Iron Insider: How Bluelight's $50K Autonomy Kit Can Boost Productivity Up to 14%

00;00;02;13 - 00;00;16;01

Jordanne Waldschmidt

It's hard to find operators who want to run rollers and haul trucks, so why are we still looking for them? These are some of the most repetitive jobs on an earthmoving site, and also some of the hardest seats to keep filled.

00;00;16;04 - 00;00;25;12

Dick Zhang

Somebody was felt the pressure of production. They tend to be extremely motivated if you offer them another way to produce and produce more with their crew.

00;00;25;14 - 00;00;39;02

Jordanne Waldschmidt

For years, autonomy has been pitched as the solution, but for most contractors, it's come with big price tags, complex installs or brand new machines. But what if autonomy worked with the equipment you already own?

00;00;39;03 - 00;00;45;10

Dick Zhang

So we're a retrofit autonomy. So what that means for the customer and the contractor is you can use your own fleet. We come to you.

00;00;45;10 - 00;01;12;08

Jordanne Waldschmidt

I'm Jordanne Waldschmidt, and today on the Iron Insider, we're talking to Dick Zang, co-founder of Bluelight Machines, a company bringing autonomous retrofit kits to rollers and haul trucks. Turning your equipment into supervised autonomous solutions. We're breaking down how it works and what it means for productivity, safety and labor on real job sites. So let's get into it.

00;01;12;10 - 00;01;31;13

Jordanne Waldschmidt

All right. Well, Dick, thanks so much for joining us today. We're not talking about the future of autonomy today. We're talking about what's happening right now. And in fact, we actually have a roller running autonomously right behind us. So can you tell us a little bit about blue light machines and the problems that you're really looking to solve for contractors?

00;01;31;14 - 00;01;53;05

Dick Zhang

So the high level, I guess, in a word, it's production is what we're trying to help contractors with. Productions with compactors, production, with hauling material. Concisely put. So we're a retrofit autonomy. We're a supervised autonomy and we're an AI powered autonomy. So what that means for the customer and the contractors, you can use your own fleet. We come to you.

00;01;53;08 - 00;02;08;15

Dick Zhang

It's kind of like a buddy system. The autonomous roller gets paired with your dozer hand or your greater hand. And then this AI part of it means just as the fleet rolls more, everybody gets better. And it's kind of like your iPhone. You get software updates and we wake up learning new things. So that's that's what blue light is.

00;02;08;16 - 00;02;38;00

Dick Zhang

And then by the numbers just to give you a rough size and scale. So we're on four continents now. We have two dozen two dozen dealer relationships to help, you know boots on the ground with our customers. We have now in the hundreds of live autonomous blue light machines. And then as part of this week's happenings, were announcing our customers have rolled 1,000,000,000 square foot of material autonomously with zero injury.

00;02;38;04 - 00;02;39;10

Dick Zhang

So that's that's blue light.

00;02;39;11 - 00;03;05;17

Jordanne Waldschmidt

Amazing. Yeah, that's great progress in such a short time. And I know a lot of contractors probably think that autonomy is expensive or complicated, or they just don't even have the time to think about learning how to use it. What are some of those biggest misconceptions that you've heard from contractors, and how are you really making Blue Light simple to install and get going right away on the job site?

00;03;05;18 - 00;03;27;00

Dick Zhang

Yeah, there's probably a few misconceptions. The first one not really touching on your easy to install. I think the joke that always comes up is, oh, we're going to install the blue lights and then kick back and go for beers. I think it's just the wrong visual. You know, as part of this concept of the autonomous machine, following up with your, you know, with your dozer in the Phil, it's kind of a buddy system.

00;03;27;00 - 00;03;49;00

Dick Zhang

And again, where like our tagline is we're out here to just help operators get more done and make more production. And so to that vein, you know, we as blue light, we try to make it extraordinarily easy. And so install we're talking two hours on your roller on your site training. It's on your iPad or you know, your iPhone, whatever device.

