50,000 Landscapers and Gardeners Threatened by the new California Law with Job Loss | Jay Martinez

Start of 2024 that you can no longer purchase internal combustion engines, which essentially includes a lot of lawnmowers, leaf trimmers, and hedgers, and that sort of maintenance equipment. They did this because they wanted to help the environment. How that affects us is that in order to procure that equipment, the cost of that can be upwards of 400% more to the small business owner. They have to either work more. If there's three employees on a truck, you're going to have to have about 50 batteries. Wow. To get through the day. My guest today is Jay Martinez. Today, he'll discuss how a new law will impact the landscapers in California. We are doing this episode to highlight the challenges that hardworking landscapers will face in the upcoming years in California. What's happening with this and putting small business owners and landscapers in a position to have to break the law like that. If they want a more equitable and just California, don't want to be able to put people who are trying to make ends meet in this position. And your father built this business, right? It's the landscapers, the gardeners, the valet person, the janitor. It's a lot of these folks who are not talked about a lot. Oftentimes, forgot about in society. I'm Siamak Rameh. Welcome to California Insider. Jay, it's great to have you on. Welcome. Thank you for having me. We want to talk to you about the controversial law in California that passed that's going to go into effect in 2024. It's going to mandate the landscapers and us residents not to use gas-powered lawn mowers or leaf blowers. Can you tell us more about what's going on with this law? Absolutely. So the law happened at the end of 2021, where the California Air Resources Board, CARB, had passed a law saying that all SOAR, which is small off-road engines, those pieces of equipment would be banned at the start of 2024. And so what that would mean is, essentially, you can't purchase this gas-powered equipment anymore. And so that law was followed up with legislation at the state capitol with AB 1346, which really solidified that movement with CARB, saying, again, at the end of 2023, start of 2024, that you can no longer purchase internal combustion engines, which essentially includes a lot of lawn mowers, leaf trimmers, and hedgers, and that sort of maintenance equipment. And how does this impact landscapers? You've been in this business for a while. This is going to impact landscapers significantly, right? Absolutely. So what's going to happen is the existing equipment that's out there right now, you can continue to use it. But at the end of it, your only option now is electric. So one of the issues is that the technology isn't as robust as the small off-road engines. And that's due to the fact that the technology hasn't been around as long as the internal combustion engines. So how that affects us is that in order to procure that equipment, the cost of that can be upwards of 400% more to the small business owner. How much is that roughly? Depending on the type of equipment you want, the largest piece would be a ride-on lawn mower. And right now, you could find a decent one, you know, retail, new for a neighborhood of $3,000 to $4,000. If you were to try to find that same one, that's the electric version of it, that can go up to right now about $12,000 MSRP. Wow. Yeah, so we're talking about a good 400% increase in procuring equipment. And so that can hurt small business owners just because they don't have that capital to invest. And so that could hinder them down a bit to be able to do their jobs and have a livelihood. And that's for us too, consumers, if somebody wants to cut their lawn themselves, they have to do that too? Yes, absolutely. So the state had estimated that most actually of the gas-powered engines are owned by consumers, but a good 20% of them are owned, you know, and used every day by landscape contractors and your gardeners. So it will affect the consumer, but it will certainly affect the small businesses. So it's going to be a big change. So if you're converting from gas-powered to electric, now you're going to have to worry about charging these batteries on the job site. So there was a study that we had done that said, if there's three employees on a truck, you're going to have to have about 50 batteries to get through the day. So then you have to charge these at night or how would you charge this? Exactly right. It sort of opens up a can of worms because now you're having to worry about charging these at night and then now you have to worry about bringing them on. And then at the same time, again, this technology doesn't work as well as the gas-powered engines. So in order to get the job done, it takes even longer to be able to get the job done because the equipment is just not as strong. We also went into the field and met with Elizabeth Byrne, whose company has adopted some of these battery equipment. And here's what she told us. They don't last nearly as long. I mean, they only have a time span of so long. And so when the guys go to the first house, they'll use the first big battery and we have extra size batteries. So they'll go to the first house, use that battery. They have multiple batteries on each truck. When they get to the second house, they have to plug in the battery from the first house so that then when they run low and so forth and so on. So when they get to the third house, they're plugging in a battery from the second house and it goes on and on and on like that so that we have enough charge and enough battery power to get them through the rest of the day. People say if you use the blowers that are the plug-in blowers, the electric ones, it's impossible because you have a large property like this. You're not going to carry around and move around extension cords. And that can be dangerous, especially if you're using like a weed whacker, a trimmer, string trimmer. You know, if something's not done right, that string trimmer can cut into that extension cord. It's just