Truck Driver Etiquette and Brotherhood On the Road

In today’s episode of The Trucker’s Radio Podcast, we’re takin’ it back to the foundation —

Truck Driver Etiquette and the Brotherhood on the Road.

Host Stacey Yearout, a seasoned driver and industry voice, dives into the unwritten rules of the highway that every real trucker used to live by. From flashing your lights to say thank you, to helping a driver in a bind, to just showin’ a little respect out there — this episode is about the brotherhood we came from… and how to bring it back.

If you’re new to the road or you’ve been haulin’ for decades, this one’s a reminder that trucking is more than a job — it’s a code.

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Transcript

Dolores 0:00

You’re tuned in to The Trucker’s Radio Podcast where real talk meets the open road. Today’s episode is all about truck driver etiquette and the brotherhood on the road the unspoken rules, the small courtesies, and the sense of unity that used to mean something out here. So grab that cup of coffee, fire up that diesel, and let’s talk about what it really means to be part of the trucking family. Welcome to the Truckers Radio podcast. Today we're going to talk about truck driver etiquette on and Off the road truck stops, parking, et cetera. Today we got a special guest, Sean from North Carolina, and we're going to talk a little bit about the dos and don'ts and The unspoken respect that we should have on and off the highway. Sean, How's it going, Stacy? Oh, doing pretty good. So how's that weather down there in North Carolina? Oh, about 80 degrees it's doing better than it is up this way. I live halfway between the north and the south and somewhere in the middle, and it still gets cold and I don't like it. Yeah, I don't deal well with cold. No, sir. I gotta keep my tail down here in the south. No sir. I do not. Well today, I think we're going to start off here with what is the topic of today is. What's your number one thing that you see on the road today that really. Screams, disrespect amongst the trucking community. I can only pick one. Well, no, you can. We gonna pick a plan anyway. We gotta start somewhere. How about not leaving enough room when you pass somebody before you come back over? Yeah, that's something we commonly see out here. Most definitely not just picking young drivers, sometimes it's just the old cat that's just an aggressive driver, he don't care and he just get it back over in his lane and take your hood off. And sometimes he, maybe he's a little mad because he had to pass you'cause you're not running 80 miles an hour like he is. Think, a lot of the problem comes down to if drivers don't hurry up and get on back over the four wheelers will jump over there in the granny lane and start passing on the right and then they're stuck out there? Yeah, I get that does happen. But they need to be some sort of etiquette amongst. At least us drivers. There's, there does. And if you get stuck out there in the hammer lane for a couple extra minutes. So what? Right. I think we're all used to rolling their eyes and shaking their head and scratching their head a little bit at the four wheelers and the silly things that the four wheelers do. But when we start doing it to ourselves and our own brotherhood in the trucking industry, that's a little bit different story. And that's something I'm seeing a lot. I was on 80 up in Pennsylvania there last week. I was running up and toward the East coast and it's a madhouse. Unreal. One particular gentleman, he couldn't pull a hill, I was quite a bit lighter but not super light. So I didn't want to lag behind him as I'm going up the hill, it's a short hill. I get almost by him. Next thing you know, he's coming, dragging down the hill. And so he is hanging me out in the left lane all the way down the hill, running 80 miles an hour, hanging me out in the left lane knowing that he can't the other side of that hill. That's just BS and he knows it, of course he wouldn't look at me. I find it really interesting. Of course, somebody's doing something they know is. highly not looked upon. They can't make eye contact, they tuck their head back past the curtain they know what they're doing and that's, oh yeah. We need to work on that. Most definitely. I agree a hundred percent. I think, we all have different speeds so far that we run out here. I think we need to be mindful amongst each other we all out here trying to do the same job. There's no competition, there shouldn't be amongst ourself. We should be riding down the road, watching each other's back, not trying to run over each other or kick each other's teeth in. Yeah, there's no need in all that. I mean, back in the day, and I hate, keep going back to the old days, I guess I got in on the last of the tail end of the respect, the brotherhood and, man, that really, made an impression with me. That set the pace for the rest of my career and that's just the way i've never varied from that. It always tried to keep that respect amongst myself and other drivers, and I'm not picking on young drivers'cause it ain't always too young drivers., No it's not. Sometimes, it ain't always the foreign driver either. Some of them guys are just happy to be here. They waving at you when you go by. They might not have a license, but they gonna wave at you. They gonna hope ICE ain't at the next rest area, but they going, but you're right. Yeah, they definitely getting serious about that. I seen several setups. Even in Ohio last week, man, they burning it up, yeah. Amazon truck ain't got a prayer in hell right now. Yeah. No, they sure don't. Yeah. I think Amazon gonna be hiring some drivers here full. But I think a lot of places will be. Yeah, I think they're kind of getting a double whammy. I got a couple of close friends of mine are still in the brokerage end of the industry and the heat gets turned up in the kitchen and, they're not booking these loads on these carriers. If they can't talk to the driver that's picking the load up and verify that he can speak English and have some sort of. Viable social security number they're not booking the load with'em because, if they go down to the scale house, get pulled in and this guy's, truck gets impounded, there's that cash load on that truck, that's a mess. And you know who's gonna foot that bill? It ain't gonna be that company. That broker's going to pay dearly to get his customer's load back. Not to mention he possibly could lose the customer. Because in the brokering industry, you ain't really got a lot to sell, but service, and if you ain't doing your homework and properly vetting these carriers, that's about all you got. You gotta sell that. And if you're not doing that and the customer's load sitting over there on the inbound yard, that's kinda hard to explain well enough to keep the account. But yeah, with a brokerage, really all you do have to sell is service. Yeah. Most definitely. And that's really the only thing that you're selling. Most definitely. And the thing about this as a driver, we're the same way. We service too, and it ain't just to the company that we work for. I mean, it's to the clients, to how we carry