00;03;49;01 - 00;04;11;10

Dick Zhang

Training happens literally in four minutes. I could teach you how to run the thing. But then there is a real learning curve. Like it's a new shovel, it's a new means and it's a new method. And building that trust, it doesn't happen overnight. And so we're doing everything we can to make the technology easy, affordable, fast. And then we do everything we can to help contractors go through that that sort of journey learning curve.

00;04;11;11 - 00;04;23;03

Jordanne Waldschmidt

Awesome. Yeah. So when you're looking at helping a contractor get started. Is there a best first project or a phase of a project that you would recommend? This be the first one they go with?

00;04;23;06 - 00;04;45;05

Dick Zhang

Yeah, I think so. At a at a high level you tend to do a lot of compaction when you're at the site work stage of a project. If we've got 15 stories are still going up. Yeah, you might need a roller here and there, but it's probably not a heavy hitting machine. And then with the articulated like the autonomous articulated trucks, definitely we find, you know, right from the get go, you get your seven day letter and you're hogging out the pond.

00;04;45;06 - 00;05;03;24

Dick Zhang

Perfect place to start. It tends to be just a few, you know, few trucks and limited limited personnel on site. It's a little bit of a lower pressure situation. So yeah, from the first pond going right after clearing and grubbing, and then as soon as you open up the site and clearing grub and then all we're doing is moving, you know, moving big material sort of get in shape roughly.

00;05;03;24 - 00;05;28;22

Dick Zhang

Right. We find that's a spectacular place to start. I think another sort of interesting pattern to as we work with larger contractors that are doing these like mega jobs, flagship jobs, you know, hundreds and hundreds of trucks, very high end, like massive data center campuses. It feels very natural to want to take the autonomy to these, like, monster flagship jobs.

00;05;28;25 - 00;05;47;19

Dick Zhang

And we can be successful there. Don't get me wrong, but what we find is pressure for production tends to be very, very high. And it's just like, unless you have been there on site, you know, 630 in the morning and like, we got to go, we got to produce 100,000 yards today. There is no time for anything else.

00;05;47;21 - 00;06;06;04

Dick Zhang

And so we've done it. We've done it very successfully with those who build on those on those flagship jobs. But if as a contractor, if you have the option to, we find a pond or a smaller job, three, 4 or 6 trucks, you know, maybe 1 or 2 rollers somewhere where you have some room to learn new means and method.

00;06;06;04 - 00;06;08;26

Dick Zhang

We find that's a better place to develop trust in a new tool.

00;06;08;27 - 00;06;22;17

Jordanne Waldschmidt

Yeah, I think that's a really good point to make. I would assume that, you know, young people might be the most likely to catch on to this, but what have you been seeing on site in terms of adoption and really finding that technology champion?

00;06;22;19 - 00;06;47;24

Dick Zhang

We find this champion operator a lot of times its younger operators like they grew up with iPhone. And so this, you know, flicking around on the screen. Super second nature actually more successfully we find anybody who has felt the headache of, you know, compaction holding up the job and somebody who has felt the pressure of production. They tend to be extremely motivated.

00;06;47;24 - 00;07;10;22

Dick Zhang

If you offer them another way to produce and produce more with their crew. And so, yeah, a lot of times it's a younger operator or that that new foreman. But honestly, some of our best operators, like blue light users are 25 year dozer, you know, dozer operator, veterans, superintendents that have been doing this for 25 years. And it's just, you know, a slightly less headache way to make more production.

00;07;10;22 - 00;07;12;08

Dick Zhang

It's very compelling for them.

00;07;12;15 - 00;07;28;22

Jordanne Waldschmidt

Yeah. And I know safety of course, is always a non-negotiable on the job site. And you guys have already hit a huge milestone with your safety for these machines. What kind of things have you built into it to ensure that safety around other machines on the site, and of course, people on the site?

