Enduro & The Curious Case of the Missing Cowboy Hat

Rhett Dotson Welcome to our 2024 edition of Pipeline Things. I am your host, Rhett Dotson. My co-host Christopher de Leon. And today we have our guest, Matt Peterson, from Enduro. We are really looking forward again to this conversation. And if you can tell if you guys have not had the chance as an audience, y'all are going to meet for sure Matt Peterson today. But I tell you what, at some point you have to meet him online, too, because the image that you see here in front of you it this is Matt. Matt Peterson. Right. Christopher de Leon We all know this. If you have been to him at least once, you've come through the exhibition and you have walked through the Enduro showcase and you've seen Matt and you've probably been like, God, I want to go meet that guy. Rhett Dotson That looks like a fun guy. Christopher de Leon He's always here and let's be real. Like, that's a big dude, right? So, he might be a little bit intimidating. Matt’s fantastic. I've known him for the better part of probably 13, 14 years now. Great guy. Great smile. Come shake his hand. Rhett Dotson So, what's really great about this show, you and Chris have, like, a common bond on the cowboy hats and the rodeo. And you all agreed that y'all were going to show up together in cowboy hats. Matt Peterson We were was supposed to wear cowboy hats but he dropped the ball. Christopher de Leon I did. Guys, I'm sorry. So, if y'all know Rhett Dotson I'm questioning his rodeo credentials; I am genuinely questioning. Christopher de Leon If you have seen a historical episode, you know that I participated the Rodeo and all this fun stuff, and we love it. And I got a new hat last rodeo season at the end, and I didn't get to wear it yet, so I really wanted to honor Matt and Enduro’s brand. Rhett Dotson Trip S can you give him like a floating digital hat just to help him out? Christopher de Leon And it's a beautiful walnut color. God dang it, I feel bad now. It stinks. Rhett Dotson Especially since you promised the guest. Christopher de Leon You were supposed to be on my team. Dude, you're supposed to let that stuff fly. Matt Peterson He said he would be wearing the cowboy hat. Rhett Dotson He said, I will make you feel comfortable, Matt. I’m going to show up with a hat, too. Are you big into the rodeo? Do you like the rodeo? Matt Peterson Yeah. We love the rodeo. My wife used to be a volunteer at the Junior Horse show Rodeo committee. Rhett Dotson Fantastic. Well, it's not like we came here to talk about the rodeo. We came here to talk about Enduro. But before we get there, Matt, you mind introducing yourself? I mean, who are you? How did you find your way into the pipeline industry at Enduro? Matt Peterson Well, my name's Matt Petersen. I've been. I've been in the pigging business, I guess, now for 22 years. I started out as a technician with GEPII. Rhett Dotson You're part of the GEPII mafia. Matt Peterson Yeah. So, I was part of that. And then after that did a few things and worked for a few different service companies, stepped out of ILI a couple of different times. Yeah. And then I've been now with Enduro for 13 years. Rhett Dotson So, what’s your role there? Matt Peterson I'm the director of business development. So, I'm, I have currently. Well, we're down, but I have, you know, three sales guys that work for me. Rhett Dotson Yeah, that's fantastic. So, and if you don't mind, give the I think most people are familiar with Enduro, but I like tell us a little bit like, who is Enduro and what are the breadth of services that you guys offer in the pipeline industry. Matt Peterson So, I always like to say Enduro is number one. It's a family business. It's owned, you know, it's family owned. It's privately owned. Yep. Duane Layman is our owner. You know, he's partially retired, but it's still his business. He runs, he comes in. You know, that's one thing I like about it. Rhett Dotson So, you run into Duane every now and then? Matt Peterson Yeah, for sure. Christopher de Leon So, I remember actually up until even recently, you know, it's pretty common when you walk through PPIM, you go to the Enduro Showcase and Duane's up there with, you know, two, three widescreen monitors. The date is up and he's sitting there, you know, showing customers, you know, your data and all that. Matt Peterson He, he prides himself in data, right? He prides himself. He prides himself in the business itself, right? Christopher de Leon Yeah. So, he was he's not just an investor, right? Matt Peterson I mean, he's I mean, he I mean, I'm, you know, I don't want to get too far into it, but, I mean, you know, he's he started the business out of his garage. Rhett Dotson Yeah. So, every business has to have a garage story. Christopher de Leon Yeah. We've shot a podcast in the garage. Shot a podcast in my garage. You can go back and look. It was cold. Rhett Dotson It was freezing. Matt Peterson So, yeah, it's, you know, it's so family. Its family owned, like I said. And I really feel it's a it's an honor to work for him and to work for the family. And, you know, it's like home. It's definitely like home for me. Christopher de Leon So, talk to us a little bit about what Enduro focuses on. Matt Peterson So, you know, Enduro started out as a caliper company. they, they were, you