ourself out here on the road, how we represent our company. We don't stop thinking about, whatever truck and company or even if we're driving for our own company and you're representing your company and you get out here and acting silly, throwing pee bottles out along the side of the road and the back of the truck stop. And not to mention them bags that looked like. Now we ain't even gonna talk about what's in that bag. Imagine, stepping on that sliding halfway through past the truck, middle of the night. I believe I'd be a little hot. Real hot. Yeah. I believe I'd be about ready to fist fight somebody. Exactly., We see it day in, day out and we complain. We get mad truck stops or. Charging the park and do you blame'em? They gotta pay somebody to go out there and pick up piss balls and shit bags. I'm just gonna go ahead and say it. We all know what it is, and it's like, would you do this at your house? Would you do that in your home? No. But you do that in our home because them truck stops are our home. This is where we stay and it's a dog and pony show out here. I mean, it's hard enough to keep the hood on your truck. The bumper, the mirrors. God knows what else, let alone, tripping on a pea bottle or something that of sort it's getting bad and everybody gets mad. Just say Walmart for instance, you know they don't like trucks parking on their lots. Do you ever ask yourself why I don't blame them? Do you think Walmart wants their lot looking that way? Probably not. I mean, I can't put words in Walmart's mouth, but they probably don't, you can't hardly blame'em. I mean, there are some Walmarts, they're set up for truck parking and there's some that are in areas where they have city ordinance where they couldn't have parking even of their own trucks. I got a friend of mine, he drives Walmart. There's some stores he can't even park at, so it ain't all Walmart. On their defense, look at Bucky's. I'm not in no means. A big Bucky's fan. Ain't really my cup of tea, but, they don't want trucks in there. I don't blame'em. Somewhere along the line, we brought this on ourself, at least some of you, we used to live in a very trucker friendly world. The general public could always count on the truck driver to stop. They were broke down the side of the road, lend a hand. You see families standing up next to the wood line hoping that the truck driver don't run'em over if they broke down side road. And that's to God's honest truth. You didn't see people running into people sideswiping, I wouldn't pull off on the side of the road unless it was a life or death emergency. That's another good topic for today. These drivers that just pull off on the shoulder of the highway causing all kinds of mayhem, instead of hitting a off ramp or on ramp or something like that, or, they stopped just before rest area or something like that and just stop on the shoulder and you got traffic trying to scramble to move over to give them room. I don't have a choice but to hit the shoulder. All right, I get it. But you know, if you're just pulling off to take your 30 minute break or just pulling over'cause you gotta pee, just find somewhere besides the shoulder of the interstate to do it right at, at least you know the exit ramp. I mean, you're putting yourself and a lot of other people. I mean, you gotta realize we live in one of the most distracted driving worlds right now, and it just ain't the truck. It's the four wheelers and everybody's on their phone. They're having three conversations at one time on text. Well, they texted somebody with their hand. I mean, that's, I wouldn't put it past them. I mean, we got people out there watching movies going down the road, driving an 18 wheeler. I mean, why couldn't a car text and scroll on Facebook? I mean, we got phones nowadays, the size of a tablet. Have you, you talk about distracted driving, kind of, kind of go back to the nineties. Before I started driving truck, but I'd be going down the road in my car, shifting gears because I had a five speed shifting gears, smoking a cigarette, drinking a mountain dew, flipping through CDs. It don't get much more distracted than what we had back in the nineties, man. Yeah, but no punt intended. We definitely didn't have much more distractions than that, but I think we did have a little bit more in the attention span back in the day. Where shifted gears and smoking a cigarette didn't take a whole lot of thought. You had your CDs, they were kind of color coded, popped it in, no big deal, grab another gear. It was just muscle memory. We'd think about it. But when you're absorbed into an electronic where we're reading and we're doing things that we do behind the laptop computer. We really start getting some distraction going on. No, you're right. Yeah, most definitely. I think what it is, the phones just people are just so much more immersed in their phones than we were with our CDs and, all that kind of stuff. I think the next one on our list, at least for me, this is a big one because I, I run a lot of nights, that's kind of my wheelhouse. I love nights Peaceful's quite, it's set for the guy that goes out and he buys him a 2000 Columbia, and then he puts him a set of these. U-F-O-L-E-D headlights in it. And then he puts him a lock bar across the front bumper to go with it. And I think he's trying to see the moon or I, I mean, if you're that blind tonight, maybe you shouldn't be driving. Maybe somebody needs to check your vision, but man, the rest of us would like to see too at Dole FYI, in case anybody's listening out there, Hey, turn the damn, at least a light bar off. Give us a break. I mean, leave the retina in our eyes that leads me in to the next one. And I'm not going to even name the one predominant company. I think everybody already knows. I ain't even got said. But you go to pass, and I know the guy thinks he's doing his D but he will flip them bright lights on to let you over and he will burn the retinas out of your eye. Instead of trying to blind my ass and let me find my way back over there like Ray Charles. It'd probably be the better for the both of us if you just not flash your lights, leave'em alone. If you can't turn'em on and off like you're supposed to, don't do nothing. I would appreciate that a thousand times I know you think you're doing a good deed. But when you blind somebody, you're causing a hazard, and that's the real deal. Yeah. I'd really just rather'em not do anything, just let me handle it myself. Exactly. I mean, I think we all have enough equipment and mirror configuration nowadays and marker lights. We know where we're at in the road. I think we've been driving, most of us. I mean, they are that occasional driver that he wants to come past me and partially in my lane and his lane too. I'm like, all right, all right, I'll drive over here on the shoulder. Just, Hey man, I'll give you all the room you need. Just leave me outta the ditch. I mean, things have just really gone off the chain when it comes to the respect of the other men and women out here on the road. They are more than just you driving up and down the road trying to make a living. And if this offends you, maybe you need to take a look at the