00;07;28;23 - 00;07;48;23

Dick Zhang

Yeah, it's a it's a it's an important topic, I guess now we've been around for a couple of years. I can lead with the resume, with our announcement of 1,000,000,000 square foot of autonomous compaction with zero injury. That's been an important talking point, not zero incident, by the way. You know, you do a billion of anything. There's going to be incident.

00;07;48;26 - 00;08;07;00

Dick Zhang

And I'll speak to that in a second. But you know we've been on now dozens and dozens of data centers. We've been on battery plants, car plants, you know, very high stakes jobs. And we installed with the contractor. And then we bring the GC safety team in. We bring the owner safety team in the data center safety team.

00;08;07;01 - 00;08;28;16

Dick Zhang

We do the dog and pony and explain it. And they love it in minutes. They love it. And so it's been extraordinarily successful from a from a safety perspective. But like when it comes to the technology, if you get a chance to see it, either you know, here at a show or out on a job site at a demo with the dealer, you got to you got to walk behind the thing, do it carefully, do it very carefully.

00;08;28;16 - 00;08;48;12

Dick Zhang

But you got to just go walk behind it. So I'm here now in this safety area that the roller cares about. And then right about here I'll walk out of the way and it counts three, two, one and goes. We've seen all kinds of scenarios with you know, if we'll get kind of tilted, we can stop the roller with conductivity.

00;08;48;12 - 00;09;03;01

Dick Zhang

If we lose conductivity, we can stop the roller. If we lose good RTK, you know, with the GPS, all those kinds of things, like there's over a dozen of these failsafe built in. So from a technical level, I think we've done lots of wonderful things. There's still lots to be done, but we've done lots of wonderful things for safety.

00;09;03;02 - 00;09;23;10

Dick Zhang

But what I think is really important is anytime we are made aware of a safety incident, it's a very transparent process. We can look at logs, we can we can talk with the folks on site. We can understand what happened. Most importantly, almost all of the time there is something that we can do either with technology or with process and training to improve the safety system.

00;09;23;10 - 00;09;44;10

Dick Zhang

And the few notable times there has been a safety incident where we can we can improve the software or the technology. We do it quickly, like I'm talking 36 hours quickly. The new safety technology is built, it's tested, it's installed, and then the magic of it is we can ship a software update and all of a sudden, rollers on four continents wake up and everybody becomes better.

00;09;44;10 - 00;09;54;10

Dick Zhang

And so it's this very transparent process. It's like this industry wide movement. As we all roll more, everybody gets better, everybody gets smarter, everybody gets safer. So that's been super exciting.

00;09;54;12 - 00;09;55;15

Jordanne Waldschmidt

And it's just going to keep getting.

00;09;55;15 - 00;09;56;28

Dick Zhang

Better and only snowballs from here.

00;09;57;00 - 00;10;10;03

Jordanne Waldschmidt

Yeah. Awesome. So of course you know it's all about production production production so beyond just you know hours rolled on a job site. How are some of your customers right now really tracking their metrics. And what's success look like for you?

00;10;10;04 - 00;10;43;26

Dick Zhang

So trackable metrics the natural place to start is hours of production. And you know, we see rollers. We've actually had customers with various tracking like Vision Link Software's before Blue Lights showed up. You know, maybe idle time was 70% after Blue Lights showed up. We're talking 7%, so we're talking like a ten times reduction in idle time. And so the machine is just doing more, you know, when when it's turned on and on the job and then like as a job and as a site, what we find is we'll get folks that are very skeptical of blue light, very skeptical of the autonomy, and rightfully so.

00;10;43;26 - 00;11;02;08

Dick Zhang

And then they'll put it to work for a week or two, and then they'll take a look at site wide production numbers and they're like, oh my God. Like, we're producing, you know, 14% more when we get our guy out of the roller and into that extra truck or that extra pan, and now we're hauling more material as a team and as a site.

00;11;02;08 - 00;11;21;00

Dick Zhang

And so that's where you start to get it's like very emotionally exciting. Of course, very measurable. And then that like once you start looking sitewide at production, then you start to build a lot of trust in new means and method. So I'd say site level production is ultimately the lever that we try to help. Awesome.

