S1E21 – Straighten Up and Roll On: Parking Lot Etiquette, Walcott Jamboree & Road-Tested Truths

S1E21 – Straighten Up and Roll On: Parking Lot Etiquette, Walcott Jamboree & Road-Tested Truths [00:00:00] Episode Transcript
Ten four drivers. Welcome to the Channel one nine Experience Trucker podcast . This is where the real stories roll straight from the blacktop.
Breaker breaker one, nine villains. You got your years on. I’m your host, Tony. Welcome to the Trucker Podcast. It’s Sunday, July 13th, and it’s episode number 21 in the pre-trip. This week we’ve got up on the bulletin board. we’ll talk about my trip up to Walcott, Iowa and to the I 80 truck Stop. Jamboree up there.
And then the big pre-trip item this week is the release of parking lot etiquette. We did the fuel island etiquette a few weeks back, so this week we follow up with that with our parking lot etiquette
in the money line. This week
we’re gonna talk about adjustment. Not your seat, not your fifth wheel, not your tandems, but adjusting. Your approach to trucking and how valuable that is to being [00:01:00] successful. , I jumped back into my trucking story in the money line this week and talk about one of my first big adjustments, , switching from one company to another and what that was like, what the adjustments really were, what I thought they were, what they turned out to be, and how life and trucking Are about a continuous series of adjustments, seeking improvement and adapting yourself, to be successful over the long haul. No interviews this week with all the travel I had going on. just three and a half hours of me this week. Just kidding. It’s not gonna be three and a half hours. My wife would kill me if I pass that over to help edit three and a half hours worth of me talking.
so it won’t be that long. I. Like I said, no interviews this week, but check out some of our past interviews. We’ve had some great interviews over the last few weeks and going all the way back, I don’t know, we must be up to 15, man, maybe, probably close to 20 interviews so far on the podcast. So, , go catch yourself up on some of the [00:02:00] previous ones.
If you’re looking for something else to listen to besides just me, don’t forget to hang around after the money line and, we’ll work through the post trip. Let’s get this rig rolling. If you’re not driving, It’s a great time to like follow, subscribe, and share the podcast with your friends.
Breaker, Breaker, one nine can I get radio check pretty, pretty quiet out here on Channel one nine, there’s a plain white wrapper taking pictures at the state line. Hit the Jake Brake quick. We ain’t paying no fines. Drivers swing into the interstate body shop south at exit five. Buddy trucking ain’t the same as it was.
We’re the last of our kind.
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Pretrip Inspection HornPretrip Inspection

Pretrip QuotePretrip Inspection
Grab that safety vest and let’s do our pre-trip. Let’s start off with our quote this week. Our quote this week comes from the world of Chess. And Mr. Robot, if you haven’t watched Mr. Robot yet on Netflix, it’s an interesting show to say the least, different world, different universe, , in the computer realm.
And the quote comes from a chess player, [00:04:00] Emmanuel Lasker, and his quotes this, when you see a good move. Look for a better one. it’s a great quote, especially for trucking. Our brains are amazing machines, but they’re very expensive to run. and between our ears, the calculation of cost versus reward is playing out behind the scenes thousands of times per second.
And playing out the scenarios of the fastest answer. The easiest answer. The best answer. What’s the possibility of those solutions? The likelihood of those solutions? What’s the risk? What’s the danger? What’s the downside? Any of that sound familiar? I mean, that’s trucking in a nutshell. I’m gonna circle back to this quote in the money line.
In the meantime, let that quote sink in, spray a little penetrating fluid on top of it, , let it soak for a few miles. I’ll circle back to it. The quote is, when you see a good move, look for a better one.
,
Pretrip – Bulletin Board – Walcott Jamboree
Let’s start off the pre-trip up north. Tons of posts this [00:05:00] week with the Walcott jamboree going on up at I 80 truck stop in, in Iowa up there.
Of course, coincidentally enough on I 80 there just was the Davenport in the quad cities. I could only do one day up there. So I picked Friday, I flew up there, , just to do one day. It was an adventurous couple of days weather-wise, , especially Thursday and Friday. , But we had a nice window on Friday morning until about 5:00 PM so I got a nice chance to enjoy the show.
I flew up into Cedar Rapids up there to the Eastern Iowa airport, Thursday night, and they had some pretty rough weather over at the Jamboree on Thursday night. , with some things getting washed out and they got quite a bit of rain. , I drove over, I. To Walcott on Friday morning from Cedar Rapids.
It’s about an hour or so from my hotel near the airport to Walcott, quick Hop down, three 80 there and then east on I 80 for about 40 miles. There were trucks in the ditch, both directions on I 80, , from the night before. Looked like. One of the first things I noticed was how nice that three 80 [00:06:00] South, getting onto the I 80 eastbound intersection is these days.
I used to run that stretch quite a bit a long time ago. Ran a lot of loads from Minnesota down to Florida, Holland, Genio turkeys. It’s good route to, uh, to pick, to get outta West Central Minnesota, head down to Florida. A little easier to time the scales or dodge the scales if needed. Um. Really all the way down till you get to about Kentucky then they’re, you know, the, the Kentucky super coops one way or another, you’re probably gonna have to cross one, but the one I’d usually cut over down through, , Evansville.
And that one was usually pretty good about, , closing up in the middle of the night. So if you time that one just right, you’d, you’re likely not to have to deal with it, unlike the one over on 24. , So that’s why I’d end up going down three 80 a lot of the time.
, That intersection, there used to be a clover leaf, which was kind of a circus. , ‘Cause there was a lot of traffic on it back then, but now it’s nice big old sweeping, right hand exits circling way around to the south and then joining back up, going [00:07:00] eastbound. So you, you, you don’t even have to really slow down.
So, nice job Iowa, DOT for that improvement. As you can tell, I don’t know when that, change came in, but by the looks of it had been there a while. As you can tell, I, I haven’t been on that stretch of highway there for a little bit.
So that got me onto I 80 Eastbound Mosey Don over to the Walcott exit. And here there hasn’t been nearly as many improvements over there as I would’ve hoped for. The interchanges there from the exit ramps heading north or southbound there, I forget the name of the road. , But, , I, 80 truck stops on the north side.
There’s a couple truck stops on the north side, couple truck stops on the south side. Still no traffic lights for some reason, which blows my mind given how much traffic and truck traffic, , is going both directions there. And it’s still a pain. It’s. Borderline suicide mission,
of course you’re coming uphill. So you know, if you’re fully loaded, you’ve got, you’re not getting out of there, coming outta that uphill, starting position very fast. , And if you’re going north, . You’ve gotta watch out for trucks coming and traffic coming from the south, headed north, either to get on [00:08:00] eastbound or head over westbound or go across over to the, the truck stops on the north side of the road.
, And they’re not using their directional indicators like they should. If they’re going eastbound, that is, and then if you’re headed eastbound. Looking to go northbound. You got the, the cars coming from the north side, and there’s a hump in the overpass. You can’t really see what the heck’s going on or what’s coming at you, and especially knowing how many seconds it’s gonna take to clear your trailer.
You basically make your best guess and hope everybody else is paying close attention. , , It, it’s still a bit of a circus. I can’t believe we haven’t addressed this over the last 20 years. , Kind of reminds me of why I, uh. I probably didn’t stop there as much as I could have in the past.
