Crisscrossing the complexities of the trucking industry, we untangle the aftermath of the Baltimore Bridge collapse and its cascading effects on the trucking community. From the FMCSA's exemption policies to hefty economic implications for truckers' livelihoods, we dissect the government's response and the dire need for safer infrastructure. The pulse of the industry quickens as we examine the FMCSA's perplexing decision to drop certain training requirements for trucking schools, a move that's stirred the pot on safety vs. efficiency in training new drivers. Expect a riveting conversation that doesn't shy away from the chilling truths of labor exploitation and the legal tussles brewing over driver compensation.
When the rubber hits the road, it's the tales of miscommunication and power plays between dispatchers, shippers, and drivers that paint a vivid picture of the daily grind. Hear how a seemingly simple decision can spiral into a weekend layover and the thin line trodden between assertiveness and insubordination. Our stories capture the essence of trucking life, including the impact of social media on careers and the harsh realities faced by drivers when companies let them down. It's a world where transparency isn't just about cargo loads, but extends to the often opaque dealings within the industry itself.
We chart the evolving industry landscape, where economic tremors from infrastructure failures open discussions on strategic maneuvers by transportation companies. Witness how these entities play the long game, from adjusting freight rates to potentially starting their own fleets to cut costs. We scrutinize the fluctuating fortunes of owner-operators, the gamble of load selections, and the vital need for sustainable business practices amidst economic shifts. Buckle up for an episode packed with insights and stories that'll shift your view of the trucking world into high gear.
Thanks for listening to this episode of The Trucker’s Lounge podcast. This show was hosted by veteran truck drivers Eugene Banks and DePriest Ingram.
The Trucker’s Lounge is a no-holds-barred, tell-it-like-it-is podcast bringing real conversations about what’s actually happening in the trucking industry. Eugene and DePriest are committed to unveiling the raw truths and inside scoops that typical trucking media won’t discuss.
If you enjoyed the realness and transparency of this episode, make sure to like, subscribe, and share the podcast so you never miss an upload. Let’s keep the conversation going and help spread the word about The Trucker’s Lounge - the podcast that speaks the blunt truth about trucking.
Don't forget to visit our website at https://thetruckerslounge.com/ to continue your support of our podcast
We’ll see you next time for more unfiltered dialogue. Until then, keep on truckin’ and stay safe out on the road.
Crisscrossing the complexities of the trucking industry, we untangle the aftermath of the Baltimore Bridge collapse and its cascading effects on the trucking community. From the FMCSA's exemption policies to hefty economic implications for truckers' livelihoods, we dissect the government's response and the dire need for safer infrastructure. The pulse of the industry quickens as we examine the FMCSA's perplexing decision to drop certain training requirements for trucking schools, a move that's stirred the pot on safety vs. efficiency in training new drivers. Expect a riveting conversation that doesn't shy away from the chilling truths of labor exploitation and the legal tussles brewing over driver compensation.
When the rubber hits the road, it's the tales of miscommunication and power plays between dispatchers, shippers, and drivers that paint a vivid picture of the daily grind. Hear how a seemingly simple decision can spiral into a weekend layover and the thin line trodden between assertiveness and insubordination. Our stories capture the essence of trucking life, including the impact of social media on careers and the harsh realities faced by drivers when companies let them down. It's a world where transparency isn't just about cargo loads, but extends to the often opaque dealings within the industry itself.
We chart the evolving industry landscape, where economic tremors from infrastructure failures open discussions on strategic maneuvers by transportation companies. Witness how these entities play the long game, from adjusting freight rates to potentially starting their own fleets to cut costs. We scrutinize the fluctuating fortunes of owner-operators, the gamble of load selections, and the vital need for sustainable business practices amidst economic shifts. Buckle up for an episode packed with insights and stories that'll shift your view of the trucking world into high gear.
Thanks for listening to this episode of The Trucker’s Lounge podcast. This show was hosted by veteran truck drivers Eugene Banks and DePriest Ingram.
The Trucker’s Lounge is a no-holds-barred, tell-it-like-it-is podcast bringing real conversations about what’s actually happening in the trucking industry. Eugene and DePriest are committed to unveiling the raw truths and inside scoops that typical trucking media won’t discuss.
If you enjoyed the realness and transparency of this episode, make sure to like, subscribe, and share the podcast so you never miss an upload. Let’s keep the conversation going and help spread the word about The Trucker’s Lounge - the podcast that speaks the blunt truth about trucking.
Don't forget to visit our website at https://thetruckerslounge.com/ to continue your support of our podcast
We’ll see you next time for more unfiltered dialogue. Until then, keep on truckin’ and stay safe out on the road.
Well, I was dubbed the nickname Bull for many reasons.
Eugene:It's the Priest with Eugene and we in the truckers' lounge. Baby, let's go. My phone's a whatnot.
DePriest:Yeah, yeah, I got everything locked down. So, uh, why did he do that? I don't know. All right, so, so anyway. So the update on the Baltimore Bridge is on the if the rules and everything you were saying earlier about that's going to cut out what the rules and everything you were saying earlier about, uh, that's gonna cut out what uh.
Eugene:I think, uh that that was just mainly all right.
DePriest:Yeah, you said what uh?
Eugene:that was just mainly gonna cut out. Uh like, over the road drivers over the road drivers weren't gonna be able to use those. Uh, those exemptions just passing through that the time that it's going to take, like if it takes you an extra 30 minutes to an hour, if it adds an extra 30 minutes to an hour getting through baltimore you're not able to use that exemption. Uh, that they're that the fmcsa is going to give drivers now and now. And that's only going to be used for guys. That's helping out with the relief efforts.
DePriest:Yeah, you're talking about the declaration, right, right, okay, yeah, it looks like they're going to be waiving the IFTA fuel tax too. Excuse me for the April 30th to June 1st quarter, and things will be starting at the end of May.
Eugene:Okay, is that?
DePriest:what it was saying. I think it was like May 31st.
Eugene:Pretty much the end of May is what it was talking about. It was going to start. Yeah, that was mainly for those local drivers, those port drivers. They were going to be able to use that.
DePriest:Right, all this is going to be portraying into just anybody like dealing with the relief. They treating this all uh, uh, they really sound like they're treating it like a female project, right, right, right, like emergency declaration and all that. You know the uh pretty much open it.
Eugene:Uh, you know the money train back up yeah, that, um, I think that they were saying that. Uh, also, with that I'm not familiar, I'm not for sure, but I know that with some of the stuff, that, with that cleanup that they were doing, uh, they was just trying to get the ports open as as quickly as possible and they were saying I was reading somewhere in an article where they were saying that that might be good. Uh, it may not affect like everybody, but some of the port drivers say it's gonna kind of hurt them because if, if they start sending those ships to other ports, that's less work for them, along with how long it's going to take for them to do their current job.
DePriest:Sometimes we're doing just rerouting the freight on the Velcro. It's probably going to hurt them anyway because their bridge is down. I know it's probably going to be a situation where it's going to hurt the average Joe but the bigger companies they's probably going to be a situation where it's going to hurt the average Joe but the bigger companies they're not going to Any move they can make to save them money. That's the route they're going to go. If they try to flood their port and try to make this work and squeeze, they're going to have to pay them drivers for being held up in their traffic. They're going to have to take, um extreme chances with uh round has met trucks through non-hazmat roadways.
DePriest:Um, it seemed like they're trying to avoid doing that. That's why they're trying to rush like clearing the port and throwing the bridge back up. But the scary part is throwing their bridge back up. You know we already had one collapse, so you're just gonna throw some back up. But the scary part is throwing that bridge back up. You know we already had one collapse, so you're just going to throw some shit back up there. That ain't no count.
Eugene:Yeah, and especially with the infrastructure, the way a lot of those bridges and overpass are already weak anyway.
DePriest:Yeah. So I don't see how that's going to know just basically just saving no money. You know there's a bunch of you know, I don't say it just sounds like a bunch of bs to me, you know, because it's going to be a lot of paranoia, anxiety with crossing that bridge, knowing that that bridge collapsed in that way. So, like, what kind of protection you're going to put around the bridge down? That's the most important part. I know they're speaking from the lenses of the economy, but you know, on a microeconomic level the people are like F that you know. We're more worried about safety.
Eugene:Mm-hmm.
DePriest:You know, is this bridge going to be safe to cross? And now you got people in social media posting bridges all around the country. Now that has separation in them um that that that uh look like they have a a weak foundation where the uh pillars of the bridge is not, you know, doesn't look like they're going to be holding up very long, but yet you got the government spreading money, you know, in all the right and wrong places, I guess.
Eugene:Yeah, and barges hit those river bridges all the time. You know, sometimes they they able to catch it in time, other times, you know, they're not. I don't recall seeing how many times that. Uh, they may have shut down bridges from people crossing because it's been hit or whatever, but they gotta put those, um, what they call them, those I think they had a specific name that they called it but just those barriers to protect the bridges from being directly hit from oncoming boats, any type of ships or barges or whatever, so it doesn't hit those pillars directly right, yeah, and I want to make a correction the uh the if the rules is waived through may 31st, but the uh 11 hour drive time restriction, with the additional two hours they are going to be added and that relief is going to last up until May 9th.
