(upbeat music) - Welcome to "A Shot of Ag."

My name is Rob Sharkey.

I'm a fifth generation farmer from just outside of Bradford, Illinois.

And today we're talking with Amy Labruyere.

Did I say it right?

- You did.

- Really?

- First time - You can attest, right?

I've been practicing.

- Yes.

Labruyere, yeah.

Is that, I don't know.

Is that a Russian name?

- It's actually French.

- Absolutely, joke, it was an attempt at a joke.

I was gonna say Canadian, but it could, because half of Canada is, Amy Labruyere.

You're from Lacon.

So if anybody doesn't know, where is Lacon at?

- Chillicothe is probably the closest town.

- Yeah, if you're in Peoria, it's that way.

- Right, north of Peoria.

- Unless their TV's facing the other way, then it's.

- Right.

It took about 45 minutes to get here.

- Everybody knows where Lacon is, right?

- No, they think Lincoln.

- Oh yeah.

- Which is all the way by Springfield.

- Lacon has a John Deere dealership.

- Mm-hm.

- They still have a pizza place?

- They do.

- Yeah?

- Yeah, is that the one you go downstairs?

It's been forever.

- Yes.

- The ice cream place?

- Is it ice cream upstairs?

- No, like down the road.

- Yeah, so there's a dairy something.

It's changed names.

- You didn't know there was gonna be Lacon trivia.

- I did not.

- Here today.

And you guys have your new Casey's.

La di da.

- It's a pretty fancy Casey's.

- Yeah.

- I haven't been in it either.

- Really?

- No.

- Seriously, isn't that like you pay your taxes in Licon, you have to go to a Casey's.

- I mean, I have gas right at my shop.

I put gas in my car.

I bring my stuff from home.

I don't really go there.

- Huh.

- But it is a big Casey's.

Now we have the DG Market too.

- I don't know what that is.

- It's a Dollar General Market.

- Oh, don't even get me started on the Dollar Generals.

If there's any place that should have a Dollar General, it's Bradford because we're up in the middle of nowhere.

We need one.

But do you think they'd ever put one there?

One guy told me one time, he was like, "If there was a bare patch of dirt in Illinois, a Dollar General will grow out of the ground" Nothing.

We have a 75-year-old Casey's up there and that's it.

- Yeah.

- We should talk about you instead of Lacon and Dollar General's lack of putting a store into Bradford.

Okay.

You are the owner of JD Belcher Electric LLC in Lacon.

That's outside, right?

So on 17.

- Right.

Tax School Road and 17, right down from the high school.

- Yeah.

That building, is it right by the road?

Is seems like it's close.

- Yes.

It is, it's really close.

- What's the deal with that?

- Well, it's a Tax School Building, so that's where the schools used to be every so many miles.

, it's an original building from 1924.

- Oh really?

- Yeah.

- So, that didn't come with wifi?

- No, internet's been a real challenge.

- I'm sure that didn't even have electricity, did it, originally?

- Well, when we bought it, it was someone was living there.

- Oh.

- So, then we turned it into our office and then we put up a big Morton building to store our generators.

- That's an old school?

- Yeah.

- Is there a ghost?

- Mm, I haven't seen it.

- Okay.

- Original school desks we still have.

- Is that like the ones that are in like a row?

- Yeah, all attached to each other.

- It's almost like a sled.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Have you tried to sit in those?

- No.

You look at that, I'm like, I don't think today's kids fit in these little desks.

- No, no, they don't.

I don't know what they did back then, but it is definitely different.

So, what is JD Belcher?

- We're a Generac generator dealer.

- Okay.

I think people know what a generator is, right?

Alternative or backup energy.

- Automatic backup power.

- That's the Generac.

Now, when you think Generac, I think of the ones where my electricity goes out, that's gonna kick on.

Is that basically what they are?

- Yes.

So, our specialty is the automatic generators that are tied into the fuel source at your home and your electric service.

They're not the portables that are on wheels.

- Yeah.

- So the power goes out, you'll hear the generator kick on and you'll have power in either your whole house or selected circuits, depending on how it's wired within a minute.

- So we ordered one, like everything nowadays, COVID, everything's backed up and that.

You show up to our house and you're telling me all this stuff that's going way over my head of like this stuff.

So, I can tell you firsthand, you're extremely well versed on all this because like our farm's an old farm, right?

- Right.

- So, it's got goofy stuff.

- Yeah.

