The OuterBelt's Podcast
The OuterBelt's Podcast
From Surprise Snow To MD-11 Crash: How Weather, Aviation, And Trucking Intersect
A blue-sky Friday turned into a surprise blanket of wet snow, and that weather whiplash set the stage for a wide-ranging, grounded conversation about safety, judgment, and the systems we rely on. We open with the simple joys—fireplace, sweats, and a Jurassic Park rewatch—then weave through Stallone’s underrated writing, Taylor Sheridan’s expanding universe, and what “renaissance” careers teach about grit. The pivot is abrupt and necessary: a detailed, plain-English breakdown of the UPS MD-11 crash at Louisville, why tri-jets ended up in cargo fleets, the DC-10 pylon legacy, and how regulators moved to park aircraft while investigators sort engine failure from structural failure. If you’ve wondered how an engine detaches at rotation, how compressor stalls steal thrust, or why freight carriers balance fuel burn against acquisition cost, we lay it out without jargon.
From there, we bring it back to the road. Black ice doesn’t announce itself, bridges freeze first, and shaded underpasses stay slick hours after sunlit lanes look fine. We share what actually helps when winter hits: carry winter-rated washer fluid and spare blades, keep anti-gel on board if you fuel warm and drive cold, and treat route planning like a skill, not a checkbox. Truck GPS units with traffic and radar beat guesswork; carrier maps are safe but often outdated; consumer apps aren’t for routing big rigs but are excellent early warning for traffic. State DOT sites and radar apps can be the difference between a clean pass and a shutdown in blowing crosswinds. And yes, sometimes the smart move is a longer arc around a metro that saves stress and time.
Underneath it all is a single idea: safety is a culture of choices. Aviation cancels flights rather than stretch thin; trucking can mirror that by slowing down, staging smart, and rerouting with intent. We wrap with a preview of a full winter preparedness deep dive, plus a practical PSA about CARB testing with OTR Services for anyone running California. If this resonated, subscribe, share with a friend who lives on the road, and tell us the one tool or tactic that’s saved your bacon in bad weather. Your tip might help someone else get home safe.
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I made a mistake and went to the post office this afternoon and they had their shutdown day today. Well that's not I don't think that's shut down. I think that's a holiday.
SPEAKER_01:Hey everybody, welcome to the outer belt. I'm Patrick, and you all know my crew. Chili.
SPEAKER_03:Buttermilk.
SPEAKER_01:Derek.
SPEAKER_03:Zucchini bread.
SPEAKER_01:And Jerry. What happened to Zucchini bread there? I don't know. Zucchini Bread found a cucumber. She was like, zucchini bread? Try it again.
SPEAKER_05:Zucchini bread.
SPEAKER_01:That's right. Welcome back to the show, everybody. We're so glad to be here. It's been a wild time since we saw y'all last. We have some exciting stuff to talk about tonight. Uh and I can't wait uh to uh to discuss some things with you, my my group. We have some challenging topics ahead, we have some fun topics ahead, but first and foremost, as we always do every week since we started the show, that weather.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That weather. I believe it was Friday, 60 degrees, 62 degrees outside. That was nice out. Very nice, very nice. Windy. Windy. It was it was breezy, but nice. Uh not a cloud in the sky, sunshine beating down on you. It was really again, except for the high winds, gusts that would come by now and then really, really lovely. It was a lovely day. Lovely day. As Bill Withers would say. It would. A lovely day. Uh and then um well, then came the morning. No. No, it's Saturday. Saturday was lovely too. Yeah, Saturday was really nice too. I'm sorry, I forgot. Yeah, Saturday was really nice. Sunday was nice. Yeah, Saturday was really cool. Uh then came Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_07:Sunday morning wasn't bad. Melissa, and I got out Sunday for a little bit. It wasn't horrible.
SPEAKER_04:No, that was Saturday.
SPEAKER_07:That was Saturday. That was Saturday.
SPEAKER_04:Saturday.
SPEAKER_01:That was the second Saturday. Yes.
SPEAKER_04:It was. We we hung out on the couch all day Sunday.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_04:Doing a whole lot of nada.
SPEAKER_01:Sunday morning was nasty and kind of crazy. Uh we ended up, Eric and I had to go to the yard. Um uh in uh we were doing some arranging at the uh house, and there is um a storage cube we have like for our personal stuff at at at the yard that we use. And so we went over there to unload some stuff. We met up with our carpenter who's doing a really cool thing on one of our trucks, and uh it was nasty. It was just like, how fast can we get this over with? It was it was it was bad. And then so we get back to the house, and I did what everybody does when the weather's god-awful outside, and uh there's nothing to be done.
SPEAKER_04:You put your jammies on?
SPEAKER_01:I uh put my uh sweats, okay, sweats on, I I lit a fire and a candle, and uh sat down and watched Jurassic Park. The original. Nice. I gotta say everybody does that, don't they? They do. I gotta say, Jeff Goldblum. Yeah, genius. Genius, absolutely genius. I enjoyed that movie so much, and uh we watched something else afterward. What did we watch afterwards? I oh I think it was um not land man. What's the one I want? Tulsa King. So we'll see. We were caught up and we were catching up with Tulsa King and uh what a fantastic show.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, gotta get you onto Land Man.
SPEAKER_01:If you're not watching Tulsa King, if you haven't seen it yet, Stallone. So that's Sylvester, right? Yeah, Sylvester. Yeah. It's so good. I was actually I was reading a thing. I don't know if y'all know, like Sylvester Stallone, he wrote Rocky in a bunch of his movies. He's he's you know, he talks funny, so I think he kind of gets that impression of like, oh, he's kind of a moron. Yeah. But he's not. He's actually a genius writer, producer, uh actor. He kind of plays himself in every movie. But um, you know, but he's actually a genius writer. I was reading a thing where they were talking about uh Tulsa King, and the guy that wrote the uh not not not Sheridan who produced it, but the guy that actually wrote it, he said when they landed uh Sylvester Stallone, he was excited because he knew his life was gonna be that much easier because Stallone is such a good writer. Yeah. And he's like famous in Hollywood for being such a good writer. So um yeah, it it's kind of cool to to watch this progression, but the show is so good.
SPEAKER_04:It is good. I I know I think I mentioned on another Outer Belt, maybe last season, that there was um kind of a documentary or docuseries uh of Stallone on Netflix. And is there? It's it's great, it's phenomenal if you haven't seen it because it talks about how he almost gave up on Rocky because he was writing and it's really good, you know, and it's from his perspective. It follows him along and you know, some hard, hard interview topics like family, and you know, but uh really interesting to see what kind of a person he is. I mean, who knew he wrote a lot of stuff if you didn't know that, you know? So yeah, it's on it's it was on Netflix about a year ago, came out.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_04:I I well worth watching that too.
SPEAKER_01:That uh that episode that we recorded, obviously I uh spaced out for that, and I apologize, but I definitely want to watch that. Yeah, that's you know, he's one of those people that intrigues me because he's kind of a renaissance man. And and some people you ex like you watch him and you see him, you're like, yeah, that's a renaissance man. He's good at everything, right? Um and some people, like Rocky, you're like, he's not a Renaissance man. Yeah, that's a one-trick pony, but no, you you dig behind the curtain, it's like, oh no, he really is. Um Arnold Schwarzenegger, I think, at this point now, he's proven himself to be a Renaissance man, right? He's an Austrian-born um bodybuilder who comes to America, uh, wants to be an actor, but he's in all these bodybuilding contests, ends up taking his money, he's he and his buddies start a construction business. They end up uh with a huge construction business. He's a multimillionaire before he ever started his first movie. Really? I didn't know that. Fascinating stuff. He's like, he's just a business-minded, work-focused person. Sure. Then uh gets into Hollywood, gets the right actor, coach, I'm sorry, acting coach, and then uh gets into a movie, and then that snowballs into you know Arnold, the the superstar we know him as, right? And then he goes on to have this crazy career in politics, a Republican governor of California, which doesn't exist and hadn't existed in forever. And I mean, I guess Reagan maybe for him. Yeah. Uh and there's more, I apologize, I'm not totally hip with uh California politics, uh, especially the history of it, just the more recent stuff. But um, like again, another and then he gets when he's done with that, it goes right back in the movies. Yeah, you know, a guy that's just like a Renaissance man genius, he is uh like pro cigars and bourbon and also pro-electric car. You know, he's just one of those people who like there's it he doesn't fit anywhere like with a single camp. He's all over the place. And um, I think that's the kind of thing that like when you see those those people highlighted and you realize like, wow, there's way more out there than the single track or single course that we're kind of the news makes us think there is. Um it's very cool. I I love I love seeing those stories. So I do want to watch uh the uh Rocky one.