DePriest:Okay, yeah, so they're going to shut that exemption down way before the 31st. Okay, I don't think that's going to work. I think they're kind of rushing it. You know, april next month, that's a lot of damage that was done out there. I think they're kind of rushing it.
Eugene:May is next month.
DePriest:Yeah, may is next month.
Eugene:I meant to say yeah, so basically, they just want to have these rules until that time, because I guess they're assuming that they'll be in a better place.
DePriest:That's got to be, you know, because the purpose of adding that extra two hours is for them to take a detour, right?
Eugene:Yeah, I guess that's to take detours and the extra time it's going to take for them to get in and out of those ports, to make their deliveries, their pickups or whatever.
DePriest:Right. So it's either one of two things. From what I see, they're going to try to throw this bridge back up, but they're planning on having a lot of help around that time to where they wouldn't need that extra hour. But I don't understand how they wouldn't need those extra hours, you know, because drivers would still be stuck in traffic.
Eugene:You know, if you work them all the way to the last 30 minutes, they can't get in and out of those places before their time is up yeah yeah well, I would imagine they gonna be working around the clock trying to get that bridge up 24 hours of probably 24 7 right, so an additional two hours.
DePriest:Everybody's just gonna head and open it up, but they know if they do it in an eld way, I don't know if the eld companies could set their system up to where it's just specified to particular trucking companies okay you know, when they do something like that in the ELD, you know, like an exemption option on your ELD, mm-hmm, because what I'm saying, they still want to keep the records of the ELD.
Eugene:Right yeah. Yeah, and that's kind of hard. That would be interesting to know if they they might be able to do something like that. Have it to where it's specifically tailored. Sure they might be able to do something like that. Have it to where it's specifically tailored to those people who have to service that, that area, that port and everything yeah, but that that bridge collapsed at the end of may, right? Uh, I mean uh there was people with the end of march and I'm all I'm mean the end of March.
DePriest:I keep saying May my bad. Yeah, it's around the end of March. So like you don't think that's kind of fast you know what I'm saying For them to put a declaration in for that kind of damage. You know if this is supposed to be. You know for the workers aiding, you know, to get the bridge back going and the damage that they had and all that steel they got in there, you don't think that's kind of rushing?
Eugene:it, yeah, but I, I guess I want to see what, what, what all it's. Uh, actually, you know, they're saying they're going to use it for you know, because, uh, is they is that for just to help out with guys? Uh, well, it is, they said, is for the emergency relief efforts, but I guess that's just the immediate emergency relief efforts. I guess after they've done with clearing debris and bringing in whatever aid that they need, they say, well, we're not going to need that, we're just going to take our time and build a bridge. Because you know, when this first happened, they were talking about maybe about a year or so to probably get that bridge back, but six to 12 months. They said somewhere up and around that, six to 12 months to get it back built. That's what I heard.
DePriest:Oh, because you're saying that that kind of justified the time range.
Eugene:Well, I ain't saying it justifies the time range. I'm saying maybe they're just using that time to say we're going to give you this exemption because we just need help clearing debris and uh, just certain things.
DePriest:You know, just for supplies, you know for essential things right now, and they probably just go to another uh method afterwards yeah, I just don't see how they're going to be able to uh, you know, I'm saying just just throughout history, or what, what, what history has shown that's the indication that they plan on having, like it, at least a frame up by then start building, because those declarations you know well, the declaration I know for the purpose of you know that that time it's going to take drivers to have to get in position to, you know, deliver and pick up those loads, and then you know they can't just shut down traffic unless they're playing on just doing this work at night. You know which? That's something I hadn't seen. Even if they are planning on doing it at night, you know you would think, working around the clock, that's really technically from the end of March to the end of May, that's two months I hadn't even heard anything about. If they recovered those other bodies, have you, I? If they recovered those other bodies, have you?
Eugene:I think they recovered two, yeah, of the six that were missing it from last time I saw they had recovered two.
DePriest:Right, that's what I remember seeing. I hope, for the family's sake, that they make that a priority.
Eugene:Yeah.
DePriest:To recover those guys and not just leave them out there.
Eugene:That's tough yeah, that is, and uh, I know that, uh, they had the barges, uh, with the crane that was uh removing debris. I think right now they they offloading their ship, a lot of those containers off that ship, so so, they had to get all that taken care of first before they start, you know, throwing anything up, rebuilding anything, get all that debris and finish their whatever uh inspections and investigations that they're doing doing yeah yeah so yeah, that says that seemed like it's gonna be a stretch.
DePriest:I just don't think. I think we're gonna get another report to where they're gonna be extending that out. I think they just testing the waters, they trying to be careful, uh, with it. I understand, because if it hits the eld system like that that kind of exemption you know drivers all around the country are going to be taking advantage of that and every time something new pops up it's like DOT you have to get DOT about six months before they catch on.
DePriest:Never seen no shit like that. They're part of the same system, and one to come up with a regulation and the one who's supposed to be enforcing it ain't even got a clue. So about six months after the regulation been implemented, yeah, a lot of them.
Eugene:they don't be understanding, they don't know what's going on. Yeah, so but yeah, it will be a way for a lot of drivers to take advantage of it and try to use that to.
DePriest:you know, get around or go and pick up a load off duty drive or whatever right, all right, and then, on top of that, it's probably going to be an experiment as well, because you know they already. It was another story out there that some of these big companies are trying to push for drivers to be able to drive longer than their 11 hours is something like that going on.
Eugene:I don't recall seeing anything like that. If anything, I remember seeing companies pushing to to put more weight on a payload. You know they put more weight on on a truck to where they want the legal limit to be like $85,000, $90,000, something like that. Instead of $80,000 gross, they wanted $85,000, $90,000 to be the legal limit. I recall seeing something like that.
DePriest:Yeah, that may be what I'm confusing it with. I knew it was something like that. They were trying to get some extra going, get some kind of extra work out of drivers, but I thought it was something. Yeah, yeah, so I don't know. But speaking of regulation, we was talking about this guy on TikTok. Content creator. Driver for Western Express. He did that video about saving his company, a shipper.
Eugene:Saving them a contract.
DePriest:Saving them a contract. What he did was I don't know how much of the story you follow what he did was. He did what most drivers do. He got impatient, got to a shipper it was a load that's supposed to have been taking him home and it was a delay on the load and you know as far as like picking it up. So him and the shipper got together and decided to come to an agreement for him to take the load and he took the load without being approved by his dispatch for the company.
Eugene:You know what?
DePriest:I'm saying that's pretty much the face of it, right, right Okay.
Eugene:Yeah, and he was serious, he felt it was because of him. It's like he alone, you know, saved his company, you know, from losing account. Because he kept saying he kept talking to the speaking of the fact that that the shipper kept being, you know, was upset and saying, yeah, I'm tired of going through this. And you know, hey, we've got to leave. You know we're going to have to just leave them alone if they can't come through on this and everything. So he's like, hey, I'll just take the load. He took it upon himself. Hey, I'll just take the load, and then I'm going to just tell my dispatcher later, right, you know, because what he said, he waited what?
DePriest:four hours five hours, for them Four or five hours.
Eugene:Yeah, for them to get back with him, and it took his company a long time for whatever reason. Why it take him four hours to try to get back with him on a load that they already had pre-loaded, I don't know. But, uh, at the end of the day, he should have waited on them to get back with him, you know, before he, because, yeah, uh, he, he did, he take it to Virginia or he lived in Virginia.
DePriest:Well, the low's supposed to have been going to Roanoke Virginia. Okay.
Eugene:Black Bear.
DePriest:Low, I don't know how far. He lived from there, but it's supposed to be going to Roanoke, virginia. I know he had Baltimore Ravens type of apparel on, so I know Roanoke. What'd you say about three hours from Baltimore?
Eugene:I'm thinking somewhere roughly around in that time frame, right?
DePriest:You know. So that might have been the area that he had lived in, so you know. Anyway, he ended up taking the load and he ended up getting stuck having to sit at the customer over the weekend, and that's what he was mainly upset about.
Eugene:that he didn't really understand, yeah yeah, because, because, yeah, they told him, so I took it. It was a friday and they told him that, uh, that low one gonna deliver until like that monday, and so now he upset with them that, hey, uh'm not going to sit on this for the weekend. But, he's the one that took it upon himself to take the load. They never told him to take the load. Right, right, yeah, yeah.
DePriest:And you know and that right there, you know, should be well, especially a teaching moment for him. But it's so many variables when they come to that because, uh, as a driver and I know since this uh fraud thing happened, brokers are really notorious about this they want to have contact with your drivers, but you got a lot of brokers that don't know how to conduct business, understanding the difference between the people that they're partnering with and the drivers that they're communicating with. Yeah, and they get on the phones and they get to talk in business with the drivers that's only really supposed to be between them and the company that they're partnering with and that kind of give drivers this idea that you know I'm a boss, you know in this truck and I make the decision in this truck, and that's not the case when you're a company driver or a lease owner operator with another company. It's layers to those situations, situations you know, just like with this guy. He said the shipper said you know I'm about to uh stop using western express. In most cases I say 90 of the time the shipper that you're talking to is not the shipper that's actually making the decisions on what carriers are getting those contracts with the shippers.
