Episode 121
The Container Guru: Transforming Spaces with Shipping Containers
The episode prominently features Luke Crosthwaite, a distinguished expert in the realm of container construction, who elucidates the multifaceted advantages of container homes. With a wealth of experience in custom building and innovative design, Luke articulates how these structures not only offer a sustainable alternative to traditional housing but also provide flexibility and cost-effectiveness. Throughout our discourse, we explore the evolution of shelter from rudimentary forms to advanced, environmentally conscious solutions, emphasizing the growing acceptance of container living within mainstream society. Luke shares insights into the practicalities of constructing these homes, as well as the potential for developing container communities designed to assist vulnerable populations, such as homeless veterans. This episode serves as an informative guide for those contemplating a more sustainable lifestyle through container home living, while also addressing common misconceptions and practical considerations in the building process.
Takeaways:
- Container homes represent a sustainable alternative to traditional housing, offering innovative designs and efficient living spaces.
- Understanding local building codes and permitting processes is crucial for successful container home construction and development.
- The evolution of container homes reflects a broader trend towards eco-friendly living and repurposing materials to reduce waste.
- Key considerations in container home design include cost efficiency, structural integrity, and the integration of modern utilities and amenities.
- The rise of container communities highlights the potential for affordable housing solutions that address homelessness and transitional living needs.
- Craftsmanship and transparency in construction practices enhance trust and satisfaction among clients in custom home building.
Links referenced in this episode:
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Boxcar Universe
- Crosthwaite Custom Construction
- Ideal Home Improvement
- Legacy Custom Homes AZ
- Stardust Building Supplies
- I Foam
- Container Home University
- Cavco
Transcript
All right, Boxcar Universe fans, meet Luke Crosswait, the container guru.
Speaker A:This guy knows everything about containers, inside and out, and he's going to show us just how far you could take him.
Speaker A:Let's get started.
Speaker A:Since the dawn of time, mankind has searched for ways to shelter themselves from the elements.
Speaker A:Over the centuries, these shelters have evolved from bamboo huts to concrete towers.
Speaker A:The last few years, there's been a push to save the planet.
Speaker A:Are you ready to embark on a more sustainable lifestyle?
Speaker A:Look no further.
Speaker A:You're about to enter the adventures of container home living.
Speaker A:And now, contractor, radio and TV personality and your host for Boxcar Universe, Steve Dubel.
Speaker A:Hi, I'm Steve Dubell, host of Boxcar Universe.
Speaker A:And here's what's coming up on this week's edition of Boxcar.
Speaker A:We're joined by Luke Crossway, owner of Crossway Custom Construction.
Speaker A:Luke is a skilled builder specializing in custom homes, high end remodels and innovative multi container dwellings.
Speaker A:With a focus on craftsmanship and creative design, he transforms bold ideas into reality.
Speaker A:Whether it's a one of a kind dream home, a complete renovation, or a sustainable alternative living space built from shipping containers.
Speaker A:Luke has the complete scoop on how you can get a container home for your family.
Speaker A:All that and more on this week's edition of Boxcar Universe, your home for sustainable lifestyle living.
Speaker A:And I'd like to welcome everyone to Boxcar Universe this week.
Speaker A:And we are, it's hard to believe we are just past Labor Day here and we're heading into the fall and I think it's time that everyone is going to be starting thinking about things that they would like to do on their property.
Speaker A:I know we've got a tremendous amount of inquiries about people and people interested in doing some kind of casita or small 20 foot container home where they can put it on their property for their family member or their or possibly use it for a VRBO for additional income.
Speaker A:The other thing too is that speaking to several investors that they are interested in building multifamily container home communities, which is one of the things that I am interested in to be able to reach out to our homeless veterans and provide a community for them because obviously they risk their lives to serve our country and we surely, I think it's a crime that they should have to be on the street homeless.
Speaker A:So we'd like to reach out to any investors that are interested in that mission to please contact me, Steve @BoxCarUniverse right here on the show and we'll give you some other contact information here later on in the program, but we want to welcome Luke into the show today.
Speaker A:Luke, thank you so much for being here today.
Speaker A:First time on boxcar universe.
Speaker A:Welcome.
Speaker B:Hey, thanks, Steve.
Speaker B:Thanks for having me.
Speaker A:It's great to have you here.
Speaker A:As I said in the, in, in the show open monologue, you know, you've got quite experiment.
Speaker A:You've got a lot of experience in renovation, construction, as well as, you know, working on container homes.
Speaker A:So why don't you give our listeners.
Speaker B:A little.
Speaker A:Some bio information on you and your company.
Speaker B:Sure.
Speaker B:So I started this crazy idea about eight years ago now, But I've been building homes for over 20 years now.
Speaker B:And so I grew up on a big cattle ranch, and we gave roping and riding lessons to the president of a very large custom home building company.
Speaker B:And somebody, thank goodness, was had the good sense to teach me something other than team roping for a living.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:And so I learned how to build houses when I was about 18 years old and went on to take advantage of all the schooling and accreditation stuff that, that the, the company would.
Speaker B:Would provide and became the youngest project manager they had ever seen.
Speaker B:And probably that's ever, ever been.
Speaker B:And you know, I totally admit I got help every step of the way on all that stuff.
Speaker B:I got juiced in and I was happy to have it.
Speaker B:And so I sort of have a unique background that most people wouldn't have in the construction world.
Speaker B:Most people spend 20 years in the trenches and then they go, maybe go work for a corporate, you know, builder.
Speaker B:I kind of did that backwards.
Speaker B:I started with a corporate builder, and then when the market took a big crash about 15 years ago or so, I. I went into the trenches.
Speaker B:So kind of, kind of reverso deal.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And so I took the good stuff from both worlds.
Speaker B:I took the good stuff from the corporate world and cut out all the.
Speaker B:All the mess.
Speaker B:And I took the good stuff from the privateer guys that I learned from, worked, you know, literally built houses from the ground up with my own two hands.
Speaker B:Worked for a guy up by the Canadian border that we built the trusses and everything with, you know, no nail guns.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So did it the hard way.
Speaker A:No nail guns.
Speaker B:No nail guns.
Speaker A:Oh, no.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:We would strip the form boards, we would straighten nails.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:And put them back.
Speaker B:So I.
Speaker B:When I say I worked for privateers, you know, I mean that in the most organic sense.
Speaker B:You know, like, we really built houses from the ground up by.
Speaker B:With our hands, kind of old fashioned style.
Speaker B:So I learned, I learned both of those ways.
Speaker B:And that is what sort of led me down this path where I have enough business acumen to do what I do.
Speaker B:So it's, it's a unique set of circumstances.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think it's so important when you, when you have the, the knowledge of both worlds and I don't care which way you start it is, but I think for where, where we are right now, it was important to have that hands on experience to be able to know what's the best way to proceed and then also stay on top of.