It’s just kind of a bit of a circus to get over there, especially if I was always heading eastbound, going that direction. Westbound is easy, you know? Right hand turn, right hand turn, you’re into parking lot. , And then of course with the jamboree, it was an extra special level of chaos. So I got over there, got parked out in the grassy meadow up there on the northeast side of , the truck stop complex there.
And started wandering around. [00:09:00] Now they’ve got golf carts and some buses wandering around between the different facilities. It helps make it a lot easier If you’ve got mobility challenges , you need some assistance or just makes it easier or it’s hot and you don’t want to build up a lather just getting into the truck stop, from your truck or you know, you just took a shower and you wanna make it to your truck .
And, and a. Pristine state as you can. , They’ve got some transportation assistance there, which is pretty cool for especially a facility of that size. Between the distance, between the, the main buildings and the fuel islands and the shops and the trucker museum, all that stuff. And for me, with rain in the forecast and being parked out in that grassy field. , I was definitely thinking about how I might get out of there early before , that grassy meadow became a demolition derby in the mud. So I walked down through you kind of when you’re parked out on the northeast side, you walked down, kind of come in, I’d say the back door
to the truck show. So you’re walking in through kind of the end of the rows of, , [00:10:00] show trucks. You’ve got the historical trucks, you’ve got the show trucks, the working trucks, all that stuff. Tons of cool rigs sitting out there from all eras. , I’ll post some of those photos, but there’s a ton of ’em on Facebook.
As you can imagine with an event like this, , I probably didn’t take as many pictures as I normally would knowing that there’s just gonna be. Thousands of other people’s photos to look at too. , And one of the fun parts of truck shows across America is that a lot of these rigs are regional, ?
Not everybody’s hauling their trucks or driving their trucks to all the various shows across the country. So each show has its own. Local contingent of trucks that maybe only get used a little bit, get brought out to this particular show, and then go back , into storage and, and to be protected, , given all the restoration work that goes into making these trucks look like they do and function like they do.
You go to a local show like this, like there’s trucks there that you’re never gonna see anywhere else. , Just at the Iowa show or just in Idaho or just in Missouri or California. . , , That’s really cool. You get to [00:11:00] see trucks that, , you may not get to see that make or model or that level of restoration job anywhere else
, I got to watch a little bit of the, the trucker Olympics need to watch, , the.
Trucker athletes compete. I was watching the truck pull event. They’ve got an old truck there and see how fast you can pull it from the starting position over to the, finish line there. They have all kinds of events, strap rolling and tire rolling, and no sprinting events. I didn’t see any of those.
No marathons that I saw. , But, , fun events nonetheless. , I could imagine there being some. Interesting alternative Trucker Olympic events going on after hours, once they, , shut the main lights off, you get a bunch of truckers together standing around. We, I think we’ve probably all thought of stupid competition standing in the back row of a truck stop, , that we probably wouldn’t want to record or repeat anywhere else.
But, , fun to watch both men and women truckers competing at the various events., From there you kind of [00:12:00] get into the vendor area, which has a bunch of booths set up outside various organizations, charities, O-O-I-D-A, truckers Against Trafficking, , various vendors selling truck parts, turbos.
Chrome, you name it. Valley Chrome was there. , Some of the trucker apparel groups were out there as well. So really a significantly sized area of, , vendors outside in, in tents. And then of course, they’ve got a big top tent over there with a bunch more vendors inside. Little bit smaller areas, but also under the protection, not standing out in the sun as much or the rain as was the case.
, , heck of a lot of vendors and a lot of people. , Yes they do come to sell their wares or advertise their wares, whatever it is that they’re selling, but also a lot of those vendors support the truck show in a variety of ways, whether that’s sponsoring events. Sponsoring, the truck show, the competitions, the various classes, the [00:13:00] trophies, the prizes, helping pay for, , the bands, the entertainment, the fireworks, things like that.
, .
You also have groups like. Load pay who had a big booth and a big area set up out there. But they also had been a part of bringing in Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs to come and visit the truck show. And he’s, I, I saw Mike, , doing an interview inside , the trucker museum there. So, these vendors do a lot to make the experience fun for the entire family.
take an opportunity, take the time to visit, , with them while they’re there as well.
I was wandering in and out the vendors stopping, chatting with people at that point I. I had one heck of a lather going on underneath my jeans. My Arizona blood is more conditioned to 110 degrees with 10% humidity, not 85 degrees with 90% humidity. So it was time to take a break from the outdoors, head into the truck, stop, wander the aisles of, , chrome and lights and other gadgets.
In the air [00:14:00] conditioning and lo and behold, ran into my buddy George Thelman there from true TMS. Perhaps you’ve heard of true TMS if you paid attention to the podcast you have. , And true TMS is also one of the sponsors there of the truck show competitions. So George and I , wandered our way up to
the Iowa 80 Trucking Museum, I had never been up there before. , And if you haven’t made it up there and , you stop at the Iowa 80 truck stop, make the walk up there. It’s, it’s pretty amazing collection that they have. , In the lobby there, they were having a little birthday celebration for a 100-year-old Kenworth that they have on display.
. We walked around the museum, they’ve got dozens. I didn’t count, but , the count might go into the hundreds of restored rigs. They’re going back more than a hundred years, the early 19 hundreds. All kinds of different makes and models. , It, it was just fantastic to see the, kind of the historical journey as you’re looking at the [00:15:00] signs and the information and you watch some of the transitions that happened in the various periods of trucking history.
When diesel engines came, when cab over engines, , became prevalent when more conventional looking trucks, , started to take over just the progression of. Features, amenities. , And then of course , when various manufacturers started to disappear for various reasons, ,
, Really a great museum. And, if you walk around with George for a while, you’re bound to get introduced to people. , So I met some awesome people walking around, , up at the museum, Heather from the Iowa 80 Truck Stops Group and CAD Scales. Linda from Overdrive Magazine and the Trucker Media Group, Gary from the Truck Business Network.
All people. That, , was great to meet and looks like, or hopefully we get a chance to meet with them here going forward, bring some of their stories to the program and also share some of our stories over into their realms. , But the bottom line is George knows just [00:16:00] about everybody when you walk around one of these shows.
So a lot of fun walking around with George , , and getting to talk to people that I might not have met. Any other way. So if you get there to the Iowa 80 truck stop, be sure to visit the museum. It’s fantastic. George and I went in, ate at the restaurant there, wandered the show some more, and we could see, everybody could see the storm clouds starting to roll in from the southwest there.
And, remembering that my little rental car sitting out in a potentially muddy field, I decided that discretion would be the better part of valor here. I. I parted ways, I don’t know. This was about probably about 5, 5 30. , , Went out and got my car out of the field, got onto some pavement and decided to make my exit a little bit early.
, And then it’s funny, , it well then trying to get out, there was another story. I wasn’t the only one who was looking at the conditions going, might be time to make our exodus, but I was trying to get out . So I’m headed southbound on that little two lane road, headed back to the freeway. It’s [00:17:00] like maybe half mile from the museum entrance back up to the freeway.