SPEAKER_04:So talk about a Renaissance man. I think Billy Bob Thornton and Lamb Man is I haven't seen Lamb Man. We need to do it.
SPEAKER_01:But Billy Billy Bob Thornton's one of those actors, too, that like he gets me because he can do something like Armageddon, which was my first introduction into Billy Bob Thornton.
SPEAKER_06:Really?
SPEAKER_01:And so I don't need that judgment. Not not Sling Blade. I'm not as old as y'all are.
SPEAKER_05:Um Angelina Jolie's husband.
SPEAKER_01:They're married?
SPEAKER_05:They were.
SPEAKER_01:They were? They didn't.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, but this was that was after Armageddon.
SPEAKER_01:After Sling Blade. Okay, but imagine my first movie ever with him was Armageddon Jerry. And then I went from that to watching Bad Santa expecting a similar character.
SPEAKER_06:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And it's uh it couldn't be different. Yeah. I mean, just like what a range of uh acting ability. Uh uh, it's very Robin Williamsy, it's very um uh oh man. I love Dumb and Dumber. Jeff Daniels.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Can just he can just flip between extreme, ridiculous comedy and dead serious dramatic actor. Uh so it's it's it's cool to see that like Billy Bob can do it too, but I haven't seen Lane Man yet. Which side is he on? Is he more Armageddon or more uh Bad Santa? Or is he not Bad Santa?
SPEAKER_04:No, I mean the whole premises of it takes place in Odessa, Texas, which if you're a driver, most of us know what Odessa looks like. A lot of nada.
SPEAKER_07:I'm more Team Midland.
SPEAKER_04:I mean it's it's all about the oil.
SPEAKER_07:Well, they travel between Odessa and Midland. Okay, and also you know, Dallas Sport Wars.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. Go up.
SPEAKER_07:I mean, you know, in a good snowstorm, you can't tell if you're Odessa or Midland. So Right. True. True. But you can tell that you're in Texas because none of the roads salted. Yeah. And I meant sandstorm, not snowstorm, sorry.
SPEAKER_04:The 16th. That's when the next one comes out.
SPEAKER_01:Uh next Light Man.
SPEAKER_04:Yep. The second series starts.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Well, we gotta catch up on it. Uh I think I don't I'm trying to remember. Uh I don't think they're done. No, there's two more episodes coming out of Pulse King, right? I think there's two more episodes going out. And it's already been re uh re-up for a fourth season. Has it? Yeah. Well that's you know, I think I hate when they tell you that because you already know, you know, you already know some things. There's sure. Like not only a cliffhanger, but certain key people are gonna go on to be in the next season. Like the way the tension is building right now, you don't know who's gonna make it, who's not. Although, in all fairness, Sheridan's not afraid to kill off a major part player in his.
SPEAKER_06:No.
SPEAKER_01:He really isn't. Oh and uh we still gotta catch up with 1883 or 1923 or I don't know.
SPEAKER_04:Moved on from the Yellowstone trilogies, quadruplees, whatever you call them. I'm uh is Landman, Pulsa King, Mayor of Kingstown, and I'm can't wait for Lioness to be picked back up.
SPEAKER_01:I I haven't seen Lioness or uh Mayor Kingstown, so we're clearly missing out. Uh Taylor Sheridan's a cool person. I'm sure a lot of y'all probably have watched the Yellowstone s somewhere out there in the ether. And and it's it's oh, it's really good. I recommend it. At least the first episode. The first episode of Yellowstone, I genuinely believe changed television. Sure. It was so powerful. I think it actually had a profound effect. If you look at m television after that, it actually changed it. It showed what you could do in television, and I think it's elevated the entire craft. I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_04:I agree. Well, and I felt that with all of his other series that he has now, you know, I I feel like there's this level of bringing something bigger and grander and and um you know, I saw it with I think Mayor Kingstown was maybe the next one, and then it was Tulsa King. And then somewhere Lioness and Landman kind of came out on on the scene at the same time, and he just whatever he's doing, he's he's doing something right. Again, my my favorite out of all of them, I I have to say, hands down, the writing is is just pretty profound, is is Lioness. Um but that's that's me talking. I love them all.
SPEAKER_01:He's a good he's a good study too. We're talking about Renaissance men. I mean, he was a writer, he tried to write on a few different shows, they all shot him down. He uh I forget he got a big break from one show he wrote for. I don't remember who which one it was. Well, he was an actor also. He was an actor as well, yeah. Uh not super famous, but no, yep. No. And uh when he it is so funny too because I had it in my head, I had an idea of who he's gonna be. And when I actually saw the episode of Yellowstone where he shows up and that's him, I'm like, oh, you are not who I thought you would be. Like, it did not fit that uh picture I had in my head at all. But um now he's got he owns a ranch, I think second, third largest ranch in Texas, something like that, behind King Ranch. He owns a distilling company, uh they have the four sixes bourbon, like he's just he's taken, he he he he plowed ahead, uh burned some bridges, but still plowed ahead and uh made a name for himself, proved he could do in television what he said he could do, and then uh has taken that and and expanded it. It's it's kind of cool to see the pattern. He certainly has made some enemies along the way, but uh it's you know. Yeah. I think that's Hollywood though. Yeah, I think it is. I don't think there's many like really big Hollywood producers that are really good people. So good point. Anywho, uh so yeah, we we did that, sat down and watched TV, uh, and then at some point I got up to uh refill my glass, and I looked outside and I saw snow falling. And I'm like, I remember seeing a thing that there might possibly we might get a little bit of snow, a dusting. Dusting. Nothing measurable. Nothing measurable. If you didn't catch it that night, Sunday night, you weren't gonna see it. No, you wouldn't see it. So uh imagine my surprise Monday morning waking up to two inches outside of the back of my house and just being like, holy cow, you couldn't see the grass. It was solid white. Every tree looked like a Hollywood set that had just been flocked. Yes, with perfect. It was gorgeous, absolutely beautiful. Uh I it just I I can't believe how wrong they were on the weather about like we'll barely get anything, and then we ended up getting quite a bit. So yeah.
SPEAKER_04:What was today's high? 32?
SPEAKER_07:It was somewhere around there, yeah. Yeah, today today was a rough. Normally you'd expect like the snow that fell yesterday. Yes. Throughout the day in today, the the the just the sun shines. The sun was shining gloriously today. Yeah, it was beautiful. You would have thought it would have melted all that stuff away. Now it's still there's still lawns are still covered with snow. Yeah. I like what Eric tomorrow, though. Oh, tomorrow. High of 55. It's gonna feel like a heat wave. It is. Watch out for flash floods.
SPEAKER_01:Oh man, it's gonna be I already know it now. So, like everywhere in Columbus, that's pedestrian friendly. So if that's your Hilliard, your Grandview, your uh your Upper Arlington, your these are uh Dublin, uh downtown uh Columbus, these are all like super walkable friendly areas. They're gonna be packed tomorrow night with people. That's what happens. We get a cold front, it everybody freaks out, stays at home, and as soon as we have a pretty day, and pretty day can be 45 degrees or 40 degrees, depending on how long the cold has been. They're out like cockroaches. I mean, like it'll be tons of people. I like what Eric did. Uh we had a tree out in the front yard, a really nice tree in the front yard a couple of years ago. We had the first, actually, it was not the first, it was the last uh snowstorm of the season. Uh it kind of came a little bit late. Yep.
SPEAKER_02:And everything had started blooming for spring. The colors were out, green everywhere.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. And then the uh we had a snowstorm, and then it went really cold, so everything turned from snow to ice.