Speaker A:Obviously, you know, the building methods have changed over the years and especially, you know, going back, even though container homes have been used or containers have been used, you know, by the military for many, many years, I don't think they really came into mainstream American society until we'll say, you know, maybe 10, 15 years ago possibly, you know, so it in the more and more people see it and they use it and more the municipalities get familiar with those types of homes.
Speaker A:I think it's only going to keep growing, especially like we were talking yesterday, that some people, they're interested in building container communities and multi family homes built out of containers, which is something I really want to get into here during the show today.
Speaker A:But doing that regular construction work, I mean I'm so, I'm sure that from the time that you got into it and got your business started, you've seen a tremendous change in just materials, not just from a standpoint of quality, but also in price.
Speaker B:Oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:That is specifically why I rely on my cost plus method of building.
Speaker B:There's just too many variables, especially when you're doing custom stuff like this.
Speaker B:It's really the only way to, to build in my, in my opinion.
Speaker A:So, you know, and I think like you said, more people are so cost conscience and, and again, you know, this is one of the reasons that I started the radio show and started doing TV is because people, our profession as contractors have a bad rap because a lot of people look at this because so many people are out there that were contracting and doing bad deals, weren't honest, you know, and forthcoming and they tried to take the homeowner for everything that they could get.
Speaker A:And it just puts a bad, bad light on all of us who, who want to take and hold that customer in high esteem because they're the people that we're trying to work for.
Speaker A:I mean, good jobs and happy customers create more referrals.
Speaker A:I mean, so I don't know why anybody would try and do a bad job unless they were just out scamming people.
Speaker A:And unfortunately there Are a lot of people out there scamming?
Speaker B:Well, what happens is they never quantified anything.
Speaker B:They just came up with a number that sounded good.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:So, yeah.
Speaker A:And then stick your finger to the wind and they, oh, that sounds good.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:You know, and then they find out halfway through that number was not what they thought maybe it was.
Speaker B:And the first thing to get thrown off the ship is craftsmanship.
Speaker B:And they have to start stealing back every loss, you know, now, now.
Speaker B:And so you're sacrificing material quality, craftsmanship, quality and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker B:So, you know, I, I learned, I, because I went back when I was cutting my teeth in this business, I, you know, I, I, I'm on the spectrum, right.
Speaker B:So, so I, I noticed a lot of little things going on, and I could notice the, you know, expression in people's faces change and things like that.
Speaker B:When pricing, we would go over pricing.
Speaker B:You know, a lot of the time they don't know sometimes I'm making nothing on parts, you know, because it doesn't seem like I can.
Speaker B:Right, right.
Speaker B:And so I just came up, I thought, what if I just show them?
Speaker B:Why don't I show them?
Speaker B:You know, just lift the curtain up and show them.
Speaker B:Here's what it is.
Speaker B:You know, plumbing cost is going to cost X, framing cost X, add it all.
Speaker B:Because what are you really paying me to do?
Speaker B:You're paying me to project manage.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:I don't, I don'.
Speaker B:I don't.
Speaker B:I'm not out there physically nailing boards together myself anymore.
Speaker B:I started my company that way.
Speaker B:I did all the trades myself.
Speaker B:But, you know, scalability is something we're going to talk about in this podcast.
Speaker B:So if I'm going to build them like that, that's cool.
Speaker B:But I can only do about one a year.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:So you're not going to scale too fast?
Speaker B:Yeah, I'm not going to scale.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So, yeah, so, so I learned that, that although I did, you know, I used to do all everything myself, concrete baseboards, everything, I learned that if I want to have any scalability, it makes more sense to remove myself from all that stuff.
Speaker B:There's only so many boards I can nail together in a day and just be the quarterback on this stuff.
Speaker B:And then, you know, every, everything can kind of, if you hire licensed subs for every phase of it, because it's a specialty product.
Speaker A:Right, sure.
Speaker B:So, so that keeps the craftsmanship there where guys can go really wrong in this business if they think they're going to have in house employees, you know, on an hourly wage or whatever.
Speaker B:Well, when they put in your baseboard in it upside down and you call them back to fix it, they're gonna go, I quit, or whatever.
Speaker B:And then they're gonna blame it on you because you didn't hug them enough last week or didn't buy them lunch or whatever.
Speaker B:Somehow it's your fault.
Speaker B:Of course they put it in wrong.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah.
Speaker B:And they just quit.
Speaker B:They're not gonna have any integrity and come fix it.
Speaker B:But if you have a.
Speaker B:A good subcontractor that's solid with or without you, you know.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:He doesn't, he's not relying on me.
Speaker B:I'm not relying on them.
Speaker B:It's a fair trade situation.
Speaker B:If there's an issue, they come fix it.
Speaker B:You know, they've got some skin in the game.
Speaker B:They're licensed, they're insured.
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker B:So that's, that's what I rely on.
Speaker B:Then you're paying me.
Speaker B:Instead of being a coyote and always looking for it, I buy it for five and sell it to them for 10.
Speaker B:I can just be transparent and we can talk to the electrician, we can talk to the plumber together.
Speaker B:It's a beautiful thing.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I mean, I think that's so important too, because the people are.
Speaker A: I think, I think in: Speaker A:And like you say, and when you're transparent and say, here it is, and you tell them what your markup and profit is and, and then they could.
Speaker A:They know.
Speaker A:I think if somebody, if you do that and other people try and bid against you and maybe don't do it that way, I think you've got an advantage over it because you're.
Speaker A:You're more transparent.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:100%.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And what helps, though, is that I'm designing the houses too.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So I can quantify every nut and bolt into it.
Speaker B:So, you know, there I. I start.
Speaker B:First question out of my mouth is, is what's your budget?
Speaker B:Because that establishes the parameters that I can paint within.
Speaker B:So then I can design their house to X square footage.
Speaker B:Being able to quantify every nut and bolt in the place allows me to produce a spreadsheet.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Then those drawings can go out preliminary to all the contractors that would do it.
Speaker B:Framing all the way down to the finished hardware.
Speaker B:I can show you, here's what it's going to actually cost.
Speaker B:Where most people are just kind of like.
Speaker B:And then I think it might work today, but it might not later.
Speaker B:And then what happens is the timeline, you know, the pricing today might be different from.
Speaker B:By the time we get your permits issued, you know, the whole world might look different.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah.
Speaker B:You know, so.
Speaker A:So especially if you're going through Scottsdale.
Speaker B:Yeah, especially.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:You know, that's a perfect example.
Speaker B:Actually.
Speaker B:Scottsdale doesn't matter.
Speaker B:If you build a dog house over there, you got to put in fire sprinklers, you know, so boom, there's 20 grand or who, whatever it is, you know, straight off the bat, design fees and all this kind of stuff, you know, and that, that's kind of you.
Speaker B:We'll get into this in a minute.
Speaker B:But it's.