dangerous. And not only that, you don't want to pull an extension cord through a beautiful landscape. How much longer would it take? Definitely depending on the type of electrical equipment that they get. But it could take, you know, probably it's going to be at least 20% onward. And that's just due to the fact that if, you know, you're a practitioner like myself and you use this equipment, you know how strong it is and how much it can endure. And if there's other situations out there like bigger terrains, longer debris that you have to deal with, you're talking about at least 20-25% more of time that you're going to have to be needing to complete the maintenance projects. Now, what do you think will happen to this 25% of time? They're either going to have to eat that cost, but eventually probably perhaps wise up to, you know, necessarily have to charge a little bit more for their time because they're having to work a little bit more. So they either will make less money or they have to get the customers to pay more. Unfortunately, right now. I can tell you firsthand, my father, you know, he relied on these pieces of equipment to provide for his home. He didn't finish high school and all he knew is two things is that if he works hard, he can provide for his family. With this piece of equipment, really, it was a game changer for us. It provided for us in a time where we didn't have a lot of options growing up. So I know firsthand the fact, you know how important this equipment is to continue to have a livelihood. I think that the cost to go up to 400%, 400% more, it's going to be quite a barrier to sort of overcome. And I've talked to other small entrepreneurs and landscapers who said that they're just not going to comply with it. They're looking to go across state lines in Nevada or Arizona and bring that equipment back, which is also not good because, you know, it sort of puts them at odds with state laws. So some people will end up breaking the law because it's just not easy to work on it, right? Right. That's sort of what their option is at this point. Unfortunately, they don't have that extra 400% or so, give or take capital to invest into the new electric battery equipment. So their other option is to go find it somewhere else. And it's just a ban on the sales or is it the ban on the use? At this moment, at the start of 2024, it'll be the ban of the new sales of them. So existing equipment will be able to stay until it's out. And once it's out, then you have to... If you buy it from somewhere else, does it matter? At the moment, right now, that's something that they're still... That's not clear. One of our lobbyists had said that it's a similar situation with firearms in a way, because you can go out of state, bring them in, but it's against the law. So there's going to be a similar dynamic to where, you know, if you cross state lines, bring it back, there's going to be some, unfortunately, some laws that will be broken. We also talked to Arnulfo Hermosillo, who's a landscaper, who has used both battery and gas-powered equipment. And here's what he told us. If I use a lot more battery, I need more time. Today, with the gas, a lot more, I cover in 45 minutes. If I use the other, a lot more battery, probably close by two hours. I used about the last three or four months ago, not working. Yeah, this is working only in my patio, in my house, in my apartment, probably I'm working with the battery, but this job, no work. But the gas right here, I use about 40 minutes. If I use the battery, probably about two hours. Yeah, but right now, what happening with all the trees, the fall, all the leaves are fall over. I need about more time. I don't have too much power. Now, in terms of operating these battery equipment, how does it work? You mentioned that, is it the same as the gas ones? So operating the battery equipment, it's harder to operate in as much as that the technology isn't as robust as its gas powered counterpart. And so what that means is that when you're using this day in and day out, the motor's working harder to get the job done. And so with that, the equipment, it's not gonna be able to handle as much volume. And then also you're gonna be having to be switching batteries throughout the day. So it's adding more logistics to the problem there. So it's lost time and it's lost opportunity. That'll be creeping up, unfortunately, on a lot of the small business owners. So this landscapers will lose the time. So they have to either work more to get the same thing done, right? Exactly. They'll be having to work more just to make what they were making, or eventually they may have to wise up and charge a little bit more, which is unfortunate as well. So Jay, when you heard about this, how did you feel about it? What's your thoughts about this law? Well, the law was passed in 2021. So we were dealing with certainly a number of other challenges in the state, especially COVID. I feel that the process could have been a little bit more collaborative with the state. To their credit, the California Resources Board did reach out to our Contractors Association and they did try to dialogue with us. But due to the fact that, again, we were sort of in the middle of the pandemic somewhat, I felt that there could have been a little bit more collaboration in terms of doing ride-alongs perhaps, or maybe having a town hall in person versus just a couple of Zoom calls. So I feel like this was an opportunity to really collaborate together and work towards solving an issue between government and industry also. They did this because they wanted to help the environment. There were some studies that it's kind of equivalent to driving from LA to Nevada for using some of these tools for an hour. It's equivalent to... Do you know about this study? Yeah, so that was a study conducted by CARB. They had their sort of internal research team that more or less said that using a, for instance, a weed eater for an hour is equivalent of driving a car from LA to Nevada. What I was sort of disappointed with, or I felt there was an area of opportunity, was to really for them to