- I mean they used like coat hangers and pie tines and all this stuff and you're like, "Oh, we just need to replace this, this, and this and this."

- Right.

- How'd you learn all that?

- Just doing it.

Just pretty much on the job, seeing how it's done, being in the field.

I started doing like in the office and then I started doing sales and then I wanted to learn more.

So, I would stay on my installation, stay with the guys, help 'em out, see how it all worked.

- Is it mainly farms?

- We started more rural because when you're in the country and the power goes out, you don't have water.

So, you got a couple of flushes.

So, it was really in the beginning people needed to have water.

And then now, in the past several years, it's more and more in town, people are more reliant on power.

Can't even charge your phone.

Your kids can't do their homework, they can't go online.

So, more and more people want power and reliable backup power.

- When you show up at a farm and you are talking to a, how do I say it?

A more seasoned farmer, right?

Elderly.

Do they look at you and think that maybe a woman should not know what you know?

- I get that somewhat.

I think the older I get, the less I get it.

I've been doing this for about 10 years.

- Yeah.

- In the beginning they're like, "Hm, I don't know who they sent out here."

- Well, I can say this because I'm a farmer, right?

- Yeah.

- We think we know everything.

- Yeah.

- And we wired most stuff ourselves.

I didn't say we wired it right, but we did it ourselves.

And now we have someone coming on our farm telling us that maybe what we did is not just wrong, but potentially dangerous.

- Right.

- And that you need to fix what we did.

- Right.

I mean, I get a little of that, but you know, we're not trying to rewire everybody's service.

We're trying to come up with a solution.

- I think ours, you are rewiring the whole- - I gave you the option, - The whole damn thing.

She's like, "Here's one option that will technically work and here's the right way to do it."

And I think there was an extra digit in the price.

- There's a lot of extra in yours, unfortunately.

- To my credit, I didn't wire that.

That was future, past generations that did that.

I think with a lot of bubble gum and stuff like that.

- Right.

Yeah, and you just kinda have to open everything up.

So I mean, I guess that's what I get sometimes with farmers.

Like, well, you can't open that box.

Nobody's opened that in 40 years.

- [Rob] That was literally our conversation.

- And I'm like, if I can't open that box, I can't see what I'm looking at, you know?

- That's what we like.

Yeah, just make it work.

- Yeah.

- So, when we get this Generac, when I lose electricity, this thing will automatically, even if I'm not home, it'll kick in and turn the electricity back on in my house.

Correct?

- Correct.

- How's that work?

- So within seconds, the generator starts, you have a transfer switch installed by your electric meter, and that's constantly monitoring whether you have power.

So as soon as the power drops out, the generator knows to kick on.

And then the transfer switch is what switches you from utility power to generator power.

- Gotcha.

- So, there's a big coil in there and it pulls it down.

- Now in our case, the generator is gonna run off of propane.

- Correct.

- Is that common?

- If you have natural gas, you'll probably use natural gas.

So if you're in town, you're probably natural gas.

- [Rob] No gasoline or diesel?

- Not in the automatic.

There is a diesel, like a protector series product that we don't really sell much of, but typically all you can go up to 150 kw using LP or natural gas.

- So, the history of the Shark farmer and how I got a following on social media is I ran out of electricity for a week between Christmas and New Year's and I had a bit of a breakdown.

I went a little insane and I decided to put that all out on social media and I trended nationally.

I don't even forget what I was gonna say.

The whole thing is when you live out in the country and you lose electricity, you're generally the last person to get it hooked back up.

So every time the power goes out, my wife and I just look at each other like, oh my gosh, how long is it gonna be this time?

Because it's never, it's always more than one day.

- Right.

- But now we're gonna be protected.

- Yes.

- Okay, if it goes out for a week though, my propane is also what's powering my house.

So, how much does that generator use?

- So, with yours were doing, is it the 24 or the 26?

- I think we're doing- - It was the expensive one.

- Well, now I have a slightly more expensive one since we talked.

- We'll probably end up with that by the time we're done.

- Okay.

So, it's about two and a half to three gallons per hour of propane, depending on the generator size.

- Okay.

- So, that's per hour of running.

So, I say if you got a 500 gallon tank, a 250 gallon tank, you could go about four days.

So, a 500 gallon tank, you could go more like eight days.

I don't remember what tank size you have there.

- It sounds like I need a bigger one.

- Well, I mean, the other thing too, if the power is out and it's gonna be days, you probably kind of know early on that there's something major, you know, if it's a small event, they're probably gonna get you back up.

