Why Trucking Rates Are So Low – And How We Got Here

In this episode of The Trucker’s Radio Podcast, host Stacey Yearout breaks down the truth behind today’s freight market — why rates have crashed while the cost of running a truck keeps climbing.

From skyrocketing expenses like fuel, insurance, maintenance, and truck payments, to the chain of events that started back in 2020, Stacey lays out how we went from record highs in 2021 to the unstable, cut-throat market we face today.

We dig into:

• The five-year timeline that led to today’s rate collapse.
• How oversupply and weak demand pushed the spot market into a tailspin.
• The hidden costs of inflation — from tires to tolls — squeezing every driver.
• Why many independents are being forced out, and what survivors can do to adapt.

This is real talk from the road — not sugarcoated, not filtered. If you’re a driver, owner-operator, or just trying to understand what’s happening in trucking, this episode breaks it down plain and simple.

👉 Visit us at thetruckersradiopodcast.com or sabrengroup.com for more resources, coaching, and support.

Got a question about trucking life, getting your CDL, or just need some real advice from someone who’s been there?

Send it in anytime to:
thetruckersradiopd@gmail.com

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www.TheTruckersRadioPodcast.com

I’ll keep checkin’ the inbox and giving you the truth — no fluff, just facts.

Until next time — stay safe, stay sharp, and keep it between the lines.

 trucking podcast, trucker podcast, trucking industry, freight rates 2025, why are freight rates so low, spot market trucking, owner operator trucking, trucking business, truck driver life, freight recession, trucking costs, diesel prices trucking, trucking insurance costs, truck maintenance costs, oversupply trucking, sabren group, the truckers radio podcast 

