on the fridge. It's not having to work hard at all. And then if it's 45 degrees outside, it's still really easy for the fridge to keep fridge temperature. Um an upright, well, generally uprights are also bigger in volume, so the most common upright we sell is 85 litres. An 85 liter chest fridge is absolutely huge, so it's kind of not comparing apples with apples, but an upright fridge is designed as a fridge. So it's not an upright freezer that's being used as a fridge, it's an upright, it's an upright fridge only. And so then for them to be optimum, they need to have that airflow and they need to have that protection from radiant heat. Um, you know, because they're not they're not a freezer. So that that's the difference. I think it's all about if you've got your setup right to you know to help a fridge, any brand fridge, um, you know, no brand fridge wants to sit in a you know in a 50-degree canopy without any ventilation. They're gonna use a lot of power and and they're gonna struggle. And it's also not good for the electronics, both in the fridge or the um, you know, your batteries and your DCDC charger and your battery management systems, like anything electronic, you know, heat is the enemy. Um so by insulating a canopy, you're looking after all the electronics, not just not just the fridge. But to talk a bit more about the question, yeah, a chest fridge is deck is generally more efficient just because of the way they're designed. There's always a little bit of talk about you know, when you open the door an upright fridge, all the cold falls out. Yeah. Um there's there's a little bit of truth in that. So some cold air does fall out, but air doesn't have any thermal mass. So there's actually not a lot of cold falling out. The there's a little bit, and then there's a little bit of warm air getting into the fridge. Um but the thermal mass in your fridge is in your goods in the fridge. You know, if your fridge is full of full of food and drinks, there's a lot of thermal mass that's cold. Um, you open the door, you close the door, the air temperature will go up to 10 degrees straight away in an upright fridge. So we have a lot of customers that put temperature probes in them and they're and they ring and they're concerned, and rightly so, because every time I open the door, my fridge is 10 degrees and it doesn't recover for two hours. Um and the the reason that that they're getting that result is that the the temperature probe is measuring air temperature, and air again doesn't have any thermal mass. So you open the door on your fridge, the air temperature inside goes up to 10 degrees, and it takes a long time to come back down.

SPEAKER_03 40:12

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 40:12

Um, whereas if you had that probe in a bottle of water and you open the door, it might go from four degrees to five degrees, and then it'll just come back to four degrees. Okay. So it's not going to wander as much as um the temperature sensor in the fridge. So, and there's a little bit of that. I mean, with a chest fridge, obviously you open it and the cold air doesn't fall out and warm air doesn't get in in the same way. And it makes a little bit of difference, but but primarily the difference is in how the fridges were originally made. One was a freezer that's been used as a fridge, and the other one is a fridge. Gotcha. Just pop.

SPEAKER_02 40:51

So people's choice is probably going to be um where they're putting the fridge, the space they've got to fit it into predominantly. Don't stress too much about the style.

SPEAKER_01 41:00

Yeah, I wouldn't stress too much about the style. Um, you know, the benefits of upright are are easy to see. Um obviously the access to your food is a lot easier. You know, in a chest fridge, you can spend a lot of time rummaging around trying to find stuff and um whatever you need, usually hidden on the bottom, and then it's it's frozen or or it's up the top and it's not cold enough, or whatever it might be. But uprights are just it's just so much easier. Yeah um and that's why they've become so popular, you know, four-wheel drives, uh canopies. So I've got a cat scratching at my door.

Lauren 41:36

That's fine.

SPEAKER_01 41:36

We've got a better than an earthquake.

Lauren 41:38

We've we've got a leaking air conditioner that's just decided to start dripping onto a cardboard box.

SPEAKER_02 41:43

Just turn it off. We've we've had it fixed three times and it keeps leaking. Oh goodness. Yeah, sorry. If you heard a little tap-tap tap in the background, then that's because uh air conditioner's leaking.

Lauren 41:57

So I've got a question in you know, with sorry, you tell me there to interrupt you, but in terms of your upright fridges, now I would say not Bushman's specifically, but with a lot of the upright fridge brands, the biggest I guess point of contention that customers who have them have is the freezer. And so uh from my mind, when I look at an upright fridge like the Butchman's ones, your freezer is because you want to chuck a couple of ice trays in there and have some ice in your bevies. But people are trying to use those little compartments as an active freezer like they would expect their chest freezer or their freezer at home. Can you talk a little bit more about that element of the uprights and and that intended purpose?

