The $285,000 Electric Truck Nobody Can Find

0:01Travis Waite: Hi, I'm Kelly Barner and this is the Art of Supply podcast. Every business story has a supply chain angle and those stories deserve to be told. This show digs deep into news headlines and interviews thought leaders, executives, and newsmakers to capture their perspective in their own words. with no agenda to lead us in any particular direction. We'll offer you objective coverage of geopolitics, innovation, and competition. Facts will always take precedence over hype. The rest is up to you.

0:40Harold Keller: In December, 2025, a$285 ,000 electric semi-truck went missing. It wasn't stolen off a lot. It wasn't lost in transit. It went missing because the two mechanics who kept it running, Travis Waite and Harold Keller,

0:59Wen Han: left the company that made it, owned a combined$91 ,000 in back wages. And according to that company, they are holding and even hiding the truck until they get paid.

1:12Harold Keller: That is not the strangest thing you're going to hear today about Windrose technology. It just happens to be the most dramatic.

1:19Wen Han: We find ourselves at another episode of Art of Supply where you just can't make this stuff up. So let me start by giving you a quick context.

1:30Harold Keller: Windrose is a Chinese-founded, Belgium-headquartered electric truck startup that is looking to compete head-to-head with Tesla's Semi. It was founded in 2022 by Wen Han. He's 36 years old, a Stanford MBA, alumnus of Bridgewater Associates and GSR Ventures. He's also a colorful character and regularly shows up in photos with world leaders. And he made the decision to have Windrose sponsor a basketball team in Belgium, even as other bills reportedly weren't being paid. Now, Windrose has raised roughly$400 million between equity and lines of credit. and they've managed to put their first truck, the R700, on the road in China.

2:18Harold Keller: Time named Windrose one of the 10 most influential transportation companies of 2026, and the company plans to go public this year. We're looking at potentially a$2 billion IPO valuation, and it's going to be interesting to see how that timing plays out. By most independent accounts, the truck itself is good. A source on the Dow Jones Risk Journal podcast put it plainly. Unlike Nikola, which faked a truck rolling downhill and then went bankrupt, quote, everyone seems to be in agreement that the R700 is a great electric truck.

2:57Wen Han: The main disputes are surrounding the way the company is run. But in the real world, you can't really separate the two. So which is this? a well-engineered truck buried under a chaotic company with an eccentric founder, or a company whose chaos is just a preview of what's going to happen when the truck tries to scale. So in this episode of Art of Supply, I'll show you why a$285 ,000 electric truck is currently sitting somewhere nobody at Windrose can find, and why the two guys who allegedly know exactly where it is aren't talking. I'll walk through why a truck built in China ended up with a VIN that says it was made in Georgia, and what that says about how much of trucking safety compliance runs on the honor system.

3:50Harold Keller: And then I'll get into why Nikola's pardoned, convicted founder supposedly has made a lowball offer for the company, and why that story gets a lot more complicated once you see the actual trucks Windrose has on the road in Texas and Chile. Like I said, you just can't make this stuff up. Now, the former mechanics who allegedly took the truck are not the only former Windrose employees making news. Former head of North American operations, Jason Geese, demanded back pay from Windrose and was fired just days later. While Windrose denies that they retaliated against him, a Michigan federal court ordered the company to pay him$413 ,000 after Windrose failed to respond to the lawsuit.

4:40Harold Keller: By August of 2025, Carl Mackey, then Windrose's director of customer success, said the company was 90 days behind on payroll and, quote, out of money.

4:53Wen Han: Now, at that time, the company's payroll provider had cut ties, meaning that staff lost their office and were actually working out of a trailer trying to keep the operation going.

5:06Harold Keller: CEO Wenhan's response to this, on the record, was that Windrose rejected the allegations, saying it, quote, is not facing financial difficulties. He blamed the late payments on an administrative transition between payroll providers. Meanwhile, he was posting on LinkedIn that Windrose cabs had, quote, arrived in the port of Long Beach and were ready to be assembled.