Transcript

Dolores 0:00

You’re tuned in to The Trucker’s Radio Podcast where real talk meets the open road.Powered by Sabren Group LLC, we bring you the raw, unfiltered truth about life behind the wheel the struggles, the success, and everything in between.Hosted by seasoned driver and industry coach Stacey Yearout a man who’s been there, done it, and still rolling strong. Today’s episode: Why are the rates so low and how we got to this point— so if you are out there grabbing gears this one’s for you.So grab your coffee, buckle up, and let’s ride. Welcome to the Truckers Radio podcast. Today we're gonna take a deep dive into the rates and why we're at where we're at today. Why is the fuel cost so high maintenance? We're gonna take a look at the overall market and kind of ended, basically ended up how we got where we're at. We're, we got a guest today, he's from Florida. We're gonna bring him in. He's been on our show before. Brian from Florida. You here with us? Yeah. Stacy, how you doing man? Great to be on your show with you. Today what we're gonna talk about Brian, is rates. You've been an owner operator a long time. I think you were leased on to various different companies. Landstar, you booked your own loads. You know what it's like to really run the system out there. Looking at your hazmat loads, what pays the best. Trying to get the best bang for your buck. Keep your operating costs low, maintenance cost, everything. Trying to make money. Today we've kinda run into a lot lower rates. We've had a lot of astronomical inflation over the last several years. Price of trucks has went up according to research. you know, cost of trucks went up 52% the last seven years. That's a big influx compared to where we were before. Operating cost went up, insurance went up, fuel cost went up, maintenance went up. 2024 was an all time high in the trucking industry. We broke a record an all time high was a buck 77 operating cost. That was non-fuel cost. That was what it cost to run your truck down the road with maintenance, truck payment, trailer payment, insurance. It was a dollar 77 a mile. That's non-fuel cost. That wasn't including your fuel. Your average fuel cost running down the road is about 60 to 65 cents a mile. And then that's being pretty efficient. Brian, what kind of fuel cost was you running? Well, Stacy, I was with Landstar for just a little bit over four years, I had a 98 freight liner with a Detroit. Now I can tell you some of the rates, believe it or not, even back then some of the low balling rates that you might see now. The cost of trucks and truck payments, and so it was a lot different, just not remembering too good about the fuel costs, way back then. What kind of rates were you getting back then? Brian? I normally would try to run, I ran the system, so I booked all my stuff and of course, if I didn't have a breakdown, I'd come home, sooner. And if I had a breakdown or something where I had to stay out, I'd have to stay out longer. I typically tried to hauls, I wouldn't haul anything less than, a dollar 80 or like$2. Even running empty, to go chase, freight to go pick up, it'd have to be up over two dollars. With the fuel cost back then, it's been a while. In 2024. The real issue at hand here is from 2020 on. What is their cost nowadays, a 2024 average operating cost of a vehicle all in was$2 and 26 cents a mile across the board. It significantly went up. I think the non-fuel average in 2024 was a dollar 77, it's huge. The cost of labor nowadays, 150,$200 an hour. I remember, paying as a couple of hundred bucks for an old change back in the day, of course, we paid right. We changed their oil every 12,000 miles and the old 60, Sears, Detroits, a brand new truck. I started it out on a 40,000 mile oil increment, full synthetic. And every 5,000 miles I'd run through speed Co. Hit lewd with a grease gun. You got to keep the truck in work in order, you can't just say, man, I'm gonna stick some fuel in it and ride down the road. Grease is the lifeblood of a truck. You see freight liners out there, two, three, 400,000 miles, the whole front end wore out. Gotta replace the whole thing. King pins wore out, these guys never, you can't just go 40,000 miles without grease in the truck. It don't happen, and then a lot of people, they jump into the owner operator and they don't think about this excess expense. Especially now, because every penny counts in operating costs. So when you get into, your operating cost fuel, I mean, fuel's your largest expense, a lot of people's like, really, but you're gonna spend more money on fuel than you're gonna spend on a truck, a trailer, any of that. That's your biggest expense out here on the roads fuel. So that's a huge factor in your profit margin. Yeah, there is, right? How did we get here 2020 to 2025? How did we get to massive inflation, massive fuel hikes. Soaring cost of trucks maintenance. This is unreal. Your average age of equipment's like significantly reduced because people can't afford to keep a truck anymore. The old school way of buy a good truck, you take care of it, you rebuild it, million miles, put it back on the highway, get another eight, 900,000 million out of it. Keep it rolling. But that business plan has significantly changed nowadays, With all the computers stuff. It's not even really so much the computer, your DPF filters, your one box, I mean, one box on a freight liner, that's 15 grand. And the DEF system, Def fuel. That whole system there. You're going to probably spend about as much rebuilding the dev system as you would be to rebuild the engine. Back in the day. Detroits man, you couldn't beat them. I mean, don't get me wrong, I was a big catman back in the day too. But the old 34 0 6 EC Oh yeah. Were great engine. They really started getting into the Acer. It just kind of went downhill from there. Double six NZ that's one of my favorite kitty cat rides. Oh yeah. The old Cummins, that the EN fourteens, that was the old red top. I had a W 900 that was a beautiful truck. It was a 99 model. W nine had 86 inch studio sleeper on it. Harley Davis and orange and white, beautiful truck. And that thing had that 5, 5, 25 plus Cummins, the red top man, that was a good motor. Man, that was a good old days back then. It didn't matter how flat the front of that truck was and how long that hood, we didn't really have to worry about. Fuel mileage as much as we do today. A truck like that now you drowned unless you really had a good account somewhere that you could really make that money. You know, the old classics and w nines and, I mean, I've had'em all, I've had old Lomax Western stars w nines, w nine's probably one of my favorite trucks, 3 59 peat. I bought a 3 59 peat, 300 inch stretch frame there. That truck was awesome. Never got to drive it. I put a driver in it, took him over to pick it up two loads later, he totaled it out. Wow. It was a beautiful truck. It was that kinda like that Pearl White had a red frame. It was a good looking ride. Back in the day, we run the big large cars and they was a lot of fun. They was, but things has changed don't get