DePriest:That's another thing that company drivers and lease owner operators need to understand.
DePriest:These just disgruntled shipping supervisors talking shit because they upset, because they ready to go home or whatever, they getting held up or they running out of space on the docks because they have to manage the docks, to manage the docs.
DePriest:For the most part those contracts, agreement between those companies and those carriers or those brokers, usually in the top office, is in a whole another state. You know the people, you know who are those, you know who are the companies. Contact is probably not even at that facility and that's the thing that a lot of company drivers, at least on the operators who haven't been on the side of brokering or having their own authority, that's the thing that a lot of company drivers, at least on the operators who haven't been on the side of brokering or having their own authority, that's the side of it that they don't understand. They think it's as simple as just grabbing the load and going and they have to understand that on the shipping side of it all, the receiver might schedule that for a whole another day. The receiver is just going to schedule it for a whole another day and it's up to the carrier to orchestrate how we're going to do it.
DePriest:Now in that driver's situation. That dispatcher probably already knew that, but he didn't have to explain that to his driver and that's what drivers got to understand that the people in your company got too much going on. They don't have to explain every detail to you because he could have been work, he or she could have been working on finding a drop lot for you to drop that load on, as well as making sure they had a driver that was going to be able to pick that load up so that you could go home. And if that didn't work out, they may was going to just counsel him picking up the load not counsel the load, but counsel him picking up the load. And they may have had another spot, but they're like well, we're going to send him to this location toward home where he can drop that trailer, pick up that load, paperwork already on that load and he can go where he can drop that trailer pick up that load paperwork already on that load and he can go.
DePriest:But because he got upset, because he, looking at his clock the time he losing versus the time it's going to take him to get home and that caused him to make a decision to end up costing him, probably got him a write-up with the company as well, probably did you know. So that's like something that company drivers need to understand as well as dispatchers need to understand. You know within the company that you have to understand that drivers working off a clock for a certain amount of time, that they got to roll, so to have him sitting there five hours with no explanation of what's going on, that can also cause him to make a rash decision. That could have been costly Probably still ended up being costly. They might have had to. He probably act a fool because they might have. It's like well, we can't pay you to sit over the weekend because you took a load that you wasn't supposed to do, but if he act a fool enough, they probably paid him. But guess what? If he do that again, you're probably going to be out the door.
DePriest:And that's not even an explanation that they're going to give him. That's why we letting you go. It's just going to be a buildup. You done fucked up, you done fucked up, them fucked up now. You done fucked up big. But now we gotta let you go based on their recent fucked up. We don't have to explain all your other fuck ups until you try to dispute it yeah, you know, yeah, and hopefully, hopefully.
DePriest:That's something he really learned from after he had time to you know, sit back and read his comments well you know he cut them off, I know that much oh, did he okay yeah, he had limited the amount of comments that uh people could post on there. I know, when I saw the video I tried to make a comment and, um, you know, I saw that. You know that uh, he, he had it where you weren't able to make any comments on it.
Eugene:So usually there's a reason for that. You know, a lot of people cut their comments off for a lot of negative comments, something that they view as being negative, and so, and that's probably why- you know Right.
DePriest:That's why I'm wondering if he is going to learn, because you know when. Usually when people do that, in my opinion, they can't take constructive criticism or any kind of criticism at all. So are they learning or are they just hiding? They may have the demeanor of a cat. A cat don't even like the sight of its own shit.
Eugene:Yeah, they bury it.
DePriest:Right. So it could be that he probably end up doing it again Thinking he a boss, Right.
Eugene:Yeah, so you know it could be that he probably end up doing it again, thinking he a boss.
DePriest:He's not. And as a company driver, you're not a boss. You have to follow orders. Even if you're a leased owner-operator, you're still a company driver.
Eugene:And that's what he was. He was a leased driver Because he that's uh-huh right, that's that's one of the things he brought up, you know talking about. He pays for his own fuel, he is is you know he was. He was pretty much breaking down hey, I'm a lease driver, I paid for my own fuel, I got a truck payment. You know, it was some of the stuff that he was saying somebody in that video.
DePriest:Yeah, but I don't even think that was his concern. I think getting home was his concern, you know, you know being able to get home in time and when you are a truck driver, and it's normal to have that reaction when you try to get home and you waiting like that and your time is running out. But now, now more than ever now, that's coming with the territory and they finna get tight on a lot of this stuff you know, to where you know with your drive time and all that.
DePriest:So it's going to be a lot on how dispatchers is going to be able to route your trips. But if you're trying to get home, you can expect for your growth to be cut. You know. Yeah, you know, because in a lot of cases where they tell you we'll get you home every weekend, that may be Saturday. Yeah, they may have you 600 miles out from the house picking up on Friday.
Eugene:Yeah, that's true, it does. Yeah yeah, that, uh, and that's uh one of them things where, uh, you know he really gotta take out his time to you know, in the future to see if that's something he's gonna continue to do.
DePriest:Yeah got a lot going on out there.
Eugene:It's not like somebody dragging a cop. Yeah, they towing, they towing something and it's skiing down the road.
DePriest:You need to put some yellow cones out there when you record. Because I was looking at the meter I'm like okay, that ain't coming from my side. And I saw your meter moving and I saw that sound moving along with your meter.
Eugene:I said okay, that's coming from him. And then I say something always happens every time I get ready to record somebody doing something, somebody probably getting their car repo, when I heard somebody blowing a horn or something, all right, yeah, but ain't no telling. But you know, like I said, with this guy, hopefully, uh, you know, that's a learning experience to him and not only him, to everybody who watching it, to just you know, regardless of what situation you in, how, um impatient you are or how much information that you not receiving from your company, sometimes it's best just sit still before you just go off and you know, pull, pull a load like that, right, right, but see, sometimes it's well, I ain't going to say sometimes like it's good as a content creator to be able to create content, invent and so forth.
DePriest:But you know the video he created, it's a lot of drivers who done lost their jobs because of creating content, because you're too critical of the company that you're working for.
Eugene:Yeah.
DePriest:And I'm like, well, he might want to kind of be careful on that because he was. In my opinion, when you look at, based on what's going on and the scrutiny that Western Express has been under, Western Express has been carrying a bad name since this post-pandemic.
Eugene:Yeah, they have.
DePriest:Yeah, and they might, you know, start letting drivers go behind stuff like that. You know, they had this one chick I think she called herself Pinky something, and she was with a company out there in Nebraska somewhere, you remember that, and they wouldn't pay her way to get home and they were saying that part of it was because of the content she was creating.
Eugene:Oh, I remember her because she did a video in the hotel right Talking about it.
DePriest:It took her about over a week to get home. I think she out of Georgia.
Eugene:She waited for them to get home or she made her own way home. No, she had to make to get a home or she got up.
DePriest:She got up, she made her own way home now she had to make her own way home, according to her. Okay, yeah, cuz they wouldn't, they wouldn't pay. But I think something end up happening. They ended up reimbursing her, but she had to pay to get a room to stay in. Yeah, and she said if it wasn't for the content she was creating, she said she would have been assed out. She wouldn't have had no money to even get a room or nothing. I know she had to rent two cars. The first car she rented because the town they was in was a small car, so she could only go so far, I think a couple hundred miles, with the car rental that she got and dropped that off at a location was she in nebraska? She was heading east, but she had to drop it off at another location, the next state or something like if I'm in another car?
Eugene:yeah, because I'm. If I'm not mistaken, she lived in georgia yeah, that's what I just said.
Eugene:You know she, oh okay, georgia, okay yeah yeah, so uh, and then too, she had a lot of stuff uh that she had with, like her stuff from a truck, which is probably why she, you know, was only trying to drive home, or as opposed to taking a bus or something like that. Because you think about it, you're on the road like that. A lot of people got a microwave or some type of cooker. You're on the road like that. A lot of people got a microwave or some type of cooker. You know all your bedding and stuff that you can clean and supplies so well.
DePriest:that's another thing too that you know. Uh guys should learn like kind of get an outlook on what company you with, how long they have you out, and what you necessarily need to take with you Taking all that stuff with you, like that, a whole carload of stuff. It's easy just to have that with just the stuff that you need. I don't think like me personally, I don't think that it's a necessity to have a toilet in the truck. I don't think it's a necessity. I mean like it's a necessity, I mean like it's convenient, but I don't think it's a necessity. Yeah, I don't think it's a necessity to have crock pots, air fryers, all that in a truck. It's convenient, but I don't think it's a necessity.
DePriest:So a lot of stuff that you know, stuff that they have in their truck for convenience, which they should, you have to keep in mind. Something may go south with this company and you done seen the videos of how these companies are doing drivers. They find a way to hold these drivers at fault for the reason why they're letting them go and they just leaving them out there stranded with all their stuff you know. So now you're in a position where some of this stuff you may have to leave behind, some stuff of value, some stuff that you paid money for. So, if you think about it, you spent money on this stuff to have in the truck for your convenience, because you're working, and now you have to lose it because of the way they let you go and the inconvenient spot they put you in. You know, guys have to keep that in mind too, you know yeah, and that always have been the story in trucking.