SPEAKER_01 42:43

Yeah, so the you're right, the we're talking about our smaller upright fridges, um, so between 50 and 130 litres, which just have a single fridge door and a small freezer, so between four and six litres. So the freezer is there primarily to cool the fridge, and it's got enough space for you know some ice packs or some ice cubes and maybe some frozen steaks. Um we I guess it's always a trade-off. Um we could put a a bigger freezer in the fridges, but again, it comes down to you know, do you how much what do you need to freeze? You know, is it just a small amount of stuff for a small amount of time, or is it um you know, deep freezing for a long period of time? And it this probably comes back to another question we get, which is you know, the what size fridge do I need? And our philosophy is that you should try and get the smallest fridge you can get away with rather than the biggest fridge that fits. And it's always tempting to you know measure up a canopy or for all drive and go, Oh, this is great, I can fit up. 130 liter pushing in fridge in here, brilliant. It'll be big, it'll be amazing. Um, and it can be, but you know, a hundred and thirty-liter upright fridge is a very big fridge to have running every day. Um, you know, it's great for weekends or trips, but but day to day, which is probably the most the majority of time, you know, most of us get four weeks holiday of a year, some people have more than they're lucky. Um, so trips are usually you know, weekends, long weekends, maybe a week or two at a time. Um, and to have a have a really, really big fridge running all the time just for those trips is a little counterintuitive. So, you know, we recommend people get the smallest fridge they can get away with. So if you can fit an 85 liter, put an 85 liter in because you can use that day to day and it's not gonna use as much power. And then if you do go away on a trip and you want to go on a longer trip, then use a second fridge. So, you know, use a chest fridge as a drinks fridge, or use that as a deep freezer, um, or a draw fridge as a deep freezer or a drinks fridge. So it gives you it then gives you the ability to say, hey, I need a big freezer, I'm gonna use this as a freezer. And and I'm gonna use my fright as a fridge. And so that's that works for most of our customers. Um and that's probably the reason why we've kept them that way. To just delineate between between fridge and freezer.

SPEAKER_02 45:28

Okay. Makes sense. Yeah. Um I want to ask a few questions about manufacturing. Um because your Australian owns um the the fridges are made overseas. Or I'll let you talk to that because I'm sure it's a question you get uh a lot around where are they made.

SPEAKER_01 45:49

Yeah, we used to get it a lot more. I think um, you know, 10 or 15 years ago when we still made a lot of stuff in Australia, maybe 20 years ago, um people were still really interested in wanting to buy Australian made, and we had you know an amount of customers that are. Um, but everything's also very price-driven now. So I think if I go back a little bit, when I was when I was young, when I was a teenager, Gary used to make fridges in in research. Um he used to buy shells, fridge shells, and then he used to fit them out with gas cooling units. Um so it was it was like production line. Um we stopped making fridges about 15 to 20 years ago, we would have like made the last fridge in in Australia, and that kind of stopped when actually in Adelaide, um I think it was the last fridge manufacturer in Adelaide Whirlpool or Westinghouse. Okay, um, and they stopped making fridges, and then all as with the car industry, all the supplies closed. Um, so then if we were getting components, which we were, we used to buy cooling units from Brazil, fridge cabinets from Europe, and we would assemble them here. These were gas fridges, um, and then eventually that became you know cost prohibitive. Um and we we we started manufacturing in China. So the the two companies we use to manufacture our fridges would be the two best 12-volt fridge manufacturers in the world, and they're both in China, right? And all the suppliers are also there. So even companies like you know, C COP Danfoss, who make the compressors, um, they used to make them in Austria, and then they moved to Hungary because the label was cheaper, and then they moved to China because that's where all the fridges were being made. So, yeah, we've been making stuff overseas now for around that 15 to 20 years. Um, we'd love to make fridges here. We we dream about it. Yeah um, we talk about how we'd lay it out and you know how good would it be, and customers could come see the production line, and um yeah, we could put that sticker on our fridge. And you know, there are some companies that kind of manufacture stuff in Australia, some fridges, but all the products are coming, all the components come from overseas.

SPEAKER_04 48:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:36

Um, and you kind of just assemble them here. Um yeah, so it's a little bit of a dream. Will it will it come back one day? Like, will we be able to do it? Um we'd love to do it. I'd love to build that facility and and have it happening. Um but if we did that now, we no one would buy them because they'd be too expensive, you know.

SPEAKER_02 49:03

Especially right now with things that are going on with fuel prices.

SPEAKER_01 49:06

It's horrible, it's horrible. Um so we could build them, but we could but but no one would buy them. Okay.

Lauren 49:13

Um I feel like when you say light manufacturing in Australia, it's it's not necessarily that that simple, right? Because not only do we not uh like you've mentioned, you don't have access to the suppliers for the raw materials within the country because that uh industry doesn't exist really anymore either. But then I think uh maybe, and I might be getting a little bit philosophical here, but I feel like sort of socially and culturally we have a really different mentality to work than other nations. And I feel like those massive manufacturing nations have a really different culture to and mentality towards working. So the fact that they might have a job for 30 years that requires them to get up and sit in a factory and sit on a production line and work a 10-hour day and go home, you wouldn't be able to facilitate that same industry in Australia in the current climate. Like I mean, you talk about, and I mean this like I said, this is probably a bit more philosophical, but even just on the weekend talking with people who can't find quality workers to just uh man a reception desk in an office, right? Or like there's just that also that level of things that I think like it would be great to manufacture in Australia, but do we actually have a society and a culture that really wants to support that and understand what that actually would mean? And I don't think we do.

SPEAKER_02 50:49

Yeah, I think there's something in there.