way you've been doing. just common sense, man, maybe instead of offending and being offended, maybe take a few pointers, say, Hey man, maybe that's just not cool to do that, it would definitely help out in the long run if we could all work together and do things, the right manner. Where we can all peacefully drive up and down the road without stressing causing any more stress than we already have to. I mean, this business is stressful enough as it is. You got CH Robertson or. PQL calling 10 times a night wondering where you're at. You got the dispatchers calling, you can't sleep. It's stressful enough without adding to it, not to mention just being away from the family and friends it is stressful. I mean, I've done this for 30 years and I'm still rolling up and down the road just like everybody else, just because I sat here behind this mic on my day off, but I ain't even been to bed since yesterday. Right Now it's got in this morning, but you know what? I dedicate my time to put out here to the trucking industry. Maybe something somewhere along the line may kind of help bring somebody back into reality a little bit. If I can do that, if I can help a hundred people, that's a hundred more people than we had. You know that that's what I try to do. That's what this is all about, just helping people. I mean, I know we joke around a little bit and that's all fun and games, but in all reality, we do need to bring the brotherhood back into this industry because right now, I don't know what the hell this is because we got going on. But it ain't brotherhood. No, it sure ain't no, it's a far cry from what it was when we first started. Yeah. You, you got people out there, wanting to fist fight and people's, I don't know what it is we got going on right now, but it ain't brotherhood. When you've got people that out here in the truck stops damn near at fist fights, fighting over parking places. I seen a guy, you're all back, man. I guess he was tired. He pulled in, he left his lights on. I mean, we've all done it. Somebody got out and spray painted this guy's headlights black. Come on, man. Oh my word. Come on. I mean, was there really any call for that? I mean, the worst case scenario I would've done maybe were beat on the guy's door and woke him up. Said, come on man. Can you turn your lights off? No. We had to go out there and spray paint the guy's lights. That's crazy. This is what we're talking about here. Vandalizing someone else's truck lights I've heard of guys putting duct tape on the headlights. So the heat from the headlights makes the adhesive on the duct tape melt to the headlight. I mean just crazy. Whatever happened to this? Go politely. Peck on the door. Hey man, left your headlights on. I'm sure he is tired. He probably didn't mean to, he probably just says, oh man, I'm so sorry. Lemme turned off. That would've been the end of the story, but no, we gotta cause a great big ordeal. Spray paint somebody's headlights man that ain't brotherhood by no means. We used to have people out here that helped each other. we need to bring that back.'cause if we keep going the way we're going, this industry is going to be 10 times worse. And it makes everybody's life better. Even the people that doing the stuff. If they stop and understand, Hey, you know what, this ain't cool. We ain't grade school anymore. This is a real working man's industry. This is the backbone of this country. And when we fight amongst each other, that's why we never get anything accomplished. When you go and you want rules and laws and things passed, and we look like modern trustees of chemistry, you think they're gonna listen to us? No, they're not. They look at us like we're the laughing stock of this country. Even though we are the backbone of the country, nobody takes us serious. And I wonder why that is. Well, and again, it. Comes right back down to, we always have to trash up the parking lots and, the rest areas. I mean, as an industry, we're really not worthy of respect at this point, not the way we're acting. I walked in probably about a couple of months ago, man, it took everything I could do to keep my mouth shut, chewed my tongue off, to just tell this guy what I thought. this particular individual was in there washing his feet in the sink where people washed her hands. Ugh. And where they brush their teeth. Yeah. And then when they get done washing their feet, they didn't bother washing their hands. They went out there and fix yourself a cup of coffee, And then, then they go in there, with the, the water bottles. They won't use toilet paper. They go get a water bottle and, and splash water up on it, and then go out there and fix yourself a cup of coffee. Come on, man. You wonder why we had COVID, you wonder why we had, and I'm surprised we ain't got something 10 times worse than that. And then, then want to go out and put the hands all over the food on the roller rack. Well, it won't coffee Hell, I was just complaining about the coffee. I forgot about the roller rack. Is this, it it, I think in some ways we need a big, great, big healthy doses. Some common sense, man, we need to bring that back. It needs to come back into style. Like bell bottoms. No, I think bell bottoms can stay right where they're at. Yeah. The common sense. We can bring that back, but the bill bottoms need to stay in the seventies where, where they were left. You got that right. Yo, and that kind of leads me down talking about the price of diesel. That's another thing we need to talk about. The fuel island is not the place to park to do 30 minute breaks. It is not the place to park to go take a shower, and if you can't run in and grab what you need in a fairly timely manner, you need to go find yourself a little place to park. most places has a little area of that you could probably pull up alongside the scale or something if you could pull a little over out of the way if you can. I get it. Truck stops are crowded, especially certain times of day. But be mindful of the guy behind you. cause we see a lot of, near death experiences in that field island when people get pissed off. This guy comes outta the truck stop with his flip flops and his Wendy's and his shower back. They ain't nothing gonna like make somebody lose his shit any faster than that right there. You're right about that. I mean, that's just the bottom line. I mean, come on man. Even though, I mean, I know when I pulled through the fuel island and I go in to get a bite to eat, just run in whatever fast food joint they got and just try to get back to the truck as fast as I can. But if that restaurant holds me up. Then I'm holding up the guy behind me and I always try to get back as fast as I can, but I always feel bad at the same time. If I come out and see the guy standing there just twiddling his thumbs staring at me walking back to the truck. And it is like, well, sorry dude, it's almost inevitable to prevent it 100% because there just ain't enough parking. I mean, that's the bottom. No, there really ain't, they ain't not parking. I don't care where you're at, what you're doing, they end up parking. But when you come into that truck stop, you pretty well know what your intentions