Speaker B:The price point is one thing, but then the timeline paired with it makes for a real pickle these days with, with the smaller products.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So it's pretty amazing.
Speaker A:But we're going to get into all that good stuff.
Speaker A:But we're going to take a short break now.
Speaker A:When we come back, we're going to be talking more with Luke Crosswait and all the different things that he does for a living.
Speaker A:Remodeling, renovation, and then we'll get into some.
Speaker A:Definitely get into some container stuff because I know that's what a lot of us are tuning in for.
Speaker A:So I want everybody to hang tight.
Speaker A:You're listening to Boxcar Universe.
Speaker A:Looking to transform your space with over 30 years of construction experience and featured on radio and TV.
Speaker A:Ideal home improvement and legacy custom homes AZ does it all, from repairs, remodeling and restorations to new builds, container homes and container pools.
Speaker A:Plus cutting edge solar systems to help homeowners save money on their utility bills.
Speaker A:Hi, I'm Steve Dubell.
Speaker A:Let us help you design and build your dream home with the expertise that comes from decades of experience in the business.
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Speaker A: -: Speaker A:All right, we are back and you're listening to Boxcar Universe.
Speaker A:And with us today is Luke Crosswait from Crossway Custom Construction.
Speaker A:And we are talking home remodel renovations and container homes.
Speaker A:And for those of you who are interested in container homes as well as I want to remind everybody thinking about container pools, even though we are coming down out of the summer season.
Speaker A:But I think there is, it's never a bad time to get a pool, you know, especially if you want something unique and be able to design something for your backyard.
Speaker A:I know that with the ones that we've had where we could put them above ground, in ground, you could put them in the side of a hill.
Speaker A:If you're on a property that has a sloped hill, be able to do build a deck around it with possibly patio roof on it and just basically tie it into your landscape design in your backyard and make it fully functional.
Speaker A:And then obviously one of the best advantages of container pools is that if you ever decide that you want to move to a different home, you can take it with you and it's fully movable.
Speaker A:So it's not like when you do an in ground pool.
Speaker A:It's there for life.
Speaker A:And when you sell a house, you sell a pool.
Speaker A:But you can always take the pool if you so desire.
Speaker A:So if you'd like to see what those 20 foot container pools look like, you can always see over at my friend's shed lot known as the Shed gal over on 99th Avenue and Thomas Road.
Speaker A:So make sure you make your way over there and tell them that you heard all about it on Boxcar Universe.
Speaker A:But we want to get back into our conversation with Luke Crosswait and Luke, you know, talking during the break.
Speaker A:I think it's important that some people have misconceptions about obviously about what a container home is, not to mention like, well, they think it's too small until they really get inside a finished one.
Speaker A:Then they have a different point of view because they see it's like a regular home, it's just configured differently.
Speaker A:But I think in the way of from a cost perspective, I think it's important because they and I can identify with a remodeling story I'll share with you later about.
Speaker A:Somebody says, well I got, I have so much money, let's build a container home.
Speaker A:You know, like I say, I only have ten grand.
Speaker A:What could you do for me for ten grand?
Speaker B:Nothing.
Speaker A:Not a whole lot.
Speaker A:Nothing.
Speaker B:Yeah, well, it's, it's a, it's a big world, the construction industry and there's a lot of nuances that you know, would be impossible for a civilian to understand.
Speaker B:And that's why we have jobs.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So, so the truth is that is a big responsibility on us and our roles to communicate and tell people about the process.
Speaker B:And it's kind of provide some job security in a sense.
Speaker B:For example, permitting.
Speaker B:You know, I get a lot of calls because people have started the process and find out how torturous it is and immediately want to tap out and you know, find somebody that they can call to take care of it.
Speaker B:You get into things like, you know, different areas have different zoning, different.
Speaker B:They're running on different code book versions.
Speaker B: n Arizona that are running on: Speaker A:Really?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B: oing to be switching it up to: Speaker B:You know, things are always evolving and so different areas have different requirements.
Speaker B:But basically there's a big difference between legitimate builders and people that are, that are making their money off of YouTube.
Speaker B:You know, and so what happens is people see cute content from somebody with no license, no permit, no engineering, just, you know, and that kind of can be, that can be okay somewhat for like a single container.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:If you're.
Speaker B:And that's really the most efficient way to use them.
Speaker B:Is is the truth is as a single, that's the most cost effective, most efficient way to use them.
Speaker B:Once you start putting them together, you know, that's when the cost is no longer so effective.
Speaker B:If things start going up in, in fabrication, engineering costs.
Speaker B:You know, if I'm going to build you a stick home, I can do all the drawings myself because I can pull from a database that's very commonly used.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:I can go on TJI website and I got a 20 foot span, here's the one that's required for that.
Speaker B:And I can put that on the plans, no engineer required.
Speaker B:But once we get into containers, a certain amount of structural engineering has to be provided and that always costs more, takes longer than people real.
Speaker B:So I wind up getting calls from these people that have been completely misled by people posting stuff.
Speaker B:You know, there's some places you can build without a permit.
Speaker B:Like here, if you go down to Cochise county, you can actually build a house without a permit.
Speaker A:Really?
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker B:Now you can't hardly sell it.
Speaker B:You know, there's.
Speaker B:There's other things that come along with that, you know, but there are places that still exist where you can build a house without a permit.
Speaker B:So it's just.
Speaker B:It's just sort of, again, provides.
Speaker B:That's why I'm now the container guru.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So if you need somebody that can be like the wolf in Pulp Fiction, remember, he makes problems go away.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's what I do, you know, Call me, and the problems just go away.
Speaker A:That's right.
Speaker A:That's the way to be.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:But that happened by accident out of just trial and error trying to do this thing is.
Speaker B:Is.
Speaker B:I just come, totally accidentally fell into this thing where I. I went to school in.
Speaker B:In San Clemente and learned how to.
Speaker B:Back when, you know, we had graphite pencils and real drafting tables.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah, I remember those.
Speaker A:I went through drafting class.
Speaker A:I remember.
Speaker B:Luckily, I had that tool in my back pocket all the time.
Speaker B:And what happened was, is.
Speaker B:Is we ran into the impossible permitting process in the modular world, because when containers were still kind of a renegade, it seemed like we'd sneak them in through the modular route.
Speaker B:Right, right.
Speaker B:And then I found out it's easier to just close a finger in a car door than it is to pull a permit with modular.
Speaker B:You know, just that.
Speaker B:Just right away, throw a couple years at it.
Speaker B:You know, it's more like getting a car ready for the road, you know, for manufacturing, than it is trying to build a house.
Speaker B:And they're just completely swamped and understaffed.
Speaker B:And the bit of staff they do have is.
Speaker B:Is, let's say, inexperienced.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:Yeah, they're not educated as well as they should be.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:You know, it's just.
Speaker B:It just doesn't work.