Lauren 50:51

Anyway.

SPEAKER_02 51:00

Sorry, I went on a tangent there. Uh you you said that uh factories uh there's one or three, I don't think, that are the best 12 volt fridge factories in the world. So I'm assuming that means that uh there's a lot of fridge brands that come out of the same factory. Um how does that work with quality control where you might have uh your bargain basement, you know, supermarket aisle special model that comes out, and then the bushman coming out of the same factory. How do you make sure that yours is worth the extra dollars?

SPEAKER_01 51:35

Yeah, it it's and they do. Like they two companies we use are uh they're they're they're massive and they're very good at what they do, and they'll build whatever product the customer wants. So if the customer wants something that's less expensive, with less expensive components that they can sell at a you know high volume, they'll build that for you. If if they've got a customer that like us that wants to build you know lower volume and very fussy on the components that we use and some and most of the things that you can't see in a fridge when you're looking at it, then they'll build that for us as well. Um I've got a good example of this. So we we went, well, I actually I went over and visited one of our manufacturers who makes the tall upright caravan fridges, and this was a few years ago, and we sat in the boardroom, and this is a very reputable company that makes fridges for very expensive home brands, very expensive. And uh we were just chatting refrigeration and we were talking about Bushman and you know customers have had fridges for 15 and 20 years. We love it, that's what we do. And and the owner of the business, his face just sort of went blank. And he goes, 15, 20 years. I'm like, yeah. He's like, oh, he said the global industry standard is seven. That that's that's the lifetime that they're building the fridges for as a standard. So unless unless the customer specifies that they want a fridge that's gonna last more than seven years, that's that's the standard that's built to. That's the global standard. And I I I I was in shock. It's been a bomb show, isn't it? It was, and now I understand well why when we always used to talk to these manufacturers, this is what we want, and we always got a fair bit of pushback. Are you sure you want to do it that way? And are you sure you want to use that component? And we were like, yes, yes, yes. Um, and and this was why. Finally, we understood why. So part of what came out of that discussion is we we changed the material that we use for the internal refrigeration piping inside the fridge. So each fridge would have, and I'm guessing now, let's say 10 meters of refrigeration piping inside the fridge that you can't see. And that global standard is to build that out of aluminium, um, which is fine, but it's not perfect. So when you use aluminium, you have the potential for if any any moisture gets in there, the aluminium will corrode. Um, and then there's also joins from copper to aluminium in behind the fridge because the compressor is it has copper piping, so you have to join that on at a certain point. And joining metals, different types of metals, has risks because uh you get corrosion between them as soon as there's any any moisture. So we went through a process over the last sort of 12 to 18 months where we've we're now using copper piping inside the fridge cabinet. So you can't see it, but we know it's there. It's really expensive. Um we're the only brand that this manufacturer makes that uses copper piping, and we're doing it because we want the fridges to last 20 years. So it's so we're proud of that and we're excited about it. And people sometimes say, why are they so expensive? You know, I can buy a home fridge for you know a thousand dollars and a caravan one for two and a half thousand. But this is one of the reasons, you know. We're we're building these in a different way. Um, we're using more expensive components and we're having them built the way Bushman wants them built, you know, to our spec. So it's you know the the manufacturers think it's overkill. For us, we think it's it's just the way we want to do it. Um yeah, so hopefully that's a bit of an example on um yeah the the manufacturers and and how they build different products for different companies. That's the same with like an iPhone or a Google phone. They're all made by the same company, which is called Foxconn in China. You know, so they'll make iPhones for Apple and um Google, what do they call them? Pixel for Google. Yeah. And they'll make um what are the other the other Chinese brands' phones? They're all coming out of the same factory, but they're using different components and and they're built to different standards.

SPEAKER_02 56:19

Well, I hope if if anyone listens to five minutes to this episode, that's probably the most interesting bit.

Lauren 56:26

Things aren't made the way they used to be, and it's like, well, actually, they're not.

unknown 56:30

No.

Lauren 56:31

I'm sure like 20 years ago, people weren't making things to last seven years.

SPEAKER_02 56:36

And you uh a few quick quicker questions. Uh but you test uh I want to mention this because uh there's a video on your website that says you test every um every fridge before leaving the warehouse. But what I noted was this old PC in the background. So I don't know when the video is from or if that's still being used, but um, but you uh still use that PC.

SPEAKER_01 56:54

I think it's like a I think it's a 486. No way.

Lauren 56:59

That video was recorded last month.

SPEAKER_01 57:03

Did you still get comments for that? I don't know. Secondhand market maybe. Uh it's pretty funny. Now the reason that computer's there is um we had compressor drivers um that had software in them that was compatible back then with a with a 486 computer that that is not we can't get the language to talk to a new computer. So we keep it there in case we need to reprogram an old compressor driver from the 90s.

SPEAKER_02 57:35

That's awesome. I love that. Yeah. So do you do test all them here in your warehouse? The fridges get tested in your warehouse here before they leave. Is that the case? Not anymore.