are. Did you come to get fuel? Did you come to get fuel and coffee? Did you come to get fuel, coffee and take a shower? Okay. If I'm coming into a truck stop and I know I'm possibly going to be a little longer, I try to take the farthest fuel island out because, the closest fuel islands to the door is the most busy. I want to try to take the fuel island way out there, try to do my thing, pull up and then go in.'cause that's going to buy me the most time. Right.'Cause that's going to be the last fuel island that's going to be used. And I really feel like there's this common sense things that you could do that kind of help. It may not be much, but it's just enough to keep the guy behind you at bay not holding him up. Because that little extra time you just bought yourself by. Pulling through the end bay, just, now you're not in anybody's way. You've done what you needed to do. And I'm not talking about going, taking showers. That should never be an ordeal. I ain't talking about a 30 minute break. That should never be an ordeal, period. No, absolutely not. Coffee snack, run in real quick. Use the bathroom, do what you gotta do, and go, that fuel island is not the place to spend more than probably 10, 15 minutes at the absolute most. Exactly. And I'm being, pretty lenient there. And then you see, and there again, we're addressing the parking issue here a little bit in these truck stops. stacking up in front of other trucks, blocking other trucks in. I know you gotta park where you can. I've been seeing people just parked in the middle of the parking lot. It's like they just drove in and set their brakes. They ain't even close to nobody. They sat in the middle of the parking lot, got the headlights on truck, still running. It's like they just fell out of the seat and the floor. Hopefully they pulled the brake. I don't know. I seen the guy the other day. Yeah, I've seen that one too. He was literally in the middle of the rope. He was nowhere close to a scale, nowhere close to the end of the aisle. Nowhere close to the end of the fuel island. He was just sitting in the middle of the road, lights on. He was asleep. People were driving all around him. I mean, what part of that screams, damn, maybe I should have parked somewhere else. And I'm really not trying to be a smart ass, but at the bare minimum we could do better than this. Oh yeah. At the bare minimum, we could absolutely do better than what we're doing. Yeah. I mean, people, we gotta get it together. There's no wonder the general public looks at us like we're freaking natures. what examples do we give'em? Not everybody, there's still people out here that's good. People that do a good job. I'm talking about a very small percentage. Kinda like my mama used to say one or two bad apples ruins the bunch. there's some very good professional drivers out here that do all the right things. For the most part, we're all entitled to a mistake or two. But you know, we got some out there that just don't even try. There's no way they could even give an effort to some of the things I see out here it was a few years ago, I was delivering to a warehouse, and, on my way in, I'm not gonna mention the name of the company, but on the way into the warehouse, this guy had pulled his brakes and pulled his curtains and gone to bed. Sitting in a live lane of traffic on the road. Oh, on a two lane road. He just stopped in the middle of the lane, popped his brakes, pulled his curtains, and went to bed. The only other time I seen that I was out in Arkansas one time on I 40, we was all shut down. It a bad accident. And we were there for a while and this guy, he literally, he closed his curtains out there and we're all going by a truck after truck. We run 65, 70 mile an hour and this guy's dead stop right in the thing. thank God they was, a cop there, turned his lights on, got behind and go over trying to wake the guy up. He'd sit there as long as he just pulled the curtains and went to bed. He didn't think about that. Got direct cleaned up. Now he just as hell with it. I'm going to bed, sitting in the middle of the road. He didn't even go to the shoulder. He didn't do nothing. He pulled the curtains and went to bed. Oh my goodness. I think he was just overstimulated. They had have been a flip-flop sale somewhere that day. Yeah. I think an ad the other day said the 85% drop in flip flop sales in the truck stop in the last 30 days. I think that'd probably be about accurate. I did see where they were cracking down on the footwear and stuff. I mean, we definitely got way too lax out here on the road. I mean, this is a job. We do need to wear legitimate clothing. I seen a guy the other day who was attempt to look semi-professional. I seen a guy the other day. At first glance, I thought maybe the guy needed to get up. He was asleep. He was, parked and doing a layover or something. No, he goes back outta the field. And gets in the truck, puts his seatbelt on, takes off. This guy literally had his sponge bob pajamas on in his fuzzy house shoes. I'm not kidding with you, SpongeBob. Oh my God. You can't make this shit up. Wow. You really can't. No. Can't make this shit up. I'll be the first one to admit, when me and my wife were running team, we had our own truck. We were running coast to coast, North Carolina, California, and back. That's about all we were doing. On the days that I knew that I wasn't gonna be dealing with customers, if I knew it was just going to be riding, maybe stop for tank of Fuel or whatever. Alright, fine. I wanna be comfortable. I wear my shorts, tank top and flip flops, but if I was gonna go in and deal with customers that day, I put on a nice pair of shorts and a nice shirt, tennis shoes, tried to look at least halfway respectable. But yeah, I know some people was going to laugh at me for wearing shorts, tank tops. Flip flops. Well, days I didn't have to deal with customers. I don't care. I was comfortable. I wasn't dealing with nobody. I wasn't dealing with the public. I dealing with customers, Well, I think the biggest issue with that now is, it actually is against the DOT regulation or it flip flops and drive. So I think that's where they're really busting'em right now today. And I don't think if we'd have had such an epidemic of it, and so many of certain drivers, I'm not going to call out particular, I think they all, we all know what group of drivers that this is. I don't really think it would ever been brought to the point that it's out now where they're actually putting people out service for it. Right. It became such a problem. On the outside that it, had to get dealt with. Yeah. It really just left them no choice but to address the issue. Right. Exactly. And, we all won't be comfortable and, shorts and tank top. I mean, I'm guilty of that. It's the next guy, and then you see this cool cat, you think you're the coolest guy in the truck stop. Do you see somebody come in with his foot hanging out the window, Propped up on the dashboard or, yeah, like, come on man. I mean, these are legitimate complaints. I mean, I ain't even got started. We probably ain't even gonna get halfway through the list anywhere close tonight. But I mean, we just