SPEAKER_02:It wasn't it was so far out of winter it couldn't keep the snow cold enough.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. So it turned to uh so it melted and then turned to ice. It was crazy. And when that did, all that additional weight on the tree actually split it in half. It was heartbreaking.
SPEAKER_04:Hey, do you remember that tree?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it was beautiful out there too. Oh, anyways, uh and so Eric was like, that's not happening this time. So what did you do, Eric?
SPEAKER_02:I grabbed one of the longest sticks I could find in the garage and went and poked all the branches to all the trees I like to knock out all the snow. Yes, we've like just in case we've just been turned to water and refreeze.
SPEAKER_01:We have a small weeping willow, and Eric's out there. It was a flagpole, so we replaced our flagpole out front. Uh, you know, the the one that goes mounts on your house. Yep. And uh it's been in the garage. We've like been meaning to throw it away. Just it's all black and ugly. And he grabbed it and he's out there like whacking the trees to get the snow off. Yes. I'm like, that's great. Because um, yeah, that would stink if that happened to another one of our trees. Yeah. I've actually seen a couple places in uh around where we live uh that there are trees that are down. Like this snow did pull a couple trees down.
SPEAKER_04:It was a wet snow very well.
SPEAKER_07:I wonder if that's why.
SPEAKER_04:Uh some of you, some of you closed.
SPEAKER_07:It was closed from the last turnoff down. It's had a road sign out said road closed. Yes. I wonder if that's why it was closed.
SPEAKER_01:I don't think that's it. So uh water leaking. It's the water leak. Oh, yeah. They've had a water, they've had the water that's been leaking there for a while. And it's two, three weeks have noticed it. Yeah, and I think they finally got the company out there to um fix the issue or whatever.
SPEAKER_05:But I told you guys it would be a problem.
SPEAKER_01:You did. Yeah. You did. I didn't we didn't talk about it. Eric and I talked about it, but I was like, this is weird. Like it's a perfectly dry road, and you'll just be driving, and it's a little hilly, not much, but a little hilly, and then all of a sudden you're just saturated with water, and it's like, what's going on here? This is not right. Something's gonna wry.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's not but it's not the first time it's happened. Like, as long as so we've been at that place for six years, it's just maybe the second or third time that exact area has gotten wet and had this as some kind of an issue. So they've I don't yeah, I don't know if it's got old pipes and they just keep fixing them and they break and they fix and break, and maybe then you just cut it out and redo it or what. But um I don't even know if it's in the under the if it's under the road or if it's off the side or what. Because I don't see a stream of water, it's just the road bed sweat. Yeah, yeah. It's very strange.
SPEAKER_04:Well, it's closed.
SPEAKER_01:Well, yeah. Hopefully they fix it. Especially with the freeze. I know. Turn to ice skating rink. Oh, that'd be fun down there.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, that's what I said. I'm like, I didn't know if it was something that happened every year, like with rain or whatever. And I'm like, it scares me because then your tires get wet and you're pushing that water, and then you're going right to the hill.
SPEAKER_01:And it's a very, it's a very steep downhill from there. It is. Um stop sign. Yes, they actually rebuilt like the last downhill to the it's it's a red light, isn't it? It's a red light. It's a red light. From there, from like the top of the hill to the red light, they repaved all that, not the whole road, just that section, and they made it with concrete because of how um how much damage that that uphill gets because it's so steep. Um kind of crazy. Well, since we've been gone, there has been some uh really, really um there was a bad event that happened in Louisville.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:By the time y'all are hearing this now, it's you we're a few weeks into it. Um, but we had occasionally uh we are sometimes we are putting these things out the week that they are actually recording the same week that we're actually putting them out. Sometimes we're banked, and and this is spoiler alert, we're at bank season right now. So uh, like the last episode you heard last season is a couple weeks old, and this one's gonna be a few weeks old too. So um there has been uh just breaking to us in Louisville, Kentucky, at the uh Mohammed Ali uh International Airport, which is UPS's uh primary terminal, a plane crash. And uh it was a UPS jet. It was an MD-11. Um MD-11 McDonnell Douglas is the uh jet that came after the DC-10. Everyone on the plane has died, and um there were some fatalities on the ground. Um it's a truly horrific uh accident. We don't even have the full details of what all's happened, uh, but there have been some indications. I've seen some reports, I thought we'd talk about it. UPS and FedEx and Western Global, who are all three American uh airlines that fly this company, uh fly this jet, uh, do some things, and then the NTSB, um which is the National Transportation Uh Safety Board, has come out and and said, hey, until we know more, do some things. So um the jet that was uh damaged was a 34-year-old MD-11. Um MD-11's one of those uh jets that's kind of unique. So it is a three-engine jet. So it's got two engines on the wings, and then it's got one engine in the tail. Um, and it's a big jet, right? So uh my sister flew when she went to Germany uh originally, she flew Northwest Airlines and she flew on a uh either an MD-11 or a DC-10, I'm not sure which. Again, MD-11 is just the modern version of the DC-10. Uh, she flew that over to Europe. And uh so it's wide-bodied, it's uh you know, three seats, four seats, three seats. So it's it's a big jet. Big plane. Yeah, big, big airplane. And um they have fallen out of favor for uh commercial airlines because everybody these days is using two-engine airplanes and a third engine consumes more fuel. Uh jet engines have actually gotten so reliable you don't need that third engine anymore. So they've come out and said it's not necessary. It's also why the 747's disappearing, it's why the uh the big huge double decker A380 Airbus that came out a few years ago, why it's starting to no longer be uh flown by a lot of companies. Um the two the two engine airplanes have just gotten too good. So um a lot of these airplanes ended up going to cargo operators. So for a passenger airplane that buys brand new airplanes, they use them as much as they can uh until their operational costs, so the amount of fuel they're putting in them, how many staff it takes to run the airplane, everything, when that gets too high, they'll sell the airplane and they'll buy a more fuel efficient, cheaper-to-run airplane, right? Uh, because they're flying them all the time. So like when you're flying an airplane all the time, and when I say all the time, I mean like these things make two flights a day, but those flights are are eight or ten hours each. So they're flying 16 to 20 hours a day, that's a lot of jet fuel, right? Uh on the commercial side, I mean on the uh freight side, they're mostly flying at night. So like all day long, if you've ever noticed you're driven past uh like Indianapolis' airport or um Memphis, uh the FedEx hub, or if you which you can't really see from Memphis during the day, but you can at night. You see all the airplanes coming in and leaving Memphis at night. If you've ever driven up 55 or uh 40, sometimes you'll see them like tons just planes like you see the lights just lit up the sky in a row. Um they do most of their flying at night. So the planes are sitting on the ground during the day. So if you're only flying an airplane a few hours at night and not all day, jet feels not that big of a deal to you anymore because it's a smaller portion of what you're doing. What matters is how much that plane loan note is, right? So how much you're spending on that on that airplane. So an older jet to a cargo airline is an ideal. You can buy them cheap, and yeah, they're a little more expensive to fly, but you're not flying as much, so who cares? So that's why these old airplanes have become huge in the freighter market. 747s are the same way. Atlas uh flies a ton of 747s, GPS actually uh flies a ton of 747s as well. They have these old airplanes, they're perfectly safe, usually, to fly. They have really robust maintenance programs to make sure these airplanes stay running as long as they can. As a matter of fact, in this particular case, it had a uh General Electric uh engine, I believe it was CFM 50 uh uh yeah 56, which is a extremely robust engine. It's got unbelievable robot reliability. Uh we're not sure what caused it, but as this airplane was taking off from Louisville Airport, uh around the time that they rotated, which is when they pulled the nose of the airplane up to be able to take off, the left engine exploded, and uh we now know that it actually completely detached from the airplane, landed uh in the grass next to the runway, and um the airplane uh could not lift more than a f like maybe 30-40 feet off the ground. Um and then it kept flying and it crashed into a building uh and caused uh quite a bit of devastation. This plane was bound for Hawaii, and so it was full of full of jet fuel, and that's what um primarily caused the gigantic blast. Again, at this point, you've all seen the videos, you you know what I'm talking about. So um it's it's really horrific. They don't know what caused the issue. I uh I did see so when they left the runway, they were doing 184 knots. Um you only need to be about a hundred and between 120 and 140 for that airplane to take off. So a lot of people are wondering what happened, how did that plane not get into the air, right? Um these in these airplanes do these tri-jets, they're designed to fly on two engines, even to in takeoff. So if you've got one engine that completely fell off the airplane, still got two others that should have been able to take you into the air, what happened? And uh we are now finding out that it looks like and again this could change by the time this comes out, this may not age well, but it looks like when the uh left airplane engine blew up and and failed, it caused uh debris to fly and actually under the airplane and hit the other engine. And the airplane engine on the right side, they have video now showing where the compressor stalled, and the what that means is that um it was basically unable to run, right? So it's it's it's putting out thrust, it's it's working just fine. Something penetrates it, causes that uh combustion part to stop combusting and uh it stops making lift and or power. Not necessarily completely uh stop uh doing power, but it primarily like you there's a major reduction of thrust. And so the only operable engine on that airplane at that point would be the tail engine. And so uh that is why they were unable to lift off the ground more than what they did, which means they weren't able to turn around or anything. Um all indications pretty much show that the pilots didn't even necessarily know that they were in as bad of a situation as they were at the point of when they lifted off the ground. Um they knew that something had happened, but they probably didn't realize the engine fell off. It's not like they have mirrors, they can't see that the engine just fell off the airplane.