, There was an oversized truck that was headed westbound on I 80 got, came up the ramp really long oversize. Trailer. Um, I, I, I’d have to look at the picture again, but I mean, I think he had probably six or eight axles on the back, so it was really long, which also means really low clearance and that, that exit ramp, that whole configuration, there is a bit of a mess.
, . He got himself hung up trying to go southbound over to the truck stops on the south side of the freeway, and so he was blocking up. Basically the hole of the overpass. Nobody from the north side of I 80 could get to the south side. ’cause his, the, the cab, you, I’ll post the pictures, but you can see the, his cab’s basically blocking up and the trailer is hung up, blocking up everybody crossing that overpass.
I was lucky to be at the front of the herd, not the back of the herd so I could actually make it up. And, and so this part. You know, it’s a little bit funny, [00:18:00] maybe not funny for everybody, but I found it funny. Interesting. Maybe a better way of putting it.
While George and I were talking with Heather inside the museum building a little bit earlier, and George was telling her about some of the new features, , in true TMS that they’re coming out with later this fall. And one of them is , a forecasting tool.
So combining their forecasting tools of, let’s say. Fuel levels within the tanks at the gas station or truck stop. , They combine it with your allocations, which is how you get fuel out of the fuel racks. And so it combines all this to make planning and especially planning extraordinary events easier for the carriers, ?
Adds more data all together in the same spot so , they can make their choices on where they’re gonna load from and, . Where to deliver that fuel most efficiently. So anyway, while George is explaining it, I, I chimed into the conversation and I said, for example, you know, let’s say something was to happen on the overpass out here [00:19:00] that dramatically impacted your fuel sales and your normal volumes, because every store has a very good idea of what the typical on a Friday at two in the afternoon in July, we sell how many hundreds or how many thousands of gallons of regular premium.
Diesel, all that stuff. So imagine if something happened that changed your fuel, , sales. And that George’s software will help your carrier who’s delivering your fuel optimize, where they’re picking it up, when they’re gonna deliver all those things. And, , so as it turns out, I don’t know, three hours later, here’s, uh, you know, uh.
80 foot trailers stuck crossways across the overpass. So I, you know, diesel Dous doesn’t fully understand the extent of his powers yet. Um, so apologies for that. I’ll try not to accidentally break things anymore. So anyway, I got on the freeway and I didn’t make it more than. I, I bet you I didn’t make it 10 miles before George sends me a [00:20:00] message.
And with the post that the folks at Iowa 80 had basically canceled the rest of the events for the day. And so it was a good call on their part because about that time, I got absolutely slammed with monsoon rain, lightning high wind. The whole nine yards interstate was down to about 10 miles an hour, and that lasted for probably 20.
20, 30 miles, um, almost all the way back to like Coralville in there. looks like Saturday was a fantastic day for weather. So I’m glad to see , that they had nice weather to close out the show and get all the events and all the truck judging and the contests and the finals to the trucker Olympics.
All that stuff went off without a hitch on Saturday. So awesome for them. I’m really happy that I got a chance to get up there at least for a day. , Didn’t get to see the fireworks or didn’t get to see the shell, but that’s okay. We’ll get back here next year. Great people, of course, as always at these trucking shows , , both people attending and people who put in all the effort and the work and the investment to make it, , [00:21:00] as successful as they can be.
So, awesome job, everybody up there at Iowa 80 and all the participants.
Pretrip – Parking Lot Etiquette
Next up on the pre-trip. Let’s circle back to trucking etiquette. We started with fuel island etiquette a few weeks back. Published the bullet points of , fuel island etiquette, and then posted a quiz, had tons of high scores on the fuel island etiquette quiz, all passing scores, by the way.
So way to go, everybody. We definitely have, the cream of the crop here in our audience, . But you know what that means? We’ve got work to do. So spread the word, share the posts, share the website, share the quiz, order some encouragement cards. We know there are folks out there who can use some extra or remedial training about fuel island etiquette.
So it’s up to us. We gotta reach ’em to together. So share that information out, this week , I’m posting out parking lot etiquette and the guide that I made, I’ll post it, you all [00:22:00] digest it, let me know what I’m missing or what needs editing.
Then I’ll finalize that thing, , get the quiz built out, and then we can all work on distributing that together. You can take the quizzes, test yourselves, see what you know. And I’ve also got some content planned to help us spread the word on that one.
, Parking lot etiquette is another area that can seriously use some work. So let’s take a stroll into parking lot and talk it over here, starting with things you should do in the parking lot. Alright? Use your flashers when backing, even if it’s obvious, use them. Some people aren’t paying attention.
Every little reminder helps turn off your lights at night, your headlights, your fog lights, for sure. Make sure your high beams are down. I know some trucks have automatic headlights that kick in. , If you’re trying to outsmart the computer, keep your truck idling if it’s got auto shutoff or things like that.
But at a minimum, make sure that the high beams aren’t [00:23:00] on this next one, we also covered in fuel island etiquette, which is, . Keep your trash in your truck or throw it away properly. Don’t throw out or dump stuff out onto the parking lot surface. This is one of the top reasons we lose access to some places.
And, and I’ll take this one, even one step further here. Add living on the show. , If you see something outta place. Help clean it up a little bit more hands, make less work, maybe collectively we can pitch in and lose one less place to park by our community efforts. Of course, use the restroom. Same as on the fuel island.
Don’t use the fuel island. Don’t use the parking lot as your restroom. Use the restroom as your restroom and if you happen to have used a bottle or other container. When you couldn’t make it to the restroom, put that in the garbage, not the parking lot. That’s the other main reason we lose access to places to park.
And keeping on the theme of bio material. Pick up after your pets as well. Parking lots shouldn’t be a minefield of disgusting [00:24:00] debris.
While you’re out in the parking lot, keep your head on a swivel, whether you’re driving or walking. There’s lots of stuff going on. So pay attention,, zone out in your cab once you’re parked zone out inside the building. But while you’re in the lot, be aware and make yourself visible.
40 tons of steel. Beats a couple hundred pounds of flesh and bone every single time. Here. Might be a controversial one. Dress civilized. Yes, be comfortable. Kick off those work boots and jeans, of course, wear sweats, flip flops to the shower and back. But I think we can agree to some level of decorum.
Nobody wants to see. Cracks in people’s bodies or extra body parts that normally no one should have to see. And if you happen to be eating in the restaurant or plan to eat in the restaurant when you can still find one that is a restaurant, [00:25:00] remember to have some level of decency in what you wear. And maybe think of it this way.
If you’re single, this could be , your one chance to make a first impression with your one true love in life. So you don’t wanna miss that. Or you may find out , you’re on an impromptu job interview, standing at the fuel island, standing at the subway, standing at the buffet line, at the Iowa 80 truck.
Stop having a conversation with somebody and either their driver is helping them find their next. Driver for a great gig they’ve got, or it’s the truck owner. , This may be your one shot to make a first impression for the job of a lifetime as well. So be prepared. Your opportunities for various things are all over the place.
, And it’s up to you to be ready for it. And finally, on the list of things you should do. Straighten up in your spot. It’s okay to do a little touchup work on your parking job and you can wait till people pass by you [00:26:00] after you get done parking. You know, if they’ve already waited a little while , for you to get into your parking spot.