wanna try to hit on some serious issues, the driving etiquette, one of the other, talking about driving, this is another thing. If I'm going down the highway and I get over to let you on the highway, what are you supposed to do? I tell you what you ain't supposed to do and that's drag race my ass down the road you're supposed to yield. Yeah. I shouldn't have to speed up to 80 miles an hour to get back over and it ain't my job to kill my pace to get back over behind you. When I did the courtesy to let you out, you do have the yield sign, that's just common sense. You yield to oncoming traffic. If you need to hear this out there, when people move over, it ain't because they got to, it's because they're doing this out of the goodness of their heart. So let that man back in and don't blind them in the process. I was driving 3 79 p back in the day, was out there in California just north of San Diego, and bumper to bumper traffic, rush hour, a fella comes up on my right. I never seen the car till I bumped him. but he come over in front of me. I never, I never saw him. And, luckily it was, it wasn't nothing but a little love tap, but. I called the highway patrol out there. Cal CHP told me, if you're merging it is your responsibility to do so safely. Now. I mean, where I bumped the guy, it wasn't my fault. He's the one that cut over in front of me. But, I think that's the only time in history that California sided with a truck over a car. Right. The highway patrolman. He told me flat out, he said, it's the other guy's fault. And he said, if you're merging, it is your responsibility to do so safely. Period. and we see that day in, day out, we see four wheelers coming on. I try to adjust a little bit. I mean, I give and take, it's just common courtesy, one of the most dangerous things you do all day long on the highway is change lanes. You got 78 feet long a truck every time you change lanes. That's one of the number one accidents out here on the highway, changing lanes, And if you can adjust your speed a little and let somebody get on the highway and get going, hey, it's the safest way to do it. Swapping that truck across the lane, back and forth, back and forth, all day long, you're double tripling your chances of sideswiping a car, running somebody over. And that's just the bottom line. Those numbers don't lie. If you can pace yourself, you're not going to lose. But milliseconds, you lose three miles an hour off of 65 miles an hour. Wow. You're gonna lose three tenths of a mile at the end of the day. 10 hour driving period. Right. I mean, come on man. If you're running that late, you should have left yesterday. I mean, I think we've all been guilty of that at some point or another, but Oh yeah, exactly. We used to have a lot of fun out here. We really did. Oh, well man, we did. We had a lot of fun. I remember running out through West Texas back when it was, man, it was horrible. It's when they had that variable speed limit from day and night. Oh yeah. That stretch of highway between Dallas and El Paso right there. Man, I'm gonna tell you what you talking about. Rough And man, they would hide. Texas Highway patrol, man, they'd hide in the bushes. They'd be down in the, under a rock. I mean, they'd be everywhere. And of course, back in the day, Hey, I'm gonna tell on myself a little bit. We was all running bird dogs and CBS and, two, three damn log books. Like, shit we wasn't supposed to be done. But that's how you had to do to make a living back then. A lot of these cats nowadays, they have no idea of the shit we had to deal with back in the day to make a living. No. And not a clue. In a lot of ways, the eLog, we ain't gonna get into the eLog. I'm gonna leave the eLog alone. But, we had a lot of fun. We did man. We talked and talked and bullshit, bump me back and forth. And man, we had the best time of our life running across that desert and at West Texas Desert. Man, we talked about from everything from chicken lights to homemade chicken and dumplings to, wives or kids. And man, we talked about everything. I'd say half the country know their business and we didn't care. But, we had that. And you didn't know that guy on the other end. you didn't know him from Adam? No. He was a brother though. he was a truck driving brother. He was a part of the brotherhood that you were in, everybody watched each other's back. You watched theirs and everybody went across through their, I ain't going to say legally, but we got a little carried away sometimes, a time or two. Yeah. Time or two. Yeah. We definitely wasn't doing 55 miles an hour, I tell you that. It was like back when Ohio had that split speed limit. We 70 mile an hour for cars, trucks, couldn't do nothing but 55. And we'd all group up together, just convoy through Ohio running 70, 75 miles an hour, Yeah. Oh, I remember them days. Good times. Good times, man. I got pulled over at Eden, Ohio. I had a really nice W 900 and that truck wasn't nothing but a speeding ticket. that truck would just move. It wasn't right for a truck to run like that, but it did. I think that thing had about 112, 113 lights on it. Man, as little dude, I punched it a little bit and get around this truck.'cause he kept slowing down, speeding up, slowing down, speeding up. And I said, man, I'm just gonna get around this guy. And the minute I did their little dude sitting under the bridge right there, I thought, there we go. Another, and of course, he wanted to have a talk with me on the side of the road. first thing he did is, man, what, what are you, what are you driving a truck like this that fast? I said, what do you mean a truck like this? He said, yeah. He said, man, he said, well, you got all these lights on this truck. I said, man, I don't know. I said, hell, I'm scared of the dark. I guess he started laughing. He said, you wouldn't be a little bit of a smart ass. Says not at all, sir. He said, well just slow this thing down. He said, get on out here. I, that was probably one of the most decent officers, right? I mean, I shook his hand. I'll tell you what. I appreciate everything you do out here and a lot of respect goes long way. I mean, I've seen in the scaled houses, man, these guys will argue the law and I don't know the law and man, all you doing is making that ticket longer'cause that guy's got the book. You ain't, he's got the big book in there, in the scale house. I think he pretty well knows what he is doing and it still ain't gonna come out pretty, that just ain't no way to be. Oh, it's best to just let'em do what they going to do and fight it later. Exactly. A highway patrol CHP pulled me over one time and this back hell, I was still pretty green. Hell, this is still in the nineties. Had a bunch of the signs took down. I was coming outta and where the road split off, they had a lot of the signs took down and you could get to 80 from there. What I was trying to do was get through Sacramento and I guess that particular way around was no through trucks. Of course, I didn't see no sign. It was took down. That little motorcycle cop pulls me over and he tells me, man, you know you can't be on this road. I said, well, it said to I 80. He said, yeah, but this is no trucks. I said, man, I didn't see no sign. He even admits to me. He said, okay, yeah, we got all that construction. We got a lot of the signs took down. I said, oh, okay. I said, so, I mean, he is cool as he could be. He's out there, he is showing me how to get around. He followed me down to the next exit, flipped me around, showed me how to get back, but he didn't do none of that before. He wrote me that ticket, though. That was my complaint. Still wrote me a ticket. Oh, yeah. It is just like a parking ticket. Ain't that big a deal. 50 bucks. Yeah.