come in and see these pieces of equipment in action as they are now. I think they'd be able to see just how they're used in the real world. Maybe if you're running it every single day, but there's a lot of times where it's not being around as much as you think it is. There's some room to dispute that a little bit. And I think, again, that could come from a lack of collaboration between landscapers and small business owners, but with the government. So I think there's an opportunity there to really see what had happened here and move forward to sort of collaborate a little bit more. California Air Resources Board did a very large Zoom call, several Zoom calls last year. And there were numerous people on these phone calls, like 1,200, 1,300 people on these calls. And they had discussions from people from the Pacific Crest Trail were on it, people from Winnebago, the motorhomes, because they're going to be impacted by it because they also have gas-powered generators on the Winnebagos. And then you have the woman from the Pacific Crest Trail that has to send people out on these trails to do the trimming every year for the backpackers and the people that go along the Pacific Crest Trail. And how are they going to plug in their equipment? And when I spoke to CARB on that Zoom call, I had about a minute and a half to speak amongst a lot of people. My point was, I believe very much so that they've put the cart before the horse. We in California here, I don't believe we have the infrastructure set in place. So how, when they change over to the battery-operated equipment, are they going to be able to sustain us with all of this extra electrical going in? Because we all know in the summertime here, we get alerts and are told that we need to shut down between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. in the afternoon because we have such a heavy surge on our electrical grid. So how are we going to do that? And then how do I explain to my clients, I'm sorry, I couldn't mow your lawn or do any of the things that we needed to do on your property because we had a brownout yesterday, which happens quite frequently in the Los Angeles area during the summer when the grid is overwhelmed. So that to me is the biggest white elephant in the room. And I'm not sure how they're going to be able to fix that. And we're going to have to abide by the laws and the rules. Nobody knows yet. We might face challenges with the grid, electricity-wise. What are your thoughts on that? I do feel like this could contribute to, with so many batteries being out there throughout the whole state of California, again, about 50,000 or so businesses throughout the state, adding more stress to the grid. I feel it could just be another issue that can just not really help it out too much. So I think that at least having the options to slowly phase this out would have been a little bit better, or at least just, again, sort of working with having more of a collaborative approach between government and landscapers and small business. We also met with energy consultant Jim Phelps to understand the potential impacts all these batteries have on California's grid. It'll add load to the electric grid for sure. Every time that you plug something into the grid, the power has to come from somewhere. It's going to be incremental at first. Not going to be a heavy toll. But as we go heavier and heavier on batteries, charging batteries, the grid is going to be more and more taxed. I don't think initially we're going to see that it's going to push us right to a brownout or a blackout. But on the days when we get to where we are just teetering, and right now, which happens in the middle of summer, and we get those high power days, and then you have people, as we start to, as Newsom has taken us away from gasoline-powered landscaping appliances and tools to electric, on those days when we are on the verge of blackout, it doesn't help. It's just making a bad situation worse. First of all, just in defense of batteries, I think that batteries are a great thing for landscaping. You don't have to drag a power cord around. If you're going to try to be electric, and they give you a lot of freedom. If you're on a construction site and you have a nail gun, there's nothing like having a battery-operated nail gun as opposed to a hose that you've got to drag. But I think just in terms of landscaping and what batteries are displacing is gas, gasoline. And what a lot of people don't understand is kind of a comparison between the two. And so if we use a Tesla battery as an example, this will put things in perspective for people about, well, batteries are great, and they're really efficient, and we should really certainly be using them. If you have a battery, if you have a Tesla that's fully charged, Tesla battery weighs about 1,200 pounds. A fully charged Tesla battery has a mileage range of about 300 miles. It depends about how fast you drive and all your driving habits, but plus or minus about 300 miles, 300. For a fully charged Tesla battery, 1,200 pounds. If I take an automobile that's gasoline and I put 1,200 pounds of gasoline in it, I don't drive 300 miles like the Tesla. I can drive 5,000 miles. So there is a, I think one of the things that people really need to come to terms with is in this whole clean energy revolution is how much energy we're actually losing by getting clean. And to produce the power to make, to energize these batteries, be it in a gasoline engine for a car or a lawnmower, the wasted energy is enormous. It's just enormous, all for the sake of being clean, looking clean. Some of the other issues with batteries that are really serious that people need to think about are the safety issues. And that is specifically the fires. The one that I think about that is not well known, but it was remarkable. It was a fire that took place in 2021 in a little town in Illinois called Morris. And they had, somebody had taken batteries and put them into a warehouse there. And then I don't know if they'd forgotten about them or what, but the batteries caught fire. They got into what they call the