- Yeah, but then I have to get out of bed to plow the drive so that the LP truck can get in.

My goal is when the power goes out, I don't wanna get up.

- Right.

- So, you're gonna have to figure something out which is gonna cost me more money.

- Thousand gallon tank?

- I'm thinking 10.

- That's the LP companies thing.

- Yeah, and we could bury it next to my bunker.

- That would really cost a lot.

- Well, we'll get there.

Are you doing a lot of these?

- We do.

We do couple hundred a year almost.

- Yeah, and you guys do 'em year round.

- Year round.

- Okay, because we have talked to your competition too, and they're like, "Once we get into November, we stop doing 'em because our fingers get cold when we're wiring it."

That's literally what he said to me.

- So, what does he do till spring?

- Maybe he's a farmer.

- Okay.

Well, I mean, the way I look at it, we only do generators.

We don't do anything else.

So, that's kind of unique with us.

There's different HVAC places that'll put a generator in for you that have other means of income.

So, we only do the generators.

Our guys are all full time.

So, if we're not getting cold at your house, we're getting cold somewhere else.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- If it's 20 below and it's the worst day of the year, we're probably gonna reschedule that installation.

But for the most part, we put on warm clothes and we go to work.

- Okay, let's throw my farm out, right?

Let's do an average house.

I don't know what an average house is, ballpark.

What's it gonna cost me to put in a Generac?

- We always say your price range fully installed is six to 9,000.

- Okay.

- So, that includes the equipment, the labor, the gas work, as long as it's natural gas.

If it's LP, your propane company does the hookup and then that's tax and everything.

So most houses, if they're doing a whole house system, they're probably in that seven to eight range.

- Okay.

- You know?

- We went way over that.

- We did.

- I mean, whew, way over that.

- And I remember you saying, "I knew six to nine wasn't right."

- And I was right.

- And I said, "Well, we could have done just," well, you've got the two services.

- Yeah.

- So, you need the 400 amp switch.

If you just had a regular house with a 200 amp service, which is what most people have, then you just have a regular transfer switch, comes in the box with the generator.

You've got a 400 amp, which has to be special ordered from the factory and costs more.

- Yeah.

We have solar panels.

- Mm-hm.

- Does that bother the generator at all or anything special?

- We just have to make sure that when the power goes out, you're not feeding into the solar at the same time that you're doing the backup power.

So, we just have it disconnected during that timeframe.

So, we either work with that on the installation or if it's set up differently than we've seen before, you might have to call your solar company back out to hook it up.

- Okay.

- But, most of the time it's something we can handle.

- JD Belcher Electric, LLC.

Now, you're the owner of it.

Did you start it?

- I did not.

My father started it in 2001.

- [Rob] Okay.

Did it just start as him being an electrician?

- Yes, he was a Caterpillar electrician.

He retired early and he started just electrical business.

And then in 2005 he did his first generator.

He actually had a customer that wanted to work on a generator and he tried to call Generac and they said, "Well you're not a dealer, we can't talk to you."

And he says, "Well, what do I have to do to be a dealer?"

And they said, "Buy one generator."

So, he bought a generator and here we are.

- I imagine that has changed now.

- You know, to get in on an entry level doing generators, you can do that.

But to be at a level that that's all you're doing, you have to do a little bit more than that.

- There's gotta be somebody else.

But I mean, when you're buying one, I mean, and all of a sudden you notice everybody else's and they're always Generac.

- Right.

- But there's gotta be somebody else making 'em, right?

- So, there's Kohler, there's Briggs, but Generac has almost 80% of the standby market.

So, I find most of the time when I have a customer that has three quotes, it's just Generac versus Generac versus Generac.

It's just who do you wanna hire to put in your Generac?

- You guys put in my mom's and I know she does like a, you come out and check it?

- Yearly maintenance.

- Oh, it's just once a year?

- We have three different plans.

Most customers do one visit a year.

- And that, just making sure that.

- So it's a small engine.

So, just like your car, you have to change the oil, you should change the spark plugs, air filter.

- Never done any of that.

- In your car?

- No.

On anything.

- You take it somewhere.

- Yeah.

No, we just drive it until we trade it.

- Until it just blows up.

- I mean, once a year, that's probably a good idea because everybody's like, "Oh, I'm going to do that."

And then you never do it.

- Right.

- And then 12 years later, it doesn't start.

- Well, and it's got a battery in there.