$500 later. Man. They'll do that out there. They'll, they'll play it. They'll tell you it's$50. Next thing you know, it's five,$600. What do you mean? Supposed to be like a parking ticket? Oh, no. Damn parking ticket. You got off cheap. Yeah. California's something else. They're a broke state. Not to mention whatever else we want, throw in there. I love California. It's a beautiful state. I just don't like it really I just don't like things that go on there, the way things is done. we're not gonna go down that rabbit hole in the politics, but we going to stop there while we can. But it is a beautiful state. Yeah. I like the state. I used to enjoy going out there. I just didn't like dealing with CHP and I mean, it's like, come on man. I think they just, they went out of their way to definitely make money. Unless you're out of California. Now, if you're out of California, you could roll across that banding scale with a stream of old coming out of the motor and they ain't gonna turn their head. I've seen that. They won't even look cross side out if you're from California. They cut a lot of them cats. A lot of slack right there. Well, at least the way it used to be. I ain't been out in California in several years and I love the state man. I really do. But that is, it's beautiful. I mean, I've been all over the place out in Redwood Forest and all up in there, probably a few places I shouldn't have been, but you know, me and the wife went out there. I was doing some local work. I just flew the wife out there, man. We took a few days off and went, rented a car and went out to the beach and Malibu and drove up the coast. Man, I tell you why. We went all the way up to Pismo Beach and around, man. I tell you what that is a beautiful country. Beautiful country. It really is. Yeah. I do miss running out that way. Oh, I do too, man. I loved going out and, running across country, stretching my legs and all that. Man, I loved it. nowadays, I mean, I gotten a little domesticated, I like being home every week and, wear and tear on your body and all that. I mean, after you've been doing this for as many years as we've been doing it, you tend to get a few creaks and you don't really roll quite as easy as you used to. Them hard days, 650, 700 miles a day out through they take a toll on you. They really do. Living on the road. I mean, you gotta think, what's that do to the human psyche? That's one of the reasons I started this podcast, particularly is the mental health. I founded Saber Group and that's. Part of what makes this all possible right here, what we're doing, and we offer full line of coaching, mental health relationship, family, we got stuff going on in your house or you just down in the dumps, man, that's what we're here for. We can go in there and sign up, send us an email, go on group.com, or for that matter, you go on the truck or radio podcast and send us an email. They both have contact information. we'll reach out to you, set you up. We do charge either 30 minute session or I think it's a 50 minute session. We don't charge a whole lot. We make it very affordable, but it's there,, and I have, everything's put together. We're all certified, schooled, know what we're doing, if there's issues, there. We're well equipped to take care of everything you need. Toward the end of this show here. We're trying, trying to get everything wound down here, but there's definitely some, another issue here. I wanna, I want to address a little bit of a hotspot in my thought process in the truck stop etiquette, and I know everybody uses them. You know, it's not like we have porta-potties set out everywhere in the back of the truck stop. But there's a, a way to do things that is not as barbaric as we like to make things. You know, we pour things out all over the parking lot. Come on man there, there's a way to do things. we were just talking about this the other day. Every time you turn around, you see a cat out there pouring his pee bottles out right beside the door of the truck. What The hail goes through your mind, sometimes they say lazy. They won't even get out of the truck. They just open the door and piss, pour it out on the ground. Splatter all over. I remember one time Matt was probably one of the worst arguments, damn. They got in a fight with a guy. I just had my wheels all polished up. That was that big lone star one I had before the last one I just had all the wheels. Polished I ain't even gonna tell you, much spent getting this truck cleaned up and this jackass done opened the door and poured his bottle out, splattered all over my tanks, my steps, my wheels, and I wasn't real nice. I ain't gonna lie, I don't think anybody else would've been either, just laziness. I mean, it ain't no secret. We're not accommodated with porta-potties on every aisle. I get it. Everybody's gotta use'em. But there again, there's some etiquette, walk back there, pour it out in the grass, or wait until you can get somewhere to pour it down a drain. Okay. Pouring it out in the parking lot. I mean, if I pull in there the next afternoon and I got an air leak going on or something going on in the truck, and I gotta get down and look under the truck, I mean, what am I laying in? I mean, What am I down there? I'm down there in somebody's pee. That ain't cool. I mean, that's just the bottom line. that should never ever be something you do. It takes a half a second. It walk back there and pour that out. At least in the grass, the water, the range, at least it ain't in the parking lots and they're running under everybody else's truck. Everybody else walking in it, tracking it in their truck. I mean, it doesn't take a rock at scientist to understand that, and that's, I know this has been a little bit of a complaint session, but we need to get our ducks in a row here. We really do as an industry, as a hood, I'm not the oldest guy here on the road, but no means, but I did start back when it was a whole different animal than it is today. And I know what it was like back then. We may not be able to reenact the old union 76 and free parking, but there's a lot of things that we could do out here that makes life a lot easier. and that's just real simple. It's called respect. Common sense and doing the right thing, even when somebody's not looking, doing the right thing. That's the number one thing Right from wrong. At least most of us do. And when you get out of that truck, keep in mind, do the right thing. Just be a decent human being. That's all anybody asks for respect one another. that's huge. That's astronomical. Just a little respect for each other. you see so much aggression out