Let ’em go pass. Let traffic clear a little bit mentally. Rest for a moment. , And then go ahead and touch it up a little bit. Readjust things or. It is gonna sound crazy to some people. You could get out and look around and see what you’ve done. Look at where you’re at in your parking spot. Are you too far back?
Are you too far up? Are you too far right or left in your parking spot? It’s a great time to, readjust things, get it prepared so there’s space for the next person. , Try to be in the center, make it as easy for everybody else as you can. I know it seems like, well, why should I have to, well, , what is the saying?
A penny of prevention’s worth a pound, a cure. I. If you make it a little easier , for everybody around you by being in the middle of your spot or in the right spot in your spot, it may just be the inch that’s needed to keep somebody from hooking your bumper and both of you doing a bunch of paperwork , and [00:27:00] in a bunch of conversations you would’ve rather not had in the first place.
Also when you’re out looking around, it’s a great opportunity to share an encouragement card. We’ve got, , several encouragement cards that are built right for this theme of a parking job Well done. I. So order your encouragement cards from our website. They’re free, and we’ll send them right to you and then you can hand them out and let everybody know how great of a job they’re doing.
Or if you want one of the sassy ones, there’s some to, , let people know that they could have done a better job. , So go ahead, get those parking related encouragement cards ordered, and we’ll get ’em shipped out to you so you can help spread the word and encourage people one way or another.
All right, let’s tackle what you shouldn’t do in the parking lot. Don’t race around. It’s not a NASCAR track. And if you haven’t noticed, the truckers often are not world class athletes,
So slow down. Give yourself time to react. Give them a [00:28:00] chance to get out of the way and everybody will be better off for it. Don’t be creepy, especially around our female counterparts. The parking lot can be an uncomfortable place to be in all alone. , Especially at night, especially in areas that aren’t necessarily very safe.
there’s plenty of truck stops that have negative elements hanging around. , So , don’t add to that concern or anxiety for people. Be friendly. Don’t be weird. Take cues if somebody doesn’t seem like they want to talk to you, or uncomfortable with the space that you’re giving them,, Don’t block stuff, fuel lanes, exits, ingress, or egress from shops or fuel drop zones, stuff like that. When you park, walk around, examine things, see what you might’ve missed from the driver’s seat. Look around the area and go,, how would people maneuver? What are they going to be doing based on where I’m parked, who’s coming in, who’s coming out, what [00:29:00] happens?
. If someone has to maneuver nearby to you, is there enough room for them to do it or are you just kind of inviting trouble? Are you messing up the program for others? And yes, it’s okay to go adjust or look for a better spot or keep your eyes peeled for a better spot. Sometimes just spotting a potential problem and avoiding it is the best thing you can do.
You don’t know if it would’ve happened, but I think if you, if you talk to enough of the folks who have 1 million, 2 million, then the crazy stuff with the three, four, 5 million miles without incidents and accidents, a lot of it goes into the little things like this of.
The level of awareness they have of stuff that’s going on in their attention to detail eliminates little dumb things from potentially occurring. They just reduce that likelihood down from 5% to 1% or 1% down to 1000 [00:30:00] of 1%, right? So take a look around, adjust if needed.
Don’t take up multiple parking spots for no reason. Obviously, there are people with loads who have to take multiple parking spots. If you’re not one of those trucks, park inside the lines. Don’t blindside back in if you don’t need to or you suck at it. They’re better places and times to practice. , Your blindside backing.
Be mindful when you’re idling. If you can give your truck and your neighbors a break from the idling, , your mental health will probably thank you. Also, you know, taking a break from your vibrating container is good for your soul.
Don’t drive through the lot with your high beams on. That should go without saying, but here we are saying it. Turn your high beams off. Don’t slam your doors, your hood, your side compartments, your toolbox on your trailers, . Take it easy on your equipment and you never know who’s maybe sleeping nearby.
People take [00:31:00] breaks at different times of day. You got people who run the all night shift. They’re sleeping at two in the afternoon or trying to, so it’s just good habit to get in. Be gentle.
Don’t hold a one person concert in the parking lot. We know it’s cool that you got. Four 14 inch kickers and a 1500 watt amplifier. We know you’re cool, crank it up on the super slab in the parking lot, chill. And to wrap up things in the shouldn’t do section if you must argue with your dispatcher or anyone else on the phone.
Do it away from other people. Nobody’s gonna mistake a truck stop parking lot for a Zen garden, but we can all do our part to make it a little more peaceful.
Let’s wrap this up with some other useful tips for good parking lot etiquette, wave or nod to other drivers and truckers. Used to be cordial. We used to have manners. that back one wave at a time, and of [00:32:00] course, use more than one finger. Leave space when possible. It’s okay to spread out a little bit when it’s not busy in a truck stop or it’s on the weekend or something like that, the middle of the day.
, Or when there’s many open spaces and you hate being by reefers, now’s a great time to park by yourself or go find a van or step deck to be close by to if you have a reefer, being by yourself is okay, or going near other reefers. Realize, this is where awareness comes into it. Self-awareness, realize that it’s irritating for others.
If there’s 20 open spots in a truck stop and you pull your reefer that you know is gonna be turning on and off for the next 10 hours, up next to somebody who obviously doesn’t have a reefer, like they have a flatbed or a tanker. A van. So just be aware of the reality of , your chosen profession, which is to pull a reefer and do your part to be [00:33:00] considerate of others.
And one last reefer point while I’m on the subject. Consider putting your reefer unit on continuous for the night instead of it going on and off and startling you or other people nearby.
This one’s pretty straightforward. Get out and look. Goal, it’s okay if people are muttering to their windshields as they watch you get out and look, but that is always way better than. Subsequent damage and conversations and hassle and everything else that comes with hitting something. So get out and look if you must or ask.
This is why we had CBS In the old days, people could see and guide you in or tying this in with my last, but definitely not lease item. Be the driver who helps others. Spot the drivers backing in. Help them get close to something, , and out of the way without hitting it. Don’t just sit there and record the incident about to happen.
It’s [00:34:00] trucking. You’re gonna have plenty of opportunities to be Facebook famous on bonehead truckers page. , Your heart’s gonna thank you for getting up and getting moving and getting out of the truck and walking out there. And who knows, you might make a friend in the process. That’s all for now for parking lot etiquette.
. Please share the post out order. Those encouragement cards, everybody can make a difference.
Look forward to the quiz coming out here in a week or so. That’s the pre-trip for this week. No defects detected, but that’s just my opinion. If you find defects, let us know. Get that seat adjusted. , Let’s push the buttons in. We’ve got work to do.

.
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Channel 19 Experience Sweeper

Money Line
Welcome back. Let’s kick it up to line three and hammer out the money line this week. Let’s circle back to our quote of the week for a minute. When you see a good move, look for a better one. One thing is relatively consistent about trucking, and that’s that it’s always changing. Sometimes it’s rapid [00:36:00] change, but often.
It’s gradual in a bunch of little ways, and right now we’re seeing a pretty unusual time in trucking where things are moving quite quickly. Tariffs popping up, being delayed, then coming back. We’ve got military flareups and parts of the world. We impacting energy pricing, dramatic reversals in trucking policy, especially in enforcement policy and perspectives.