SPEAKER_01 57:43

Not anymore. We you we you we used to when that video was made. Okay. Um they're all they're they all run in the warehouses, the factories that we use before they're packed. So they'll run the cooling units first and then they'll drop the cooling units into the fridges depending on the type of fridge, and then they run it again. And you know, we'll we get data on that, we can see um you know a graph from every fridge and and how it pulled down prior to it being sent to us so that we know that um we know it's all working well.

SPEAKER_03 58:17

Cool.

SPEAKER_01 58:18

But nothing's ever perfect. We'd love to say we were perfect and that we've never had a fridge fail and that we've never had you know something go wrong uh or something not meet our QC, but not true, it happens. Um the main thing for us is we just we just own it and and the customer rings us and we just fix it straight away.

SPEAKER_02 58:36

You're there to support them if something does happen. Um few quick questions. Steel versus plastic, why do you choose steel?

SPEAKER_01 58:44

It's stronger.

SPEAKER_02 58:45

Stronger.

SPEAKER_01 58:46

And it doesn't it doesn't get brittle over time in the sunshine.

SPEAKER_02 58:49

Good one. Uh contradicting that is the lids polycarbonate.

SPEAKER_01 58:55

They are on the on the roadie, the little chest roadie, and on the original Bushman fridge. Um simply because it's very difficult to make a steel lid that's gonna fit in that position.

SPEAKER_02 59:09

Good one. Uh I think you answered this before, but they're marine rated, so your new materials are marine rated, and I think you've changed screws and components and stuff to all be suitable for a marine environment now.

SPEAKER_01 59:22

Yeah, we do. Uh marine's difficult because salt attacks everything. Um the original Bushman is definitely marine, it's like it's marinized the entire fridge, every component. Um the uprights will work in marine environment. I mean, they're not they're not made. So the doors, for example, are not stainless steel, they're a mild steel, um, some of the hinges. So if people were putting those into boats, which they do, um and I I had a boat many years ago and it had a couple of bushman fridges in it, and I used to just spray any of the mild steel with Lanox, like whether it was a hinge or something like that, just which is kind of normal in the boat industry anyway.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:07

Um, you generally any metal component, even you pretty generally spray everything.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:13

Okay. So treat it like you would you everything else if you're using it in a marine space? What about just leaving it in the weather? You see it on the see fridges on the back of Utes, and despite brands saying you shouldn't do it, there are some brands that stay on the back of the Ute. What's uh Bushman's take on that?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:30

Uh it's not ideal. Yep. Um there were some brands that released kind of four or five years ago, a range of fridges that were like the outdoor range. Um for us, we'd say no. If it was my fridge, I wouldn't put it on the back of a Ute. Actually, I would, it'd be okay, but if it was raining, you wouldn't want to drive the car around because you you're forcing the water into the electronic components of the fridge if you're driving a car and in the rain and there's a fridge on the back. And it'll last. The fridge will keep running for you know a month or six months or a year or two years or three years, but at a certain at a certain point, it's gonna fail. The electronics will fail. Um, and it's it's it's counterintuitive because going back to something we spoke about earlier, what's the best thing you can do to make a fridge run efficient is have as much airflow and ventilation into the compressor area as possible. Um so our fridges are very open, like the the the compressor areas on our fridge are super open and exposed. And then um if they're in the back of you and getting driven around in the rain, everything is gonna get wet.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:46

So the back of you undercover, perhaps.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:49

So it's yeah, that that'll be fine. Okay. Um, you know, if you're at a caravan park or you you know, in your camping and you've got your chest fridge out in the annex, and uh you know, you wake up in the morning, everything's dewy, and the fridge is a bit wet, that's fine. Yep. Um the compressor's generating enough heat to keep itself dry.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:09

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:10

And the electronics are right next to the compressor, so that's okay. Um, but actual rain, uh it's it's not ideal. Yeah, it's not ideal. We've got a lot of sympathy for fridges. We love them.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:24

So I've I had an interesting one come up, which is uh obviously only really recent with the evolution of EV cars, and I don't really understand the systems, but I think it's a 16-volt system. But there has been a few questions come up around can I use my 12-volt fridge in a in a electric car? I've not done any research into this. I'm assuming they've still got 12 um 12 volt 10 amp outlets. Um what have you had that question? Do people approach you about that?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:53

Yeah, we've got customers that run um that run chest fridges like a little roadie in their in their Tesla or their electric vehicle. And yeah, they do. They have a 12-volt um old-style cigarette uh socket. Some have them in the car and in the boot, some just have them inside the car. Um and every brand's slightly different with the power output rating of them and whether they would continue to run with the ignition off. Generally, they don't. Um But yeah, we we we have customers that that do. So the manufacturer has made them with those cigarette sockets in there so people could, you know, charge a phone or um charge other appliances or or run a run um you know an air compressor or whatever it might be.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:41

Okay. So they're still gonna plug it into a 12-volt outlet. I'm assuming these cars don't just have a 16-volt outlet because that's what the batteries run at.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:49

That's right. Yeah, they're they're regulating for 12 volt.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:52