Speaker B:And so what I finally learned was I can do all the drafting myself and I can permit them as a normal house because there are certain individuals that just have a certain personality.
Speaker B:I just ran to one up in Clarkdale and talked to one of the building officials up there, and they almost just immediately got mean and aggressive at just the mention of containers.
Speaker A:Oh, my God.
Speaker B:Because what's happened sometimes is you'll get one of these people that have came in with their crayon drawings and say, dugga, Dugga Me want live in containers, you know, out in the middle of nowhere, whatever, and they make some demands and they're not happy with what the building officials have to say and they sort of leave it at that.
Speaker B:Then I come along a year or two later and they've already had this exchange.
Speaker B:You know, they think container people are a little crazy or whatever.
Speaker B:They don't realize.
Speaker B:I have it down to a science.
Speaker B:But sometimes I run into these personalities.
Speaker B:They hear containers and they're just like, no, we're not going to build it.
Speaker B:You know, if it was a container at one point in its life, well then how can it be, you know, what do you say about trees?
Speaker B:You know, wouldn't that lumber a tree at one point?
Speaker B:Well, it was milled into a building product.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:It was transformed.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:That's what you're doing.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So I tell people all the time there's no such thing as container homes.
Speaker B:Container homes do not exist.
Speaker B:I have simply taken a material that I believe is, is, is a better resource than our, our, you know, lumber.
Speaker B:I do think we have to do a lot of logging to maintain our forestry because if you don't log it, it's going to burn anyways.
Speaker B:You know, there's a certain amount of responsibility we have there.
Speaker B:I'm not saying just, you know, neglect that part of it and let the trees grow.
Speaker B:There's, you know, there's a couple dynamics of that whole, whole argument.
Speaker B:But I do think that it's a smart idea to be repurposing what would normally just kind of go in a landfill.
Speaker B:They don't know what to do with these things a lot of the time.
Speaker A:I know there's so many that come over from overseas.
Speaker A:It's just like, where are they going?
Speaker A:I mean, you, I don't think that you could go anywhere, at least as, as long as I can remember and not see where somebody used a container for storage.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean, in a lot, mostly commercial, but there are homes now that they, you know, that people, they, instead of building a shed, they're like, oh, I'll get a 20 foot container and put it in the corner of my property.
Speaker A:You know, I mean, they're right.
Speaker A:It's solid, it's strong, it's not going to fall down.
Speaker B:You know, it's a beautiful thing.
Speaker B:But, you know, we come, you and I are old enough to remember what the world was like before Internet.
Speaker B:Remember when people said it would be a fad?
Speaker A:Oh, yeah.
Speaker A:Oh, wait, I was, wait a minute, it was before.
Speaker A:Oh, that's before Al Gore.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:You know, okay.
Speaker B:Y2K and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker B:You know what I mean?
Speaker B:So, so things evolve.
Speaker B:And I think that we're, we've, we've evolved past the primate phase of container homes and we're starting to walk upright a little bit because we're in the building code, you know, and we're getting, for every time we produce a, a home that's a flagship in the ground for the whole container home community.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Because now we have comps.
Speaker A:Right, Exactly.
Speaker A:That's what, that's what I ran into too, where the realtors would turn around or the mortgage people would turn around.
Speaker A:Okay, so where's the comps for what you're building in the neighborhood?
Speaker B:It goes back to that stigma where they see, they see a container and they just want to force a label on it.
Speaker B:It is a container.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:No, it's just a home.
Speaker B:On your appraiser sheet, you should have a box.
Speaker B:You check for brick, stucco, siding.
Speaker B:Well, there's one for steel barndominiums and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker B:You know, you don't say that.
Speaker B:That's a tree built house, right?
Speaker B:Oh, this house was built of trees.
Speaker B:So we need to appraise it differently.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:It's right.
Speaker B:But, but, but this is where we're at.
Speaker A:It's called common sense.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And yet people are rooted in that old theory of the, well, this is the way it was.
Speaker A:And you hear, we come along with this new, this new idea and it's, it's, it's great.
Speaker A:I mean, it's a great idea to be able to use.
Speaker A:And everybody started being more, you know, green and, and using it and being sustainable.
Speaker A:Well, yeah, well, why not embrace it instead of trying to push it away?
Speaker A:Like that guy up in Clarkdale.
Speaker A:Yeah, he, he just didn't want to know immediately.
Speaker B:Mad and, and you know, and then they find out, you know, like over in Phoenix, my nine units that I started working on three years ago for permitting.
Speaker B:And when you get in these commercial jobs, there's civil engineering and all this other wild stuff, you know, parking.
Speaker B:It has to go through a whole science and a board of review, administrators, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So it takes a lot longer.
Speaker B:But they told me I wouldn't get permits.
Speaker B:You know, containers.
Speaker B:No, we'll never do that.
Speaker B:Now I've got the mayor helping me out and everything else over there because it's a sustainable build, it's affordable.
Speaker B:Also, it's nine studio apartments that's within, it's a less than a mile from the light rail.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:So there's all kind of benefits that come along with that.
Speaker B:But you know, there's like the, the, the Goodyear house that you liked, right?
Speaker B:Yeah, I get.
Speaker B:Look at the comments on that.
Speaker B:The thing's just hitting 100,000 views right now.
Speaker B:It's been pretty nice with the comments.
Speaker B:A lot of different things and people on there making negative, like, oh, you know, what does this do for the community?
Speaker B:As in, as in the home doesn't look nice enough.
Speaker B:Oh, you know, so it's amazing how people will force their ideas on other people.
Speaker A:People.
Speaker B:You know, this is America where we're allowed to do things we don't have to be.
Speaker B:You know, like that song Tiny Boxes, Remember that old song made out of ticky tacky.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:You know, it does look a little weird for me because like I came from a ranch, right.
Speaker B:I grew up on the Irvine Ranch, SO0 neighbors.
Speaker B:This is back before.
Speaker B:So I used to gather cattle where the Irvine Spectrum is now.
Speaker B:So, okay, so all those shopping centers and huge housing developments I helped build later on in life, which is kind of ironic, but I grew up with zero neighbors is like, like whatsoever, right?
Speaker B:Very, very, very old fashioned.
Speaker B:But when I went to town, it was Orange county, you know, when I went to school, it was Orange County.
Speaker B:And so for me now, trying to integrate into the regular world, you know, in the suburbs and stuff, I've got a family now and I'm in the burbs and, and it's really weird to me that we all live in these little, you know, if you take away the cute little hoa landscaping and stuff, we're in government barracks essentially, you know, is really what it is.
Speaker B:You've been tricked into thinking it's something else, but when you can hear your neighbor snoring, you know, Right.
Speaker B:It's what are we really doing here?
Speaker B:So you get into these off grid ideas and stuff.
Speaker B:And so now with the container homes, that's why I've started to integrate gardening tech to them, hydroponics, aeroponics, and the Kratky method.