thermal runaway. And a thermal runaway is where the batteries do catch fire. They overheat and then they're just off to the races. And when they go to that condition, they don't need oxygen to burn. They burn and burn and burn. And so fire departments that show up with hoses and try to put them out, you can't put them out with water. That fire department in Morris, Illinois, it took them more than three days to put that fire out. And they finally were able to extinguish it with dry concrete. They smothered it with concrete. The other issue that we have is lithium ion batteries require cobalt. And cobalt comes predominantly out of Congo. And Congo's labor force is predominantly child labor. So we are outsourcing child labor, illegal child abuse to mine cobalt for lithium ion batteries so that we can appear clean and don't have to use gas-fired lawnmowers or whatever, just so we can have clean lithium ion batteries. You mentioned some of the bigger businesses that they might even go out of business. Can you tell us why? Sure, so a lot of these landscape maintenance companies sort of really base their business around small off-road engine equipment. And so if you think about your HOAs or your parks, you have guys kind of running lawnmowers, trimmers, and hedge trimmers throughout the whole day, eight, 10-hour days sometimes. And so if you take that away all of a sudden, you imagine you have 50 people going to different sites throughout the day. You take all that equipment a day, that really starts to exacerbate or add up. And so with that, employers may not be able to handle the transition. And a lot of people may have to unfortunately lose their job because of the logistics of this. I mean, with all the batteries being charged, with the slower lead times, it starts to eat into the bottom line. Are you concerned with stock market volatility? The market's closing in on their worst year since the financial crisis. Two of the major indices had their worst day since 2020. U.S. financial markets had their worst day since the start of the pandemic. Do you really trust this economy? 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A lot of landscapers, if you think landscaper, you could think of a gardener, someone's coming in and doing the maintenance on your residential home. Doing the trimming and the weed eating. And then you have the bigger side of it, which is larger companies who manage wineries, parks, HOAs, other city government entities. And so those are sort of the bigger operations. But really at the end of the day, it's maintaining and making a beautiful California. Yeah, and that's why we have really nice, we have a really nice suburbs and the areas we have, it's very well maintained. And this profession is contributing big time to that. I'm wondering if it's gonna get much more expensive and some properties will not maintain themselves as well as they're doing it now because of this law. Is that true? I believe so. And the reasoning for that is, there's gonna be costs that creep up on these contractors and landscapers that they don't really realize yet. So if you have a crew of three using all electric equipment, they're not gonna be able to get the job done as fast as if they had their internal combustion engines there. And so with that, it's more labor, it's more time intensive. And so the only way to really make up for that is really to, at the end of the day, unfortunately, charge more. So I think two things will happen. One of two things, someone will either have to pay a bit of an upcharge for the same services that they're currently getting now. Otherwise, they may not just opt out. They may not maintain. Correct. And what about the landscapers? You talked to a group of them, right? You were involved with them. What do they think of this? Initially, I think the spirit was that, yes, we want a beautiful California. Yes, we want a healthy California. I think the disagreement sort of started to happen as to the quick and sudden transition to that. So really from 2021 to the end, to the start of 2024 is pretty short. A lot feel that we could have had more of a transition and maybe some exemptions, but we weren't able to, unfortunately, secure any of that. Was there another option? I don't know if you guys talked to Sacramento about this. Was there another option to actually make these combustion engines more clean? Their prescription was really just to move away from internal combustion, just period. We had asked for an extension or some exemptions for landscapers and small businessmen, but unfortunately, we weren't able to secure any of that. And so I think that with that, unfortunately, it's sort of what they want and we have to follow. This profession of landscaping is a good entry profession for a lot of people that immigrate to U.S. And your father came here. What was it like for him and how did he get started? My grandfather and my father immigrated from Mexico. With coming from that background, his only really way to survive and to make ends meet was to get into the landscape industry because it's an industry that if you're able to work hard, you can make ends meet. So he didn't graduate high school. This was everything to him. And so I'm particularly grateful because because of that, he was able to work and do this day in, day out for 30 years and have a family and sort of lift me up, I guess so to say, for the next generation to go to college and work hard and to do very well. So I think that's a lot of the stories of us in California. I think him in particular, people like him can be forgotten sometimes, but this equipment makes all the difference. Being able to work hard and make a living, supporting your family makes a big difference when you have more tools available at your disposal. There's a lot of people like your father that came here and are doing that and they built this industry, right? And helped this industry. How can it be heard more in Sacramento? Do you think the Sacramento doesn't understand what the impact would be of this law? I think it's the bill AB 1346 was sort of a bill that's sort of at the