All right. A few customer questions. Before I do that, did you want to spread any of your awards? Because I know I'm pretty sure it's the bottom of your website, you've got all your awards down there.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:02

We have a lot. Um and we're really proud of it. And you know, we've got the best customers in the world. Um, we really do. And those awards are all they're all customer voted. So uh sometimes people ask these product review awards and stuff, uh, how legit is it? And um, it's it's a completely independent third party, so we have no access to modify or edit reviews that people submit to productreview.com.au, um, which is why we use it. Um there are plenty of companies around that post reviews on their own websites, uh, which is generally the way it's normally done. And uh that then would give would give that company the ability to remove reviews they don't like and edit reviews. So we use product review, we use Google reviews, the same thing, it's a third party, we have we have you know no ability to to influence that. Um and we've won quite a few awards from product review. I think on Google, I know we've got at least a couple of hundred reviews, and I think we're averaging five stars at the moment, which is which is awesome. Yeah, and look, it's it's nice for us just to know that you know that we're doing the right things. And if we look after customers, um then those awards and things will come.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:25

Nice. We um we'll admit we host our own review system for uh product reviews, but we do publish everything.

Lauren 1:05:32

Yeah, our our individual product reviews we host ourselves, but our business ones are th all third party.

unknown 1:05:41

Yeah.

Lauren 1:05:41

But I think like product reviews are different, right? Like the purpose of a product review is to review the physical product itself so a customer knows if it's right for them and they can get other experience. It's not that that's a bit different to a business review.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:54

It also helps us decide whether we're gonna continue with the product. Exactly right.

Lauren 1:05:57

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:58

Yeah. Yeah, and you get a lot of good feedback from it. Like like we we love it. Like we a lot of the ideas we have in the business and things we want to improve. You know, if one person makes a comment, we're like, okay, we've got a comment. If we as soon as we get three, yeah, we're always like, all right, we've got three. Something that means Yeah. We we then go and look into it. Yeah. So that's always the threshold. I'm like, okay, because I'm manager of it because I'm like, all right, boys, we've had the third comment about this. So we have a meeting and let's go and find out what's that means.

Lauren 1:06:27

Yeah, we're similar. If something's like hitting a three-star average, then it's like we start asking questions. Because yeah, it's not three star is not really good enough, is it?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:37

All right. Um and you don't you guys don't want a three-star product on your website either, really? Oh, totally. Exactly right. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:45

Yeah. I've got three three customers who are two of them are regular um contributors, sorry, to uh Facebook group who've asked some questions because I've run out. Um I did quite a few questions for you, and I think we've covered heaps today. It's been awesome. Um I'll fire these out here and I'll I'll paraphrase it because they're quite long. But Sam Walker has asked, oh, he's got an 80-litre upright DTX reach. Excuse me. I want to know how it can prevent frost building up quickly in the freezer, but also on the front. Uh the front of the freezer never seems to freeze properly. I think maybe you've sort of answered this before in saying it's it's not really a true freezer. That section is just a little out of the benefit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:27

Yeah. Drumsticks are probably gonna struggle just because, again, they need really minus 18. Um but with the ice, definitely the most common reason is the door seal. Um, particularly if the customer or the or the say the canopy builder has moved the door hinges from the factory side, which is the right hand side, to the left hand side. When when that gets done, it's really important that the doors align square so that it's not rubbing when it closes. And the door latch needs to be adjusted so it's nice and snug. But the trickiest thing is you need to reheat the rubber door seals with the heat gun. This is the same for all upright fridges, even a home fridge. You can you do the same thing. You think about the door on your fridge, so you've got the side with the hinge, that that side squashes the rubber seal a little bit more than the other side, because it's where the hinge is, so it's got the most resistance. When you swap the hinges across, you've you've now got the side with the squashed rubber, doesn't have any resistance on it, so they generally don't seal very well. So we actually use a heat gun and um to heat the rubber seals up with the door closed. Sometimes it can be even up to like a 10 mil gap, and you just gently heat it up, heat it up with a heat gun, and it'll it'll it'll close back over, and then you just let the door let the door cool down like that, and you'll get a seal. So ice is generally air sneaking in somewhere, and you only need a teeny little sliver, a one mil gap, and air's just gonna sneak into your fridge.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:10

So could anyone just heat those door seals at any stage and just to kind of reseat it? Is that just a almost like a maintenance thing with your fridge?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:18

Yeah, it's it wouldn't be maintenance, it'd just be you'd need to do it once, and and if the hinges have been swapped from one side to the other, um, that's when it would happen. And look, they can give us a ring, we can talk them through it. It's probably the best way to do it because you just need to. We're actually going to make a video on that in a couple of weeks. I'll put it on the website, which will be handy. Um, and then again, just the other things we spoke about airflow to the compressor, um, radiant heat, um, the thermostat setting. You know, you don't want to set your upright fridge flat out because it'll just run flat out and then um it it it starts working against itself. Um but look, Sam's welcome to give me a ring. There you go.