on the road it's like they will kick your teeth in to get a half a mile ahead of you. I mean, where did this come from? Just take the next exit. And there again, we ain't just talking about four wheelers. We're talking about the men and women out here running alongside of us driving the same thing we're driving. It's not a race, it's a lifestyle. And I think people forget that this is a lifestyle. That's what makes it a brotherhood. And when you live this lifestyle, you have the brotherhood alongside the guy next to you. And that comes with unspoken respect. Doing the right thing that benefits other people. And that's really what we're trying to say. it costs nothing to be a decent human being. It costs nothing to do the right thing. and I think we need to get back to that. And that's something I'd really like to see. And that's one of the things I said when I started this podcast is, hey, maybe we can get some of the brotherhood back into this industry. Maybe there's a voice somewhere. Maybe it may be mine or maybe Sean's or whoever else we have. Maybe somebody somewhere will be a voice that says, Hey, let's go back to the way things used to be and let's do things the way.'cause I think things were great. I mean, yeah, we got some new technology, GPS, this, that, cell phone, there, there's some good things that's happened, but they've been a lot of bad too. The cell phone is great for. latching into your family, being able to FaceTime your kids and all that. But it's also made a stranger to the man and women beside of us. We don't care. We've tuned that out. We have become emotionless to the people that work out here beside us. But hey we're all on the same team. It may not seem like it, but we're all out here living the same life, trying to survive just like you. And I think that's where we really need to work on a few things I'd like to, we're gonna start doing, I've been getting a lot of emails and we're gonna start at the end of every show, we're gonna start addressing. A handful of emails. We're gonna leave the email in the description of each podcast, and if you've got ideas or something you'd like to ask or input hey, drop us a line. That's what we're here for and we'll try our best to get back and dress it on the show. Talk about things, that needs to happen and if we can be of influence of some manner to try to get things back to a certain way or bring things to people's attention, there's things that people do, they may not even understand that. It may even dawn on'em, Hey, this ain't cool. They don't even understand sometimes. But I got a feeling a lot of people do. But there's that small percent, Hey, we may be able to say you shouldn't do this. If you do it this way, it would be so much better and it made a difference. But at least it's an effort,? and hopefully we can see a turn of events, happening out here that, puts this together. We used to be such a great industry. We really did. We stood behind each other. We stood together If, I mean, they, I remember times they, they'd be a guy in the truck stop, blow a turbo, had a problem, man. They'd be three other trucks over there lined up, dragging their toolboxes out. They had the guy going. I've seen people change the clutch of the truck stop parking lot. Hell, I've changed two turbos in my years in the truck stop parking lot. that was back when we could actually work on the engines. They didn't have the dang computerized actuators and all that. you had the old mechanical waste gate ducts, Detroit sixties, they was easy enough to work on, especially the big long head trucks. you raise the hood, they each stand right on the ground, reach everything on the engine. that was actually an interesting time. My first turbo, I had a big old long hood xl, classic man. I loved that truck. I was coming outta the scales. I turned lineman Colorado. I was right there just coming out the end of the ramp, merging back onto the highway, out the scales. Man, that turbo it cut loose, man. Smoke rolling. I limped it over at the Flying Jay. I sat there in the flying tee for about three days. Overnighted me a turbo from a parts place over in Louisville, Kentucky and had everything took off and slipped it back and slipped the old one in the box and do the chorus. Exchange. Had everything ready when they brought it. UPS man told, hang on just a second. Jerked that box open. Slid the old one back in it. He taped it up and we did the return right there. Took that new one. We put that on that truck, got it right back up and rolled. We rolled up out there. That took a little while to burn the oil out of the, air a little bit., We tried to keep it, it didn't come plumb apart. It just blow the seals in it, the oil everywhere. But you know what, we fixed that truck right on the side of the road, I mean on the truck stop parking lot. those were the good old days. We could actually afford to work on something. I mean, you carried tools in the truck. Other man had a problem. You helped him fix it. There was no question. You just did it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I had a buddy of mine, he rebuilt both his rear ends and the truck stop parking lot. Yeah, man, that was some good times. It really was, man. I mean, don't get me wrong, I used to turn ranches and stuff. I don't do anymore. I mean, I do little things. It's all part of getting old, I guess. But I used to enjoy working on stuff. I mean, people call me, I get calls all the time, Hey man, trucks doing this, this and this, and oh yeah man, that's, such and that, you know this, that. And, sure enough, that's what it is. I mean, I'm really good at diagnostic I know these trucks have drove enough of'em. I've had all sorts of different engines to where I can pretty well listen to your description, if you know how to describe it correctly, and I can give you a pretty good, accurate description of what's going on. certain engines, they all have trademarks, and that's the first thing you need to look at. they generally hold true to most engines. There's a few things that's out of the box, but for the most part, they all have certain trademarks and they all will show their head one, one place or the other. But,, this overall truck maintenance and all, I mean, used to, man, you could take an old cat, I remember. First old truck, man, I ain't even gonna get into that man, that that truck old cab over. I drove. That was the first truck I ever drove, man. I had a mean four and a quarter cat. 13 speed man. That was a running, running old truck. I started out with a drop deck flatbed. My first job I was driving for a, he was an agent for Cardinal Flatbed. Had about three trucks., That was not a fun time and ain't gonna lie, but y'all learned a lot. Learned a whole lot. Yeah. Well, Sean, if you got most of your back still intact, you probably ain't missing it. Well, most of it anyway. Yeah, man, that thing was, I guess it was only years when they first started trying to call their self putting in, it looked like two donuts for airbags. I don't know what the hell that chip was supposed to do. Then he was sitting right on top of that front axle. There wasn't no damn airbag on that. Until when