So, that's the most common reason the generator doesn't start is a dead battery.

- Gotcha.

- So, we load test the battery, we check the generator, we clean it inside and out.

They do exercise weekly.

So you know, you will hear it kick on.

You should have a green light that tells you everything's okay.

- Yeah, every Wednesday mom's fires up.

- Yeah, at two o'clock.

- For a little bit.

Is it always Wednesday at 2:00?

- The older generators we're all factory set, Wednesday at 2:00.

Now with the new version, you can hook 'em up to whatever time you want.

You can do once a month, every other week, or weekly.

- Gotcha.

- We prefer weekly.

- Just to make sure.

- Yeah.

Why not?

It's five minutes.

- Yeah.

So, how did you get to be the owner of JD Belcher?

- Well, my dad started it and then I was away, married, my husband at the time was in the military, and he was kind of encouraging, "This generator thing, I think it's gonna take off.

Would you guys wanna come back, you wanna help with this?

I'm getting old, but I think I'm on to something here."

So, I started helping.

My mom would do paperwork with him and I started helping remotely back in 2012.

And then in 2013 I moved back with my two young kids and then started working with him.

And then officially he retired in 2018, but '16, '17, he was sort of taking a backseat and things were starting to go in a different direction.

- Yeah, I remember when my dad retired, that meant he would show up at nine o'clock every morning to my shop and tell me what I'm doing wrong.

And then he would leave.

- Not a fun vibe, huh?

- You guys must be doing all right.

I don't know if you can even see this, but there's an award here.

What's this?

- So, Generac has different levels of dealers.

So, this is the premier level.

It's all on how much you spend with Generac yearly.

So, it resets every year.

So, it was always my goal to be a premier dealer, which at the time was 1 million in sales in a calendar year.

So, in 2016 was the first year that we did this.

- [Rob] Wow.

- And now.

- And this is actually made from diamond.

- Our name's spelled right on this one too.

I've got a few that it's not.

- Oh really?

Well, that's gotta make you feel good that not only that your dad built a successful company, but then you and your husband have taken it to a next level.

Because your husband had generator experience too, right?

- Yes, so I actually met my husband at a sales class.

So, he was working for a generator dealer up in Highland Park, Illinois, GenX Generators.

So, I mean they do a lot of generators and he'd been with Generators since 1999.

S, he had a lot of experience there.

And we met through Generators and kind of talked a little off and on and then we ended up dating long distance and then getting married.

- Are generators romantic?

- They can be.

- Apparently, for two people anyway.

- Right.

- You were in the military?

- I was, I did one tour in the Navy.

- In the Navy.

- Yes.

- Okay.

Generally when people get into military, it's because their family was in it.

Was that the case with you?

- I was just, I graduated high school, I went to ICC.

I was in a court reporting program and I just wasn't- - Stenographer?

What is it?

What did you say.

- With the little, the court reporter.

- I never understood how those work 'cause it's not a real keyboard, right?

- They're weird, definitely.

- Did you know how to do that?

- I did.

Yeah.

- Really?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

You have to teach people.

- I don't think I could even attempt it now - You couldn't do it anymore.

- 'Cause it's a combination of all of the, and you have to be a really fast typist.

- I always thought that people that were doing it just basically were putting gibberish on there because nobody reads the stuff.

- Well ,and when you look at it, it is gibberish.

When it prints out, the old machines, by the time I was doing it, they kept talking about how technology was gonna take it over.

- Yeah.

- And I thought, why am I here then?

- [Rob] You ever talked to your phone?

Yeah, that's gonna work well.

- Right, right.

- All right, Navy.

You went into the Navy.

- Yes.

- Yeah, we were talking about why.

- Uh-huh.

- You were at ICC.

- Yes.

- And then I interrupted.

- Uh-huh, I just got a phone call one day from a recruiter and at the time when I was in high school, you would take ASVABs and they would publish those scores to the recruiters and they could call you.

So, I had scored highly.

They gave me a phone call, said, "Hey, why don't you come in?

We'll just have lunch.

We'll talk about the Navy."

And I thought, eh, what can it hurt?

I'm bored.

I'll go have lunch.

Well, I never got lunch, but I joined the Navy.

- You never got lunch?

- Never got the lunch.

Never got the lunch.

- I'm telling you right now, I think the Navy owes you, I don't know, a Subway.

- At least a free lunch.

Right?

- At least a six inch.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

And what did you do in the Navy?