Lauren 1:10:00

Well, I I would like to say that he did say, follow up that question in saying that he wants to praise Bushman's on your brilliant customer service because uh when he had issues with that particular thing, um you guys were really awesome in helping him. So I think we just did the shout out of questions and he was like, oh, this is something that happened, it'd be good to have it addressed on the podcast, which is handy.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:22

So um the next one probably leads into that. Um Fat Man Overlanding is his name, regular contributor. Uh asking if you support aftermarket modifications, which I think relates to the freezer thing too, is that people must be adding a PC fan for airflow around the uh freezer elements to stop the the ice buildup.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:43

Is that I think I know what the answer is gonna be, but there's a lot of there's a lot of aftermarket um for all of our products, actually. It it really took us by surprise. Um people modify all of our fridges, and it's it's kind of cool. Like um we see all sorts of different things. Um, you know, we've seen upright fridges and chest fridges being turned into keg fridges with taps on the front.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:10

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:11

Um we have some customers, and this is a little cheeky, that have our original Bushman fridge, so that the expandable one we spoke about earlier, and they'll put extra collars on it. So I've got a I've actually got a customer who's got three collars and a flat lid. So he's got an extra 30 litres on top, and then he's he he's cut some of it. It is, but he only uses it like that. He goes, he spends two weeks every Christmas where he camps fully off-grid. Um, no stores, no topping up. And it's so he cut he cut a bit of perspective the same size as the inside of the fridge, and he put the holes in it and he experimented with what size holes, and he sits that on top of the 35-litre fridge, and then he puts the collars on top, and then he he runs it flat out. So he'll use the bottom section as like minus 15 freezer, and he uses his top section as a fridge. And he uses a lot of power, but he's got a solar panel, and that actually sounds genius.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:19

It's just expanding on the existing configuration, right? So are you saying you don't not support it, but it's probably depending on what modifications there are, may or may not be a warranty issue down the track?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:33

We don't mind if people want to modify five their fridge, it's fine. Um and then when they have issues, if they ring us, we'll we'll we'll chat to them about it and try and give them some advice on what mod might that might work or one that might not work.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:48

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:48

Um yeah, so it's like it's fine. It's like, yeah, we think it's pretty cool. Um so people move positions of thermostats to get you know to get some fridges to run colder than they're supposed to. And we've got trip truck companies that use the 50-litre upright as a deep freezer, and we were like, we had no idea. We're like, you can use it as a deep freezer. They're like, yeah, we've worked out how to move the thermostat so it runs flat out because a truck doesn't have power issues. And they use it as they use them as freezers.

Lauren 1:13:18

That's wild.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:19

That's that's such a refreshing approach to that. Uh moving away from that initial statement of if you make any modifications, it's like, no worries, he's fine. That's it, we don't want to hear about it. It's just an easy car. You'll go, no, give us a call, we want to know what you've done.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:33

Yeah, yeah. And and and some of the best ideas come from aftermarket. You know, car manufacturers do this all the time. You know, people people buy a car and then they modify that series of a car, and then when the next version comes out, it'll have some of those modifications in it.

Lauren 1:13:50

Well, you wouldn't have the success of things like Marty Car mods if that wasn't a thing, right? Like it's it's people love some people would just tinker it. Yeah, it's just how it is.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:00

Yeah.

Lauren 1:14:01

Um, so just in addition to that, um, Tommy, like because um Fat Man Overlanding sort of has mentioned improving airflow and and reducing front ice buildup um and uneven temperatures inside the upright ridge. Um when like just having a customer call the other day, they'd sort of purchased a Bushman's and then come back and said, Oh, look, I don't know if uh I want it before you ship it out. Can I ask some questions? Because I don't know if I want to change to a different brand. And one of the questions he said was that it seemed like on a lot of forums or Facebook, the Bushman's upright seem to have feedback about icing over. So is that primarily in your experience, primarily down to the moving of the door hinges that you just talked about, or are there other factors?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:47

That's the main, that's the main factor.