know, running caliber tools for most all of these ILI current ILI vendors out here, the big ones, right. Because they didn't these other ILI vendors didn't have a caliper. They focused maybe more on MFL. And that was back when it was just stand alone MFL. Yeah. And so, you know, he built a caliper tool and back then they didn't he, he was the first one to build a bend direction tool. Rhett Dotson Bend direction tool? Matt Peterson Yeah. So he knew so they would run a tool to know where the bends were in the line and what size thing. Yeah. So, you know, that's where the, that's where it started. And then they got into, you know, building, cleaning pigs and, you know, different stuff like that. And then 2004 they started the combo tool. Christopher de Leon Yeah. And you know, just for our audience, you know, depending on how long you've been in the industry, when pigging started a little bit more commercially combo tools weren't a thing yet. Matt Peterson No actually you know honestly and Earl come out with the first combo tool in the market I mean. Rhett Dotson What time frame is? Matt Peterson 2004. Rhett Dotson Yeah. Yeah. Before I was actually working. Christopher de Leon And so, what was pretty common is it's, you know, you'd run a caliper tool because again nowadays we talk about first run success back then if you a lot of times we got the tool out and all the pieces were together, that was a plus because you know how pickleable lines were, weren't known. Right? And so, you didn't know what restrictions you had. And so being able to just describe the pipeline's Pigg ability was a big thing at the time Rhett Dotson Is it fair for me to say, well, I'm not sure. Are you guys like the last O.G. pigging company that's still privately owned? I mean because y'all or you're I mean, you got to be on the forefront of picking in the United States. Christopher de Leon By OG, you'd have to mean somebody that's at least, you know, 15 years old or something. Rhett Dotson No. At least you got to be at least 20. I mean, he just dated it to 2024. I mean, I mean, it's late nineties. Matt Peterson Well besides TDW Rhet Dotson Were y’all before or after? Matt Peterson After Rhett Dotson Well, I would like to ask, well we are at PPIM today you can walk, this is the biggest PPIM, I was just joking, I was going to look for someone in the 800 sections, you need a passport to get to the 800 sections, I mean they are in the 1000’s now Christopher de Leon For the record we are in the 100’s Rhett Dotson But it's like every year there are new inspection vendors out there, I’ve seen MFL company X. New vendors honestly feel like almost a dime a dozen. And what I want to ask you, Matt, is what's unique about Enduro? What sets you guys apart in the sea of combo tool inspection vendors? Matt Peterson Customer service. Okay. We pride ourselves on customer service. We pride ourselves in getting the customer. Well, we'll talk really quick on cleaning pigs. On an average cleaning pig, we like to 3 to 5 business days. Have it in the customer's hands. Call outs for caliper. I mean, we want to be there as soon as we can. You know, we always, we always keep our schedule flexible. We're not one to fill because, you know, you never know if you got a customer that, that needs help. Rhett Dotson You know and it's funny you mention that, Matt, because if you would have asked me just from the outside, I think that's what I would have said about Enduro. And it's not I'm actually I almost want to ask how you guys got that into your culture, because it is very evident, Christopher and I, as you can imagine, we are on calls with every major Ili vendor out there for various features as we help operators. And without a doubt, whenever you're on the call with Enduro, the one thing that shines are I'm going to say the level of transparency and sometimes how over the top, whoever it is we're talking to, goes with helping the client. Like the we talk about, do y’all have sayings on the wall or something that are like customer service. Matt Peterson I mean, it's just yeah, it's just I think our owners always pushed it and, you know, I don't know, I've worked for some of the other, you know, like I said, I in my past I worked for the other big ILI companies I think for, for Enduro it's making sure the customer's taken care of and yeah, you're, they all get treated the same. Christopher de Leon Let's tell, let's tell Sarah to go off air and then we can ask him who the top two clients are. No, but. But also, that's really what they all sincerity, Matt. It is a testament. I mean, it's we can testify that, you know, you guys are you get what you see. Yes. And for us it's you know we will be on a call with you guys and you guys are very transparent about saying this is what we can do. We're not sure about this or if we're looking at a project like guys, we're not sure if we can explain that yet. We'll have to get back to you. Right. And that's pretty refreshing. Rhett Dotson It actually is. I will say, you know, and again, for our audience out there, if you've not had the chance to engage with Enduro that way, it is I will say it feels different because of how much the conversations typically don't feel like that, unfortunately. Matt Peterson Well and too I think it's all about how things are sold