DePriest:That's nothing new under the sun. That that just started, that that that was going on in in the year 2000 when I first started driving it. Companies would leave and drive a stranded for whatever reason.
Eugene:Yeah, they would, and you got to find your own way home.
DePriest:Right, right, you know, like the most you know they would do is probably give you a ride to the bus stop or something like that. But it wasn't going to be no car rental, nothing like that. Nah, right, and in a lot of of cases, like some drivers not even making you know a lot of money like that to pay for a rental car and all that kind of stuff. Oh, there was another driver, a brother, black guy. He was working for this company out of chicago somewhere I forgot the name, I think it started with E, and he was talking about how them folks did him and he was like man. He said about a month ago. He said I almost had a stroke. He said I had to. The ambulance had to pick me up from the truck because my blood pressure had went so high and I still checked out of the hospital so that I could deliver that load.
DePriest:And these people do me like this. Hey yeah, you can't have sentimental values to these trucking companies. You gotta look at it. It's an agreement. I do work, you pay me. You know what I'm saying. Whatever, you agreed on my benefits. True enough, you hate to leave these benefits behind, but you can't have that much love for a trucking company that you put your health on the back end for them, because they're not going to put their money on the back end for you, not these big companies.
Eugene:No, no, they not, no, not at all. No, no, they not, no, not at all.
DePriest:Yeah, but, like I say, I think, I really think and I really want to highlight it. I think brokers are doing this service as well as some of these shippers talking to these drivers about business like that, because they don't understand what's going on. They're contributing to crippling a lot of companies by doing that because, no matter what anybody says, if I'm making fifty thousand dollars a year and I'm managing my bill and I'm okay, I'm satisfied, I'm not bothered to somebody tell me how much the person who paying me made.
Eugene:Yeah.
DePriest:You see what I'm saying and that's a problem. And then all of a sudden it becomes this thing where companies not being transparent with some are not being transparent like they should be, but it becomes this thing like company drivers, at least on operators try to play this role like they're getting fucked. Not getting fucked, it's an agreement that you're negotiating or it's not even up for negotiating. They let you know coming through the door. This is what we pay. You know, this is what you get a percentage of. And even if they're doing a percentage, they ain't necessarily meaning that you're going to get a percentage of the contract they agreed on.
DePriest:They probably agreed on the contract in bulk yeah to do a hundred loads for a half a million dollars and they have to break that down on how they're going to pay their drivers and all their expenses in the ill factor yeah you know, in case people don't know what. If is, it's a math, you know the effect is, is a math that you can do on you.
Eugene:Well, you know a, a math formula that most businesses do, in case something happened, you know so right and and that's the thing a lot of drivers you know if they're doing doing the percentage, you'll get a percentage of whatever it is they decided to give you. You know, like you said, it's not gonna be a percentage of what they're contracted for, right? You know, whatever we decided to give you and and it's what we deem to be fair, Right, right, right Because you know, what I'm saying.
DePriest:It's so much you know when a company is negotiating with a shipper, it's so much that goes into that. What you're negotiating on. You know most shippers they don't at one time and some still do want to break down on what they're being charged for. But in most cases in this environment we're living in now, most shippers are looking for an all-in rate. You know like you know what I'm saying. Just the same way the brokers are. They're looking for all in rate too. You know, okay, I got this load going from Memphis to Jackson, tennessee, what you charge me a $1,200. Okay, if you're a leased owner operator, you don't want me to give you a percentage of $1,200, because, see, if I give you a percentage of $1,200, then next thing you're going to say, well, where my fuel surcharge at?
Eugene:Where is my detention?
DePriest:Yeah, where my detention at Not realizing all this is wrapped up in that $1,200. So I may have to tell you $600. And then the possibility, if you get detention, okay, I got room to pay you for that. I got room to pay you for your fuel surcharge. So that's why brokers are doing the industry a disservice by doing that bull crap, which some of them, I think, do it on purpose.
DePriest:Because you are giving somebody the answers to an algebra problem when they still trying to learn regular math. You know what I'm saying. Then, when you give them the answer to the algebra problem and they still trying to learn regular math you know what I'm saying Then when you give them the answer to the algebra problem and they can't get it on their own, they automatically think oh man, something wrong here. This some fuck shit. This right here, man, this problem ain't right right here, because I know I saw he told me this how you do it, and blah, blah, blah.
DePriest:But I keep coming up with the wrong answers. I ain't understanding it. So I must be coming up with the wrong answers because it's on your paper now. As long as it was on the broker's paper, I was okay, I had all the answers, but now that the problem, get on your paper now, all of a sudden things change. No, you never knew how to do algebra in the first place and you need to start at the basis and play your position as a company driver or a leased-owned owner operator and count your money and start counting other people's money. Then you can profit.
Eugene:Mm-hmm. You know, yeah, that's true, because I remember when I was leased-owned I used to hear the drivers always talking about they know they can pay more than that. They know they can pay more than that, all that money they making and all they want to give us is X, y and Z and I used to always say you can't make somebody. Make another man pay you your worth. Make another man pay you what you feel like he should be paying you. Take what they give you and make it work or move on.
DePriest:Right, right, right right now. You said that, uh, now you can make somebody pay you your worth. You may just be waiting longer, like you know, it's basically like you just said. I'll just basically simplify what you just ended with okay, you know uh, yeah, you know you, you, you know I'm saying I mean, but like for the most case, like you say, if you coming on as a contractor under another Company's umbrella, you know it's really not much Negotiation now because they already have their guidelines In place you know, and right now, what's going on With the trucking industry, which is what I'm speaking on as an owner-operator who has their own authority they're making it even more difficult to negotiate your worth there.
DePriest:You know, actually what you're getting as an owner-operator with your own authority on average is coming up less than what guys who leased on to a company is making, if not the same. Yeah, you know, it's, it's unfortunately, it's just being mapped out that way. When the storm is over, no one really knows. Now things keep happening. You know. Look at what just happened. The baltimore bridge fell. If they end up coming out of more money for transportation purposes on that when that bridge is built, they're going to get that money back. They're going to find a way to kill the rate, something that's going to come along to find a way for them to kill the rate so they can get that money right back. So you'll obviously flatbed average rate I think it's at what like 226 a mile in some states. Now that bad boy may go back down to $185, $187 a few months after this bridge is back built, because they're going to get some. Get back If we go in and say no, no, no, I want this right here for it. I want $6 or $7 a mile. I'm not saying you shouldn't do that, but just know people hit back. You hit somebody in the mouth, be expected to get hit back, and that's what they doing. You know.
DePriest:I saw that personally during the pandemic. I knew revenge was on the horizon. I already knew that. Yeah, and brokers made a lot of money, just like we did. It's just that theirs extended out longer. I don't think brokers are making the kind of money that they were making, like in the pandemic, when the rates started so-called dropping, the shippers were actually still paying high dollars. Brokers were trying to get their money back. But I don't think they're making that kind of money now because too many brokers are going out of business and the liability for a brokerage is not the same as the liability for a carrier Not at all and they're going out of business like this. Light bulbs should be popping off with question marks with that To a lot of the ones that feel like the brokers are still stealing from you know why they come or go out of business because they were stealing or because they was. Uh.
Eugene:Uh, the race was so damn cheap, you know yeah yeah, you just have to ask those questions yeah, and because a lot of those brokers, uh, you know, a lot of the stuff we found out about about that was that, hey, a lot of the shippers, they're going from using brokers to doing things in-house and handling things themselves. A lot of them are going from, uh, using a broker and doing it themselves to also saying you know what, what we're going to get our own trucks and hire our own drivers, you know, and we just do everything in-house. Now, of course, we know that creates more liability for them, but if the liability outweighs I mean, if that extra liability is worth them not having all these claims and losing loads and not being able to track their own loads and the constant fluctuation in rates, why not just take on the liability? That way we have practically complete control, or even more control and more outlook on what's going on right, right and and and.
DePriest:Then, like you think about it, you know like we, we we've covered topics where, uh, we have, uh, you know like, uncovered shareholders who the shareholders in a lot of these companies are associated with.
DePriest:So, when you own the cow, you own the milk, you own all the meat, you know you just paying somebody to deliver it for you. So, if I look at it over time which this is what most rich people do they look at money and you know like, whereas, if we look at something like, say, for instance, crypto and stocks, if we day trade, we looking to make something right now, when big companies start throwing money into stocks, that's for five or ten years down the road on their expectation of what they think it's going to be. So when you look at that, okay, they calculate up. Okay, we, on average, when we look at our data from the past five years, we've been spending this much amount of money on transportation. Okay, so if we was to get our own equipment, we're going to spend a good amount of money on the front end, but we'll pocket. That's going to be going in for the next 20 years that they're looking at on their savings.