Speaker B:So that if you put atmospheric water generation along with that, now you have a truly sustainable house.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Because if it's one thing to build a sustainable home, but if you're still handcuffed to Walmart, you're not so sustainable.
Speaker B:I can cut off your supply.
Speaker B:Right, right.
Speaker B:But if it's actually producing food and water on its own, that's the definition of sustainable.
Speaker B:And that's kind of where I'm trying to go.
Speaker A:Yeah, And I think that's really great because I know and in the past I've had people on from freight farms where they actually have 40 foot containers where they're doing hydroponic vertical grow, grow.
Speaker A:And I think they said, if I remember correctly, I think he said, I mean it was incredible when I heard, I think they can grow 800 heads of lettuce in a 40 foot container in one week.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:I mean it's just, it's just incredible.
Speaker A:So the amount of food that you could grow, not just to mention sustainable.
Speaker A:I mean if you have that hydroponics and expand on it if you want to, you can create your own like local business.
Speaker A:And some of them supply, I know down where the container freight farm unit is down in University of Arizona, they supply some of the local municipalities and I think some food banks with some of the food that they grow.
Speaker A:So it's, it's amazing how, how this can grow and help not just for something you like, but to be able to reach out and help the community.
Speaker A:And I think that's, that's what it's all about, really.
Speaker B:Yeah, I, I couldn't agree more.
Speaker B:You know, let's talk about the truth behind all this stuff is dictated by cigar chomping CEOs that have set these practices in place because that's what they had their money wrapp in.
Speaker B:It's not necessarily that it was the most sustainable or best practice.
Speaker B:You know, this stuff goes back to Rothschild, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker B:Our curriculum that, you know, teaches people to be a good employee rather than, you know, actually think and problem solve.
Speaker B:And so, yeah, the methods that we use today to build homes are not the best.
Speaker B:It's what was profitable by the guys that put it in place at that time and they kept going with it.
Speaker B:And here we are now, we live in these little, you know, cooked air houses with this, you know, I'm.
Speaker B:People can't see what am I. I'm making an eighth of an inch here of stucco and then this chicken wire and Styrofoam and some sticks and you're paying a half a million starting price for it.
Speaker B:So you can hear your neighbor yell at his dog or whatever.
Speaker A:Well, that's why people take when I moved out from back east and you know, and you start talking to people who have experienced it in, in the, in the construction community here.
Speaker A:It's like, you know, they say, oh well, you know, they don't build homes here like they do back east.
Speaker A:Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, you know, you've got a different extreme back.
Speaker B:Totally different.
Speaker A:Totally different.
Speaker A:I mean, you find more, I mean, you know, and then people Wonder why, you know, when they have parapet walls, why they get leaks.
Speaker A:Because when you go up on top, like you said, I mean, you think that that eighth of an inch of stucco is good?
Speaker A:Well, I think it's.
Speaker A:It's like maybe a quarter inch on the wall.
Speaker A:But when it gets over the top of the parapet, if it's an eighth of an inch, you're lucky.
Speaker A:And it'll crack.
Speaker A:And then before you know it, you know, there goes, you know, as my friend Dan Hayden, the home inspector says, it's a water injection point.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's exactly what happens.
Speaker B:Those are.
Speaker B:They give me all the heartburn.
Speaker B:They just want to leak, you know.
Speaker B:And then a couple of fun facts for people listening, you know, Containers.
Speaker B:How you would apply them down here in the valley is night and day different.
Speaker B:If you just go a couple hours north, you know, up.
Speaker B:I've got projects in Flagstaff all the way down to Tucson.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:But once I get.
Speaker B:Once I cross the imaginary barrier or border where ice and snow start.
Speaker B:Now we've got to consider snow load.
Speaker B:You can just rely on the.
Speaker B:On the water shedding capabilities that comes with a sea going vessel, which is a container.
Speaker B:You actually have to put a little roof on them and stuff like that.
Speaker B:And so people kind of get used to build.
Speaker B:They get comfortable building here in the valley.
Speaker B:It's happened to me, you know, and then I get up there in the mountain country and find out, oh my God.
Speaker B:We had to do a soils test.
Speaker B:Yeah, we can't use the same stuff we've been using down here.
Speaker B:We got to go with the Volkswagen size spread footing underneath this pier.
Speaker B:Footing where we normal.
Speaker B:Just do a two by two down here, you know what I mean?
Speaker B:So, so it's just, it's just.
Speaker B:But that kind of goes back to the cost plus thing, you know.
Speaker B:Like I approach every project, you know, if you call me, tell me about your project, the first thing I'm going to explain is that I got to turn into a detective for the first couple weeks, you know.
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker B:And find out all you gotta do.
Speaker A:Research.
Speaker B:Yeah, you know, we could find out.
Speaker B:It doesn't perk, you know, on the septic.
Speaker B:There's.
Speaker B:There's so many variables that your average homeowner is never even gonna think of.
Speaker B:So they need to.
Speaker B:Well, that's why I created container home university.
Speaker B:So people could go to a place and they could pull down those constants in the equation and have a pushing off place to at least have some kind of parameter, you know, permit process.
Speaker B:And what these Things should cost or shouldn't cost.
Speaker B:Don't hire an unlicensed guy, you know, no matter how attractive the price is.
Speaker B:You know, it's very expensive to be cheap.
Speaker A:Yes, it is.
Speaker B:Those kind of fun facts that people just don't know.
Speaker B:They think, think guys like us, that we wave our magic hammer at it, you know.
Speaker B:And another really interesting paradigm is they think that the cost per square foot should reflect the size of the home.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So going Back to the 20 footers.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:An interesting.
Speaker B:A point of diminishing return happens there where you think that, you know, it's going to scale down along with the size of the home.
Speaker B:But it doesn't.
Speaker B:Because good luck trying to get somebody serious to come install your 20ft of baseboard or 20ft or whatever.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Well, it's just like pouring concrete.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And you somebody people say, well, why does it cost so much?
Speaker A:Well, I only want like a 10 by 10 slab on my patio.
Speaker A:Like why?
Speaker A:Because exactly.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:It's too small.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And people, if you bring a truck in, forget it.
Speaker A:I mean, they're going to charge you a minimum.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:And it's just, you're gonna have to live with it.
Speaker B:People could liberate themselves so much more if it wasn't for all the bureaucracy and red tape around the permit process and zoning and all that, all those sort of restrictions, you know, people could definitely break out of the.
Speaker B:You know, Covid taught us we don't have to be in town at the office all the time.
Speaker B:You know, we can work remotely.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:We can figure out how to, how to do better that way.
Speaker B:But it's just costs too much.
Speaker B:You know, if you want to go back to how I started this, I thought that I would just build 20s and 40s and they'd fly out of the yard and it'd be much more scalable because I could remove myself because it was going to be a modular product and I'd hire a good modular builder and they'd just be printing them off.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:So the first thing that we did is designed and built the most adorable 20 footer you've ever seen with all the cool stuff on it.
