Tips for the road and non-domicile drivers.

In this episode of The Trucker’s Radio Podcast, host Coach Stacey Yearout delivers practical, real-world tips, tricks, and common-sense do’s and don’ts for surviving life on the road.

From parking issues to staying safe at truck stops, avoiding common rookie mistakes, and maintaining a professional mindset behind the wheel—this episode is packed with insight that only comes from decades of experience.

We also take a hard look at the growing presence of non-domicile drivers in the trucking industry. What is a non-domicile driver? How are they licensed? Why is it becoming such a controversial topic in the United States trucking community? Stacey breaks it down honestly and clearly—no politics, just facts and impact.

Whether you're just getting started or you’ve got 20 years under your belt, this episode has something that will help you drive smarter, safer, and stronger.

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Transcript

Dolores 0:00

Welcome to another episode of The Trucker’s Radio Podcast, powered by Sabren Group LLC. This is the show built for the men and women who keep America moving—bringing real talk, real support, and real experience to the trucking industry. Today, we’re breaking down some of the most important do’s and don’ts of life on the road—along with some hard-earned tips and tricks from behind the wheel. We’re also touching on the growing conversation around non-domicile drivers—what it means, what’s changing, and why it matters. Your host, Coach Stacey Yearout, is a 30-year industry veteran, business mentor, and the founder of Sabren Group LLC. He’s also the author of Silence of Humanity, and a true advocate for the people living life on the blacktop. So whether you're rolling solo or riding out a long haul—stick around. You just might hear something that makes a difference. Welcome to the Truckers Radio podcast. Today we got a couple of guys on here that's experienced drivers, been all over the United States, and we're going to take a little tips throughout the show about the do's and don'ts, and especially with all you new drivers learn a few things from us old cats and kind of throw it out here on the road. We're gonna start out with. The do's and don'ts and weight distribution. We got Mike from Georgia and we got Sean from North Carolina. Y'all with us? How's it going, Steve? Doing good. So first thing we're going to talk about. Honestly is, your truck stop etiquette. Of course, when you're in, you're trying to slide tandems and things like that. You wanna make sure, you're kind of back out of the way. You're not clogging up the truck stop if you're having problems, everybody knows, hey, these old tandems, they don't wanna slide real good. Your basics of tandem sliding is you gotta know, do you have. A big slot or a metric slot. That means your space between your holes are closer together. That means that you've got less pounds per hole. A lot of'em are 250, some of'em are 450, 500 a hole. You gotta know where you're at and what kind of trailer you got. Most general, they're marked on the side of the trailer. This one I believe is, your standard and it's, California hole. And this one in particular is, your fifth hole. And being the states that we operate in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, that would be your 11th hole to make Bridge Law on this particular trailer that I'm hauling. I know a lot of the different states, like North Carolina, Florida, they have different weight distribution you can have on your tandems. I know, some of the companies, allow you a 400 pound weight distribution for an A PU. I try not to use that unless it's just an absolute emergency. When you're distributing, it's kinda like a teeter totter. You move the wheels back, it throws the weight forward to your drives. When you move them underneath the trailer, it goes back to the tandems. I think a lot of people I've seen and out many, many times. I ran into a guy the other day, he had 10 years experience. He had no idea, Hey, how do you even slide the tandems? He really didn't. It's pitiful. It's becoming more and more common in this industry'cause they're not trained correctly. I've had some old cats train me and they've always told me, slide towards your problem. Exactly. If you're over on the drives, slide toward the problem. That's a good rule of thumb to think about it. It's just sliding toward the problem. That's actually a good idea. Honestly, it is. It is just, you gotta know how many pounds per hole, I can take, if I'm over 1200 pounds, I know exactly how many holes I need to slide back, it is really a real simple aspect. Once it clicks though, it kind of clicks. But I think that's where we have a lot of the trainers, they just don't really, they don't teach a lot of this in school. We have a lot of underdeveloped and that's kind of going to be one of our next episodes is we're going to talk about the training that the non domicile drivers get. That's a big topic nowadays. We see a lot of that out, out here. I hate to keep beating a dead horse, but it's a real problem. It is a big problem. I've seen it myself while pulling trailers out of a specific vendor and trying to assist, third party carriers, letting them know in the state of North Carolina, they're pulling out of the state of North Carolina going to a consignee. In the state of North Carolina, you were allowed 38,000 pounds on your tandem. So long as you're under the 80,000 pound gross mark. And they wanted to argue and disagree with me because nobody's taught them any different. You gotta understand some of these companies, I'm just gonna throw a few names out there, like Swift and Western Express and Schneider and US Express, some of these guys are training other guys with only six months to a year experience themselves. They have no idea what they're doing. And you had mentioned before Stacy, that you ran into a cat that had 10 years experience and now slight his tandems. I know a guy that had 10 years experience that used to train other people that had a very similar problem to that. And not to poke fun of nobody, but it does happen because if you don't know, you don't know. And the thing about it is, is you see people once they get past a certain. Time under their belt. They're embarrassed to ask'cause they think it makes'em look stupid. But there's no stupid question out here. They really ain't, you don't know. I always say it closed mouth, don't get fed. You gotta ask if you just don't know, We have a hell of a lot of problems out here on the highway. I see it all day, every day, in and out. You go into these truck stops. I mean, I went in to one the other day, thought I was gonna grab me a parking place, man. I sat there for 15 minutes. I mean, they switched out driver back and forth. I guess they were a team, and of course they were a non domicile and, they're just not trained. They don't get it. They don't understand. And finally after about 15 minutes, they got frustrated and went over and parked