me wrong, there's still a lot of'em out here on the highway. Quite sure most of'em is paid for, but with the day's rates and. Cost, which I'm sure a lot of those don't have the death filters and all that. That's a huge added cost that we didn't have back then. I'm trying to remember, when they came out with the DEF system. There's got a lot of these trucks out here. They started edging into the deaf system in 2008., I should say the regen system deaf didn't come out until a little bit afterwards and they finalized the deadline. I'm thinking somewhere around 2009 where everybody had to have the regen system because they blocked it out in California. You couldn't come into California without a 2009 or newer with a re jenning engine. With a particular filter. Now I had a 2010, it was the newer style of the DD 15 and it was a predef. Now that truck got astronomical amount of fuel mileage. I made a lot of money with that truck. I think it had a little over a million when I got rid of that truck. And man, that was one of the money making this truck what? It was ugly. I ain't even gonna lie. It was ugly. But you you can't eat that. You can't eat that paint. And chrome, man, that truck made me a lot of money. I got fuel tax quarters with that truck, 9.1 mile a gallon. I mean that truck was really good on fuel, but that was before they put in the DEF and that was on that sweet spot. Where they made the predef, DD 15. I think that killed a lot of the trucking. The old ISX, the dual cam, the old eight 70, I had one of them that, that truck got nine and a half mile gallon when they first come out with that motor man, that, that truck would pull. It was unreal. It was pull a lot of tort, great fuel mileage. It was unreal. And then they started putting the depth system and all the new admissions. Just killed it. They keep saying, oh, well we need to get the trucks up to where they're getting X amount of miles per gallon. I'm like, well let's get that off there. That's what's killing the fuel mileage, right? Yeah. It kills the engine, it kills the fuel mileage. It doubles the cost of rebuild. I mean, an engine, nowadays you're looking 25, 30$5,000 just to do an in frame on a Cummins or a Detroit, if you're lucky. Honestly, by the time the truck gets some age on it to that point, it ain't even worth what you're trying to put in it. Yeah, I mean, I've been out of it for a while there, Stacy. And, I still have a buddy at, Landstar. He is been over there. I don't know. We both started in oh two, so it's 25, almost 26, he's still kicking it, he's educated me on oil changes, the price of these trucks, tires.'cause i've been, doing company for quite a while and it's like, I kind of forgot about the rates and it's just been so long. But it's just amazing. Like you were just talking about earlier, how much everything's jumped up. Man, that's crazy. If you wanna order, I believe you have to special order some of these,'cause they're not making a lot of'em anymore. And if you want an 18 speed in there, some of these trucks are almost like a house, they're not gonna make a whole lot of the big large car trucks just simply because of the fuel mileage. Nowadays you gotta be. Efficient to really survive. Survival out here now with a truck getting six and a half mile a gallon is tough. I mean, that ain't saying it can't be done. I mean, you gotta really be very selective on your rates that you choose. And sometimes, you can't just set in a bad area and wait for the rates to change just because you want a better rate. Sometimes you just gotta bite the bullet, do one or two things. You're either going to dead head out or you're going to take that load. It's gonna kind of least cover your fuel to get to a better area, and that's all in part of knowledge of running a truck. Running a truck, you start learning your lanes. A lot of that's what I, help people with, in the consulting getting people profitable and, making money, we learn lanes, the dos, the don'ts, areas you don't go for X amount of dollars because you're not going to get it out of there. Believe it or not, that changes. There's different times of the year that areas pay really good and areas don't pay really good, it changes depending on what you're pulling, if you're pulling flatbed, you're pulling step deck, you're pulling oversize. If you're pulling reefer, you're pulling produce trail. Things change throughout the year, especially your produce trail. I mean, that was a big thing back in the day that I did a lot of your produce trail. We get, all the trucks ready. We'd hit that Florida state line, coming into Spring and we'd run up into Deroy, we'd run up into Cincinnati, we'd run up that East coast and up into the markets and Costco and up into really try to keep the drivers out of New York. Nobody wants to go up in there I had a couple of guys that didn't mind it. We used to pull a lot of beef out of Garden City, Kansas, and up in there a lot of beef back in the day. Right. But anyway, far as the rates nowadays, about the best I can tell with all my research and everything, in the last five years we had COVID come in, COVID shut everything down. So then there was like an explosive demand for certain goods, food primarily. And they just, the rates went through the roof. A lot of drivers were scared to come out, and we lost a lot of drivers. Due to COVID sometimes they had COVID conditions that didn't allow them to come back on the road. It really offset the trucking industry there for a minute. Rates went astronomical. Then you had a lot of guys jumping into trucking, running out and buying trucks. You know, then you come in with the COVID stimulus and all the stimulus checks, that sparked a lot of people spending money that normally didn't spend money. So they were a lot more freight demand. And as anybody knows, it's in the industry, your truck to load ratio controls a big proportion of your load rate, and if you don't have enough loads and you got too many trucks, we all know what that does. That brings the rates down to a bidding area where, okay, well this guy down here on end, he said he'd do it cheaper than you. Well, can you do it cheaper than him? Then they start this bidding war and nobody wins. Somebody's gonna leave there with the load and it's not even going to pay for his fuel to get it to where it's going, I imposed years ago that we needed to basically come in and get some regulation on the rates, even, they could put a$2 a mile base and say, okay, every load out here, unless it's a partial, pays$2 a mile now where you get into your specialties. Now if that's oversized, you start building out the X soils. If that's reefer, produce multiple stops, you start building theorial. But everything starts building from the$2 a mile base. So your most general load of paper towels in a dry box pays two bucks a mile. And I think that would keep the industry from gouging the truck drivers a whole lot because if they come out at least$2 a mile and then added fuel surcharge on top of that, then that would give enough meat on the bone to allow a driver to make money. And the