I got in the truck. And it was just in that transition period where, you had JB Hunt, Snyder, Burlington, you had, Burlington Motor Carriers. That was a pretty well known company back in the day. Then you had builders transport, no green and yellow trucks. They were big back in the day. Snyder. they all had cab overs. Nobody really had conventional tractors except for owner operators. And then they eventually started in with that century class. And then when Snyder and JB Hunt, they all started coming in with, the century class and so forth. Only the trainers had'em, and then they had, I think JB Hunt started that a lot with, the flat floor International. They say that was, I never drove one of'em. Hell, I wasn't lucky enough to have a truck, had a knife. I drove some junk, man. I ain't gonna lie. I'm going to tell myself, man. this old cab over, man. You talking about rough, I don't even know if it even had any heat. It didn't feel like it. I remember I was coming through the gorge. I'd went over to around DC over there and picked up a, like a small helicopter. And I was coming back across North Carolina and went through that gorge and it was the middle of wintertime. Man, it was cold, man. My feet about froze off. You know that truck didn't have didn't know what the hell cruise was in that old throttle. Stick over here. though I figured out how to reach, I turned that throttle stick up. I get it going. A decent amount of speed the way I wanted to, where I was comfortable with it. I drug that comforter off my bed, tucked that thing underneath my feet, had that thing tucked up around one hand, sticking out, holding onto the steering wheel. Man, you can see my breath in that truck, IPRO to death coming through that gorge over there in North Carolina. I tell you what, I told my son, he complains about trucks and I mean he probably don't drive nothing more than a year or two old. I said, man, I only want to hear it. I said, if you'd have drove some of the junk I drove. You done went to the house. In summertime you might as well get air conditioner. I said something about air conditioner. He said, whatcha talking about air conditioner? he said, hell, you run flatbed. Hell you need air conditioner for. That's the last conversation we had about that. Yeah. I've drove some of them old trucks. Man. The front end feels like it's about to fall out from under it. Can't hardly hold the steering wheel. I'm tell you man. But you know that doghouse, the front end shaking so bad. It feels like it's going to yank. Yank the wheel right outta your hand. they was supposed to have been no more than one inch. Play but I swear they was at least three or four inches you can't make this shit up, man. You really can't. I mean, it was old trucks. They were junk, they ran good. An old four and a quarter cat boy, you had to think pin that time and pinned on that truck. Man. You get to rolling through there, they had a double stacks a little bit oversized stacks going up the back of that cab. I mean, it was a good looking truck. It just, it was just old. I mean, real old. I mean, you go through them gears just jamming through that thing. If you didn't keep'em wound up, man, you don't get down. they wouldn't pull. You had to keep that thing wound tight, buddy. It ain't like these new trucks, these new trucks are made torque. Mm-hmm. Low torque, low RPM and mobile trucks. Man, if you got them things down, they wouldn't pull. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You had to turn'em up. Oh yeah. But. that old truck man has something else. But you know, I cut my teeth on that steering wheel, that truck right there. And it taught me a lot. And I'm convinced I taught it a lot because me, and it definitely had some come to Jesus meetings time or two. I mean, I was green. I ain't even gonna lie, man. That was my first trucking job. Guy said, I just got my CDL. He didn't ask. He's here, here's the keys. There's go, there's the load. Go get it. I just had to figure it out. different time, man. I mean, just, here you go. Go get it. And I'm surprised that things worked., I wouldn't want to do that nowadays, people, all the regulation stuff. But you didn't have all the regulation like we do now. I mean, you did, but it wasn't as intense. It wasn't as enforced. No, man, you gotta call cheating log books, shit. Hell, you just, oh, go to bed for a while and get up and do it again tomorrow. I did figure this out to get caught with no logbook than one that was to say it was cheaper to get caught with no log. But one, trust me, I had a deal. OT officer, he just told me, he, look man, he said, if you'd have just told me you didn't have one, we wouldn't even, we, I, I would've done been writing, but now. But it was definitely a different time DOT stuff, they were a whole lot different out there. but there again, the different era. They didn't have to worry about the, the stuff we got going on out here today they got tougher because people got a lot different if we were a little more responsible, I'd like to think things may not be at, to be so tough, we go back to more of a responsible era in the trucking industry. I think we would definitely see a difference in the way we're treated. Oh, absolutely. We can't blame nobody but ourselves.'cause I mean, we've allowed this to happen. We really have, we've sat here and watched these schools, these CDL meals. They pump these guys out there, they don't know what they're doing. Nobody teaches. It ain't their fault. Chances are he'd probably be a hell of a driver. Somebody teach him something. That's the problem. It all starts with the roots man, and that roots of the school. If you don't know what you need to be, if you're not taught what you need to know, how you expected to know it. I mean, there's a certain amount of things you can dig out on your own. Of course. But there's things that should always be taught in the schools, but we have these CDL meals that just pumps drivers out and there's a lot of good drivers that came out of those schools, but those are the few handful of drivers that had the initiative to learn it on their own,, but there's a lot of failure rate where people roll through these CDL mill and they're not gave the chance and that ain't right either. I don't believe in just picking on the, the new driver or the foreign driver we're all to blame one way or the other of where we're at., It's been good having you on the show here. I appreciate you having me. I think I'm gonna wrap this up. This'll do it for the Truckers Radio podcast. That’s it for this episode of The Trucker’s Radio Podcast, powered by Sabren Group LLC. Respect on the road ain’t just about hand signals and lane flashes it’s about remembering we’re all out here fighting the same fight. Let’s bring back the brotherhood. Let’s set the example for the next generation of drivers. If this episode spoke to you, share it. Help keep that old-school respect alive and strong. Check out more at www.TheTruckersRadioPodcast.com and follow us for more real talk from the road. Until next time keep your wheels turning, your lights on, and your head held high. Stay safe. Stay sharp. Keep it between the lines.