Eugene:So rich people count their money different, totally different, mm-hmm. Yep, I agree, and that's one thing I think a lot of drivers don't understand that when shippers look at that, that looks way more attractive than continue to go on as business as usual. Right, being able to reduce the amount of money that they paying out. Right, because I think we made that similarity one time. You figure they pay $6,000.
Eugene:They generally pay $6,000 on one particular lane and let's say they decide okay, why not we get a truck and a driver for that lane? We're paying $6,000 one way, one load. Well, we can probably own that $6 thousand dollars. Not only we can. We get a truck and pay a driver, we can do a round trip and get a backhaul and all that stuff on that same load, you know. So we're gonna come out ahead because that's six thousand gonna pay for all of their expenses probably right, and on top of that they can pay their company driver very handsomely give them good benefits, because that'll still be only a percentage of the money that they be paying an outside contractor.
DePriest:But why not put a driver in and give him good benefits, make our company attractive and build a fleet, exactly.
Eugene:But like I said, when you own the cow you own everything yeah, and those private carriers say that's what make them decide to do that. You know, go ahead, get good depend. You know, which is one of the reasons why Walmart can afford to pay you $100,000 coming through the door. I remember Ashley Furniture were paying their drivers, starting them off at like $80,000, $70,000, $80,000 at one point. I don't know where they are today, but they used to. You know, pay very well.
DePriest:Right, right they're point. I don't know where they are today, but they used to.
DePriest:You know, pay very well, but all right, they probably still paying pretty good. Yeah, but yeah. But drivers just got to understand that. You know, I learned a long time ago dealing with brokers. When you're dealing with a broker and they say, yeah, man, I got this low here for 2800, with an average rate on dat, might might say $29.50. You know, boss, I can do it for $31.50. I can't get up to $31.50. I get to about $29.25. And well, you know, if you can get up to about $3,100, give me a call back. Okay, I'll give you a call back. Hold on, let me check. If they give you a call back, chances are you'll get that load. You won't get many more after that. You know what I'm saying. Because they're going to keep looking for somebody to stay at their rate, because it's a reason for them to want to be at a certain rate.
Eugene:Mm-hmm.
DePriest:You know, drivers just got a lot to learn. You know, you know what I'm saying as far as when it comes, because we got so many new guys coming in and so many content creators exposing a lot of information about logistics and how it works, but they're not really breaking down the fundamentals. I guess you got to take their master class to get that information.
Eugene:I learned mine off.
DePriest:You know, just trial and error you know. But you know, if you got the money to pay for a master class and it's legit, I guess it's worth it. I mean, I'm not trying to stop nobody from doing a master class, especially if they are authentic, and and and and and got good information. But most people looking at the videos that they post Go ahead, you choose anything yeah, I was going to say especially the authentic.
Eugene:They got good right now information, information.
DePriest:You can apply right now and start making money, as opposed to what we've seen so many times with outdated material, you know, yeah yeah, don't, nobody really had it right now information because the uh, who we call the customers, the shippers, they hadn't even got it figured out yet, they still trying to stop freight from coming up missing, yeah, and and save money at the same time, because you know with them, when they take a loss, the cut gotta come from somewhere when they can't recover that loss and and from what we've been seeing with the uh freight fraud, they not catching these people. You know so. You know so. Drivers just have to keep that in mind. I know it took me a while to learn it, but that's why I started driving in 2000 and then getting my own truck to 2018. I always had a fear of jumping into the unknown.
Eugene:Yeah.
DePriest:And I started getting more familiar with some of the known around 2014, 2015. That kind of gave me enough motivation to say, hey, try it. And if it wasn't for the pandemic, everything would have still been smooth. But the pandemic caused a lot of. It caused a bad rip. I'm getting an echo in my head from somewhere. It might be coming from me, but yeah, it caused a bad rip in the business model of trucking.
DePriest:It did Right because you had owner-operators, you know and God bless them that wanted passive income, that got money you know whether it be PPP loans or SBA loans and they wanted to buy a bunch of trucks and they was letting the drivers just run the trucks themselves. Well, if anybody's seen the movie Noah, god destroyed the earth. For that same reason, you don't let people run out of control on your land. You're supposed to have control on your land. You're supposed to have order on your land. And when you got drivers coming into your business, you got them out there running you know what I'm saying picking their own loads off the load board.
DePriest:No experience with picking loads, but they got them picking their loads off the load board. You know what I'm saying, which you know what I'm saying? Brokers they don't know what the hell going on. They just know they're getting a call from somebody saying this is the mc number, right? That's why I can't go go, go too hard on the brokers when they communicate with the drivers and they tell them too much, because these drivers have been letting their drivers just pick loads at free will like that and I think for a, a business model, that's a big mistake.
DePriest:I know some would disagree. I don't care. But the ones who disagree, they just greedy people.
Eugene:Yeah.
DePriest:You know, who want it all for nothing, with nothing on the line, no sacrifice. They just want it all at somebody's expenses. So the people who disagree with that, I don't give a shit about what they're talking about, because they ain't talking about nothing, because most of them don't even have a business that's sustainable. They're trying to run someone else's business and I know there's a lot of owner-operators out there that can relate to that, especially now with what's going on with the price dropping and the rates and the cost of operations going up, and you know it's a lot of drivers that can relate now. But they were some of the same ones that saying I was a fool for saying that, or a hater, or didn't want to be transparent, you know, because everything was good. I mean, hey, everybody making $14,000 a week, why not share the wealth? Why you can't share the wealth?
DePriest:And my answer was because it's not going to last.
Eugene:It definitely wasn't going to last. Yeah, yeah, that's what a lot of people didn't know. That was coming into it thinking that's the way it had always been and it's going to continue to stay that way.
DePriest:Exactly, exactly. But speaking of cheap, what's up with these two business owners down in San Antonio, texas, got their ass hooked up by the police doing some bullshit. Yeah, talking about those Mexican brothers that was hiring immigrant drivers or Mexican drivers to drive for, but wasn, but wasn't paying, right, right, yeah, they uh, my, my, my well, first uh to explain the situation. Uh, the half brothers, jose, the. Uh. Uh, what is it? Dejesus? Yeah, jose, dejesus. What's that?
Eugene:Valisquez.
DePriest:I can't read this shit. And who, who? The Carlos dude?
Eugene:Same one, same last name Valisquez.
DePriest:Okay, yeah, first name you don't want to pronounce.
Eugene:Oh, juan Juan Carlos. Right, so Okay yeah, no, I'm talking first name. You don't want to pronounce it either do you?
DePriest:Oh, juan, juan, yeah Juan. Valencia, Carlos Right so Jose is 35 and Carlos is 51. They have brothers running a trucking company together and they got charged a first degree felony for continuous trafficking of persons and the company name is VSR Transportation, which is now inactive.
DePriest:according to the FMCSA, they were recruiting immigrants from Mexico to work as drivers for their trucking company, while threatening their jobs and exploiting their immigration status for the employees to continue working. But see, they promised a rate of $0.47 a mile. That's what they was advertising with their company on $1,300 a week. You can't tell. No immigrants, no shit like that, right.
Eugene:Yeah, you promise them that kind of money and, at the same token, wasn't paying them.
DePriest:They probably were paying them, but they probably were paying them at a rate of peso, probably were and they probably were like oh you go, what the hell is this? You said 47 cents a mile, yeah, but you ain't American, so I had to pay you 47 cents a mile in peso, which would probably be what like 10 cents.
Eugene:Probably would be. I'm not familiar with that currency, but be I'm not familiar with that, uh, that currency, but I would imagine it'd be like about 10 cents a mile the equivalent of 10 cents a mile yeah, I'm gonna look it up, but yeah, man, that's spell peso.
DePriest:What is it pa?
Eugene:I think it's p-e-s-o if I'm not mistaken yeah let's see, yeah let's see, let's see, they got a range, so 16.
DePriest:Okay, they got a graph here. So 16.45 pesos equal 1 US dollar. Okay, yeah, I'm trying to get up in here so I can put those amounts in. Let me see if I can put it in yeah go ahead. I was you feel about it.
Eugene:I was going to say probably you did $1,300 US. What's the equivalent of $1,300 US in pesos?
Eugene:Let's see what they say yeah, but they basically was threatening them, guys, for basically, if they didn't want to work, because they weren't, not only was they not paying them, they just threatened to to report them, report their immigrant status. You know that they were illegals basically, basically, and so that right there probably kept those uh, mexican workers from doing anything and then probably just forced them to continue driving and continue worker, basically for free, and they said he was falsifying their logs for just changing their logs yeah, we're doing that for the american.
Eugene:Yeah, a lot of them was doing that.
DePriest:That's. You know what I'm saying. So I ain't gonna crucify them on that, because they had already been caught doing that. But let's see 47th Center Mile. Let's see what that is first.
Eugene:Yeah, let's see what they talking about on that is for, yeah, see what they see what they talking about on that, let's see so that's going to be 7.72 pesos okay so 1300, what is that going to be?
DePriest:so that's going to be 21,376 pesos. They probably paying them for 1,300 pesos, man and if that was the case, 1,300 pesos.
Eugene:That probably equivalent to $200, us $300, I'm going to see that's crazy okay, now 200 is 3288 pesos.