problem with not making enough money with a truck, because everything else suffers, including your family, including your equipment, you, because you're going to run twice as hard. You're not going to go home because you can't afford to take your foot off the gas. Everything suffers while you got certain clients that wants to, report record earnings. And that has happened., They'll get people to do their loads for pennies on the dollar, and then they're saying, oh, you know what? We reported record earnings. Sure you did. And they say, that's just business, but, and really not when it affects other people's business. Right. But once we got out of the woods with COVID and we kinda reached the point where everything kind of come to a head. Then in 2023, the market kind of started crashing on everybody and it fell. Between 20 to 35% between 2023 and 2025., They're still out there. A lot of cats out there, they're still fighting, trying to hang onto that truck that they overpaid for. That was a big thing. Everybody ran out and paid astronomical prices for trucks just to jump into the field, once there's a big influx like that, it never lasts, you can ride that wave, but when you go in debt in the middle of that wave, somebody's going to fall and they're gonna fall hard I got buddies right now that they're still over there trying to chew off a$3,000 a month truck payment just because they bought a super overpriced truck. But you know, just in 22, the number of carriers nearly doubled in owner operators. Everyone just jumped into that thinking, oh my God, here we go. There's such a rate demand and the rates are astronomical they was some good rates, man. But anytime you run upon that, you got a thing. This is never going to last. Make your money way you can, but be understanding that this is not going to stay forever. Yeah, and what I learned back, when I was with Landstar, it was rough in the beginning. Stacy, they call'em agents. They're same thing as a broker, but if you didn't know the right people and it took a while, you see these guys initials let's say it's,, you're picking up in North Dakota and you're running it over to Minnesota or something. It's paying average. And your deadhead was average, and then you did that load for that guy and did another load for that same agent. Well, you do 5, 6, 7 loads for this guy and he trusts you. You're on time, next thing he says, Hey, you wanna start pulling freight for me? I don't really post a lot of my stuff on the computer. You're working for this guy and you might be pulling some stuff from a buddy of his, and then all of a sudden you're pulling higher dollar freight., I found that out too. It was really tough in the beginning, trying to find the best paying loads out there, because what you were talking about with fuel costs and everything else, it took me a while to get going, and find the right agents where I could actually start making a decent living, making pretty good money because, the breakdowns and all that add up, if you're not pulling good freight, it'll shut you down quick, to where you might have to park that truck and get out of it. Like with Landstar,, they'll tell you up front, I mean, there's no secret that 50% of their loads never hit the board,, and that's up to you to build and grow your business. That's up to you to make relationships with agents. And that's why Landstar has the ferrate that they have, because they have trusted people that haul. Sensitive freight and they can charge for that. There's still the customer out there that is willing to pay premium dollar to get what they want I made a lot of money with Landstar. I mean, I started out with'em, with the dry box. I pulled a lot of hazmat and it didn't take long. I ended up into step deck, a flatbed, I had a low pro step deck, pull out just over dimensional stuff, a lot of equipment, stuff like that. Once you get into the open deck, you gotta use different agents, it took me just a little while to gain the trust and. Get into the good loads. Most of the time when you're dealing with these agents, they know you know what you're doing. Hazmat was always a big thing. I haul a lot of hazmat totes and stuff like that with the step deck. All that stuff pays good. It really does. That's where I made my money, basically doing all the specialties where other people didn't want to do hazmat. I pulled a lot of military. If I only got my toe into the military, hauling stuff in and outta the military bases, that was good money. It's, one thing I did like about Landstar is they're not like, getting your own authority. And calling up Joe Smoke broker. That guy may say, I got three grand on that load. Not reality. The customer is probably paying four, five. He ain't gonna tell you that because he's just an independent broker. With Landstar, everything is transparent. You know what that load is posted for, that's what that load pays, There's no way for them to hide money because if they did, the agent would be cheating. Landstar and me, and I'm sure Landstar would end up canceling their contract. Landstar's kind of a picky company and I like that because. You don't want a safety record to get pulled in the scales everywhere you go. And they had their corks a little bit, but it kept you in the good graces, the DOT. So when you got in to Landstar, one of the biggest things, and I'm not trying to, be a spokesperson for Landstar, I just happen to, like Landstar. I had a very good experience there, but they are other companies that does just as good. But when you lease onto one of these companies, the thing you need to look for is what kind of fuel discounts am I going to get? Because that's a big thing. You know, Landstar, I think Mercer does the same thing. They give you big discounts in your fuel. I mean, I've gotten up to a dollar a gallon off on fuel. You just gotta look at where you got to buy fuel. And I think Landstar did predominantly with the Ta Petro, that's where we got their biggest discounts. And then we got discounts on tires, we got discounts on oil changes. I mean, man, I was getting a full synthetic oil change For what? A regular oil change cost. That was significant. And then, not to mention, when you use them a lot, you kinda got front door service, especially when you had Landstar on the side of the truck or Mercer or something like that. You ended up. Being up in the front of the line there most of the time, especially if you just needed a chassis, lube or something. But you gotta take care of equipment fuel mileage, keeping the rates just don't haul stuff for nothing. Like if you're going to Pennsylvania, don't go to Pennsylvania for$2 a mile,'cause you know you're going to come out for a dollar 50. Well, your biggest thing with your freight volumes is, a lot of your shipments right now is kind of, they're dying off a little bit. You got the kids going back to school, certain times of the year they do die off. Yeah. Stacy, you were, when you were talking about the COVID thing, you remember back, I think it was 2008, did we had a big recession. Was that the year 2008? Oh, yes. 2008. I