SPEAKER_04:Um looked like it happened pretty quick.
SPEAKER_01:It did happen very, very fast. Everything was I mean, it was uh I've seen a lot of slown down footage of this, but if you watch it all together, it's a few seconds and it's and it's over with. Um so it's it's been it's been really rough watching this uh all play out, and there's so many questions now of why did this engine fail? There's did the engine itself blow up and fail? Or in 1972, I want to say, '73, somewhere around there, DC-10, again, I just told y'all the MD-11 is the modern version of the DC-10. The DC-10 had a very, very, very uh famous accident uh with United Airlines, where they uh took off and they made a turn, and when they made the turn, the piling pylon, which is the piece of metal that comes from the wing to the engine, it actually snapped and broke off. And when it did, the engine fell, the airplane lost lift, it took out all the hydraulic systems of the airplane, like all of the hydraulics were completely gone, so they could not control the airplane anymore. Without hydraulics, you can't control flaps, you can't control ailerons, you can't control elevator, nothing. They pilots had no control. Be like if you're um driving your car and your steering wheel uh were to just snap off. It just they completely lost control of the airplane and it crashed. Um and it was devastating. And so a lot of people are comparing this situation to that situation, and they're going, is there a uh a problem with the pylons that are causing this to happen again? What Boeing, who now who bought McDonnell Douglas, so now Boeing is recommending is everybody that has these MD-11s, until we know more, park them. Don't fly them. Let's figure out what's going on. Let's do some safety inspections on the airplanes that you currently have in your fleet, and then we will um, you know, then once we figure out what really happened, then we can decide whether or not to do modifications to make the plane safer, or you know, hey, that was a freak accident, and you know, uh your planes are still safe to fly. So uh all three carriers did that. So UPS, FedEx, and Western Global all parked their jets, and then a couple days later, the NTSB National Transportation Safety Board, they came out and grounded all the planes. So now even if they wanted to fly their airplanes, they can't. They're MD 11s. The MD 11s, correct planes. Exactly. Yeah, I'm sorry, the MD-11s. So uh now we're gonna find out, wait for this uh these planes to be looked at and try to figure out what happened. So the question at this point, since we know the engine blew up and we know that the um engine fell off the airplane, was it the pylon failed causing the engine to blow up, or was it the engine that failed causing the pylon to fail? Like what caused what? That's kind of the situation we're in. Exactly. Yeah. So until we know that, uh there's not a lot that can happen. Uh UPS and FedEx have both come out and said that's it. This is fine. We uh have contingencies in place for if something like this were to happen, uh, we have other airplanes we can fly. So both UPS and FedEx fly a very diverse fleet. So uh they have 777s, they have 767s, they have 757s, they have a lot. Actually, the MD-11s are actually airplanes that are starting to phase out of their fleets because each one right now has like one is 27, one is 24, I think, or 28. Um, there's not a ton of airplanes uh in their fleet. It it's already a a minor inconvenience. Right. Um, but they are uh putting these contingency plans in motion so they can still cover the freight, still get everything out. Your UP uh and uh your UPS FedEx overnight stuff can still make it there without the use of these particular airplanes. So yeah, it's interesting.
SPEAKER_07:Uh you know, in general. I I I actually found an article just on that same topic from 2023, February of 2023, saying that UPS has begun a planned retirement of its aging MD-11 freight freight freighters uh as part of the plan to renew the fleet with more fuel efficient aircraft. This was back again in 2023. Uh they were looking to retire six of its 42 MD-11s back in 2023. So I don't know where it's gone from there, but they already started that process, so they weren't relying on them heavily anymore.
SPEAKER_01:Um so FedEx had even so I I haven't followed uh UPS as much as I followed FedEx. FedEx actually did come out and say we're officially retiring this airplane, uh, we're gonna phase them out and by 2028, which is only three years from now. Sure. Really two years from now, uh this plane will be gone out of our fleet. Then they uh changed their model. I think we talked about it mini a few months ago. They actually brought the CEO uh from Atlas Air over to FedEx Express. And Atlas is a um they're a unique cargo operator. They they do all kinds of weird stuff. Like they have a a huge fleet of 747s, they fly troops in and out of uh uh Europe and and wherever they need to with these 747s that are uh set up for passengers, and they have a bunch of 747s that are set up for um cargo, and so they do a lot of like ad hoc cargo missions. So they'll they'll pick up freight and bring it somewhere it needs to go, and then they'll go find another job. Kind of like it's very much like expediting. They are going and finding these jobs, and then they're they're hauling them and whatever, they're just doing it, you know, over water. We can't. Um and so uh but they also do things like they they operate. Are you familiar with uh and y'all may have seen these and thought they're ridiculous looking? Uh Boeing has these gigantic uh airplanes that they're based on 747s, but they've taken the top of the 747 completely off and they've put this huge bubble like super guppies. Yeah, the super guppy things. Uh so Boeing has these airplanes, they own them, they did the the the mod modification to them, and then what they do is they actually will open up the front of it, they'll slide a fuselage for like a 787 or something like that into it during the construction phase, they'll fly it from one factory to the next factory, take it out, and then they can finish building the airplane. That's why Boeing owns these. Um well Boeing doesn't have authority to fly their own airplanes, they're not an airline, they're a they build airlines. So Atlas has the contract to fly those. So Atlas flies those planes that are owned by Boeing for Boeing. Yeah. They do all kinds of crazy stuff.
SPEAKER_04:Um west of airplanes.
SPEAKER_01:Kind of. And Atlas is very good at it. And and if you uh know, you may not even recognize this is what it's from. If you've ever uh driven through Louisville, not Louisville, if you uh Cincinnati, and you're heading to Florence, y'all on the right hand side of the interstate heading south or left hand uh heading north, there's a big office building they just built maybe three, four years ago, and it has the picture of Atlas like holding the globe.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That's their company headquarters. Okay. So that's Atlas. They also at Van Lines. Atlas van lines. Oh my gosh. No, no, no.
SPEAKER_07:No, no, no, but I mean, but there's Atlas van lines as well with that same logo. So I'd imagine they're just a different division of the same company.