But. You know, even when you take out these recent accelerated changes, the situations that created some of these circumstances, they didn’t happen overnight, right? We didn’t get thousands of non-English speaking drivers overnight. Cabage didn’t happen overnight. CDL Mills didn’t happen overnight, and even four years ago when we didn’t notice as much.
When freight was all of a sudden plentiful, these gradual things were happening that built up to a point where it required something drastic to happen, ? And the [00:37:00] drastic thing was either gonna be a rapid collapse of organic. American trucking capacity or something like what we’re seeing happening needed to be done.
during the normal business of trucking, things are still always changing. I. Just typically slowly, Sometimes so slowly that you don’t even notice until the changes upon you. , And sometimes it’s too late, ? For example, when I started out trucking, there were very few large reefer companies nationwide.
A couple companies, C England, Dick Simon, if you remember them. Reefers being shipped on trains was very rare. Reefer, shipping containers was rare. The technology just wasn’t ready for those things yet , in the nineties or before that, ? Reefers weren’t very reliable. , It took more skills. As a driver, more care, more attention to keep a reefer unit running.
Back then, you couldn’t just set it and leave it for a week and think that it was gonna keep [00:38:00] working. even if sometimes it might work for a week without problems, you just, you weren’t gonna chance it and risk buying a load. That spoiled because the reefer unit stopped working or caught some error message.
not that even back then, like my 89 utility, that carrier Phoenix unit error message was basically, the switch is on, but I’m not running. So there’s your air. Good luck. you certainly. At that time, you weren’t gonna put a reefer on a train and leave it for a week with nobody checking on it or put it on a ship for weeks on end. But as the technology improved, we saw all of that start to change, right? Refrigerated groceries started showing up from all over the world because you could ship it long distances.
Now, big fleets started adding reefers to their mix. Small reefer companies grew and became nationwide carriers And this is where it started to impact the little people in the business, right? I grew up in the reefer game and largely when I was coming up in the nineties and before that, it was, [00:39:00] uh, regionalized and somewhat protected just by the skills required, the extra knowledge.
You wanted to have drivers who are a little more diligent, , people who could problem solve on the fly. When a clock’s basically ticking, when your reefer unit goes down. So you have lots of small fleets, owner operators, and we got good rates back then for reefer freight, it was more specialized than today. you didn’t have a ton of outside competitors. People didn’t just jump into it. . Like they did dry van or even flatbed work, because you had a few more variables to manage and if you did it well, you could make decent money. If you didn’t do it well, you get run outta the business pretty quick. But what we do know is in trucking, if you’ve got a good thing. Somebody’s gonna come after it. and in this case, part of what came after it was the technology improvements that allowed some of the dynamics to change in this segment of trucking.
There were still, even as the technology was improving, there were still things that, Posed an extra challenge and kept [00:40:00] people away. A good example of that might be something as simple as pallet exchange, ? You can lose money if you’re not mindful of your pallets or if you’re entrepreneurial, like a bunch of us were, you could make a buck or two managing your pallets well and picking up spare pallets where other people weren’t paying attention or didn’t care about theirs. And next thing you know, you’ve got an extra 20 pallets to turn in. It’s your shipper when you get back to the Midwest who’s always buying pallets and there’s an extra a hundred, 120 bucks in your pocket.
but the big fleets struggled. With managing pallet exchange, the company drivers didn’t pay as close of attention. , They gave up their pallets more readily and if they needed pallets or were short or went to a pallet exchange shipper and they had to buy 20 more call in for a comp check, wasn’t there 120 bucks to spend?
But when you’re the business owner, , you watched all those things. ’cause that’s a good part of your margin. That can be lost , if you’re not being mindful of your pallets.
, So when a big fleet would come in and undercut the bid and steal the business or [00:41:00] win the business, however you wanna look at it, depending on which side you’re on, If they didn’t manage all those little details, they would spend more, and that includes things like detention or claims.
Detention, for example, a lot of the big fleets had in their pay package that they were promising at that time or agreeing to with their new drivers was to pay detention, pay regardless.
If you were on time, after one hour, two hours, whatever their limit was, , of free time, then they would start paying you detention. Well, if you’ve hauled reefer loads, you know that. It could be a bit of a circus at times, getting loaded, getting unloaded, and frankly, most of us owner operators, we were just eating the cost of it, a lot of times, we would go to the same shippers and consignee and we would learn how to play the game. We would make good contacts. We were going there on a regular basis. , So we would figure out how to minimize our detention for the most part when we could, and also we would just eat the cost of it.
So these big carriers, they would come in, underbid the freight, and then quickly [00:42:00] realize, holy cow, like between the pallets and the detention and the claims and the drivers being irritated, . This is no way to make a lot of money. So they would win the business, do it for a little while, and quickly run for the hills, , because it wasn’t nearly as good as they thought it was.
And then we’d go back to normal. The shippers would call us back up and say, Hey, , still wanna haul our freight and we’ll give you your old rates back. And, uh, and, and so we would.
Now it’s not right that we ate some of the costs doing it, and we also encouraged bad behavior to some degree, ? It was just a part of the game , and we knew how to play that part of the game really well. So we figured it out and we minimized the damage as much as possible. And, you know, let’s face it, it works the same way in many other types of the trucking game, ?
Whether it’s flatbeds, oversize hopper bottoms, you acquire the skills to play that part of the game really well, you find a good move and then you start to look for a better one. You’re continuously improving your methods, finding back hauls in those lanes, improving your MPG.
You figure out [00:43:00] where there’s a value and specialization and when there isn’t, and if your customers value service, you provide great service. Another point. To think about in all this is that you always need to be on the lookout, Other people are always looking at your freight, your segment, your drivers, your business, and they’re looking for their better move.
You need to be doing the same, whether you’re a driver of someone else’s truck or you’ve got hundreds of ’em yourself, the pressure is always coming at you in trucking from all directions. It’s relentless. Sometimes it’s out in the open, like on the load boards. You get to see the dynamics of that pressure play out , in public view.
But oftentimes, it’s behind the scenes, And you’re playing offense and defense out of the view of everybody else.
So no matter what you’re doing, you always need to be learning, be upskilling, be listening, paying attention to. Subtle cues about your customers, about your drivers, about your bosses, , from your dispatchers, [00:44:00] and, be improving yourself, your company, your people, your equipment, your drivers, your processes, how you use technology.
I mentioned before on the podcast that I spent a number of years as a consultant. Visiting lots of trucking companies, hundreds of trucking companies, and you know, some of those companies weren’t doing very well a lot of the time. They had been around for a while, decades, generations in some cases.
I’ve been in a bunch of trucking companies that were still running their whole operation on paper. Some of them only had one computer and it was on dial up. And this wasn’t 20 years ago. I’m talking a few years ago. . They had a good move. They weren’t looking for a better move fast enough or aggressively enough, and some of them aren’t in business anymore.
In trucking, that’ll catch up with you. I mean, we joke that trucking moves slow. At times when it comes to adopting change, but it’s always going on subtly behind the [00:45:00] scenes. Find your good move and then keep looking for a better one all the time. So that’s my segue into my personal journey part of the money line here, and I’ll catch you up if you haven’t.