bottom of the barrel a little bit. So the problem is, is that landscapers and small business owners, they're so busy trying to make ends meet. They don't really have the time, unfortunately, or know how the process works to be able to talk to people in Sacramento or our government leaders. And so what the organization, I'm a part of Cal Landscape Contractors Association, what we do is we're able to sort of be that voice for that small business owner, for that immigrant, for that hardworking individual to be heard a little bit more. And so I think that if more people sort of were to think about that, think about how that affects your everyday life, it's the landscapers, the gardeners, the valet person, the janitor. It's a lot of these folks who are not talked about a lot and oftentimes forgot about in society. So if maybe you think about them and see where you could possibly support them and support these folks who are trying to do better and try to be involved in organizations to get that voice heard in Sacramento, that's how we can make a difference. And do you think immigrants may not want to come to California or if they wanted to do landscaping because of these kinds of laws? Well, I think that they will come still, but at the expense of possibly breaking the law, unfortunately, because again, if they're not able to have access to this equipment right away, they may find other means to get it. And it's not like they'd be criminals or anything like that in the traditional sense, but unfortunately, it's being set up to where they'd be breaking the law. My assessment is that they'll still come, but they may be put in a position to- To break the law. And Jay, you know, this place, California and the US, personally, I've lived in Mexico, I've lived in Iran and China, and this is a place where people follow the law. And this is one of the reasons this country is really good. And in California, what I've noticed is people follow the law for the most part. Do you think this is going to have a bad impact on people, especially when you immigrate from another country? Most of the time, Mexico and China and Iran, people don't follow the law and that's what causes the problems. Do you think this is the wrong thing that could impact these people in the future to lead to other- Well, with the state right now, as it is, there's talk about equity a lot, a lot in certain state departments. What's happening with this and putting small business owners and landscapers in a position to have to break the law like that, it sort of goes against the threat of what they're doing. And so, if they want a more equitable and just California, you don't want to be able to put people who are trying to make ends meet in this position. And your father built this business, right? And how was California for him? To him, his perspective is that it's always sort of had its challenges. But what he's taught me is to be creative. There's a lot of disconnect sometimes between not only business owners and their clients, but also with government as well. And so, I think he taught me to be very creative and work towards solutions. Sometimes there's something there that you just can't see. So, I think that if you're able to just sort of take a step back and think critically on how we can solve this, how can we work together to solve an issue or to make an issue better, I think that that is a good prescription for it. And why did you get involved? You're becoming a voice. You reached out to us. You're becoming a voice for this industry. Why? Well, I care. I care about our industry. I think it's an overlooked industry. I feel that it employs so many people and a lot immigrants. And if you know anything about immigrants is that they work very hard. And I think that work ethic is being lost a little bit. And so, if this is an opportunity to bring more awareness to a hard work ethic, to folks who are providing for their families and to create a beautiful California, I'm all in. Do you have any other thoughts for our audience? Overall, I think that this is an opportunity for the state and small business owners and a lot of our small business owners, immigrants, and also others who work in the landscaping industry to sort of collaborate more with government. I feel like it went a little bit too quick in 2021. And the fact that it went too quick, it's seeming to be a little bit messy. So I think this is an opportunity really to really partner a little bit more with them and sort of see where we can make the hurt be a little bit less. Do you think it's a big hurt on the landscaper? It is gonna be, right? I feel it is. I feel like initially it won't, but as time progresses and- And everybody has to go to electric. How long do these things last? The equipment itself is not as time-tested as our internal combustion engines are. And so we're hoping a couple of years, maybe three, four years maximum with commercial internal combustion engines. These pieces of equipment go 10 years, 10 years plus being worked every day. So it would be a lot harder for people because it might not last longer and it costs a lot more. Exactly right. And unfortunately, again, the technology, I feel a couple of years would have been better to have that technology be developed and be better used as far as application. And that could have helped a little bit more with the transition. Because right now, again, the technology isn't as strong. Jay Martinez, President of JVM Landscape and Construction Company. It was great to have you on California Insider. Thank you for having me, Simak. And thank you for all the great work you do. Thank you. Excellent. If you like the show and our content, you should go to InsiderCA.com and sign up to our newsletter because we never know what can happen with social media and other platforms in terms of distributing our content. If you'd like to come on the show and be an insider, you can reach out to us at cainsider at epochtimesca.com Again, it's cainsider at epochtimesca.com. We'd love to have you on the show to tell us what's going on in your field in California. Thank you for watching.