5:31Wen Han: He celebrated that deposits would soon be accepted from buyers at$15 ,000 a truck. Kyle Mackey's response to that? Those cabs, quote, never left the port in L.A. due to unpaid bills.

5:46Harold Keller: All a marketing stunt. As of Windrose's own July 2026 statement to CarScoops, mechanics Wade and Keller still hadn't been paid.

5:56Wen Han: The truck still hadn't turned up. And Hunt called their$91 ,000 past two salary demand unfounded.

6:04Harold Keller: Windrose has told the LAPD they believe this is grand theft auto. Now, the information's July 12th piece titled Electric Truck Startup Windrows has stiffed a slew of people, end quote.

6:19Wen Han: That's the article title. Suggest that this isn't an isolated issue with one or two employees, but instead a pattern across supply partners and staff. This is also a federal judgment, a director going public, a missing truck, and a police report all within about a year. Oh, and don't forget the Belgian basketball team. So we know one of the trucks is missing, but where did the trucks come from in the first place? Believe it or not, that is up for debate too, least from a paperwork standpoint.

6:55Harold Keller: A reporter pulled the VIN numbers for every Windrose truck that had entered the United States and found that two indicated the vehicles were manufactured in Georgia. even though Windrose CEO Wen Han personally told that same reporter that all his trucks are made in China. Han's explanation, which has been repeated consistently across the Wall Street Journal and CarScoop's coverage, okay, come on, say it with me, it was a former employee's mistake.

7:25Wen Han: And we can joke, but this matters far too much to be brushed aside as a paperwork error. As the Dow Jones podcast episode noted, quote, a lot of the safety that goes into the truck is also self-reported by the manufacturer to federal regulators. So a fabricated or wrong, depending on your perspective, country of origin on a VIN raises the question of what else in Windrose's self-certification might deserve a second look. And if that wasn't all complicated enough, and enough for Windrose to struggle under,

8:02Harold Keller: Nikola founder Trevor Milton said, hold my beer. Now, you may remember Trevor Milton and his company Nikola, another electric truck company from episode 97. I'll put a link to it in the show notes if you want to refresh your memory. Trevor Milton was convicted of securities fraud in 2022. His company, Nikola, went bankrupt in February of 2025. And just one month later, Trevor Milton received an unconditional pardon from President Donald Trump. Now, the thing you are most likely to remember about Nikola is that they're the company with the gorgeous promotional video showing their truck rolling along the open road, looking like it was moving under its own power, when in truth, they towed the truck to the top of a hill and

8:53Wen Han: pushed it down, and it was traveling under gravity power.

8:58Harold Keller: Now, according to reporting from the information's Steve Levine in July of 2026, Trevor Milton first declined to invest in Windrose, and then he made a lowball$3 million offer for Windrose's North and South American operations. So the founder whose company literally faked a truck rolling downhill, actually, correction, the truck really rolled down the hill, he faked it driving under its own power, is now circling a distressed American arm of a company that, by most accounts, has actually built a good truck. So they're looking at a$2 billion IPO valuation, and Trevor Milton offers$3 million. The interesting thing is, these trucks really are on the road.

9:47Harold Keller: As of July 23rd, 2026, DSV, a major global logistics company, announced that it's deploying 10 Windrose E700s on the I-35 corridor for U.S.-Mexico freight through the same Allogic Greenspace partnership that handled Windrose's first U.S. delivery. Now, Windrose used this announcement to tease their next-generation platform that promises a 500-mile-plus range. In Chile, Trailer Logistics is running Windrose trucks on retail routes for Walmart and mining routes for Codelco. Owner Hernan Seals said, quote,

10:27Wen Han: Today, having diesel as the only energy source within a truck fleet is super risky. And he's done the math. These numbers are compelling. He says the trailer logistics is saving about 17 cents a mile compared to diesel. He believes they will break even on their investment in two to three years, at least on the high mileage routes. And they expect that Chile's electric heavy truck fleet will grow from about a dozen trucks today to roughly 50 by early 2027.