SPEAKER_01:They're not. They're actually totally different companies, but I do like I do see where you're going with that. Yeah. Um, but no, they're they're they're they do this. They also have a bunch of stuff they fly for uh Amazon. Okay. They're one of Amazon airs big people. So like they just go out and find jobs and they know flying, so that's what they do. Sure. Uh so they got they uh FedEx got their CEO or COO and brought them over, and that person has has basically taken FedEx from like, hey, you're not we're not just flying FedEx overnight envelopes anymore. Now we're going after all this other cargo that FedEx has never gone after before. And so because of that, FedEx moved their MD11 dates from 2028 to 2032. Interesting. Oh they're delaying their retirements and then they just had their whole fleet grounded of those airplanes. So it's it's interesting because uh up until up until a couple of weeks or a week ago, all of us would have argued the MD-11 is a very safe airplane. And it makes perfect sense for them to fly it as long as they are, and as far as durability, I hate to say this, but even the crash proves how strong those airplanes are. The debris field is, I think, like a mile long or something like that. That's because that airframe is built so strong, it was able to actually go through all of that. Whereas you think of a lot of airplane accidents, they're very like small. Right. There's not a lot of airplane accidents where the debris field is huge. This is a testament to how strong this airframe is built. Um, and so it is a unique situation where uh this airplane is uniquely perfect for what they're doing, uh, and they can't fly them now. So I am curious what's gonna happen. I think so too, but I but I also don't know if they're going to use this as an excuse to retire them. You know what I mean? Like, will this be the big push that kills the MD-11 entirely?
SPEAKER_05:I think it's gonna depend on what they actually find.
SPEAKER_01:So right up here, my FedEx airplane is an MD-11. I just realized that.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So the model that I have of this uh FedEx airplane up here on my uh on my shelf is actually an MD-11 from FedEx. I mean, it's a it's a very popular airplane they fly. Yeah. Um, so it is uh again, it's very interesting. I'm I'm curious to see if this is gonna be the death of the airplane or if they're going to uh find out, hey, this was a one-time fluke. And um and that's that. I I follow a person online called Captain Steve. I don't know if y'all watch Captain Steve or not. I do. Uh he's he's a great captain, just retired out of American Airlines. Uh he was an Air Force pilot before that. I mean, his whole career has been aviation. He breaks down uh lots of topics in aviation, but he does talk about when there's a major crash, like he uh talked about the Air India that happened last year or earlier this year.
SPEAKER_07:And he's good because he actually on the Air India flight, at least, he he he he speculated and he said it was speculation. Correct. And he came back and said, Nope, I was wrong, it was actually something different. Absolutely. You don't see ego there. You don't see that.
SPEAKER_01:No, no ego, just just facts. Just facts. Just facts. So he talked a lot about this airplane uh uh crash and everything, and getting that perspective um kind of helps you process. And again, here's someone who has really studied these crashes for years before I was born, uh like just a long, long time. He even said kind of we'll see where the evidence brings us, but based on the initial findings, this is a a fluke accident. That that may never ever ever happen again. Yeah, right. It is he said it's unlike any plane crash he's ever seen. Maybe we'll find more. So again, uh I did want to say, so the the plane that happened in in the 70s, they redesigned the pylon, so now they're they're not as easy to break. And there hasn't been a pylon break since. Like it's literally been since the 70s that we've had a pylon that broke and an engine fell off.
SPEAKER_02:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:Um because they redesigned it. They also redesigned all the hydraulics. So if that were to happen, you don't lose the ability to f to fly the airplane. Uh, which is why you do see in this situation it does take off and it does fly a little bit before it crashes. Um because they they made all those improvements over time. It's very interesting uh situation and uh heartbreaking. Um It really is. Yeah, it's just it's the it's you know, there's there's people that the the the pilots that were on the airplane, obviously, and and have seen some of their stories, and um, if you haven't look them up. Like these these are really good people. Um, and then the uh people who were just at work and this horrible crash got them. Like I've there's been several people that have died that were on the ground. Just I mean, like, none of us ever expect a plane to fall out of the sky and hit us. And then there's so many people that have survived but are in intensive care or at hospitals right now as we speak. Some are fighting for their lives, some are not, some are just trying to heal. Uh, but still, I mean it it it it changed a lot of people's lives immediately. I really appreciated being um obviously with us having such a close relationship with FedEx, that they did uh uh post out there, uh, we are deeply saddened by the tragic accident involving UPS Flight 2976 near Louisville. Our thoughts are with the families, crew members, and everyone across the UPS and Louisville communities affected by this devastating loss. The entire FedEx team stands with our colleagues across the aviation industry during this difficult time. So for FedEx to sit back or to to pretty quick within a few hours, recognize this is not a UPS issue. No, this is this is a horrific accident that's happened in the aviation community. And we are fierce competitors, but we are also the same. Uh I thought it meant a lot. It was very classy, and uh certainly appreciated uh them making that statement.
SPEAKER_07:You know, if we can bring this back down uh over to trucking back on the ground, yes, you know, how many times have we passed by a collision of trucks? I I drove by one just yesterday morning and it was three trucks, the two in the back. There were two had re-rended one. I'm not sure how it happened. I've of course I didn't see it, but you know, when you think about that person that got up that morning, whether he was in the sleeper and he got out of the sleeper and got in the truck to drive, uh or left home. Um, you know, but he's out there working doing a job and these things happened. Yes. Don't know why they happened. Yesterday's conditions on the road were were pretty sketchy, but these things happen all the time, unfortunately. And you think about the people that are affected, besides you being stuck in traffic or the drivers that were in the vehic in the truck, um but their families and the families of those other folks that were affected, and just um you know, it it's it's it's dangerous out there all around, whether it's flying a plane or in trucking, being a passenger excuse me, in in a plane or or a motor vehicle. Um and you it you gotta stop and think and and appreciate the life that we've got and and and what we're doing here, you know? Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:I I I couldn't agree more. I mean, you know, I I being the the channel's uh airplane guy. Yeah uh sure you know, you I still sit back and you realize like this was terrible. The Air Andy was tragic. The uh American Airlines uh uh express jet that uh outside of DC with the helicopter. With a helicopter, yeah. Hor horrific. Like when you get on an airplane and you sit down in your seat, you expect a certain level of safety, right? And it's still the safest means of transportation. Statistically speaking, like when we yes, when we go fly somewhere or do something, the uh the drive from my house to the airport, airport to my house, is the most dangerous thing I'll do that day. You know, flying is extremely safe. Even so I'm hoping by the time this comes out this is all settled. But right now, there's a major uh flight um air traffic control sister uh center uh air traffic controllers um shortage because of the ongoing uh government shutdown. Which looks to be resolved, but we'll see. And um so they're cutting flights left and right, and people are upset they're cutting flights, and I get that. I would not want my flight to be cut. I have about the actually about the time this is gonna come out, I'll be on a flight. Uh and I hope it doesn't get cancelled, right? But at the end of the day, they are doing this because uh a canceled flight sure beats the alternative.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It it just does. Sure. And so they are like whatever the political and other motivations that are happening behind the scenes, they are still taking a backseat to safety has to be the most important thing. And I and I think too with trucking, safety has to be the most important thing. It has to be. So when you are driving, especially right now, we're in that time of the year where the road conditions can change quickly, they have to be the most important thing. We have to keep eyes out for black ice. What does black ice look like? We used to hear that term all the time, not know what it means. When you're driving down the road and it hasn't been raining, and all of a sudden the road looks wet, you're getting into black ice conditions. Where is that where is icing most likely to happen? It's most likely to happen on a bridge or under a bridge. Yeah. And under a bridge can be really dangerous because the sun, like you talked about, the sun will uh melt the snow and all that ice. Uh so on top of a bridge, the sun may actually de-ice the road naturally. When you're driving over a bridge during the day, you don't think anything of it. When you go under a bridge, that sun wasn't able to penetrate through the bridge, and so you could easily have still have that shade and cold in there. Absolutely, and you have that ice uh that still formed. So uh being smart about how to uh be safe and be on the road. I I thought it was great. Uh Jerry posted a um article to our uh Heifeld uh trucking website website. What is that one? Our blog. Our blog, thank you. Uh and it talked about uh winter preparedness and um it talked about a lot of like being prepared, having additional food and and and water and uh things like that on the road, additional uh wiper blades, because in summertime you're only turning your wiper blades on to uh for rain or maybe to clear bug splatter. Yeah, you know, yeah. Uh in the middle of uh winter, you're using it to uh clear ice, and ice destroys wiper blades. So having additional wiper blades on your on you so when it does happen, you can pull into a truck stop and swap them out if you need to quickly. Uh having uh additional uh wiper fluid, because you go through wiper fluid so much faster and have appropriately rated. Yes, that negative 20, negative 30 degree wiper fluid because uh if you're like me and Eric, so we were uh from and I think you were this well, uh uh Vince, we're from the South. Yeah. Well and you're from South LA. You're South LA. I'm South uh I'm also South LA, right? It's just Louisiana, not Los Angeles. Like we we didn't learn winter preparedness because we had washer fluid, period. There was no different flavors. Never heard of winter blend, summer blend, didn't know any of that stuff nonsense, right? Uh we didn't know about uh that that diesel fuel gels. It's not a thing down there, it doesn't happen, it'll get cold enough. So the transition was big for us, and so a lot of people, if you've never driven in the winter, if you've never really experienced that, taking those additional steps, knowing that it does increase your risk, but it doesn't I'm gonna this is gonna sound weird, it doesn't make it more dangerous. It's knowing that, hey, here's a few additional risk factors I wasn't counting on. Sure. So you mitigate those risks by paying attention to the weather. Sure. Like becoming a crazy fiend for the weather person. Yeah. Almost every trucking uh people I know that are out there, at least one partner has weather.com or underground, weather underground or and yeah, or uh what's the other one that's big?
