Otter Ai

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I see according to LinkedIn and such that you're general manager, and you've been
the GM for quite a while, it sounds like.

A little over 13 years. I guess.

That's great. So, given you've been in the industry and around it for so long,
what would you say is exciting about the industry? Not right now? Is there anything
in particular?

I don't know about exciting. The driver shortage is definitely the biggest
challenge right now.

Is that worse than it has been in the past?

Oh, significantly worse. Since COVID, there's hardly a school district that doesn't
have a problem with driver shortage.

Is it getting drivers initially or keeping them? Or are both of those?

I suspect is both of those. A lot of opportunities right now for prospective
employees to do other things, districts are getting real aggressive. Why? I guess
what the biggest problem is they're going outside of the district and doing other
things. Driving school buses isn't always the easiest job, 50 of those little
Rugrats behind you.

Right. A school started back up and your district in your area?

Yes, almost every district has started already. And is it in person?

For the most part. I think there are few options. But Texas is fairly well mandated
districts offer person to person.

Okay. Did you experience anything with bus orders or anything like that given
COVID?

Kind of all over the board. Depending on the customer, some customers actually
found a way to buy more buses, a lot of customers put purchases on hold just
depends on the customer. So we will deliver less buses this year than we did last
year. It has hurt us a little bit.

What's your is your-- what's your primary bus that you're-- isn't the CQ?

CQ is our primary bus.
All right. So the driver shortage is a challenge. Are there other challenges? And
then, anything that comes to mind is positive?

Positives? Well, that's a good question there. There's a lot of luck about the
industry. I don't know if I could really-- I don't know what that would be.

I'll just bring up a topic that I've heard a lot about, which is electrification.
What's your perception of that and the impact that's going to have on the industry?
And I'd like to talk a little bit about your customers and how they feel about
electrification in general?

Well, there's always some nervousness about change. But the biggest thing holding
back the electrification in Texas is just on the financial side. Right now, well,
districts aren't going to pay close to $400,000 for a bus, they can get diesel one
for just over 100,000, unless there is grant money, and there's financing attached
to it. We've quoted some electric buses out, we don't have any orders. I think
Texas is behind some states when it comes to issuing the grant money for those.

There's no remedy now?

Nothing is truly dedicated towards school buses.

Okay, got it. So besides the funding part of it, have you heard anything from your
customers about hesitancies or opportunities when it comes to the idea of electric?

Besides cost, the other piece of it, and I guess cost can be thrown into the
picture, it's the infrastructure side of it, and the challenges of getting the
infrastructure, trying to coordinate that with all the different parties associated
with what it needs to take to install infrastructure.

Do you think that's going to be something moving forward? Will be electrification
of the industry?

As long as the government entities really push it? Yes, I definitely think it will.
The more difficult you make the diesel engine emissions, and the more costly that
becomes, makes it easier to move. So it goes both ways, I suppose. Making it harder
to buy diesel for customers, and if they can make it easier to buy electric, then
they'll go that direction.

So do you see that happening and diesels becoming harder?

Well, if the standards stay the way they are now, the diesel engine will change and
it will become significantly more expensive.

More expensive to make it qualify for the EPA emission standards?
Correct. So customers will either have a choice to go gasoline, which will probably
still be around and be a cost effective manner, or they'll push to the electric
side if they can get the funding to help justify it.

When it comes to electrification, do you think they're well positioned?

I think they have some of the best engineering and product available
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