Speaker B:And I mean, I really put my heart into the design.
Speaker B:I put it up for sale and immediately got bombarded with messages.
Speaker B:I can't remember how many thousands of messages I got, but it was fairly overwhelming.
Speaker B:But I painstakingly responded to every single message and I was excited to have those messages.
Speaker B:Never sold that unit.
Speaker A:Never.
Speaker B:Out of all of the messages and hype that it Drove on social media, never sold it once.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:So I had to auction it off.
Speaker B:Did you send it to an auction house to get rid of it?
Speaker B:Because what I discovered is the people that want that sort of thing are just priced out of it.
Speaker B:They're the kind of folks that want to go live off grid.
Speaker B:You know, they want to buy some property out in the middle of nowhere and they want to go live off of it.
Speaker B:But when you start looking at this little 20 footer you want to put up and it's going to cost you 100 and a half, it doesn't seem very sustainable or scalable to do something like that, you know.
Speaker B:So what I end up doing is I tell them, hey, you know, I thank you so much for calling.
Speaker B:But best thing you can do is go down to Cavco.
Speaker B:You know, they're going to pull you, you get you a little, you can finance it and put a few grand down, they're going to give you a payment and they can even pull it for you because they've got it all juiced in with the modular stuff.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:But that's the only way you can get around the modular thing.
Speaker B:If you want to build something custom and do it modular.
Speaker B:And that's where a lot of these, you know, building department guys get, get all twisted up is they think that it's, it must be modular also because it's a container.
Speaker B:But what I do is, doesn't have a stitch, a modular on it.
Speaker B:I just build them in place just like a regular home.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:Right, right.
Speaker A:All right, we're going to take a short break.
Speaker A:When we come back, we're going to wrap things up with Luke and just touch base a little more about, you know, what it takes to build a multi container home and that like we said, touch base on it's something that is beyond a one unit home that you could, which I'm sure a lot of you who were interested in container homes have seen.
Speaker A:But some of the different configurations that you could, you can build with container homes as well as I want to, I want to talk to, I want to talk to Luke a little bit at.
Speaker A:One of the things that I noticed that I had gone down to see when I first heard about it was one of the commercial projects down here in Phoenix, Churchill's.
Speaker A:Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Where they have multiple containers and multiple businesses in like a plaza type organization.
Speaker A:And then they have.
Speaker A:I love the way that they did one of the artwork where they took one of the containers and put it on end and then sculpt it out to make it look like it was a piece of art on the corner of the building.
Speaker A:You can't miss it.
Speaker A:It's right down here in downtown Phoenix.
Speaker A:So I want everybody to hang tight.
Speaker A:We'll be right back.
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Speaker A:All right, we are back and you're listening to Boxcar Universe and I am here today with Luke Crosswaite and we are talking about container homes and everything and anything, you know, connected with it, you know, how much they cost, why you need permits to do it.
Speaker A:Trying to make sure that the people that are interested in that type of building, you know, sometimes, Luke, you know, like you said, we, we have to give them a dose of reality.
Speaker A:And I think they've, People have misconceptions because they've seen so much in social media and what other people are doing.
Speaker A:It's like, you know, I hate to be, you know, like you say, you go out and help somebody, you know, and they get upset and like, okay, well, timeout.
Speaker A:Don't shoot.
Speaker A:I'm just a messenger.
Speaker A:Don't shoot the messenger.
Speaker A:I need to, I need to turn around and tell you this is how it is, you know.
Speaker A:And, you know, I had a guy once, we did a homeowner who is very, very, shall we say, you know, narrow minded.
Speaker A:And I like to put labels on people, but he was narrow minded.
Speaker A:There was no way to describe it.
Speaker A:You know, he had a leak in his flat roof.
Speaker A:We went up there with, with an infrared gun.
Speaker A:We showed him where all the water was, why he needed to do the roof over.
Speaker A:And what did he do?
Speaker A:He criticized the technology that we were using to show him that the water was there.
Speaker A:But wait a minute, you got water downstairs, you've got leaks here.
Speaker A:Here's the proof.
Speaker A:And he wouldn't admit, he wouldn't.
Speaker A:He wouldn't admit it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:I'm like, okay, sayonara, we're out of here.
Speaker B:It's like, I'm.
Speaker B:As much as I know about homes, right?
Speaker B:I am.
Speaker B:Equally.
Speaker B:There's an equal deficit there when it comes to being a mechanic.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:I'm not a. I'm not gonna change out a transmission or anything like that ever in my life.
Speaker B:And so could you imagine me telling, you know, standing there telling my mechanic, are you sure that goes over there?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:And that's kind of what we get into.
Speaker B:And so going back to that communication thing, right, There's a lot of, of expectations that I set early on with my customers and make.
Speaker B:And there's a few, you know, there's a lot of that stuff can get, you can feel out, but you got to tell people that sort of stuff early on.
Speaker B:You know, I'm gonna guide you through this, you know, I'm the builder, you're not.
Speaker B:I'm sure you'll have some ideas I want to hear about them.
Speaker B:Some of them will be plausible, some of them won't.
Speaker B:Some of them will cost more than you think.
Speaker B:You know, but there's that, that's exactly, that's a.
Speaker B:When, when, when I peel, peel out of a place.
Speaker B:But I can usually sense that kind of thing early on, you know.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I learned that I don't, I don't want to work for a hundred customers and make a thousand off each of them.
Speaker B:I just want to work for one customer or two, you know, so I, that's another scalability thing is since it didn't work out the way I thought it would with the single casitas, you know what did?
Speaker B:What the people that, the customers that did start calling me are the people that wanted to build a real home, you know, a primary home, and put them all together.
Speaker B:And that's when I discovered that it doesn't matter if you build them out of sticks or bricks or containers.
Speaker B:The cost per square foot is going to be fairly relative, although heavily driven by the design itself and the finishes.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:But where you really see the, the effectiveness of containers is over the, the lifetime of ownership.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:You don't have all the, all the fascia boards that are going to run off on a stick build.
Speaker B:You don't have the roof that's going to rot off.
Speaker B:You know, here in the valley, you know, the roofers crush it every 10 or 15 years.
Speaker B:You got your new roof.
Speaker A:Oh yeah.
Speaker B:Your composite just disintegrates in the, in the sun.
Speaker B:And so that's really where you see a huge benefit.
Speaker B:For example, people up in show low.
Speaker B:I've got a customer that's right next to a very well known athlete and he's got a very beautiful wood built home up there.
Speaker B:Well, our home is going next to him.
Speaker B:All containers.
Speaker B:We've got fire insurance.
Speaker B:He doesn't really.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker B:So there's the, the real benefits of containers aren't being well illustrated in the real world.