SPEAKER_04:Um Brian's weather?
SPEAKER_07:No, yes, well, he's the video YouTube channel that the the Lords share with us on the Sunday.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, and there's also uh what's is it angry weather? What's the one y'all like?
SPEAKER_05:Um the cat one?
SPEAKER_01:No, the uh the um inappropriate one. WT weather, yeah. Okay, that's for adults only, just so you know. Yeah, and then Jerry, you were gonna say something.
SPEAKER_00:Carrot weather, it's kind of along the same lines. You can do either what obscene or very nice. Wt forecast. Okay, WT forecast, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, or you get the serious ones like Noah, yes, N-O-A-A. You can play for subscription that alerts you with the bad weather. The bad, bad stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Nike weather is good with you.
SPEAKER_04:Um I personally use WAF. It's gonna sound really weird. Uh WAFF. It's a weather channel out of Alabama, actually. Um, but it shows me radar.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And it's got a lovely, it's free. It's a lovely radar. I don't have to pay for NOAA anymore. Um, your daily notifications are Alabama.
SPEAKER_01:So you know exactly how the weather in Birmingham is gonna be at any given moment.
SPEAKER_04:However, it still follows me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And so if something catastrophic is gonna happen here, weather, snow, whatever, um, it will alert me to that as well. Uh, but that daily one is is Alabama. Uh I got Vince on this this channel, but it it shows it shows everything. I really like the way that it shows, especially for the tornadoes.
SPEAKER_07:Um Another one we used to use was highway weather, where you can actually put in your your location and destination and it'll route you, or not route you, but it'll tell you the weather along your route when you anticipate to be there. Um so it wasn't accurate if I'm planning a trip for tomorrow. Yeah. Uh, but it it would help right away to know where I was going and kind of look ahead. Uh then also the other places to look for, not necessarily weather, but road conditions, are your state DOT websites, absolutely, which will tell you what where there's road closures, that type of thing along your route potentially. Yes.
SPEAKER_04:But that's a lot of downloading of apps.
SPEAKER_01:It is, but they're helpful, they're useful. But I also recommend people um I know so Google Maps in ways, they get a lot of like in the truck community, like, oh, that's you shouldn't use that. That's for cars, right? What they are and I agree, you you shouldn't. You they will put you in a low bridge. They will absolutely put you in a situation driving into a neighborhood you can't drive through. So for navigation, no. But they do they're really good at giving you what are at traffic conditions. Oh, yeah, definitely. They are very helpful with that. And so I know CB radio is is is a very handy tool that a lot of people use. Uh so use or don't use, but I'm just saying, so some of those, some of those uh like Waze or Google Maps or Apple Maps, they're getting the same information, they're getting it to you potentially miles further than your CB radio can actually find out. And so you may uh you know look at traffic and be like, uh a good example, miles out. So I used to run Dallas to Columbus all the time, not hauling freight. I used to do that moving trucks because we worked with double-A sleepers, god rest our souls. And um when I would get from uh I had two major uh points where I had to decide where I was what I was gonna do. Memphis was one. So from Memphis to get to Columbus, you can go uh I-40 all the way to Nashville and then go straight up 65 to Louisville and and and on to 71, uh pretty much all the way into uh Columbus. Or you can actually go north of Memphis. You're on a highway, don't know which one it is, you go through Dyersburg, you go through a couple other places, you sidestep Paducah, and then you get on the Western Kentucky Pirate uh Parkway, and that eventually gets you over to it's a beautiful drive, isn't it? Yeah. There's it's I love that drive. Um and then you can get to um it spits you out on 65 by Fort Knox. So it's a longer route, but if you know traffic and you know like you can look at 40 and look at okay, is there any accidents on 40? Because an accident on 40 may say a 15-minute delay, but we all know 15 minutes can quickly turn into two hours. Quickly on 40. Uh, or if you can look at uh Nashville traffic, if you're gonna hit Nashville at nine o'clock at night, go that way. Yeah, do you think it's fine? Yeah, it's quicker, yeah. It's quicker, it's a lot of fun. Uh but if you know you're gonna hit Nashville at 4 o'clock, five o'clock in the afternoon, going the northern route, even though it says it'll be quicker to go through Nashville, going the northern route does save you time. Same with Louisville. If Louisville is really bad, actually taking the time to go through uh on that same parkway over to Lexington and north can save you a lot of time.
SPEAKER_07:So Yes, we're not talking about just taking the the outer bypass of the city. We're talking about Louisville is what, 65 north through Louisville? You have 65 north, you could do the 265 or you can do the 265. We're not talking about doing 265 or 264. We're talking about route planning way around the city and not just the the outs outside belt. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:And that's one of those things too where it's it looks like it's hundreds of miles out of the way, but it's really not. When you look at the time-wise to, it might say, oh, this is gonna be 10 more minutes, but knowing after a little time of being out there and being stuck in Louisville traffic, 10, 15 minutes is nothing. Yeah. If it's bringing you to somewhere where you're not gonna have traffic, yeah, it's nothing. Because you also can't get through those areas as fast as those other services think you can. Right. You can't buzz through Louisville uh in the left lane doing 75 miles an hour uh because you're in a commercial truck. So taking all these taking all these tools, uh the weather, the the traffic uh highlights. I like what you said too about the uh the local DOTs because they are really good at like Google may say, hey, there's a wreck.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And that's all they say.
SPEAKER_07:But your DOT website's gonna give you more information. Yes, absolutely. Especially in those bad weather states. Uh Wyoming. And it may be the same for the northeastern states, but those are the ones that we found ourselves in during the winter for some weird reason all the time. And you can look at things like wind advisories on the I-80 through I wyoming telling you the roads closed. Looks clear, but wind advisor is gonna shut you down for half a day, if not longer. So Jerry was gonna say something a couple times earlier. I want to give Jerry a chance to talk.
SPEAKER_00:I was just gonna say, you know, your modern truck GPS. I mean, when I had Garmin, I had Ram McNally, they all give you live traffic, they all rerouted, they all give you radar and live weather. You literally could tell Garmin voice navigation, and you can just tell it, show me the weather, and it'll pop up right on your screen.
SPEAKER_07:I'm gonna I'm gonna dispute one thing there with you because sometimes our Ram McNally would give us bad information. So when it would pop up and say, and we had ours next to our Wi-Fi hotspot in the truck, it would pop up and say, you know, traffic ahead, whatever, whatever, take this route. One of us, a passenger, would hop on the phone and go, okay, let's make sure this is actually uh uh there's a problem here, and this isn't the old report. Sometimes it'd be old reports and you find really figure out that you didn't go that way, but it was good to make you aware, and then it was actually giving you a proper truck route around a problem versus a Google Maps route around that problem that's gonna take you on through neighborhoods and stuff. You should have to do that.