Lauren 1:14:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:51

Um and it kind of catches people by surprise because we've all come from chess fridges. Yeah. And and on a chess fridge, you know, you shut the lid and gravity keeps it closed. Um whereas on an upright, it's not the same. So so yeah, the door and you know maybe half customers move the hinges from one side to the other, and there's a potential um for a little bit of air to sneak in. And as I said, you only need a teeny little what you know, a couple of mil gap in a corner, yeah, and and the fridge will ice up quickly. So that that that's one of the things which is it'll just be a challenge forever. I mean, it even if we put a latch on every side of the fridge, um, it's still not really solving the issue, which is that the the rubber seal that was squashed on one side is now on the on the open side. Um, but but it is an easy fix, you know, it's just adjust the door, you know, grab a heat gun, takes maybe 10 minutes to fix. Um, and we're always happy to chat to customers. I said we're making a video about it soon on YouTube, which will be good because uh that'll make that a lot easier. So that that's one one thing, you know, running the thermostat too high, like if you run the thermostat flat out, um the ice will build up quicker. Or if there's not enough ventilation to the compressor, or if there's too much radiant heat, then the compressor's having to work really, really hard to try and cool the fridge down, and then you will also get more ice buildup. So for uprights, all of those things are really important. And it's mostly canopies and the back and forward drives just because they get really hot. Caravans aren't so bad. Um, but following up on that too, so we with the heavy duty series fridges, they now come with an internal fridge fan, a very small fan that just creates a little bit of air movement. And that that came from the aftermarket. Uh, probably started a few years ago. Um, people saying, Oh, I'll put a fan in a fridge. And so we started testing it out. And it we we spent about two years testing it. We we it took quite a while to get right because the size of the fan, the the position of it, the direction, and how much airflow it was actually creating can upset the thermostat calibration pretty easily, especially in colder weather. You can find that your fridge is too cold. Um, so we've spent a long time trying to come up with a design that would work in you know 15 degrees and 45 degrees and everything in between. And we released that in the heavy duty series. Um we also did something pretty cool, which is we made it 100% backward compatible. So anyone who brought one of our little upright fridges in the last seven or eight years can fit one of these that is OEM spec from Bushman. Of course, it doesn't affect your warranty. Um, they're a little tricky to install. You definitely need someone handy to do it. It's it's not a job that you know that anyone would be able to do. Um, but the kits are like $99 and they come with all the wiring loom and all the instructions and everything. And that's great. You know, again, it it gives customers a chance to upgrade it if they want to, and not everyone will. We've got you know, the majority of customers are are happy with the way they work as is, but then obviously we have customers that have you know their expectation is it's gonna have you know more even airflow, or or they might have an installation that that isn't ideal because they they they can't improve it, you know. It's the fridge is in a spot where it can't get more airflow or it's gonna get radiant heat. Um so this this little internal fan sort of compensates for that. But that came from aftermarket. So that that uh yeah, that's cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:44

So many good answers to everything here, Thomas. Yeah, yeah, I love it. Last one is from uh one of our OG uh contributors, Fiona Ludbrook. Um she's got a uh a roadie. She's she camps out of like a I think it's a Corolla, and she's got a roadie in the middle, she loves it. Um bit of feedback in here about saying she's uh she's quite interested in like a 20-litre version. Um she's part of like female traveling groups and stuff, and the ability to lift it in and out. I don't know if you read that that comment or that feedback. Uh she questioned in particular, she's heard you can configure fridges like my faithful bushman roadie, slightly differently if a customer wants to run as a freezer only. Is that I've never heard of it. Is that a thing?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:27

Yeah, this is part of the modding. Okay. Um so you can, and I'll I'll give a little bit of this away. Um you can move the position of the temperature sensor slightly, and the fridge will run colder.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:43

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:44

So the roadies run to about minus 15. Um if a customer wants them to run to minus 18, you can. Um so I'll tell you how to do it. You you you basically there's four screws underneath the front of the fridge, and you slide the front cover down and as off, and then on the back wall of the fridge, there'll be some uh like black putty, like blue tack, it has a little wire going into it. If you take that putty off and you pull that wire out maybe another two inches, and then you just put the putty back on and you can test it then. It it the the temperature readout won't be correct on the fridge anymore. So when it says minus 12, it's gonna be like minus 15. And when it says not when you put it on minus 15, it'll probably be minus 18. Um because it's just a hack it's a hack, but it's a hack.

Lauren 1:20:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:41

Bushman fridge hacks. There is a Facebook page, got like 5,000 members on it. Yeah, wild. Um, yeah, so this is just a hack. And um you could probably get it to run you know minus 18 or minus 20. The only challenge you'll have is if it's humid, you'll get condensation on the outside of the fridge.

Lauren 1:21:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:01

So it's not designed to run that cold.

Lauren 1:21:03

It's not so customization um pre-market is not something that you offer for customers, but there is the ability to modify your fridge if you want to get do some tweaking, is is ultimately where that comes down from. Because I think Fiona initially thought that Bushman's do custom configurations, but you don't.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:23

We don't, unfortunately. Um we'd love to, but again, it comes down to like a volume thing. Yeah, totally. We've we've we've had some, you know, we had the army ask us a little while ago they wanted some fridges that needed to run in temperatures down to minus 10. And we were like, okay, and they need to be able to handle um you know different uh air pressure. And we're like, where are these gonna go? They're like, they're going in airplanes. Can't tell them. Yeah, and then we looked into them and we're just like the volume was too small and it was, yeah, it just couldn't have configured something for them. But um look, customers own their fridges, right? They they can they can make changes and things for them if they want to. Of course, if they break something, you know, then it wouldn't be covered under under a under warranty. But if um, you know, there's a lot of information online and and you can keep it pretty simple. Um one of the other reasons we released that internal fan kit is to solve some of the issues that the aftermarket had created because some of the fan kits that were being sold were creating more problems. Um and upsetting thermostat calibration or people's fridges wouldn't work properly in you know in cooler weather, but they'd work really well in hot weather, or they'd get a lot of ice building up, or they'd freeze everything, or they'd use too much power. So we thought, oh, let's just we'll provide an OEM solution that's gonna that's gonna tick all the boxes um rather than you know customers thinking, how do I do it? And or trying to buy something off the shelf isn't quite right. So thanks for the question, Fiona.