Speaker B:It's more, you know, Instagram hyping inaccuracies.
Speaker B:And meanwhile, guys like me that are doing it for real with licenses, engineering permits are kind of.
Speaker B:We're putting on this show under a rock that nobody can hardly see.
Speaker B:You know, I get just a few hundred views on multimillion dollar house with missile silos and all kinds of cool stuff in it.
Speaker B:And meanwhile, guys got millions of views.
Speaker B:It's putting in an unpermitted bungalow.
Speaker B:And what they don't talk about is when they got to call me because they've gotten a nasty gram from the locals and they have to get a permit.
Speaker B:And they find out now they've got to spend thousands of dollars on engineering footings, you know, all kinds, you know, just like, just like I get calls all the time from guys will close in a patio, you know, they'll frame it in on their three inches of walkway.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah.
Speaker B:You know, and then they get the nasty gram from whoever it is.
Speaker B:I got two of them right now in Mesa.
Speaker B:And you know, they could.
Speaker B:They just went ahead and did it themselves.
Speaker B:One guy knocked out a load bearing wall, you know, just went ahead and knocked out a load bearing wall and bolted in these really thin sort of pieces of steel that he sort of kind of tried to create a header out of.
Speaker B:And so I appreciate his tenacity on that.
Speaker B:But, you know, he, he got, he got in a mess with Mesa and then he had had to call me.
Speaker B:So that's what I found out.
Speaker B:Just by necessity when I kept running into how difficult it was to permit these things, that I got to just do it myself because relying on anybody else isn't going to work.
Speaker B:And then you get into this whole racket of scams with people that have also kind of discovered that.
Speaker B:And there's, you know, architects that you can hire that will purposely price you out of your project because they don't ever really have to finish it.
Speaker B:See what I mean?
Speaker B:They can charge the customer for all this fancy design, but they know it's never going to get permitted, it's never going to come to fruition.
Speaker B:And I've seen this, this sort of stuff.
Speaker B:So I've fired all my architects.
Speaker B:I am the architect now.
Speaker B:Of course I have to use my engineers, but I do the draft drafting and then they can help guide Luke.
Speaker B:This idea is a little too crazy.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker B:That's not gonna work, buddy.
Speaker B:You gotta dial it back.
Speaker B:They kind of keep me in check that way.
Speaker B:You know, they are the, you know, the buck stops with those guys, you know, the structural engineers.
Speaker B:But I push the limits as far as I can to try to get my customers what they want.
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker B:But basically, fun fact for people listening, if you use containers the way God designed them, okay.
Speaker B:You know, if you put them together like Legos.
Speaker A:Right, right.
Speaker B:Just like they go on the boat, okay.
Speaker B:That's the most efficient way to use them.
Speaker B:But when you start seeing all this Instagram stuff where they twist them and turn them side, we do all that fun stuff.
Speaker B:But that's where just throw cost right out the door.
Speaker B:You know, all that stuff, you're right back to any.
Speaker B:Anything else.
Speaker B:And so for, for the, for your listeners, you know, Cost plus guy like me, somehow, because I run an ethical business, I somehow can still kind of hit the 250 numbers.
Speaker B:250 per square foot.
Speaker B:Right, Right.
Speaker B:That's soup to nuts.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:It's got your septic and all that kind of stuff in there that's even paying me.
Speaker B:And, and, and my role is contin or my paycheck.
Speaker B:And my percentage of that cost plus method is contingent upon my role.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So some of people do want to be more of a DIY because maybe they have an easy build and they're very.
Speaker B:They've got a lot of tenacity and they want to do it, but they got to use me to get through the permitting.
Speaker B:And that's where I.
Speaker B:They can draw on me as the container home guru to get as much or as little as they need from me.
Speaker B:So it's a win.
Speaker B:Win.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:I was able to supply them with what they need to get another container home in the books, which is a win for the container home community.
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker B:And I didn't, you know, there's no way, there's no way for me to attach myself to it like a regular GC that old.
Speaker B:You know, I'm gonna show up in overalls and, and point at stuff with a tape measure and two sunflower seeds in my F150 or whatever.
Speaker B:On your job site.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Because that's what people think they're gonna get.
Speaker B:Cause they've seen Bob the Builder and they've seen the movies, and they are drawing their entire education of construction based off of TV or whatever.
Speaker A:Well, you know, it's the same thing too.
Speaker A:They turn around, they see things done.
Speaker A:You watch a half hour, an hour program, and they see this whole thing just come together.
Speaker A:They have no clue how.
Speaker A:How many hours it takes.
Speaker A:I mean, I know, I know, for instance, when I first started doing TV and we started doing, you know, filming flips and stuff like that, and, and people have no idea what goes into coordinating.
Speaker A:Coordinating the filming aspect of it with the remodeling aspect.
Speaker A:And I learned that really fast because I know some of the things that I wanted to have showcased and trying to time all that so it comes out together is.
Speaker A:Is a challenge.
Speaker A:Not to mention the hours extra that winds up on a cutting room floor.
Speaker A:Oh, I mean, it's amazing.
Speaker B:Well, you see my YouTube stuff.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I'm like.
Speaker B:I'm like, you know, waving my phone and stuff, trying to capture a shot.
Speaker B:Well, and that's kind of the irony, is it?
Speaker B:Of it is I'm watching these guys that are not real builders.
Speaker B:They have no license, no nothing, no permit in a lot of cases, and their views are way up.
Speaker B:Meanwhile, I'm the real deal and my views are way down, you know, so it's like I'm trying to be a bill.
Speaker B:I'm a professional builder, an amateur video maker, you know, so.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:But I have been learning, you know, with.
Speaker B:Go back to scalability, you know, let the professionals handle that stuff.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So I think it's super cool that you invited me to come do this.
Speaker B:You know, I could probably get a lot more information out of my mouth this way than I can trying to, because I try to pick fun facts and make a video on it.
Speaker B:You know, I'm a. I'm a container home builder.
Speaker B:I'm not a video maker.
Speaker B:I try to be, you know, but.
Speaker B:But I do know that my.
Speaker B:My stuff is.
Speaker B:Is amateur at best.
Speaker A:Well, you know, I think the one thing that people has seen, and I know I, you know, I'm not patting myself on the back here, but people have given me compliments where they turn around and they say, you know, you really know what you're talking about, but you're passionate about what you're talking about.
Speaker A:And you also entered.
Speaker A:I like to do, and I think that's why I've been successful in broadcasting, is to turn around and have the humor part of it to break up that it's not all just facts and it brings across the humanity and your personality.
Speaker A:That's the word I was trying to look for.
Speaker A:It brings out your personality in how you're doing it, and people connect with that.
Speaker A:When you talk knowledge and you have a great personality to convey that knowledge, that's what sets you above all the other people.
Speaker B:Well, what I like about the cost plus thing is I am disarmed.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:I love what you just said about being authentic and all that kind of stuff, but you can't do that if you're always hiding.