Been all the way through all of the journey so far. So at this point in the journey, I’m talking about when I was 21 years old, I was running my 1988 International. So this was in the nineties. 21 would’ve put me in what, 1997 or so. I was running 1988 International, pulling my 1989 utility trailer with a carrier Phoenix Reefer unit bolted to the front of it.
So I was working as an owner operator, , for a local farmer. He’d find the loads off of the fax broker sheet and , we’d go run ’em, chase ’em around the country with my truck and trailer. luckily my overhead was next to nothing at that point. , So I was making a few bucks doing it, but it didn’t take a genius to tell that like this wasn’t the smartest way to be trucking or the most profitable way to be trucking.
We were hauling the leftover freight, the crap nobody else [00:46:00] wanted. when everybody else ran outta capacity to haul these loads, that’s what we were doing. We were going to leftover destinations with leftover freight, and even in good times, there wasn’t much for back hauls. So it was. Sit around, wait, get crappier load, give up on finding a decent load and just get out of there to try it from somewhere else.
I wanted to do better. We did that for a while. It was a good learning experience, figured out some things, but, we needed to get into a new game if we were actually gonna make anything that resembled a living out of this. And time was gonna catch up with me. At some point, something significant was gonna break and I just didn’t have the capital to fix it, and I was gonna be in a, in a predicament that I didn’t want to be in.
So it was time to make a move. I needed to get to a better move. So I talked to the legend, talked him into getting me leased onto the company that he had been running freight with , for a few years. At that point, they were , a local reefer carrier, all owner operators.
And these were real truckers, not half ass truckers [00:47:00] like I was. They were in it to make money. They had families to feed, they had good equipment, they had real obligations. , This company had started off as an offshoot of a larger van and reefer company, , in Minnesota. And like a lot of startup trucking companies at the time.
the folks there. At this little company had learned their business at a larger carrier and then made relationships and learned the business and decided to make it a go for themselves got their own authority and started to try to find their own accounts in their own freight.
Of course, the quickest way to expand if you’re a little. Trucking company just starting out is round up some owner operators who happen to have all their own equipment, all their own plates, their own cash, their money for fuel cards, everything. Basically they just need somebody to coordinate the freight and put the loads together and then we’d, we’d go haul ’em.
So they were able to expand and get their little trucking company off the ground, all owner operators. there was about 20 to 30 of us at the time. But it [00:48:00] was definitely a significant level up at least one level, maybe more like two or three levels up from how I’d been chasing things around for the farmer out in the middle of nowhere who was just getting loads off of fax sheet.
, Like I said, about 20 to 30 of us, a small portion of them, maybe like five to 10 depending on. At the time of year would be running West Coast, the produce circuit out to the West coast, Southern and Northern California. Meet up in Salt Lake City or Denver, swap out, the produce and then go hit the distributors in the Midwest with the back hauls.
But the bulk of us, most of us, 2020 or so of us at that time, we ran the East coast. Minnesota to the Northeast, we’d have some stray loads as far south as like Pomo City, Maryland, and as far north as Boston. But most of it was primarily between Philadelphia and New York City. Whole bunch of Philly, whole bunch of New York City, whole bunch of Northern New Jersey.
From the [00:49:00] Cisco down, in the sports complex down in Philadelphia, there by the Walt Whitman Bridge, the old Walt Whitman truck stop, which isn’t there anymore. And then all the way running up through Bayone Edison, Verona, New Jersey, and then of course a bunch of New York City Hunts Point Holland meet to.
Outta the Midwest, outta the big packing plants and cheese over to the East Coast where people want to eat it. . Good paying loads. I mean, this is in the late, mid to late nineties, so, you know, we were getting a buck 70, a buck, 90 a mile. , Fuel surcharges hadn’t been an invention yet, really, at least that I had seen in my career.
, Especially ’cause diesel was in Indiana, diesel was running like 80, 90 cents a gallon., Fuel wasn’t the cost driver like it is today at 3, 4, 5 bucks a gallon. . But here’s where I learned to level up my game, ? ’cause I got in with smarter people who knew what they were doing.
With the farmer, I. He didn’t wanna spend a bunch of time dealing with these fact sheets, calling these numbers off these fact sheets. So for me, or even for his own [00:50:00] trucks at the time, and his own drivers. So he was looking for full truckloads, right? And go from A to B to Z, wherever. Just find a truckload, one phone call, get it booked, get the.
, The circus of paperwork back and forth with a new broker, , get the driver loaded and then he can leave me alone for 2, 3, 4 days and, not be overwhelmed , with all the busy work. This new company, they had a different plan, ? We go out for Minnesota to the East coast and we come back to the Midwest.
That was it. We focused, but we also did LTL. To get back from the East coast, we’d let the big carriers or the lazy carriers fight over all those full truckloads and let them beat that price into the ground, which they did, . They’d beat that thing all the way down to 60, 50 cents a mile back then, just trying to get something in the truck to get off the east coast.
Meanwhile, we were running around. Collecting partial shipments all over the East coast, and bringing those back to the Midwest. And you might start delivering, hell, you, you might start delivering ’em in Pennsylvania or , your [00:51:00] first stop on the way back might be in Minnesota. but we would collect all the scraps and most of the time come back to the Midwest.
For more money than . We went out there with, if you listen to me, talk to Ryan last week from DE, similar concept, right? They just happen to be doing it on an open deck trailer, but basically do what other people don’t want to or aren’t willing to do. ’cause it’s more work and reap the reward of it When I got started over there, I still had a very simplistic view of things. I didn’t know much. Now I didn’t know how little I knew, but the truth was I didn’t know much. And I was so worried about little things I couldn’t see the bigger picture yet. So, for example, like , my first loads with them, I was stunned at what the rates were, These rates were like 30, 40% higher than what I’d been hauling freighted for, , up until that point. And, . I was trying to figure out how I could make every single penny out of those loads because I’d used to have been having to scratch just to make a buck, and I was so [00:52:00] cost conscious and used to be in a broke trucker that I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
I was running all back roads from the east coast or from the Midwest, from Minnesota to the East coast. When I say all back roads, I didn’t pay a dime in tolls except for bridges, ? And even then, out on the bridges, you don’t have to pay oftentimes in both directions. So I was always figuring out, okay, how do I cross, how do I get over there for free and how do I get back for free?
So running around trying to save the bridge fees but so yeah, Illinois didn’t pay a toll. Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, never paid tolls, but there was a cost to that. I was being pennywise and pound foolish, and dispatch kept asking me like, why the heck, why is it taking you so long to get anywhere? , What are you doing? , I’d call in with my check-ins and I’d be, explaining to ’em how many hours I’ve got , and where I’m at, and what time it is, , and they’re like.
What are you doing? the other reality was I was wearing myself out. , I was saving six bucks in Illinois, not [00:53:00] having to go through all the cash boxes, but I was spending hours doing it on these ridiculous streets. Cutting across town, dodging the Illinois Toll Road. I thought I had a good move.
I was making the smart move. Just think I’m saving like 30, $30 a week, one way 60 bucks round trip or more, ? You got six bucks in Illinois, what about 1280 back then in Indiana, depending on your weight, , 20 to 30 bucks and the PA Turnpike was always easy to dodge unless you, I mean, well you’d have to pay something on the Northwest extension there.