think it really hit in 2009, man, that's where it really kinda sank in pretty good. Right. Because I remember it took a big hit back then too. That was a blood bath back then. That was probably one of the worst times in trucking that I'd ever seen. I pretty well had to sell off. Pretty much most of my fleet. I mean, you just couldn't keep anybody running. Not for them kind of raids. You was lucky to run your own truck and make a profit margin back then. Yeah. Back when I was working company and, they, lost some of the companies were downsizing. You had to make sure you kept onto your job, because there was a lot of companies that weren't hiring, the economy just basically crashed. It was just so bad. It's like you said, the owner operators, guys that owned, small fleets of trucks, they got hit real big. Oh yeah. Big time. COVID came in and we created this mass as a society. We came into the COVID, all the rates spiked, everybody lost their mind. Went out and bought a bunch of trucks, grabbed their own mc trailers. The cost of a trailer almost doubled the cost of a truck damn near doubled. It was unreal. And they're not understanding that this ain't going to last forever. So when they ran out and bought all these trucks, all these trailers in the market cooled after COVID dialed off. So now you got all these guys trying to survive. They're falling. Day in and day out. And I hate to say it, but sometimes it's like an act of nature. You gotta be losers for other people to survive. The market's gonna restabilize itself no matter what. It doesn't matter who's going to fall in the process, the market will restabilize itself. Everybody got real used to the wages during COVID because nobody wanted to work. Everybody was paying 15, 20, 30 bucks an hour to work at McDonald's and now people expect that then there was that great big push for$20 an hour minimum wage or$15 an hour minimum wage. Minimum wage jobs was not made to make a living on, they're made to learn you how to do a trade for you to step to the next level. They're not made for you to pay bills. They're made for teenagers to learn what it's like to have a job and people wanna make careers out of fast food. Then they want 20 bucks an hour. Well look at the price of a Big Mac. I mean it's astronomical nowadays. And then you ended up with a lot of the unions, they had a big push for more money. That a lot more money in the automotive industry. That just drives the cost on everything else being high. That cost has gotta come in from somewhere. So when you start charging somebody$25 an hour that used to pay 15 bucks an hour, that cost has gotta be absorbed. I think a lot of people just think that the employer just shits it out. It don't come outta nowhere, but it finds its way to the shelf. And I know a lot of people is blaming a lot of the inflation on the tariffs and this and that. We had all the same tariffs then as we do now, and we really didn't, I didn't notice it back then. I think the little bit of tariff influx with the massive inflation, I think, yeah, that's the real culprit is a massive inflation. And I really don't think the tariff is going to hurt as bad as a lot of people think, but it's something that, needed to have been done. They should have never been the trait deals that we had. That was just such a bad deal. And I think a lot of people don't understand where we were at. We were trading and paying tariffs to other countries, but they was not paying us tariffs. I mean, it was a one-sided deal. Everybody was taking advantage of us for a long time. Exactly. The tariffs needed to happen. It needed to force a lot of the American companies back into the United States. To me, one of my hot spots is, you go make a product in a foreign country on foreign wages, and you bring it back here and you stick it on our shelves and expect me to buy it for an astronomical price. It don't really sit that well with me. You go up around Detroit and that place is a ghost town that used to be one of the rock in the city that wasn't in, in the country back in this day. Man, they was automotive plants popping cars out of their left and right man. Lot of work everywhere you looked and it's slowly been taken to Mexico and then they bring them back here and slap 80,$90,000 ticket on'em. Even the steel plants, up in Pittsburgh and Erie, tool and die used to be really big back in the day. They sold it off to China, it was cheaper, for them to do it than for us. They were giving them a lot of our work, closed a lot of steel plants, a lot of machine shops down. Even all the way back into the late nineties. There've been a whole lot of reasons we only tend to want to go back five years. Where did all this start? Five years. But in the grand scheme of things, everything started a long time ago. It's just gradually starting to come to a head and, it's real easy to sit here and just throw darts at the wall and blame this and blame that man, there was a whole lot of things that created the situation we're in right now with freight rates and the industry and the cost and it's not just drowned in the owner operator. Now it's drowned in the companies. I mean, you're seeing big companies, multiple big companies are just up and closing their doors. I forget what one that was down in Florida that just closed up. There were two down there, Davis Express is one of them, right? There we go. He just closed doors because he wasn't making no money. Davis Express is a family owned, refrigerated trucking company with 160 trucks and about 140 drivers. After 44 years of Operation Davis Express closed down. So it's not due to bankruptcy, but because of rising operating cost. They just decided, Hey, we're going bow out gracefully. And I respect the company for that. They didn't leave owing driver's money. They just said, you know what, just this too much. So they halted all deliveries and laid off most of their workforce. After giving them somewhat of an understanding that they probably needed to be looking for another job. Then that Cal Carol, formal logistics Grow Plan Florida, they came in closed down and went out of business, announced a closure. That was back in July. Prolonged air, freight recession. They cited a couple different reasons. Personal injury lawsuits, especially a surge. I think they had 200 company trucks, more than 50 owner operators. So there was a lot of drivers right there looking for place. Then that TGS, transportation and National location, they had 40 years in business. They, cited market conditions led to their closure. LTI, that was another one that was not a Florida company, it was just a national company shut down without bankruptcy and market struggles. And there's just a lot, you know, and you see on the fall, you on two, 300 trucks, 150 trucks. I mean, that's a lot. Just to take out of our freight system on a day-to-day basis, you know, and that's, that's all part of the bubble. You know, you had just, everybody ran out and just jumped on the bandwagon, went out and bought trucks. Oh my God, I'm getting$5 a mile. And that lasted for a couple of years. And