Speaker A:True.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker B:That's what I love about the cost.
Speaker B:But, you know, go talk to these other builders with their customer.
Speaker B:They don't want the customer and their electrician or their plumber or whatever in the same room.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:They're always doing this like, remember that old show Threes Company and the guy's trying to date two girls at the same time.
Speaker B:He's got to go.
Speaker B:Yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's just, it's it.
Speaker B:I put, if you operate like that, you're putting more time and effort into that than the actual thing you're supposed to be doing.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:You know, so, so that's where I just thought, you know, this way I can be totally honest and the customers appreciate.
Speaker B:We can have a meeting with the plumber.
Speaker B:Look, this fixture is going to cost you this.
Speaker B:Oh, you know, we got to run the P trap over, you know, all the, all the things that can come along with it.
Speaker B:But most people only have a experience of exchange with business, you know, and the drive thru or Starbucks or whatever, it's very immediate.
Speaker B:They put their money in Amazon drops off the thing.
Speaker B:You know, they've never gone through these marathons that you've got to run as a builder, you know, my multifamily product right here in Phoenix, 26 units.
Speaker B:I'm on year four.
Speaker B:The units aren't up yet.
Speaker B:They're built, they're sitting in our yard.
Speaker B:The, the, the streets are in, the storm drains are in, 100 of the, the utilities are in.
Speaker B:I'm waiting on.
Speaker B:The state is supposed to turn this stuff around in like 30 days.
Speaker B:They're up to 90 days now really.
Speaker B:And so you have to go through all the normal permitting stuff with the locals, which is Phoenix in this case and the state.
Speaker B:So you have, it's a, you know, two headed dragon that you gotta fight.
Speaker B:And so people just don't typically have the wherewithal, you know, especially for like investors and stuff.
Speaker B:Do they kind of understand they might, might have done some of this before, but when it comes to like a single family home, you know, just, just to wait a few months for the construction documents alone to be produced, then you got to submit it to the locals and let all that stuff, you know, go do its thing, get the comments back, handle all that.
Speaker B:So the customer needs somebody that's going to be there every step of the way and tell them, hey, this is what's going on.
Speaker B:You know, you're in Scottsdale now.
Speaker B:You got to have fire sprinklers.
Speaker A:Oh yeah.
Speaker B:You're.
Speaker B:Who knows what, you know.
Speaker B:Turns out they are making us do like that Goodyear home.
Speaker B:I got them out of having to spend five extra grand on doing a whole draining and drainage plan because they're up on those columns.
Speaker A:Oh.
Speaker B:So they got up off the ground enough to get out of the watershed stuff so they didn't have to spend a ton of money on extra surveying and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker B:So it allows me to be able to really work for the customer and they're, you know, have good intentions instead of just constantly looking for a markup, you know.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So it's amazing.
Speaker A:Look, tell our listeners again your, your websites and where they can go for all that great educational knowledge we were talking about earlier.
Speaker B:Containerhomeguru.com so the legal name of my company is Cross Weight Custom Construction.
Speaker B:I wanted people to know that my heart's in it.
Speaker B:So I put my last name in my company.
Speaker B:But it's kind of like Jagermeister.
Speaker B:You remember it when you see it, but you don't really know how to spell it.
Speaker A:Spell it right.
Speaker B:So I came up with containerhomeguru.com so that people could much more easily, you know, if I'm on the phone with somebody, you know, my email is that container guy, gmail.com so it's a lot easier for people to just find me that way.
Speaker B:But yeah, Cross Weight Custom Construction, Container home guru.
Speaker B:And if you cruise through there, you'll see a lot of different pages.
Speaker B:But basically my whole business model is on the consulting page and you can see right there what you're getting into.
Speaker B:So everything's quantifiable and that, that leads to clear accounts and long friendships.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:And it's, it's, it's a good policy.
Speaker A:But Luke, thanks so much for being on the show today.
Speaker B:Thanks for having me.
Speaker A:Great to have you here.
Speaker A:First time here, hopefully not last.
Speaker A:We'll have you back.
Speaker A:We'll talk about.
Speaker A:I really like to follow along with that 25 unit container community.
Speaker A:Once the city, you know, and the state get together and are on the same page and then.
Speaker A:And cover, cover that how that goes in.
Speaker B:I'm on the.
Speaker B:Hopefully if I come back for another one of these, we'll be installing.
Speaker B:I'm on the last few weeks of that whole thing.
Speaker A:Oh, good.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So you think, do you think they'll be ready to start installing before, before Christmas?
Speaker B:God, I hope so.
Speaker A:I really keep my fingers crossed for you.
Speaker B:Yeah, it should.
Speaker B:They.
Speaker B:We should have got it back.
Speaker B:We had to go through variances with the city and all this stuff.
Speaker B:So all of the major stuff is done.
Speaker B:It's just got to finish processing with the state, the department of housing.
Speaker B:Then we should be able to crane them all in place and finally have lots of cool content.
Speaker A:And it's all going to be single story.
Speaker B:It.
Speaker B:No, it's two stories.
Speaker A:It's two stories.
Speaker B:It's all two story, but it's all basically like studio.
Speaker B:So it's all sort of HUD housing type stuff.
Speaker B:So you get, it's not quite section 8, but along those lines you kind of gotta have a voucher to get in.
Speaker B:But, but you know, it's one of those deals for people in transition so that they can have a place and put their stuff together.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's great.
Speaker A:And we always like to help promote all that type of work, especially with the community, to get the word out to know that people like yourselves are doing that type of work.
Speaker A:And there is, you know, everybody turns around, well, what are we going to do with this and how are we going to do this?
Speaker A:But you know, if, and like you, if you don't reach out.
Speaker A:Yeah, nothing gets done.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker A:And that's exactly how I view everything.
Speaker A:But we want to thank all our listeners for listening to Boxcar Universe.
Speaker A:Remember, we are your source for cutting edge communication and information on remodeling container homes and container pools.
Speaker A:And if you are interested in a container home, please make sure that you reach out to myself or Luke and be able to go contact the container home guru.
Speaker A:I like that, that's great.
Speaker A:And it's nice, short, sweet, and I think it sends the right message.
Speaker A:It's really good.
Speaker A:But don't forget, and also, you know, in the process of putting all that together, we didn't get a chance to talk about it, but obviously it's one thing that is possible to be able to have solar when you have a container home.
Speaker A:So we can help you with that also.
Speaker A:But if you have any questions at all, please make sure you contact me at Boxcar Universe.
Speaker A:And my email address is steve@boxcaruniverse.com and remember, Box Car Universe can be heard on any podcast player.
Speaker A:And always remember, let us remodel and renovate your world.
Speaker A:Have a great weekend.
Speaker C:You're a great American.
Speaker B:I love you.
Speaker A:Sa.