Even then sometimes I’d run down through, happy Valley and not pay the toll there either. So, you know, but I was just pissing away, time left and right and energy and beating up my truck and, there was a time and a place than to run, you know, some of the more efficient ways to dodge the toll road than what I was doing.
I realized. After talking to the guys , and dispatch, and dispatch scratching their head going, what kind of moron did we hire here? Like, this guy’s gonna [00:54:00] waste his whole week monkeying around on two lane roads when , he could be getting to his destination and getting in position.
, So I started to hop on the toll roads. , The more I ran the to road, the more energy I had, the better my logbook looked, I was in better position for my next load.
Also what was happening was is they started to trust me more. I was building trust with the dispatchers and trust that I wasn’t such a simpleton to figure out what the bigger game was that we were playing and that. I could play the game the way they wanted me to, because that’s how they set it up.
They had a formula, they had a plan, and in that formula, we both win. But I had to do my part. So I had to learn to shut up and listen. And I had to learn to put my trust in them. That, I could count on them to do some of the problem solving, and I didn’t have to figure it out for myself, even though I.
I didn’t know what the hell I was doing half the time anyway, but good luck telling the 21-year-old that,
This company wasn’t in the business of running me out in the middle of nowhere and leaving me there for [00:55:00] days , like my previous company, and they weren’t taking the easiest freight. ? L ting off the East Coast, especially in the Northeast is not a ton of fun. For them or for me.
That’s a lot of hustle, but it paid really well. And so I started to learn a very important lesson, that lesson was two parts. The first part of the lesson was, is that I have a choice. I could keep running the back roads if I wanted. The second part was learning how to calculate the benefit and the cost of things, and especially that sometimes the cost wasn’t out in the open for you to see, so I had to learn how to think through things better.
I learned to ask more questions. I learned to ask better questions. I was running the same lanes more consistently instead of wandering around the country like a goofball. So I could start to see patterns more clearly,
the other thing that I started baking into my decision making was my interaction and my relationship , with the [00:56:00] dispatchers.
I started to learn how they started to think through it. I made a good relationship with one of the East coast dispatchers became to a point where I felt like I was comfortable enough to ask him questions about I. What am I doing wrong? Or, I’m talking to the other guys and , they did better than me.
What, what did I do wrong? What am I doing differently? Why are they getting paid more? Especially on those back hauls because we’re all hauling the same freight out to the east coast, but significant differences in how much money they were making on the back hauls, it was costing me money.
he explained to me, he’s like, well, you know, when we check in and get a picture of where you’re at , we’ve got a board here where we’ve got all the pickups that we’ve gotta make, and we’ve got literally, Dozens, sometimes hundreds of pickups to make in the East Coast. , Based on where those pickups are and the density in which parts of New Jersey and in New York City, like we gotta pick who we think is gonna be able to do the tougher asks Out of all that.
you’re not gonna [00:57:00] want to go in and pick up one stray pallet in New York City because our other guy couldn’t get it if you’re coming from Philadelphia. So , we gotta break up the work in a way that is reasonably reliable because we don’t want to have to figure this crap out at the last second.
you’re kind of putting us in a bad spot when you’re always outta position, outta hours. Probably tired and it’s not just about picking up the freight, but then we’ve got all kinds of goofy delivery times built into these loads as we’re building these things to go back to the Midwest.
And if you’re not in position and ready to roll. On Tuesday morning or Wednesday morning or whenever that is. , You might not get all these pickups on, and what if you’re the last person and there’s nobody else? Like, we’re gonna have to burn a relationship and tell somebody we can’t pick it up, or we’re gonna have to broker it out at a loss.
You’re putting us , in a situation where we have to take the safest approach with you, which is. We’re [00:58:00] only gonna give you a few LTL partials to pick up. We’re not gonna make it too hard. , And sometimes that also impacts which outbound load you get to. So you may not get the highest paying outbound load.
You may get the lowest paying one because it goes to a spot where we don’t have a ton of density and we can give you three partials and they’ve got enough space in ’em , and time to deliver ’em that even if you screw it up, ’cause you don’t seem to be making decisions in a sensible way it doesn’t impact the whole network of decisions that we’re trying to make on a daily basis around here.
They didn’t trust me. To do the work that they could trust the other guys to do., And it was having a huge impact in how much money. I mean, we’re talking a couple thousand dollars a week. , of freight that I wasn’t getting that they were . Of course led to a lot of miles thinking about what he said and digested and talking to other guys, understanding like, what are you guys doing different?
Like, what does that really mean? Because of course I didn’t really exactly know [00:59:00] all of what he was talking about, but I was starting to put the pieces together and I just had to keep examining it to figure out why what I thought was a good move. He was telling me there’s better moves That’s what the process evolved into. I started to understand the game even though I’d never been on the dispatch side, I just kept asking questions and trying to understand like, how are you making your decision so that I can help make the best decision I can make from behind the wheel of this truck to help us all be successful.
now, my quote was from the world of chess. I don’t play much chess, but I love to play backgammon, another board game. If you, if you’ve never played backgammon, Google it. Check it out. It’s a ton of fun. , And it’s a really good mind exercise. Help you keep sharp on the road. And if you wanna play online some night,, I’ll be your opponent.
but the principle that we’re talking about that Emmanuel Lasker is talking about in chess.
Holds true. Your mind is going to find a good move really fast or what it thinks is a good move really fast. That’s what your [01:00:00] brain’s designed to do. Come up with decent. Options really fast. Pick one. That’s instinct. That’s what we were wired to do from back in the caves.
Dodging saber tooth tigers, and then our brain wants to shut down and go rest. If you wanna make better moves. You have to force your mind to rethink some of this stuff. It doesn’t want to turn back on. You’ve gotta force the operation and then examine stuff all over again.
And then you’ve got a chance to see the best move sometimes even great moves. also what was going on during that time as well was I was still doing a lot of reading, And I started to read, read. Rand her book, Atlas Shrugged, and one of the core principles in there revolves around contradictions.
here’s the quote. Whenever you think you’re facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong. So I started to learn how to check my premises. A lot of my premises were built on faulty assumptions. I was young. I hadn’t seen that much of the world.
I hadn’t [01:01:00] seen that many situations. But I happened to run into a bunch of great people in this little stretch, both in the office, the people who founded the company, the people who worked in the company, the dispatchers, the owners, all of them. They knew the business. They’d been working in it a long time.
, They’d seen a lot of angles, and even though I was young and I wasn’t perfect at it. I learned to stop dismissing what they had to say, and I started listening. yes, they shattered some of my premises, some of my assumptions, , and at times that hurt. , But they replace those faulty premises with better ones. Now, I wish I could say I was cured at 21 years old. , I wasn’t. I still have a long ways to go, and in reality, there is no cure, ? Because as we discussed earlier,
the trucking business is constantly changing, incrementally changing all the time. And so about the time you think your premises are on solid ground. You should probably already [01:02:00] be reevaluating them to check them against the new reality . But during that stretch,, I made money like I’d never made before up to that point in trucking.
once I started getting outta my own way and trusting them, they began to trust me. then we really started to level up. it was the middle of a nice upcycle for trucking during that stretch in the mid to late nineties. we had Bill Clinton as president.