naturally when the market re stabilized itself, people started drowning. COVID, if you looked at the spokes of the will of COVID, how it affected people, it affected in many different directions. It affected, impulse and freight, people's health for one. You took a lot of people out of the industry with COVID. They may have survived COVID, but it left them with a permanent lung issue. They had to be on oxygen so they couldn't pass their physical, they couldn't get back into the industry, along with, some people could never turn back to work, whether it was driving a truck or something else. So it caused a mass shortage, which slowed lines down. It slowed getting things like that. What was that, that chip for the cars, that was the big supply chain ordeal there with all the cars, coming from China, we couldn't get the chips. Yeah. That was a big thing back then with, a lot of dealerships, with different chips and stuff for computers that they couldn't get. Oh, there's a little big shortage in the trucks. The 18 wheelers. You'd have to order a truck a year in advance. I mean, but there was a lot of'em that just quit taking orders. They wouldn't even make'em because they didn't have all the parts. They couldn't get'em. So that was a big thing, it was a very dramatic time that we lost a lot of lives during COVID. I know Florida, they definitely stepped outside of the box, a little down in Florida around DeSantis, I think he's a pretty good guy. I like O Ron. Yeah, Ron DeSantis has done quite a few things down here. You guys got a good governor down there, man. I like him. I don't know everything about him, but what little I hear about him, he seems like a pretty standup guy, right? He just passed a thing, when we had all the protest stuff going on, in different places, he basically said, Hey, if you're gonna block public roadways or interstates where people can't get to work and trucks can't make deliveries, they basically give the option, Hey, if you don't get out of the way, they're gonna push you out of the way. So, and he had it passed, and so the people in the vehicles, aren't gonna be at fault. Wow. I mean, that's scary. When people start protesting and everything, I just tried to stay away from all that and, really tried to just stay off the main highways and, run some of the back roads it seemed like they targeted a lot of the main interstate, coming in and outta the bigger cities, they really seemed like they wanted to hit the main veins, that really caused unrest. Peaceful protests don't mean you block roads and Right. We're not going to go down that rabbit hole into the politics, but I definitely know where you're coming from there. The rates, they seem to be a big push right now to level this play field with the licensing. We just did an episode yesterday about the illegal CDLs and the illegals driving and people that can't speak English posing a threat or a highways I don't wanna sound like we're picking on them guys, but they need to do things the right way and if they received the correct training, they would never be in the situation that they're in. With that being said, once we get a lot of this cleaned up, I really look for the rates to influx. So we may start restabilizing here a little bit once we start putting some of the Nonvalid CDL drivers off the road. And I'm hoping to see a little bit more of that. Not trying to prey on anyone else is bad fortune, when you open up the borders and let millions of people into their country and allow them to obtain CDLs and work visas illegally, it puts a strain on their entire workforce in this country, not just in a truck, not just around the globe. I do understand that they are a huge population of. Some of the Mexicans, they do a great job with the produce and stuff in California, and them guys are definitely needed. I mean, I have no problem with that. Them guys come over here on a work visa. They work, they're documented and they do a great job. I mean, that's not what this is about. I'm a very open-minded when it comes, and I don't think everyone should, be thrown out of the country. The biggest part is when you don't do it right. It's almost kinda like when you was back in school and you had this one jackass that always wanted to cut line in the lunch line, man he wasn't where he was supposed to be and he always ended up getting in trouble or getting the shit knocked out of him. You can't just skip the process. There's a process and if you follow that, I think everyone would be happy. But when you don't, it really pisses people off., Especially the people that's took the time, went through the channels and done everything they were supposed to do. And then you got guys coming over here that just break all the rules. They don't give a shit. They ride here. They go to these sanctuary cities, they find someone that does the illegal CDL or the green cards and they go out here and away they go., That's a big ordeal nowadays in this country. And I think if we, get back to the stability that we had. I think we would do much better in the trucking industry for one. I totally agree. Yeah. Stacy I've seen, being out here a long time myself, I've seen a difference, back when I was, an owner operator with changes in that, price of freight stuff and then we had that recession, things going up. The attitude out here changed, even before we started seeing a lot more, people from other countries, whatever coming over and driving over here. But, there was a huge change and, you started seeing guys, they were more lazier, I'm not gonna put work boots on, I'm gonna wear flip flops. And, the respect went away. We talked to each other for hours. We didn't even know each other. And we'd run down the road, 10 hours or more and stop and have, a supper with each other and have some laughs, maybe even have a beer or something, and all that's, gone down the drain I miss the old school days where we all have respect, you flashed everybody over or told'em, Hey, come on over. You just had a good time. You really enjoyed driving out here. And it's not that I don't enjoy driving anymore. It's just, it's hard, it's like we talked about it. If you're an owner operator, it's hard to make a living, with all the prices and everything going up or even being a company driver dealing with illegals or, some of these other foreign guys that have different cultures, that we're used to driving in third world countries or however they drove, they're not driving how we do. Rewind back to where we lost the respect and honestly, I can probably pin that to the age of the cell phone because once the cell phone came out, the CB got turned off and everyone becomes strangers out here on the road. They used to be a brotherhood that we ran up and down the road out here. Everybody watched your back and you watched theirs. Everybody kept an eye on Old Smokey Bear and anything going on within a hundred miles one way or the other, you note about it. You don't have none of that anymore. I still run a CB in any truck. I think it's a necessity. It is just the way I was brought up. I remember even when I was a