Lauren 1:23:02

Yeah, she's a well the the second part question which I am curious about because I sort of we've talked about it with other fridge brands before, about um, you know, for Fiona specifically, she's a so solo female traveller. And I know that um the community of like retired women or solo female travellers is actually increasing significantly, which is awesome. But there's obviously then some limitations of uh being able to physically lift a fridge and move a fridge around, especially when it's a full. Um, and whether or not there there's ever been thought about those smaller 15-litre, 20-litre fridges and doing something like a collard or an extendable version of the small one. A lot of feedback comes down to fridges of that size and efficiency and insulation and components. It's just really difficult. Is that the same for sort of where you guys come at that with?

SPEAKER_01 1:23:58

Yeah, it it's tricky. So the roadie is the smallest fridge we have, it weighs 11 kilos, and then you know, when you add some stuff in it, it might be what 15, 16, 17 kilos. So it's starting to get heavy. Um you can buy a like a tie-down carry kit, which has um saddles which screw to each end of the fridge, and it has like a shoulder carry strap, and that's quite good to carry it because you can kind of grab both ends of the strap and you close your shoulder and you can carry it around. So that's that's probably the best way to do it. Um but fridges are heavy, and even especially when you've got food in them, like you know, even if if like our 35-litre fridge, even if that, let's say the fridge didn't weigh anything, you know, it could have 10 kilos of of goods in it.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:48

Um, we have seen some backpack fridges floating around. Um some of our manufacturers send us samples, we get them all the time, and we're we've actually got some in the factory, and it was pretty funny. It's like a it's like a a backpack um insulated, um, you know, a soft backpack with a with a little compressor in it.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:12

It's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:13

I'm not sure. Are you guys selling any of this stuff? I'm thinking of it.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:17

Where does the battery pack go a 25 kilo battery pack or something that you're cutting around with or something? Or a really long extension?

Lauren 1:25:24

I'm imagining like an umbrella hat that's actually made of solar panels.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:28

That's a good idea. That would actually work pretty good. Yeah, um, yeah. So that's the challenge then is how do you power it? You know, you've got to carry if you carry, you can, you know, you can get a small lithium battery which wouldn't be wouldn't be heavy, but that might only run it for six hours or eight hours. And if you wanted to run it overnight, then yeah, it it does get challenging. But we it'd be nice to have something more lightweight. Um we don't have plans to put a collar on the roadie. I wonder whether I might have spoken to Fiona. Um I'm possibly like I have spoken to quite a few um single female travellers that use the roadie and and often wondering, they're talking about you know how heavy it is and running it in the car, and then and then if what if I'm on the way somewhere and I stay in a motel? How do I plug it in into the motel PowerPoint? So yeah, we've we've spoken about that quite a few times. And the roadie is probably the best for that because it is it is the lightest.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:24

Um the only other option is to have something that was fixed in the back of the car, you know, a little chest fridge on a fridge slide, so something you can easily access, so you can slide it out, you can you know you can get to your goods and you can slide it back in, or a little upright in the back of the in the back of the car. But if something that needs to be moved around, and this is also one of the reasons why we're a big fan of small to medium fridges, because you can move them around. Um, yeah, that roadie's probably the best.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:55

Well, if you've got any ideas Bushman, Tommy, and the team are all ears, so yeah, fire fire's way because it could turn into the next evolution of a Bushman fridge. Hey, Tommy, this has been a really refreshing uh conversation, especially around the whole warranty and modifications thing, because usually most manufacturers just go down the path of like, nope, can't do that. Warranty's void straight away. But you're you're like, no, let us know what you've done because we might we might be able to do more of that. So it's really cool. Um long chat, heaps of info. I think our viewers are going to find this really engaging. Um, you really uh awesome uh bits of information in there. But really appreciate your time today, Tommy, for chatting to us for well over an hour now. It's been great. Thank you.

Lauren 1:27:39

Hasn't felt like it, which is even better.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:41

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:42

All right, thanks, Tommy. Thanks, man. Thanks, Lauren. I appreciate the opportunity and um yeah, keep doing good things. It's nice. We appreciate it.

Lauren 1:27:50

No worries, mate. Have a good day.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:52

That was a great episode. I really enjoyed that. I reckon that's one of our longest episodes, but so much information in there. So if you need to sit through two two um rides to work is something to get through it, do it because there's information from start to end.

Lauren 1:28:06

I always love it when you know we've both worked here for a long time, we've worked in the industry for a long time, and you think you know a brand, and then you sit down and you chat and you're like, I didn't know that, and that's amazing. And this has just like added so much value, even to me. So it's um, yeah, it's good. Really appreciate these conversations.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:23

Well, I hope you'll enjoy it. But thanks for watching. We'll see you next time on the Snow's Camping Show.

Lauren 1:28:27

Catch you later.