DePriest:Okay, oh, that's it. So 100 to 1641.31 pesos. It wouldn't surprise me if they were doing them like that, though you know because, you know for, because, because I'm pretty sure you know, I don't know this for a fact, it's just my opinion. Uh, one, one, one of them, goddamn mexicans, you know so that was illegal.
Eugene:You don't say probably reported them you know, yeah well, yeah, I'm sure it was, you know, if they didn't report them, they, they sent word to somebody, and you know because, and they were just anonymous, you know right.
DePriest:So see, because I can't see, because I don't uh understand the situation. Um, you know, like with each mexican is coming over across the border, I'm pretty sure you got family behind. It's probably depending on you to get that money. If you have an opportunity at that, money like that, and then you get cheated, like that, I mean, what else do you got to lose? You know, it's more like an attitude of fuck I turn out, yeah, you know, but I'm not gonna let them get away.
DePriest:I, you know, I'll go down with the ship to make sure they go down to you know, especially when you talk about that kind of money, because if they turn, turn that into pesos, I don't know how they spend their pesos, but they spend their pesos like how we spend a dollar, like one peso. As you can say, they put the same thing over there. Oh yeah, man, we got to tell on you. You really you know what I'm saying. Fucking over me.
Eugene:Yeah, we got to tell on you. Yeah, but man, you can't do folks like you're already doing wrong already and now you're gonna mistreat the, mistreat your workers and ain't expecting nobody to snitch on you yeah, well, you know, uh, uh, for one, they was contributing to a lot of the stuff that's going on on the border right now.
DePriest:So in in Texas, that's probably going to be a major thing. Ain't no telling how their court system is going to view that, because they fight to keep a lot of immigrants back up out of here and you over here trying to help them over here by giving them jobs like that. Thank you for fucking over them, because now we got your ass. Now you know what I'm saying. So we finna hook your ass up and hopefully this be an example to every other Mexican over here. You try that motherfucking bullshit. We'll hook your ass up.
Eugene:Yeah, oh, you know they're gonna make a good example out of them, right, because they already busting them to New York and Chicago.
DePriest:You know Texas trying to get them out of there and you know know San Antonio ain't far from that border, so I know they in the fight too with that. You know in agreement with trying to keep these immigrants back across the border because Texas don't want them in their state anyway.
Eugene:From reports we've been seeing, because they're not getting any help who that talking about the immigrants? No, the state of Texas. They weren't getting a lot of help along the border. You know they weren't getting a lot of help along the border Because isn't Texas a what you call that word?
DePriest:Like an independent state.
Eugene:Not an independent state. I would have been thinking about it. New York is one where they have to take in immigrants, take in refugees, what you call that.
DePriest:Texas and Florida have been busting them up to the sovereign city. Yeah, texas and Florida been busting them up there to the sovereign city.
Eugene:Yeah.
DePriest:Yeah, they've been busting them up there and the federal law that they got in place doesn't make Texas stop. That's what New York is kind of upset about and in an uproar about and they are messing up their marriage chances to get reelected up there in New York because it's a federal law where he got to take them in and they supposed to give them three meals a day and a certain amount of money to survive. They can't let them work and all that. The mayor thing is like man. I wish they Well. The mayor of New York, his thing is like man. I wish they'd let us let the people work. Man, I need some service, I need this. You know he looking at monopoly Like shit. You know what I'm saying. Like we need people in the restaurant, we need janitors, we need road crew workers. That's going to work for the cheap.
Eugene:As opposed to us giving it to them for free. Cheap, as opposed to us giving it to them for free. You know, just taking care of them, as opposed to because you said they got to take care of them. If they come up that way, right?
DePriest:No, they shouldn't have to take care of them, they shouldn't even be up there. Yeah, but that's what they got.
Eugene:But, that's what they got to do, right, if they're bringing them into the city.
DePriest:Oh, you talking about as far, uh-huh, yeah, he's saying by law, by federal law, they're not supposed to let them work. I don't know if they're not supposed to let them work because of uh, they may get loose and be out here, you know, committing more crime. I don't know what the reason is that the federal government is not allowing some of them to work. I guess they got to go through some kind of vetting process and he was just saying, as a mayor of a city, they could be beneficial to the needs of the city. You know what I'm saying. People who work in low-level positions of the hospital, restaurants, doing janitorial work, keeping public restrooms clean, fast food chains, restaurant chains that's what he was saying, that it could bring the city back to life. But as an American, like most Americans, well, those benefits that the federal government allow you to get in them, they could be giving that to us and pay us our worth to work those kind of jobs. You know, which is understandable, you know, know, so I was like no, they, they shouldn't even be in that position, like that, to where it's like a battle between the people who live here. The natives here might as well say now, you know, the americans here versus immigrants coming in and they want to give those opportunities away for cheap.
DePriest:Essentially the same thing that Carlos and Jesus was doing. Yeah, you know, they was just doing it illegal. They were doing the same thing this marijuana do they was bringing over immigrants, putting them in a truck. Rates are cheap. We can't keep good drivers with these rates being this cheap and survive. But why not bring somebody over here that we can pay half to and our company survive like? I get the concept, it was just illegal yeah you know, I get it, understand it.
DePriest:It's a shame that the country got us in a position like that, to where we have to think like that or even understand a rationale, something like that. You know, but you know it is what it is. I think leadership created these ideas. That's going on now that people are doing what they got to do to make something work you especially with running a biz. Yeah, you know, like, look at what they're doing to the content creation sector. They want to have little stinging-ass digits on that you know messing with stuff and want to limit this and want YouTube to put this kind of guidelines in place. They want to kick TikTok out of the country. You know they want to have the government, just want to have total control.
DePriest:I mean it just doesn't make fucking sense to me, right.
Eugene:Yeah, so I guess we'll hear soon about you know. They may have an article saying what was done, but they probably going to try to make an example out of those guys.
DePriest:Mm-hmm yeah.
Eugene:Yeah, go ahead.
DePriest:You said what now?
Eugene:I'm going to say they're going to have to, because a lot of that is going on right now, with them coming across the border like that.
DePriest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and most likely they're not the only company that's doing it. You know they probably just got caught because they wasn't playing the game right. Even if they were offering 47 cents a mile, they could have brought them over and just explained to them look, not going to be able to pay you 47 cents a mile, but I'll pay you this. I'll pay you that. I ain't aiding and abetting criminal activity. I'm just talking about how they got caught. I think they got caught, you know.
Eugene:I think they got caught, but yeah, that's what I'm saying, Like right.
DePriest:You know, they could have said look, I'm going to pay you 30 cent, a mile straight uh you know, uh, keep you rolling, and and I'm not trying to be funny when I say this but if you sit for a long time and you lose time, we'll pay you $0.35 a mile, $0.25 a mile, and we'll pay for all your meals.
DePriest:You know what I'm saying, or something like that. They could have did that and probably still been low, but they wanted to get kind of crazy with it. Oh, okay, you want to complain? We'll sing your ass back across the border. You know that old bullshit.
Eugene:Right, you can't do that, man.
DePriest:You know, I don't care what ethnicity you are or where you're from. Crazy is crazy in one language. You cannot talk crazy to people and think nothing going to be done about it.
Eugene:Right, and you know that's how they were doing it. You know trying to throw them. You know you're illegal. Right Damn you know, throw that over their head.
DePriest:Yeah, like they've been watching Minutes to Society or something you know they fucked up, right, right, or what's love got to do with it.
Eugene:You die bitch I kill you. Yeah.
DePriest:You know what I'm saying? Old shit like that. But nah, you know what I'm saying? They played the game dirty like that, but nah, you know what I'm saying. They played the game dirty like that. Their asses need to be locked up because you set yourself up.
DePriest:You the one you did that shit and tried to fuck them folks. Basically, you know what I'm saying. When you look at it, they went out there and grabbed a barrel full of rocks and went and stood in front of the police station and just started chunking the motherfuckers at the police station. That's basically what they did. You know what I'm saying. You involved in criminal activity, don't tell on yourself by doing people dirty.
Eugene:But anyway, speaking of criminal activity, you was talking about this bag and stuff that FMCSA done changed up now yeah, you know that back in uh, back in september, they had changed, uh, at least made it law as to why they changed the requirements for trucking schools to uh, the way they present the backing. So they took some things out of the backing maneuvers and they just added just one simple thing and uh they they made a lot of changes. That really isn't going to really benefit the driver. The main thing the driver needs to do, that's something they pretty much going to do every day. They took, took away, and that was the alley dock. You know, they took the alley dock away and now trucking schools are taking so much time trying to teach them how to do the new backing maneuvers.
Eugene:To where, like I work at a trucking school and the trucking school we have, we still teach our drivers.
Eugene:We don't have any automatic trucks, so we still teach our drivers how to drive a 10 speed so that way they don't have a restriction on their license.
Eugene:So, with that being said, we still try, whenever we can, to teach them the original alley dock so they don't have so much weight on them when they get to whatever company is going to hire them and train them, and so that's the issue it's taking so much weight on them when they get to whatever company is going to hire them and train them.