kid, my dad always had a CB in the car. That's how we knew where, all the smokey bears was at the whole nine yards. I was raised on that, and it was a way of communicating if you needed help, you needed emergency crew, you had channel nine, the police always monitored Channel nine. And honestly, I think they actually still do. I'll have to ask my son. My son's a police officer. He should know. The biggest thing is when everybody got a cell phone in front of them. They got all the apps, they got all the different. Things. And there's nothing wrong with that, communicating and everything. And there's a lot of technology that makes things different today than they were years ago. I think I spoke on this before when I started out and I literally, called my wife once a week if I was pissed off at her, sometimes less than that if I was really mad back in my day we didn't have the luxuries of cell phone. We had a calling card. We sat down at the table. They were a phone at every table. You had phone booths all around the flying Jay or the ta back then the TA wasn't nearly as prevalent as it is now. We always had the union 76, and you didn't have a whole lot of, I don't remember hardly any pilots back in the day. You had the flying j's, but you always had some sort of a payphone, some sort of a phone at the station or the counter where you ate. You call, you talk, make sure the kids is all good and everything. You go about your life and you was at work nowadays, you got all the cell phones and stuff and the communication is better. Most definitely, there's a double-edged sword of that. There's 10 times more of a chance for an argument to break out between you and the wife where you're driving down the road and now you're thinking about what she's doing. There's a lot of different things that became out of it, but that's where everyone becomes strangers, even families, even friends, people don't go out and do things anymore. They're stuck in the cell phone. And I'm as guilty of it as anybody else. The technology, especially, I've had to learn a whole lot of new technology, breaking out this podcast. This is a whole different world nowadays. But I think the CB was a key factor in the brotherhood that we had out here on the road. Most, all your big truck stops always at CB shops, and he was. that was a lifeline in the industry. And you're right. You could talk to people all day, every day that you didn't even know. It didn't matter. I'd love to see some of that brotherhood had come back into the industry again. People work with each other. We got far too many people running out there with a cell phone trying to, record somebody, trying to back into a spot when he is having a hard time and run out there and load it up on TikTok to get a laugh, man, that ain't cool. Go out there and help that man.. That's what it seems like. Yeah, it is. And we created that with technology. Yeah, I remember times, this was actually kind of funny. You get on CB and start a pretty lively little argument just to stay awake and come to the end of the night. You'd be like, man, take it easy out there, man. Be careful. You too, man. you pass the pleasantries and some things keeping me up.'cause you get on there, start an argue, you know, just to get somebody's blood pressure up and keep'em awake. They knew what you were doing, at least most of'em did. And you wasn't really trying to hurt nobody. It just gave y'all something to talk about. Things have definitely changed out here. Everything else keeps getting higher. The mechanic rates keep getting higher. Oil changes keeps getting higher, the equipment keeps getting higher, and the driver's rate wages keep getting less. When's it going to be geared toward us? And I don't understand that because, when you look at what we go through, what we forfeit, a whole life that we forfeit to come outta here on the road and live a life that we do, I mean, we live in a truck, a quarter of the size of a federal prison sale. Think that don't weigh on your mind. Your wife's at home, your kids is at home, or sometimes, we carry one of the highest divorce rates in the industry. The truck drivers.'Cause you're gone all the time. And heaven forbid you work for one of these big over the road companies and you try to go home, they don't want to hear that. And even when you do go home, they're calling, Hey man, you need to get back in that truck. It don't matter if you've been out in two months, they don't care. They don't want that truck sitting because it's all about that bottom line. Oh, I agree. Yeah. We're definitely the backbone for America, for all these big corporations, companies. And you're right, it's like we get mistreated, we don't get compensated good enough. And you're right about the sleeper either, that it does feel like a. Little jail cell or something, and it's a lot smaller than a regular jail cell, that weighs on your mind. And that's one of the reasons, I started Sing Group is, the mental health and the counseling and life code. I try to provide a service for a lot of different people if they need somebody to talk to, if they need advice, family advice, marital advice, and I am certified, so I have been educated and learned all the things that I need to, to be able to do that efficiently. Right. And I can definitely tell you're very educated, Stacy, talking to you twice, you know the industry very well. You've been doing it a long time. It's been an honor. Well, Brian, it definitely ain't been easy out here over the years and not always have I been in the front seat of the trucks, but I've owned trucks, I've owned companies, I've ran companies. I've owned brokerages and trucking companies at the same time, I remember I built my first trucking company. I would drive my truck. And I'm gonna tell on myself a little bit here, back in the outlaw days,, running multiple log books, I ran so hard just trying to keep everything afloat. They were days that I'd sleep in the front seat of the truck. cause I knew if I laid down on the bed, I wasn't gonna get up. I was gonna crash out. But I had, two or three trucks, that had to be dispatched. So a lot of times I'd stop four o'clock in the morning. I'd sit there in the seat until about eight o'clock and they'll sling out a laptop on the steering wheel and start dispatching trucks. A lot of people don't realize what goes into, putting together multiple trucks. They see it on paper, man, it looks great. I'm going to get rich. I'm not going to have to drive. I'm just gonna sit back and let them do all the work and make all the money. That's not really the way that works out. There's a lot of variables, you really gotta do your homework. You need the experience before you start into owning multiple trucks. Most definitely, and the guys out there doing it and being successful at it. We actually think probably six, seven years ago, we sold off everything parted down to one truck. And that's pretty much all we wanted to deal with after that, my son, he got into one of my boys. We raised five boys. At least one of'em was going to end up driving the truck, my son got in