We had Newt running Congress. Maybe the last time we had a function in Congress working with the President. So , they had a pretty good run there, which really helped. sometimes
good luck and good timing is on your side in this business. even if you don’t understand those things yet, as I didn’t. Back then I thought I was just brilliant. Uh, little did I know that there was quite a significant tailwind working in my favor at that time.
It wasn’t just ’cause I was a genius, , but, , take advantage of those opportunities when they were there. And I did, I was working hard. I’d gotten [01:03:00] into , a good place with a good company, and so it was time for me to level up. I replaced my old truck that, , 19 88, 93 70, and in November of 1998, I bought a brand new 1999 International, 9,400 burgundy colored color of wine, full fairing series 60 Detroit, four 30 on the floor, four 70 on the cruise, 10 speed with the Eagle package.
At optimized idle, every bell and whistle you could buy in a truck in 1998, and I also bought the diamond warranty. That was a new thing they tried. I probably ruined that for everybody at the, at that, during that period, uh, they, they had a diamond package at the time, which was bumper to bumper warranty for 500,000 miles.
And so I had a brand new truck that basically, if anything broke that wasn’t a belt or a filter. it was on them to fix it. And the other cool part about it was, part of the way they upsold that package was you got priority service. [01:04:00] So if you broke down and you got to a shop, either you limped it in or you got towed in.
They had 60 minutes to start working on your truck, or they started racking up penalties that they had to pay, the dealership had to pay, Navistar had to pay you, and the dealer had to pay Navistar to cover it. it was a different level of service you received when you strolled in with your diamond package.
But I love that truck. It was an amazing machine, I didn’t have the high rise, I just had the condo. But that was, , in a fully integrated sleeper, you know, a desk, a fridge, drawers, top bunk with more storage space.
It was heaven and the eagle package on an international at that time was as good of an interior as you could buy, so it was a hell of a machine. I, uh, I missed that machine. We spent a lot of time together over those few years. , But that was, that was my next leveling up, was getting a piece of equipment that they could depend on, that I could depend on.
, It really set the stage for my next period. I don’t think I could have [01:05:00] even remotely come close to what my next leveling up period was like without that machine. , . But we’ll talk about those things in my next leveling up. Next time we pick up the story. Let’s take a quick detour to line four, and then we’ll wrap things up with the post trip.
I’ll see you on the flip side.
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[01:06:00] Quick reminder to pay a visit to friends of the show on social media. Check out Big Cow over at Trucking with Coffee and Cow Superior Trucking payroll service. Happy birthday, Mike. Mike had a birthday this past week. I 95 truckers, Al posted some more shots this week that he took and I totally spaced. I looked at ’em.
All great shots Al, but I forgot to reshare it, so I’ll go do that. You guys go reshare it too. Thanks for all the pictures. Al MJ love Johnson. They’ve got some sweet new . Giant decals up on the side of their wagon this week. So really cool. Horses, mountains in the background. They’re big, they’re big. I, I gotta ask ’em.
I, I wonder how much something like that costs because they’re big. I mean, I don’t know. What are they? It’d be like eight foot tall by [01:07:00] six to eight foot wide. They’re big, they’re big decals. Go over there, check those out on their page. Say hi. She trucking an organization for women Truckers, truckers Wealth from Mike Barber over there at Trucker’s Wealth.
Be sure to check out his page. And Danny c Hall, he’s always got stories to share. He is up there every week posting funny stories about his trucking days. , Coming up on the podcast, we’ve got some more etiquette items in the works. Customer etiquette, communications etiquette, both for truckers to communicate to others and also for people communicating with truckers.
, And I’ve got some guests lined up who want to talk about some of these etiquette topics, so that should be fun. Get some other people’s opinion to weigh in on the matter. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, so I got wrapped up in talking about parking lot etiquette and totally blew by the, the first item that was supposed to precede it.
Um, I’m recording this on Sunday morning, and you’re not gonna start hearing it until late Sunday or Monday at the earliest. So, uh, [01:08:00] but, but Sunday afternoon I’ve got the new website going live. I’ve been promising it for a while. I say that with optimism. It is technology. Uh, so there’s slim chance you won’t, but I’m gonna speak it into existence and commit to, there’s gonna be a new website up , by the time you all hear this.
There’s a bunch of new, great content. On the new website, there’s still some things under construction, and I’ll be back filling in some of the older episodes, some of the older interviews, all those links out to the YouTube channel out there. But tons of cool new stuff, especially the trucker etiquette content.
That’s a little bit. Better done on this website. That’s one of the reasons why I switched. I’ve got a placeholder up there for trucking legacies. We start to build that out behind the scenes. It’s not public facing yet, but I’ve got a bunch of content in the trucker resources area that’s coming. Probably release that later this week, I hope, , depending on my progress.
So come check it out. Let me know what you think. If you spot something that doesn’t look right or isn’t working, [01:09:00] please let me know so we can get it fixed. Next week on the podcast, I am reviewing a trucking book that I got and I started reading this week on the way up, , to the jamboree. It’s called Lot Lizards.
What more could I say? Really? It’s not G-rated Surprise surprise. It’s by Fred Green. He might have been green when he got into trucking, but he wasn’t green for long, I can tell you that much. , At one point I had thought to myself, maybe one thing I could do to add value to the community would be to take some of these trucking related books from a while back and.
Read them and record them because there’s no audio books available. And then I come across this book and I go, I’m not sure I could read this book with a straight face or, uh, you know, because it’s being recorded. We could do multiple takes, but then I’d have to read some of these parts over and over and I’m [01:10:00] pretty sure I still wouldn’t be able to get a cut that anybody would wanna listen to or that I keep , a straight face for.
So, um. It’s an interesting book so far. , There’s some funny parts, but I’ll, uh, I’ll share my summary of Fred Green’s book Lot lizards. Funny enough, this is not the only trucking book out there called Lot Lizards. There’s multiple books called Lot Lizards. , And I got Fred’s first, but there are more on the way to my house so I can cover the entire genre, I guess, of, uh, lot Lizard.
Literature.
I, I, I’d be willing to bet there are no college courses that would offer, , this genre as, uh, as a class this fall. So the one and only place you’re going to hear this is on Channel 19. Experience , summer show season. That’s a tongue twister. Summer show season is in full swing. Of course. Check out the website, the truck show [01:11:00] list.com.
Still got a bunch of great shows coming up, here yet in the summertime. . We’ve got Joplin, Missouri coming up. I, I think I want to get to that one. I’m really, I think I can, I can, I think I can pull off the schedule on that one. We’ve got the Las Vegas Invitational Danger.
Dave really wants to go to that one. He’s giving his best sales pitch to get, The three of us to the Las Vegas Invitational. we’ll see about that Dave California Truck Show going on in Ontario, Louisiana. Truck show going on. These are some of the bigger ones. And then stars and stripes and white lines going on in Atlanta over in November.
So check those out and all the other shows going on this summer. Be sure to keep reaching out if you’d like to be on the show, like follow, comment, subscribe, leave us a review. Email us at inbox at channel one nine experience.com. There’s a contact form on the website. Keep sharing with your friends.
Thanks for listening and see y’all next week. We’ve got work to do.
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