00;11;21;04 - 00;11;29;18

Jordanne Waldschmidt

Yeah. All right. Well, for those people who are ready to get started, roughly what is this cost and what are the brands that you guys are compatible with today?

00;11;29;20 - 00;11;49;25

Dick Zhang

Yeah, if you're trying to get started, we work very, very hard to make this accessible for contractors. So whether you're going through dealers and you're doing the traditional sort of buy it and do the subscription or rental, we just announced this week, you're able to now just rent the thing off our website with Apple Pay, whether it's rental subscription, if you want to put it through a dealer, like we've done it all.

00;11;49;28 - 00;12;08;06

Dick Zhang

So we try to make it very accessible. Rough like price. If you want to look at one number, you should be in 40 something a little bit less than 50,000. All in to go. And obviously if you run it it's way less. But you're talking 40 50,000. We're talking a couple of hours to install, whether through us or through a dealer.

00;12;08;08 - 00;12;27;04

Dick Zhang

You're talking literally minutes to get to to get going, you know, on a on a device so highly accessible, you know, you know, to summarize it and then actual makes and models, we've been with cat rollers between the B series and the and the GC rollers. We've also worked with the next gen Cat ADT and their articulated trucks for a good time.

00;12;27;04 - 00;12;43;24

Dick Zhang

Now we're just announcing it at this week the Volvo articulated trucks. This is hotly requested. And then Dyna pack rollers as well whether here or at Dinah Pack, you know, at their booth or at a dealership, they are able to basically deliver autonomy from the dealer with that relationship.

00;12;43;25 - 00;12;53;15

Jordanne Waldschmidt

Yeah. That's amazing. And I know a lot of manufacturers are offering smart compaction technologies. Now. Is that something that can also be integrated with this system?

00;12;53;22 - 00;13;21;29

Dick Zhang

Yes. So also officially as of March here in Las Vegas, we're able to to speak about a development integration relationship with Trimble. So we have lots of customers in the Trimble ecosystem, lots of customers that want to get into Trimble's compaction technologies. So it's been a beautiful marrying like blue light will drive the thing. And then you get to lean on Trimble's basically GNSS, GPS ecosystem and then their whole software ecosystem.

00;13;22;02 - 00;13;37;24

Dick Zhang

And so we're working on that integration with Trimble. There are others that were not able to announce yet, but in a word, yes, blue light is here to help you run this machine, help you make production, and then whatever software ecosystem that you want to be looped into, you should be able to be looped into it.

00;13;37;24 - 00;13;45;22

Jordanne Waldschmidt

Awesome. Exciting times. Well, Dick, thank you so much for joining us and showing us what autonomy really looks like today in 2026.

00;13;45;24 - 00;13;48;01

Dick Zhang

Yeah. Thanks, Jordan. Great to be here.

00;13;48;03 - 00;14;17;03

Jordanne Waldschmidt

If you're a contractor looking to get more production out of your rollers or haul trucks without buying an entirely new fleet, this is a conversation worth paying attention to. Lula retrofit approach shows how autonomy can be practical, affordable, and jobsite ready. Right now, Blue Light currently integrates with Cat and Volvo haul trucks, some of the top selling manufacturers in the category, according to editors equipment finance data.

00;14;17;06 - 00;14;51;11

Jordanne Waldschmidt

Among the most popular models are cats. Seven. 45. 730 and 725. Along with Volvos A 30 G, A, 40 G, and a 45 G, Blue Light also offers retrofit kits for cat and Dynapack rollers. Cats leading roller models include the CB 2.7, CB 4.0 and CB 13. Well, Dyna Pack CC 1200 by and CC 900 G rank among the most widely financed units.

00;14;51;12 - 00;15;03;15

Jordanne Waldschmidt

We hope this helps you in your business. To stay up to date with our latest videos, hit like and subscribe. And for more news on all things construction. Head on over to equipment Worldcom.