the trucking and I thought he was going to go toward the owner operator, but he just pulls local, does a good job, great driver, very good driver. I think he'd even rival me sometimes, but very talented. I knew that kid was going to be a truck driver when he was 11 years old. I could just tell, I could tell him, Hey, go back a camper in the driveway. And he just knew, and he knew exactly how to turn the wheel, how to put it in there. I mean, it was like he was just natural he was also hanging on the truck like a set of monkey bars all the time too. The rest of the kids was, all playing video games. So, I mean, that was his thing, I took him out with me when he turned 21 and got his CDL for him. And I trained him pretty much myself. And then I dropped him off at the school and let them kind of go through the motions and get his CDL for him. But I wanted to make sure he knew what I needed. I wanted him to know before I dropped him off. And I wouldn't take that back for nothing in the world because, all the things that I instilled in him. At least I know he is safe going down the road for the most part. That's good stuff to hear right there. It's real Life outta here, man. It's real life. I spend a lot of time in these old trucks and everything. A lot of different parts of the industry. I worked all over. But it give me a good perspective, a good idea of what everyone's doing, and I think that's something that a lot of drivers lack sometimes, is they don't understand what dispatch is doing. They don't understand what the broker's doing. And we all kind of tend to wanna work against each other sometimes because we don't understand each other's job. And that's kind of where I fit the hat of everybody because I've done it I know what the dispatcher, the broker's doing. I understand what they're doing versus what I'm doing. And that helps. That helps to know because, once you realize that, this guy's just like you. He's trying to move a load. You're trying to get a load to move. When you start working together and building relationships, and that is a good thing about Landstar and Mercer and I think a couple other companies does the same thing I even did this when I had my own authority.'cause you gotta build relationships. They were certain people that I dealt with a lot. I had a couple of contracts of my own. You can't just run an authority on broker freight that just don't work. You gotta have some contract freight and use the broker in there where you need him. Brian, I think we're gonna wrap this up. We've yacked enough about the good old days and the rates and how we got to where we're at for the most part. COVID kinda bit an influx. Everybody flooded the market with trucks and with the help of illegals and states like California and Washington, some of the other states given illegal CDLs that took part in flooding the market with way more drivers than we had freight, which destabilized the market and we ended up here at ground zero. So I'm hoping that'll kind of get better. It looks like there were making some pretty big moves here to get the unsafe and the unlicensed., We talked about this before. I have no problem with a guy that comes here, obtains his CDL legally. He goes through the training, he learns what he needs to do. Hey, great. Come and do your job right up and down the road with the rest of us out here. You're, just as much as a brother as the rest of us, have no problem with that. So I don't want people thinking that I'm just dissing the, the foreign driver. But no means, by no means am I doing that, but when the guy comes here and he buys the CDL, he puts me and everyone else at risk, not to mention everyone around him on the road. I think we've starting to see a big uptick in that, and it's starting to show. The outcome of doing that and starting to kind of bite, bite'em in the rear. But with that being said, Brian, I do appreciate you calling in tonight. I'm gonna wrap this up and get on down the road here, man. I'm gonna let you get back to work. Okay, Stacy? I totally agree everything at that last part there, that you hit it right on the, the hammer, right on the nail there. And, yeah, it is been a pleasure, man. I really enjoy, you almost kind of remind me of like a teacher, Stacy, so hopefully things get better out here. I did teach for a long time. But, yeah, I mean, a little walkthrough memory lane there. I loved the old days of trucking, that that's where it really was good. I feel bad for a lot of the new guys coming in. They never get to experience that'cause it's gone and then it's probably, we're never gonna get back to there, but we could bring back the brotherhood. I think everything comes back into style once in a while. Certain things in life, I wish they'd bring the CB back into style. Get people on there, get people talking again, get to know each other as a friend, not an enemy. A work acquaintance that runs up and down the road with you. They've been times I rolled up and down the road. I might've been in California over here and. Heard somebody key up to cb like, man, is that you, i'm like, yeah, sure. You get to know people and it's a small world. It really, it is, right? You run across people. You remember people, you built that brotherhood. And that is something we really need right now in this industry, is a brotherhood. That brotherhood come with a whole lot of respect amongst each other. And that's something that we really need a lot of respect, a whole lot of common sense, that people need to learn. Kind of reminds you watching that movie Convoy back in the day. Where you, seen all them guys. They had a brotherhood in that movie, Uhhuh. Yeah, they did. They, they did. That was, that was a great movie. It really was. Really good movie. Oh yeah. I love the sound of that old school Detroit man. I think it sounded awesome in that movie. Oh yeah. And it's a shame a lot of these guys that did a lot of these trucking movies have they passed on for Reynolds and Chris and Bur Young and there's been a lot of that, that, that have been taken already, so. Have you seen the new previews of they're getting ready to come out with a Smoking A Bandit? Another one. yeah, that's gonna be, I saw something about that. There's gonna be something. I know it ain't gonna be like the original because they ain't gonna have no, they ain't going have old Bufort in there. I don't think you can ever replace the original. No. but it'll be interesting when it comes to any kind of movie. It'll be interesting to the take they get on it. Yeah. I'm interested to see what it is. I'll keep an open mind. Brian, buddy, I'm gonna wrap this up. I gotta get this truck back on the road here. Now I can get rolling on down the road and I'm going to get busy here, man. I appreciate your time, man. I'll catch back up with you later. All right, Stacy. Thank you for having me on your show again, man. Alright. Keep them wheels rolling buddy. Take it easy. Alright."That’s gonna wrap it up for this episode of The Trucker’s Radio Podcast, powered by Sabren Group LLC. 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