Eugene:And so that's the issue is taking so much time to teach them how to do the new stuff that you don't really have time to teach them how to do the stuff that they're going to use every day. So now you take a driver who is equipped with just a new way of backing and they go to a trucking company. Now you place the burden on whoever that trainer is to teach them the fundamentals of how to set themselves up for the alley dock and back at a warehouse, back at a truck stop, when that's those fundamentals they should have received at a, at a trucking school, and really got the practice and the experience from the trucking company that's going to hire them. So one of the things we've been wondering is OK, is this going to create more backing accidents at truck stops or warehouses? Are those trucking companies?
DePriest:already going to be wandering? Yeah, that's a given.
Eugene:You've been driving wondering.
DePriest:Yeah, that's a given. You've been driving over 20 years, that's a given. You know that's going to create more accident and the infrastructure hasn't changed for back in. You know what I'm saying in real time.
Eugene:Mm-hmm, and that's the same thing that we think is going to happen. For the simple fact, are those trucking companies going to take out that time to really teach them to do something that they should have gotten at the trucking school? Right, you know, I'm saying that is the thing, you know are they going to really take out the time? Because that's going to be frustrating, for I've also been an over the road, uh, trainer. I used to be a trainer or we called him a mentor at Swift, and so when you come through the Swift Trucking School, they teach you. They would teach you all those things, and so you just want to drive, because you know I'm getting paid to train you, but I only get paid for the extra miles we're doing as a team.
Eugene:And if I'm taking up all this extra time to really train you how to do something, I felt like you should have learned at the trucking school. Every time we get to a location that you, let's say we get to a warehouse, and you drive us there what, what is that trainer going to do? Hey, get over here. In the past I put it in. You know he's not going to take out the time and say all right, I'm going to get outside and I'm going to guide you and we're going to work this thing out. A good trainer would, and it really depends on how much time they got, but how many are really going to take out the time to just really teach those fundamentals that they should have learned in the trucking school?
DePriest:Did you get an understanding of why they even took that out? I mean, what was the benefit of them taking that out?
Eugene:according to them, there was the benefit of them taking that out. According to them, there was no benefit. When we researched it, we was all trying to figure out, okay, what politician, what lawmaker tried to make this a requirement? Why would you change it? And so basically the consensus we came to was that that wasn't really something that was required in order to do their jobs. They wanted to change things around.
Eugene:Now, something that we heard, and kind of heard through the grapevine that they were making it a little easier for the trucking schools. Now I got to say this the truck I drive for a trucking school at a community college. Our trucking program is a three-month program, so it's a semester-long program, which is roughly about three months, so our drivers can still have the time to have a full-time job and or a part-time job and then go to school and we work around their schedule, you know. So that gives them more time. If you go to a three-week trucking school, uh, which most trucking schools are, three weeks, um, nine to the out of ten you got to quit your job to go to that trucking school and, um, a lot of those drivers, from what we were were hearing they weren't really passive and I can't really speak on this, saying that that's really true, but that's some of the stuff we were hearing that they were having a hard time. A lot of people were failing on the backing portion.
DePriest:Oh, they were trying to get to the bag.
Eugene:Yeah, they were failing on that, and so they were trying to come up with a way. How can we have a better success rate, passing rate?
Eugene:And I think that was one of the ways. Let's change the backing, because this is what the number one thing that we've been seeing in our data that our students fail on, not the pre-trip, because you have three sections to your test. You have a pre-trip, your skills test, which is all your backing and your driving. The majority of your students who fail is generally going to fail on that alley dog. That's what the majority of hours failed, uh, was the alley dog, but they would have an opportunity to go back and retest after they got a little bit more training, and so that was one of the things that we kind of found out, that we felt that, okay, they changed it for that, you know, maybe through lobbyists, and they was able to get everything changed oh, that's that bullshit coming through, that theory that they used another driver shortage.
Eugene:That never was oh yeah, you know what I'm saying.
DePriest:They coming up with pulling some shit out like that they can get ready for the insurance company to up them rates. Then them insurance companies up them rates. You take something like that out of the school, something you know, unless you ain't planning on sending them to the northeast, no more yeah because you're gonna have to do a lot of alley docking up there. You know, you know, with all them old tight ass docks like that, right there, boy, it's gonna be yeah, and that's why we said that.
Eugene:You know, uh, and it's tough to do, but that's one of the reasons why we said at the school I'm with is that have the time to go on and teach them the alley doc, because you don't want them to get confused and go and test and and still fail because you were teaching them other stuff right, exactly, yeah.
DePriest:And then on top of that, they give a student room for grievances like why are they trying to teach me alley docking and it's not required? I just want to go ahead and do what I'm required to do so I can get to the bag.
Eugene:Yeah, and at the end of the day, the trucking school is there just to help you get your CDL. That's it. It's up to the trucking company to teach you how to be a driver. Yeah, yeah, so, so a lot of people, but but that's that's the sad part about it, that that, and that's pretty much a lot of beers. That the sad part about it is it's more so about money than bringing out a good quality of drive exactly what it is yeah and people not understanding it, that these people making these decisions.
DePriest:when you talk about trucking, you know you're talking about really a bomb on a highway. So you got a bomb on a highway, you know, with an inexperienced, misguided person driving it. So how many families are we talking about in danger here? Exactly Because the way I was trained as a truck driver.
DePriest:I was trained as a truck driver that regular people who drive four-wheelers are dumb when it comes to the road and it's my job as a licensed professional driver to protect them from themselves. You know, because most drivers regular drivers they don't know that when you pull up on the side of a truck on the interstate you speed up and you get on past that truck because that truck has blind spots. They don't know that when you merge back into your lane you don't cut short in front of that truck because the truck doesn't have the stopping power to stop as quick as a regular car. So it's our job as professional drivers, the way I was trained and what some of the young folks like to call the ancient times we were trained to protect drivers from themselves. That was our job. Our job wasn't to deliver the freight, that was automatic. To pick up and deliver the freight. Our job was safety.
Eugene:And to prevent accidents yeah, to prevent accidents, yeah.
DePriest:Exactly. Prevent accidents, yeah, prevent accidents, yeah, exactly so, no, so that's, that's, that's uh, another uh example of, uh, the powers that be destroying the industry. I think they're doing a lot of this stuff, gearing this stuff up for these electric trucks and these autonomous trucks exactly, you know, because you know, pass laws like that. I mean, like you think about it. If the argument in the House is I can't vote on this bill because I don't see any statistics showing that autonomous vehicles are safer than a regular human driving a truck, 10 years from now, you're going to have probably more drivers out there that don't know how to alley dock than do know how to alley dock According to the. What is it called? The DAC report?
DePriest:the statistics of the DAC report an incident is the same thing as an accident. So if you got drivers that's having a bunch of bagging incidents that's being reported on that DAC report. That justifies politicians' way of voting. If they're already against autonomous vehicles, now they're seeing data where autonomous trucks are safer, because look at the numbers on the back in the last 10 years or the accidents in the last 10 years that give them data. So I think it's a setup. You know, I know that's a conspiracy thought, but just with what's going on, I think that's a setup to justify a lot of these other avenues they want to take when it comes to transportation as they sound like one, because uh that would be a perfect uh uh argument for autonomous vehicles yeah
DePriest:yeah, you know, yeah, you know, and, and and that was just me hypothetically speaking like the what, if, like what, if that's the scenario that you got some politicians, you know, holding their votes on certain aspects of this autonomous movement and electronic movement because of data like that in terms of accidents. So if you're setting us up like that and you know damn well, everywhere you go, you're going to have to well, just about everywhere you go, it's going to be cases you're going to have to parallel park a truck alley dock, a truck straight line bag. You might have to bag all the way down the road. You may have to be in the neighborhood and bag up to somebody's house, to where you might have to bag. You know what I'm saying Get on the street, bag and get angled to where you can pivot your trailer to go down this next street and then get straightened up and bagged down and angle in somebody's driveway. If you ain't been talking to the basis of Allie Dockin, how are you going to have the patience and the confidence to do that Right?
Eugene:That's true.
DePriest:I don't know. Hopefully drivers will take it upon themselves to want to learn every aspect of trucking because their life depends on it. Right, you know? I don't know if that's the case. Like I say, everybody's so in a hurry to try to get to the money. They're thinking there's money out there in trucking. That's really not there. And you're dealing with this. What's this? Generation Z?
Eugene:Yeah, I can't remember. Yeah, yeah, can't remember, yeah, yeah.
DePriest:Gen Z. Is it Gen Z Because millennials are from the 80s? I think it's Gen Z. Okay, gen Z is not a generation that wants to be told what to do or able to take constructive criticism, you know, uh, you know, as a positive. They look at constricted criticism as a negative than a positive. Uh, gen z just pretty much got tunnel vision toward material things that are, you know, like morals for what's right and what's wrong. So you know, we got a generation here that's getting in these trucks. They're not going to have that concern about learning. Well, a lot of them I'm not speaking for every one, I'm just talking about overall they're not going to want to have that want to to say, hey, I want to learn how to do everything dealing with trucking.