- I was a interior communications electrician.

- Okay, I don't know what that is.

- It's basically just small wires like phone systems, alarm systems.

- Bombs?

- No, nothing that exciting.

No.

- Bombs.

- Nope, no bombs.

- Why are you winking at me?

Did you like it?

- I did, yeah.

- Yeah.

- I met my husband at the time, my ex-husband, and I got out, we wanted to have kids.

I didn't wanna stay in and do the kids and military at the same time.

- You've got two kids?

- I do.

- And one of 'em just joined.

- Yes.

My oldest joined the Navy this year right after high school.

So, he's stationed in Pensacola.

- Now it's different, right?

Now, I mean you were in the Navy, but now it's your kid.

Is that nerve-wracking?

- Even though both his parents had the background, it's not something we really talked about a lot with him.

He got the idea he wanted to do it and he was all about it and I think he'll do well.

- Yeah, are you watching like all the world events now and going, oh boy.

- I always felt like the Navy is kind of the safest service to be in.

I mean even if you're on a ship, it's like everybody else's job to make sure your ship doesn't get hit.

- Wow.

- As opposed to like being the Army on the ground or a Marine.

I've never really thought of the Navy as being as dangerous of a service.

- See, all I think is like the SEALs.

- Oh well, he's not a seal, thankfully.

- Yet.

- No.

- Alright, back back to the generators.

Now, if someone is thinking about doing this, what do they need to know?

I mean, what is something that keeps people from getting generators on their house?

- I think a lot of people think it's gonna be too expensive.

They think it's gonna be 15, $20,000.

Yours was less than that.

- We aren't done with it yet either.

- Or just thinking maybe their house isn't a good fit.

I've run into that a lot.

Well, I have an all-electric house and I just can't have a generator.

I've talked to somebody else and my house isn't a good fit, or my gas is on this side, my electric's on this side, it's not possible.

- Yeah, well like our house, I still won't have water 'cause it's, I mean, whatever.

- Yeah.

- I just wanna charge my phone and watch Netflix.

- There you go, and not leave your house.

- And not, we could store water.

So, what's the future?

Are you just gonna continue to grow?

- I would like to.

We can't really go much further geographically than we already do, but I think for every house that has a generator, there is probably more houses that don't have generators.

- Oh yeah.

- And it's definitely grown in the last few years.

I don't know if you remember in 2020, well 2019, we had that derecho.

Do you remember that?

- Mm-hm.

- So, that really kind of spurred a lot of people into generators that didn't have 'em before 'cause places like the city of Princeton were without power for four days.

- Yeah.

Is that how you say it, derecho?

- Derecho.

- Or derecko?

- I say it derecho, hopefully I'm right.

- That's when I grew up it was always boom slang, a boom slang's coming, but now all of a sudden we're derecho.

- Everything's got a name now.

- I know, it's confusing.

It does seem to be a very popular recently, within like the last five years.

Do you think that has something to do with the price point coming down?

- Not really.

I mean, I think the price point has gone up in the last few years.

Especially with COVID and then shortages.

Generators are made in Wisconsin, so they are in the United States and they have another plant in I think it's Trenton that they opened this year.

- [Rob] Okay.

- But there's still components sourced overseas and everything seems to have gone up lately.

- That's right.

- They do try to keep it down to keep it affordable.

- I paid $8 for a dozen eggs the other day.

Not even joking.

- Organic hopefully?

- I didn't know, no, they weren't.

They were at a convenience store.

- Farm raised?

- No, they weren't.

I didn't know what they cost.

Emily told me to get eggs, I got eggs.

Where can people find out more about JD Belcher?

- We have a website.

You could go to jdgenerators.com, a little bit on Facebook.

If someone wants an estimate, we do free estimates.

So, the best way if you're interested in a generator is just give us a call.

We'll come out to your house.

There's no pressure sales.

- [Rob] You were pretty high pressure.

I'm like, "I'm not sure we're gonna do this."

You're like, "Well, if you wanna leave your family in the cold, go right ahead Mr. Sharkey.

Here's your bill."

No, it's been fun to to work with you and I'm glad you came on the show because this is something that does help out rural America and in town too.

But, definitely us out in the farm that have to wait several days to get our power back.

So, I appreciate you coming on.

I appreciate you helping power the world.

So yes, JD Belcher Electric, LLC, go check them out.

Thank you so much for being on.

Everybody else, we'll catch you next time.

(upbeat music)