right. I think some things get oversold in some aspects of companies. Rhett Dotson Are you saying the ILI companies oversell capability sometimes? Matt Peterson So, I just try to sell what we have or we sell what we have, right. Or what we can or can't do, right. You let the customer know what we can or can't do. Yeah, it's not about, you know. Christopher de Leon So, talk to us a little bit about so you know, when we walk by your booth, you guys have a massive cleaning pig there. You guys have a combo tool there. Talks a little bit about that, right? What is something that you guys are most proud of outside of the way you serve? Your customers talked about your product and services a little bit. Matt Peterson I think it's for or for such like the cleaning pig side, right? We don't look at just selling a cleaning pig. We want to understand the customer's issues. What's in the line, what the product is, you know, pressure flow rates. We have a little questionnaire that we send a customer and tell them, hey, can you fill this out? I get a customer calls me, hey, I need an eight-inch pig with brushes. Well, what? What's your problem? We want to understand what the issue is. Christopher de Leon So, what kind of flexibility do you guys have on your cleaning pigs? I mean, do you guys have, like, a three-week lead time? Because you have to order it from somebody? Matt Peterson All our cleaning pigs are all our cleaning pigs are built in house. We have our own urethane department. Everything's built in the house. The bodies on the cleaning Pigs are built in the house. The only thing that we outsource are brushes, magnets and bolts. Christopher de Leon So, if a customer has a unique cleaning problem, let's say, you know, they know they have an integrity issue with some kind of threat, call it some type corrosion or something like that. And we all know cleaning is a big deal, right? You don't have clean pipeline. It clogs up the sensors. You get standoffs, you know, from the internal pipe. You don't get good measurements. You guys can build something custom for them maybe. Matt Peterson For sure, we’ve built, I had a customer that had salt buildup and another ILI vendor was running the line. They couldn't get a good survey. So, they come to us to build a pig for it. And we got the salt deposits out of the line. Christopher de Leon If you guys. If you guys don't follow in Enduro on, on LinkedIn, you guys post some pretty gnarly cleaning pig pictures. Rhett Dotson Yeah. And it's, it's, it's funny. Well, we'll even get messages that oh those are fake. Christopher de Leon Yeah. Fake news. Matt Peterson So, like, now, like you're Photoshop and stuff. Christopher de Leon We're going to do that next time. Next time you guys put a gnarly cleaning pig picture, I'm going to put. Is this real? You know where coming from. Don't have Duane come at me. You tell him that it's supposed to be a joke. Rhett Dotson So, can you share? What's your favorite cleaning story? Do you have a favorite one that you remember that stuck to when you got to have one? You tell over beers. Christopher de Leon It's like the ugly child that you love or something like that, you know? Matt Peterson Not as far as not as far as cleaning. You know, J.R., I don't know if you know J.R. Morgan. He's our sales manager for Inside Sales for the Cleaning Pigs. And, you know, he's been doing it for 30 years. So when I have a, you know, a very difficult cleaning situation, he's the first person. He's the guy. I'm going to reach out. Rhett Dotson Well, what's your favorite tool that Enduro, what's the one that gets you most excited? Rhett Dotson Combo tool, for sure. A good combo tools. Rhett Dotson What about the combo tool? Matt Peterson You know, it's just being, you know, one of the first combo tools. And you know, when you see that, you know, we, we've, we've made some changes to the combo tool. Christopher de Leon Well, what's what I think is, is unique about you guys is your combo tool hasn't changed very much in its traditional sense right. Because I remember when I was running you guys, the energy transfer back in 2008, nine, ten, your combo tool had it MFL, a caliber high resolution caliber. And you guys even at the time had a low field. Matt Peterson Yeah. And we still run, you know, MFL, residual field and then you know caliber and IMU Rhett Dotson So, tell you what actually Matt we're going to take a real quick break. When we come back. AUDIENCE We're going to get into that we want to hear. We've heard a lot about where Enduro is today. We're going to hear a lot about where Enduro is going in the future. Hang on. We'll be right back. BJ Lowe Hello, everyone. It's BJ Lowe from Clarion, and we're very happy to be a sponsoring this season of Pipeline things to showcase the impressive technologies being exhibited. Here at PPIM. Ben Stroman I'm Ben Stroman and we've been impressed with the turnout at the 36th PPIM conference event in 2024 with 159 companies exhibiting over 3000 attendees and over 90 papers being presented. We've had a great year with a huge turnout in terms of high-quality technical paper submissions. Attendees this year will have the opportunity to hear from industry stakeholders and their advancements in several fields, including ILI analysis, geo hazards, material identifications