SPEAKER_00:Whenever I bought the Garmin, I actually got the plug that had the traffic building to the plug. So it would constantly pop up and it'd be like it would well, I mean it was like 20 bucks more or so and it would just pop up on the screen. Hey, you know, there's an accident or whatever, this route can get you around it, and you just literally click a button and you're good to go.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I do think it's an important part because we do have a lot of people who come over and uh the uh with each carrier they have map functions that help you get from where you're at to the uh delivery. So you don't have to buy a a Garmin or a Ram McNally GPS, you don't have to. We they already have that. Those do not have weather integration, they do not have traffic integration, they are the quickest points A to B that's truck sell uh truck route safe. And so um that is where these additional apps do come in handy. And if you do even if you have to pay for one, they're taxed right off. So you have that ability as well. Sure.
SPEAKER_00:Um FedEx, but you do Oh, I'm sorry. I was just gonna say FedEx, they offer navigation building to the Qualcomm.
unknown:Exactly.
SPEAKER_07:That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, same with Fantasy. Updated are those maps, though.
SPEAKER_00:Great.
SPEAKER_07:Because on the Panther side, constantly we used ours on the time on the Panther side. However, Panther no longer uses the Qualcomm or the Omnitrax, they use Samsara, which doesn't have it. Right. But we found that our maps were ages old too. They weren't up, Panther didn't update the maps on their Omnitrax.
SPEAKER_01:So Jerry ran for FedEx uh longer than I did, so I don't have the most up-to-date, although you're up to date's 2021. So it's a little old. Yeah. And uh at those points, when I left, uh those maps were uh very conservative safe. Sure. They weren't necessarily ideal. Uh so I I do know that it uh while it's provided, it wasn't necessarily the best. And and absolutely having a GPS that's made for trucking is um is definitely advisable, but I do recognize too, a lot of people come here and can't buy a three, four hundred, five hundred dollar uh navigation system.
SPEAKER_07:And and that was certainly, even though Panthers maps are outdated, it was more of an inconvenience and less of a oh a danger or a you know a safety issue. The map still worked. Yes. They may not just have the latest interchange that was built five years ago on the map.
SPEAKER_04:We we didn't have the newest technology for probably the first six to nine months that we We didn't have that until we actually had a hazmat load and our GPS wouldn't do hazmat.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Like we ran the Panther maps off the Omnitracks. Again, Omnitracks are not what's provided now, but like because we were in that boat of not having financially cash to have a uh a direct GPS. Yeah, we didn't have that, so we ran what we had. We may have backed it up with Google Maps again. That's where a new construction zone and and Panthers map ended, but you're like, I can visually see something. So then you would maybe switch to a Google map to get you that last half a mile or whatever. But um not everybody has the the money to make it happen, but there's apps now. I don't think I don't feel like there were as many truck specific apps when we started in 1990. 2019. Like then that there are today.
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_04:Like and maybe there were, but we just didn't know about them. But I just don't feel like there were truck.
SPEAKER_01:I think that whole I think that whole technology and trucking segment has exploded. I mean, sure. You know, what do they say like every is it every year or every two years? Uh what is it? It something doubles in technology, right? There's some kind of wall. It has been broken, but I'm just saying like it moves a lot faster. It moves it moves so fast. So like 2019, when it comes to that stuff, is ancient. Sure. It's just crazy, you know? Yeah. Think about that. Um, so when Eric and I get off the run 17, that's very old information. I still keep up with some of it because I do still have to drive trucks cross-country sometimes. Sure. Um, but uh I I don't have a I don't have a GPS to take with me, but I know the routes I'm going. Jerry's got five. He does.
SPEAKER_00:I normally do take one, and it's the last truck that I went to get whenever it was down in Florida. I forgot to take it. And sure enough, the first thing I did is I went straight to Trucker Path and they had a free seven-day trial to their trucker GPS. And so I was like, hey, this will get me home.
SPEAKER_04:If I've if I've got to gotta travel yourself a note for seven days.
SPEAKER_07:If I've got to travel outside the original or the the immediate area to grab a truck, I I got our I have our GPS in the car in the in the at home. And if it'd been six months or so, I'll go sit in the car and plug it in and try to wi fi and update it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I love, I love uh uh when we would get so Eric and I are back in our day.
SPEAKER_07:Did you use the book?
SPEAKER_01:Did you use the book? We never used the book. We bought a book. Yep. We bought it because we said if we ever break down and need it, we're gonna have it. That's it. And we never used it, so we never bought a second book. But that's okay. But I can't tell you last a while. I can't tell you how many books I pulled out of trucks, and I'm curious if y'all have had that experience. Or people are like not very often. But we do. Yeah, yeah. We got we got it back when I was expensive. Oh, they were so they're a hundred something dollars.
SPEAKER_07:Then if you're old and you want the the large text uh spiral bands. That's what we had. We had spared button's going to be.
SPEAKER_01:Two gears or two two dogs, you had a double shift, and you were staring with your knee while clutching with your other foot.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, exactly. Uh so I bought my own. And uh my first trainer uh when I was driving tractor trailer at the end of training, he he presented me with one as a gift. Oh wow. And I go, Well, thank you, but I I bought one, I have the same one. So, you know, pay it forward to somebody else, right? Yeah, but yeah, he was surprised that I had one.
SPEAKER_01:I thought you were gonna say that it was last year's model. No, he bought a new one.
SPEAKER_07:He bought a new one, so it was all uh dog shit, dog ear. No, it was brand new, but that's a sweet gift.
SPEAKER_04:I didn't know that.
SPEAKER_07:Um, no, but you know, it's it's good to have just in case it is technology goes down, whether whether your GPS breaks or just your your your satellite service doesn't work for whatever reason, you know, those big cities, Chicago, New York City, you gate right.
SPEAKER_01:My first experience with that 2009, Eric and I, Eric, I, Jenny, and Jamie, we drove my Toyota Tundra up to New Jersey, pulled a trailer that uh Jamie, Jamie had got for us, uh, to pick up the 1973, uh 74 Volkswagen uh microbus. Best year. Yes indeed. With air conditioning, thank you. Uh and the angel was seized. Uh so we had to trailer it back. Uh so we got permission from the guy that we bought it from, he had a big poll land in uh New Jersey, that we could load the van up, leave the trailer there, and then we would go in the city. So we actually drove into the city, and that was my we went to the tunnel, Lincoln uh uh no Holland tunnel, get out of the Holland tunnel, and it's so cool. Like I'm in the I'm in a truck, but whatever. Like, it's fine, we're in the tunnel, it's good. And we get out of the tunnel, and Google on my iPhone is like, sorry, we will see you when you leave the state. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, y'all gotta quick open up your iPhones and figure out where we're at and we're going. So we literally had to like look at regular map view, not and there was no moving dot. It was like, uh, we're passing uh third and 164th, and then like find that like okay, you need to turn right at the next one. The next one's a one way and it goes left only. So like all that to the holiday inn, and and and if you know where the Holland Tunnel comes out, it's it's like near uh uh Midtown, and we had to go all the way into the CBD because that's where we were staying, right next to the Brooklyn Bridge. Oh, it was a disaster, an absolute disaster. That was my first time ever experiencing like so many tall buildings that your internet's like no, we're good.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, you need to use paper products.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yes. And we parked the trunk at we paid to park. It was so expensive. It was like$40 or$50 a day. We paid to park and then we didn't touch it until we left. I'm like, I'm not driving to this city for nothing. Uh but we were down, I mean, at that point, Brooklyn Bridge, I mean, that's that's way downtown. That's the the heart of it. Like, we were not far from Wall Street. It was crazy. Wait a huge hotel room. That was really cool. Anyways, so um Squirrel. Squirrel. Uh so uh yeah, having these tools, I one thing I was gonna say too is a lot of teams do come in, and because we have that really cool deal with loves, uh, every point from from day one, every every gallon you of fuel you put in that truck gets you three points per gallon. When you go over thousand gallons. A thousand gallons, it bumps to uh four points per gallon.
SPEAKER_07:Diamond assassin.