11:00Harold Keller: This is genuinely independent validation. There's an operator with no reason to flatter windrows, giving real unit economics on the record.

11:11Wen Han: Interestingly, this is almost more of a complication than it is a resolution. The wage disputes and the missing truck haven't gone anywhere. Well, we don't know. Maybe the missing truck is driving around, but it's still missing. We also can't tell this story as pure vaporware. DSV and trailer logistics are real counterparties putting real freight on these trucks. That leaves prospective buyers caught in the middle. Despite all of the good operational news coming out of Windrose, some anonymous prospective buyers have shared their concerns online, mostly anonymously. One anonymous U.S.-based source said, quote, I was a Windrose supporter, but I have not been able to get my hands on the truck since they came into the U.S., and none of their timelines are believable.

12:02Wen Han: That same source went on to say, Windrose is very successful if you follow them on social media, but the reality is they are having issues. I am not giving them a deposit on their vehicle or firming up any purchase orders. Another anonymous potential customer also suggested the same hesitancy around ordering,

12:24Harold Keller: Quote, because Windrose has not shown me that their truck is certified for U.S. operations and that it will achieve all of the performance that they promise.

12:33Wen Han: Now, there is one other issue here, if all that wasn't enough. A few episodes ago, I covered China's decrees 834 and 835. These are the country's attempt to ensure that all companies with Chinese roots remain under their influence, no matter where they're located or headquartered or operate around the world. Take a look at the show notes for a link to that episode as well. And just to remind you, Windrose is Chinese founded with a largely Chinese supply chain. They may say that they're headquartered in Belgium, but that's unlikely to survive the impact of the decrees.

13:14Harold Keller: In addition, I mentioned their supply chain. Windrose's trucks are contract manufactured in China, so they don't have their own manufacturing capabilities. And then all of the components are sent to regional locations for final assembly.

13:29Wen Han: This very supply chain is now the subject of U.S. reporters trying to trace VINs, financials, and ownership.

13:38Harold Keller: Decree 834 restricts exactly the kind of supply chain information gathering that these reporters and any future regulators would need to do. And Decree 835 gives Beijing a formal tool to label those information requests, quote, improper extraterritorial jurisdiction and block Chinese entities from cooperating.

14:02Wen Han: They would consider Windrose a Chinese entity. Belgium doesn't matter. Basketball team doesn't matter. Where the finally assembly is done does not matter. By their definition, they consider this within the scope. And automotive and EV are explicitly named sectors. Now, this is just my read. I haven't found anything else that connects these stories, but I don't see how we can ignore the possibility that eventually this issue, too, rears its ugly head. So before we finish, let's come back to the truck itself. Nobody serious is disputing that Windrose hasn't built a competitive electric truck. And they did it in four years, and they've been able to undercut most of their competitors on price.

14:51Wen Han: The issue is that the company behind that truck is a different story. So we've got the missing truck, a$413 ,000 federal judgment, a director saying that the company is out of money on LinkedIn. A founder that is blaming a paperwork error for Vins that say the trucks were made in Georgia when he says they were built in China. And now we've got Nicholas Pardin founder circling the mess with his lowball offer. Ironically, the truck might be the only thing that outlives the company that built it. Or let's be positive. Maybe Windrose will get their act together long enough for that truck to matter at scale.

15:32Harold Keller: Right now, both of those outcomes are still possible, which is a strange place to be for a company chasing a$2 billion IPO valuation to be standing in.

15:50Travis Waite: Art of Supply is part of the Art of Procurement family of brands. To ensure you never miss new content, I invite you to sign up for our newsletter at artofsupply.com. If this episode of the Art of Supply podcast made you think, please spread the word. You can support the show by giving us a thumbs up, a star rating, or a review wherever you find your podcast audio. Join me next week for another deep dive into the art of supply.