and verification, emerging issues, repair, hydrogen integrity, management, entity and more. If you couldn't make it in person to the PPIM conference in February, you can always find helpful resources and tools offered by Clarion year-round. We have several courses taught by subject matter experts that can be found on our website. We're excited for PPIM this year and we hope to see everyone next year as well. But be sure to stay up to date with Clarion and its offerings by joining our mailing list on our Web site. Thanks. Rhett Dotson Welcome back. As we continue our conversation with Matt Petersen from Enduro and Hatless, Christopher de Leon, I am sure that he will not forget his promises to clients again and our guest on the show. Matt Peterson I was going to say something about earlier. Yeah, I don't I don't like I said, I don't have a cool cleaning pig deal, but we ran a caliper tool, new construction caliper tool. So, we run. So, we run a caliper tool for a customer. You know, we run a lot of new construction. And so, the tool gets stuck in the line, so we can't figure out why the tool is stuck in the line, right? So, the customer goes and cuts it out, and they send a picture of it where we get a picture of it. And I guess they had an upset, maybe welder or foreman or whatever, you know, whoever was working. They had taken wood and pounded an end to the pipeline. And then when we ran the tool, it just it hit it and it couldn't go anywhere. So, they cut it and stood it up. And you've got all this wood just sticking out. Christopher de Leon You start wondering, I'm sure someone that's listening is like, we know exactly why we did that. But it makes me think of like, you know, maybe they were trying to do a fit up or something or like, hey, bend it too much it or you have ovality and you can't weld it. Matt Peterson Well, look, on our LinkedIn, you'd probably have to go back a year to see it. It's on our LinkedIn. Rhett Dotson You know, darn good what happened is those welders got like two joints down and they were like did you take that piece of wood out of there, and they were like just keep moving. Matt Peterson But it was but it wasn't just one piece of wood. like, no, no. Like they stacked that in there and pounded it in. yeah. So, somebody was disgruntled. Rhett Dotson So? So, yeah. Matt, you shared a lot about the combo tool as we in this, this last half of this, I'd like to kind of talk about where is Enduro going now? What's the what's, what's on the horizon for you guys. Matt Peterson So, so for, you know, the combo tool, you know, I guess I'm going to say this a lot of I see a lot of, you know, competitors come out with when they build a tool, they build a whole new fleet, right? We just decided, you know, our owner decided we're just going to upgrade our current fleet and we went from our legacy MFL tool to our new UHR, our combo tool. So, you know, it's Ultra-High resolution, high resolution. Rhett Dotson So, you say upgrading. Is that mean you're you so you're not building a new tool fleet, you're retrofitting your existing tool fleet? Matt Peterson We're retrofitting. And they've all been retrofitted except for like odd sizes like 18,14. But those are sizes that can be done, you know. Christopher de Leon So, the customers don't have to say, hey, by any chance, do you have, you know, your new tool, you're saying, nope, we've gone back, retrofitted. Matt Peterson We're done, our UHR like, are you are we've been running that now for two years. Christopher de Leon Awesome. And what's your take on it? Matt Peterson Well, it's I think it's a great tool. It's yeah, you know, lots of sensors as far as the MFL, we basically at first when we brought it out, they named it the double density tool. So, they basically doubled the number of sensors on it. So the legacy tool for instance, was we'll go with a 12 inch was 84 MFL and we went to 168. Rhett Dotson Perfect. So, what did you think about the name Double density, Double D’s? Matt Peterson I just everything that you saw, I mean, I just I just think about it. Double D’s. This doesn't seem. Yeah, I think you should stick with double density. Christopher de Leon But double density so practical, like you actually so ultra make you think what, by double density, you're like, we have twice as many. It's so practical. Right? Matt Peterson But it was. But but it was. I guess it was confusing to some of our customers because then really because everybody else was like, I've got a you know, a lot of a lot of the acronyms are h r Right. Christopher de Leon What else are you guys cooking with. Anything else you feel like you willing to share? Matt Peterson Yeah, we're. We're currently working on a new tool. We're going to come out with a CMFL tool. So that's, you know, something that's. That's in the works. Rhett Dotson Are you going to call it CMFL? Matt Peterson No, we are going to go with the original TFI, transverse flux inspection. Christopher de Leon That's perfect. And so, you know, it makes us think a lot of things. Rhett Dotson But seriously, I want to thank you for joining us. Matt, thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed having Enduro. Thank them for being a guest here on our 2024 PPIM edition. Come back, see us in two weeks where you'll catch the next show. Thanks.