SPEAKER_01:And so you always have platinum, but it will let you go to diamond if you need to, but platinum's your shelf, not basic, not gold, not whatever the other ones are. So a lot of our teams do come in, they fuel only at loves, they really hold that line and they build up enough points pretty quickly because of the amount of running we do to then go out and buy a GPS. Yep. Uh, and then we get in the whole Rand McNally versus Garmin debate, which none of us want to have. No, please no. Yeah, we don't think we've done both. We don't. You we have, yeah. I I don't know if y'all have, but I mean it's Garmin or nothing. But uh I won't we're not gonna get into it.
SPEAKER_07:Our our first one was a Rand McNally, our last one was a Garmin. I'm and I know teams that use both at the same time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'm just saying they're not putting Rand McNally's in airplanes. No, they're not, but they are putting Garmin's. So uh, you know, you do you.
SPEAKER_04:Uh I like the one that just says turn here, buttermilk Piquee.
SPEAKER_05:Piquee. I always thought Rand McNally had like a bedroom voice.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And I always thought it was funny that it was welcome to Virgin. Yeah. But when it was West Virginia, it was welcome to West Virginia. And I'm like, well, what happened to Virgin? Yeah. How do we say one one way, but we don't say the other one the other way? Well, you know, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:It's uh it's politics. Again, it's politics.
SPEAKER_04:Pakee. We still say it today. Anytime we pass anything that says Anytime we pass a peque, we say a bakwi, which is PKW. Yes. And she translates it as pequ.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, we got to espoe.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I uh I we're about to wrap up. I do want to say one thing, uh, and and I think all y'all will agree. Next week, uh I think it would be fun if we talked about winter preparedness. And since uh Jerry's already done all the homework.
SPEAKER_05:Ooh, he could bring it.
SPEAKER_01:I think he should bring it. And we'll talk about it and then we'll talk about it.
SPEAKER_05:Whose seat is he gonna sit in? Oh, there we go.
SPEAKER_04:I like that. He likes his seat.
SPEAKER_07:He Patrick's the host, so you can have my seat.
SPEAKER_01:No, I think he's good where he's at. All in favor of Jerry staring where he's at?
SPEAKER_07:Aye. Aye. He does control the camera, so he can certainly put a camera right on wherever he is.
SPEAKER_01:We can get a little iPhone, set it right here next to the candle. Well, the candle helps illuminate his face. It gets him that that glow.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah. Candle glow. And he literally has a five o'clock shadow from his beard coming up his face. Jerry's like, I thought I was gonna get away without being bullied today. So I let all the teams know when they come to pick up a truck. Yes. About we talked about the washer fluid. Yes. Because, you know, I learned about it as I was on the road, and then there was a point where I needed some winter washer fluid, and I was in, I don't know, Mesa, Arizona, or no, actually we were in Yuma, Arizona. Oh yeah. And they they don't have no winter formula washer fluid. Yep.
SPEAKER_01:I was like, oh, that makes sense. Well, it's like uh anti gel. You know, we talked to teams about putting anti gel in the truck, and uh we've had some people who are like well you don't the truck stops already put some of that in there, they're already treating their fuel. They are to a degree, yeah. But if you buy fuel in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and then you drive due north, you'll be in Chicago with two-thirds a tank of diesel of untreated fluid. Yeah, or untreated uh fuel, rather. So I mean like it's not hard to that to gel up. So um no, it's definitely good stuff, and uh we will talk more about it next time. Next time on the outer belt.
SPEAKER_00:Brought to you by OTR Services doing carb tests every day.
SPEAKER_05:I like it any day.
SPEAKER_01:What he does is he takes bread from eight to back. And he has a little sensor he sticks in the bread and it tells you how many carbs it has. Exactly. Exactly. Uh no, tell us about our good friends over at OTR Services.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, uh, check them out at OTR-services.com. Uh and whenever you need to do a carb, uh, which is the clean truck uh emissions systems testing that the state of California does require. So if you are doing business out in the state of California, that is required uh every six months. So check us out at OTR-services.com for all your carb needs. If you're in the Columbus, Ohio area, you can go online, book your appointment, and we'll come out to you and take care of it.
SPEAKER_01:And we have heard uh like uh a lot of companies, carriers that are starting to that that have kind of been ignoring it are starting to crack down on that because the fees and the fines are going up. Custom critical just announced they're gonna start enforcing it as well. Um come the beginning of the year. So it's uh get on the bandwagon now. It's not worth the$25,000 fine or whatever it is,$2,500,$25,000. I don't know it's something.
SPEAKER_04:It's a big difference. Wait a second.
SPEAKER_01:It's a simple zero thousand dollars. I don't if it's if it's three hundred dollars, it's too much. It's too much when you can pay$150 or whatever it is and get a carp test on. All right, I'll get that. Um yeah, be safe than sorry, uh, I think so.
SPEAKER_00:And then uh no mill lights. Yeah, no mail lights, no check engine lights. Um I had someone call me actually yesterday, and they were like, you know, hey, I don't have a mill light on, but I do have an issue with the radar system on the front of my truck. That does not bother it. Nope. Just no mail lights, no check engine lights, uh, because we're only checking the emissions. We're not looking at anything else on your vehicle.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. This does not replace a DOT inspection or anything like that. No at all. Um cool. Well, I like what they're doing. I, you know, there is that piece of me that hates oh the ban, the government, it's costing us a fortune. But at the other hand, I also like breathing clean air. So, um, you know, take it as you would. I'm I'm I am anti-acid rain. Vince, not so much. He likes acid. So, um until next week. Uh wait, whoa, whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Can we slow down? Yes, please. Okay. Until next week. Jerry. What have we forgotten to ask everyone to do?
SPEAKER_00:Make sure you hit that thumbs up button if you like the video. Share this out to your friends if they're just, you know, looking for content to keep them occupied going down the road. Uh, also hit the subscribe button. A lot of you are watching the channel or listening on your favorite podcast, um, but you're not hitting a subscribe, which does not cost anything. It's completely free to you, but it does help us with the YouTube algorithm to get our channel in front of more people. If you're interested in high field trucking and all that we do over here are interested in getting started with Highfield or would like to know more information, check us out at highfieldtrucking.com. That's H Y F I E L D Trucking.com. You can also give recruiting a call at 833 Highfield, H Y F I E L D, or 833 493 4353 option one, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. You have any comments about the show or any suggestions, please leave a comment down below. We do read all of those. Or you can send us over an email at the outerbeltpodcast at gmail.com.
SPEAKER_04:Hey, what's the thing that we just hit?
SPEAKER_00:The Highfield YouTube Trucking Channel. Highfield Trucking YouTube channel.
SPEAKER_01:So that's out that's Outer Belt Plus Truck Tours plus all the other stuff.
SPEAKER_00:Everything that encompasses Highfield Trucking, we actually just hit 1.8 million views on YouTube.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, nice. That's a lot of views. A lot of views.
SPEAKER_07:Boy, if I had a dollar for each. Oh, really? It's only taken me, I mean, the last five years of watching trifield trucking videos. To make sure all 108 to make sure I get 1.8 million views.
SPEAKER_00:Well, yeah, I mean I started it. I actually got it up going, what, like uh March or April of 23?
SPEAKER_07:Something like that. I think so, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So two years.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, that's awesome.
SPEAKER_00:Two and a half, but two and a half, one point eight million views. That's that's a pretty good clip.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's not bad. How exciting.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:And we haven't even done any of the clickbait or any of the craziness, you know. We just just it's all it's oh naturel. Yes. No clickbait, huh? By the way, Jerry, we need to incorporate clickbait. So uh until we see each other again, thank you so much for hanging out with us. We certainly do appreciate it. So until next time, until we see you again, thank you so much for hanging out with us and supporting us again. As he said, if you do see uh anyone in your life that you're like, hey, they would enjoy hearing these crazy people ramble. Uh, we would love to have them uh check us out. And uh if you didn't like anything you saw, we totally understand. Hit that uh thumbs down button twice to really show them how much you don't like us. Uh and we would appreciate it. We will see you um shortly. Stay safe, make good decisions. Don't leave money on the table.