DePriest:You know what I'm saying, because it was about the love for wanting to drive a truck when I started driving a truck. I didn't start driving a truck for the money. I started driving a truck for being able to have peace of mind and have a little bit more control over myself, where I could be out in the truck, learn a new trade and not have to be working around a lot of people in the warehouse dealing with all these different personalities. I had confidence that the money was going to come sooner or later, because nobody told me when I first started driving a truck you're going to make $2,500 a week. They never told a lie like that, no. But you got companies and owner-operators telling people lies like that now just to be able to get people in their truck.
Eugene:Yep, there you are.
DePriest:And it's unfortunate.
Eugene:Yeah, that's. The first thing they're going to show you is either how much we can give you for the year you know your yearly salary or what we're going to pay you by the mile.
DePriest:Yeah, yeah. So everybody. Just I just hope everybody stays safe out there when all this stuff starts getting implemented, because I think it's going to be ugly. Oh well, I just try to stay out of the way. But speaking of trucking, you know this lawsuit that CRST tried to. What is it they call it? Oh yeah, they tried to appeal this lawsuit about this team driving situation. Yeah, you got a little bit more information on there, right.
Eugene:Yeah, they did an appeal. It was a driver he sued. He's a team driver in CRST and he sued him because he said he's not being compensated for his time in the sleeper berth, basically saying that when my co-driver is driving I got to be in the sleeper. You know, according to my law book I'm supposed to be in the sleeper and I can't go nowhere, you know. And he said I'm not being compensated for that. And basically he was saying that when I look at my pay, it's like I'm getting paid less than minimum wage when you factor in the amount of time that I'm on that truck.
Eugene:And so according to I think it's the Fair Labor Standards Act, flsa According to the Fair Labor Standards Act, you basically, um, it's against the law to pay somebody below minimum wage, you know. And so basically that's what his chick amounted to for that time that he's in there. So the the rule that the court basically said was that, um, teams should be, basically should be, uh, compensated for working as a team because they're being what they call it a federal minimum wage loss. And so I forgot exactly how much that lawsuit uh paid out to them or was supposed to pay out to them.
DePriest:But crst tried to appeal it and but the court so it was an appeal, uh-huh okay yeah, you know, because you said earlier, when you saw, you said it wasn't an appeal.
Eugene:No, I said uh, you said it wasn't appeal, we'll play it back okay I said okay, so I said yeah, he he had a suit of first one man about 20 seconds.
DePriest:Yeah, we'll play it back.
Eugene:All right, yeah. And I said, yeah, that driver when he sued them, they did try to appeal it, mm-hmm, you know, crst. They appealed to a higher court, which that higher court pretty much stood to the decision that the lower court had made. Right, they stood firm on that.
DePriest:Okay, so they might have been trying to get it reduced, Probably, you know, because usually in an appeal well, usually in an appeal you can appeal the case or you can appeal for a reduced settlement, right? That's usually how they work.
Eugene:Yeah, or they're trying to just throw it out altogether.
DePriest:Okay, okay. So that's a wrap, because they can't appeal it anymore behind this right.
Eugene:I don't think they can, unless they go to the Supreme Court or something. They can probably still appeal it. Hmm, you know, because CRST said you know we didn't feel like it was fair that we had to pay that because hey, we, you know we paying, feel like it was fair that we had to pay that because hey, we, you know we paying them what we promised basically, well, yeah, what?
DePriest:what was in the agreement?
DePriest:but dude was smart, see, he took his pay, he did a little math, you know, according to the time he spent on the road and uh, if you out there months at a time and you only making, as a team driver, $1,000 a week and he had a point that motherfucker too smart to even be hired anywhere, they probably got him on notice. Don't hire him. You got your money, we're going to go out and get your money, but you'll never get another job at one of these kind of companies again. And I know there's got to be some companies that specialize in team driving, which that's been a common practice since I've known. You get paid by the mile.
Eugene:You know what?
DePriest:I mean, was it all miles though back then? I think what they did was, I know, swift. They cheap ass back in the day what are like 20 cent, 21 cent. They pay each driver, so they made it like a combined 40 cent a mile yeah, they'll do like a split.
Eugene:They might say a 50 cent split or a 70 cent split, and y'all splitting that in half, whatever that's supposed to be.
DePriest:But the mathematical part of it is they paying 40 cent a mile to the truck and I guess dude found out. You know what I'm saying. A loophole in that shit. Like you can't hide behind 40 cent a mile to the truck because there's two people in this truck splitting it. You see what I'm saying? It's like you know, unless they were doing something shady, because even with the split you're still getting your miles while the other person's driving. It's supposed to be.
Eugene:Okay, yeah, because you're still getting paid for the total miles.
DePriest:Right, you're still getting paid for the total miles, so CR getting paid for the total miles, so crs t. Now that I'm thinking about. I didn't think about it when we was uh reviewing it to uh discuss it, but uh, they must have been doing something shady. We might have to look deeper into that. They must have been doing something shady, or that must be a practice where it was some bullshit anyway and nobody just really caught it yeah, or maybe he's he the.
Eugene:The argument is that, instead of me just being in the sleeper for 10 hours or whatever, well, technically you only have to be in the sleeper for eight hours.
Eugene:Legally, you're supposed to be in the sleeper for eight hours of your 10 hour break you know, and I guess he's saying that, since my co-driver is driving for his 11-14, I'm in the sleeper all this time. You know, I'm in the. I'm actually in the sleeper longer than what I have to be, and maybe that's the argument he's using, you know well, if that's the case, these other companies can get ready for a lawsuit too.
DePriest:Yeah, yeah, because that's not just gonna I, I, I can't see that stopping at crst and other drivers paying attention to this shit. Now, what they may do, what a lot of other companies do, that's following this. They may do something like walmart doing. You know, walmart, they got uh, I heard something on the radio, not, but they actually got sued. Walmart was overcharging us during the pandemic and they saying that if you got your receipts from from around that time, they're going to give you five hundred dollars back. It's a website that you got to go to to be able to pull your receipts and all that kind of stuff. So I wanted to make sure I mention this while we're on the air. So anybody who's listening to this conversation that may not know. Walmart is paying you $500 if you can prove your receipts, which you should be able to go on their websites and pull up the card information that you their websites and pull up the the card information that you paid with and pull up your grocery list. Jim, we doing the show. You can't look now.
Eugene:You try to look down I looked down but shoot, that's something I didn't.
DePriest:Yeah, yeah, I heard them talking about it on DJ Envy yesterday. Oh, okay, yeah, they was talking about it, and if you can't come up with proof of your receipts I think it's $25 they'll give you. Yeah but it's a website. I'm going to have to look it up and let you know which website it is, because I said I was going to make time to look at it myself.
Eugene:Okay.
DePriest:Yeah, give me some of that money back. How that is man. You go there, you get two bags, you walk out there paying $98.
Eugene:And how far back the receipt's got to go.
DePriest:I want to say it was like during the pandemic time so 2020 to 2022.
DePriest:So yeah, yeah, I had to go back and listen to it again to see exactly what they said. Uh, the time is, but, but he did say that you could go to walmart website and you could pull your receipt from there if you paid like well, which I'm assuming if you pay with a card, because I know on their app, you know. So you can pull your receipt from there if you pay like well, which I'm assuming if you pay with a card, because I know on their app, you know what I'm saying you can go to their app and pull up a lot of your history. I don't know how far the history go back, though, but you go on the app and pull up the history based on the card that you paid with. Okay, yeah.
Eugene:Yeah, that's good to know.
DePriest:Yeah, so yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good to know. Yeah, so yeah, I gotta look into that too. So yeah, so crst, they could probably well not crst, but the other companies they probably going to do something like that before a suit hit, they probably going to try to make it right through bonuses or or something.
Eugene:They're going to try to try a way to to having to keep from deal with this they're going to change something in their policy, uh throw something in there to I don't know, to you know, because that ain't the first time somebody's talked about being compensated while they're on their break. Yeah, so, because I think that was something they was trying to uh send through through the FMCSA to make it a requirement to pay you while you're on your break.
DePriest:Yeah, and that's probably going to end up having to fall in line for solo drivers too. So it's going to be a movement that's going to start on that. It's most likely going to put a hurt on a lot of companies, especially if the rates are being cut like they are. Yeah, they're going to have to find a way to manipulate the numbers. Companies, especially if the rates are being cut like they are yeah, they're going to have to find a way to manipulate the numbers and factor those costs. So if you a company driver, you getting paid high dollar on those kind of full truckload companies, they're probably going to be killing your miles. If this kind of movement starts where they getting sued, they're going to find a way to make up for that money now.
Eugene:Yeah, they're going to find a way to make up for that money.
DePriest:So you can get that out your mind, thinking that they not going to find a way to survive because they so cocky that they feel like they the lifeblood of the country. Without them, there is no you. Without them, you don't have a house to live in, a nice car to drive, and all this they're going to find a way, even if they had to get help from the government. They're going to find a way to manipulate them numbers to get that money back.
Eugene:I guess we'll see.
DePriest:Oh yeah. Well, brother, it was good doing this little conversation with you. Man, I'm going to see you next week.
Eugene:Yes, sir, Alright man.