by the scale. You go into the truck stops. I mean, they're stacked up in the fuel aisle. They're stacked up beside the scales. They're stacked up in front of every other driver that can't get out. When they need to go to work, they gotta wake somebody up. Then they're mad, they get pissed off because somebody's gotta wake'em up to go to work. But the problem you shouldn't have parked there to start with you got to learn the ropes. If you're going to run out here with the big boys, I'm not trying to be an asshole. That's exactly right. And to further add to do that is, we used to have a term, for that in the industry, we used to call it a-hole parking. Because you basically, like you just said, you're blocking somebody from leaving when they're parked on the curb or parked on the scale, and the first ones to cry saying, you can't wake me up and disturb me during my 10 hour break is you're, first of all, you're not in a designated parking spot. If someone were to come around the corner and actually hit you while you're parked there, insurance liability is going to look at you and go, you are not in a designated. Spot to have that vehicle parked safely for your 10 hour break. And I've seen where companies have gotten onto their drivers about that. You have to be parked in a specific spot, not on the curb. Oh, exactly. And it is a growing problem. And then you see him plum out on the highway, off the exit ramps. They was a guy the other day, he was stopped right in the road at the end of a arrest area, trying to figure out if he wanted to go in. If he didn't. Okay. Now let's say if I wanted to come into that rest area, and I'm running down the road 70 miles an hour or 60 miles an hour, and I start decelerating three o'clock in the morning. I start into that scale not realizing this guy stopped on the ramp. That's gonna be a hell of a surprise when I start in and figure out, Hey, this guy stopped in the middle of the road, could possibly, if I'm not paying attention, if I'm tired, you know what? That could really cause a real problem for me. It may cause me to, or have to react a certain way. And here we go. And who's going to get the blame for that? Me, because this guy, oh, you should have seen him. They're always a problem. As my old saying, shit rolls downhill, and it is one of'em things that the, they keep doing things that goes right back to the grounds and roots training. They ain't getting trained, and I blame that, starting with a lot of the schools, a lot of the companies, fly by night, CDL schools and they go, they don't get any on the road training. They go jump behind the wheel of a truck with some, their cousin or whatever that you know come in and bought Uncle Jimmy's trucking. And they just, they don't get any training. They say Here, there you go. Go. And this guy's out there just trying to figure it out, and at the end of the day, it's not really his fault. I see that a lot in the Carolinas. It's not, you see it a lot in Carolinas and Georgia. You get into Uncle Billy's trucking, uncle Jimmy's truck, and you name it. Oh, I drive my uncle's truck. I've seen it with my own eyes. They have no qualifications. They don't know what to do if it walked up and slapped them in the face. But because their family member owns a truck and puts them in it and pays for their licensing, they're good to go. Supposedly. Now the particular company, and I won't mention names that I work for, they spend and invest a lot of money into training their drivers well over a month if necessary. But, usually a month minimum. And we still have holes where some of the drivers don't get it, and that's where they'll spend more time with particular drivers. But it's very valued that safety comes first at the company I work for. And that's one of the things I treasure about working here. They are very safety minded, oriented, and they do believe in you better have a good head on your shoulders and know what you're doing to do this job. If you don't know, ask. Exactly. And that is a good part about working for a very compliant company,'cause man, I don't want to be harassed every time I drive by a DOT officer sitting in the middle of the highway. I wanna work for a reputable company and therefore I want to do all the right things that don't make my company look bad either. I wanna make sure we're not putting marks on their record They're gonna pull me over again to see if I can find some other shit wrong with it. And that's generally what happens is they start. Pulling moer and more of us into the scales When they see those overweight tickets coming from other drivers or if they're seeing, people not passing compliance inspections on Roadsides. Not too long ago, about a month ago, I was pulling out of one of our terminals and, I didn't make it 15 minutes down the road, I got popped, pulled over to the side. The officer explained to me that I didn't do nothing wrong, but he just wanted to do a quick. Level 3D OT inspection. And he's it's just easier for us to pull you over, even admitted that we're an easy target'cause we have our stuff together and we're organized. And I said I appreciate that. Let me get you everything we need. And he's that's what I like about where you guys work. You guys are organized. And that goes a long way. Have an organization, yes. I'd rather be low hanging fruit than the fruit that's rotted and fell off the vine. Without doubt. I came into that, I run in Ohio a lot and you know how I, Ohio's had a reputation for years on end. I mean, oh yeah. I used to, it used to be when I hit that Ohio line, it was like wrecking, fingernails across the chalkboard, man. I was like, I dreading the hell out crossing that state. You know back when it was 55 and man, they was ever half a mile.. Every mile. Just watching every move, just waiting for you to do two, three miles over the speed limit. Oh yeah. They were well protected back in the day, Jack. Oh, you ain't kidding me. Tell you what, you ain't kidding man. They just waiting for you to look, even look at'em wrong, man. They was on that. People, a lot, a lots of people don't realize just how good they got it right now, Texas. That was another, oh God, Texas was just God awful back in the day. Tennessee, Ohio. Tennessee, Ohio, Texas, Georgia. Used to be some states that you would just go through and you just, you were saying the prayers you make through it not had any kind of discrepancy. Show up. Oh yeah. You ain't kidding. Shreveport. Those in place. I got a story. Tell about Reedsport Louisiana. Oh. I hired an old boy. I think every driver has a story to talk about. Shreveport, go ahead. This ain't one of'em truck driver stories, but it's one of down there that, man, you ain't going to believe this but it actually happened. I hired old boy speaking to 10 years experience. He said he had 10 years experience. I mean, this goes to show, and this was even back in. 2007, 2008, and he said he had 10 years experience. A super nice guy. I mean, we had a lot in common, man. We talked it up a lot, dude. He was big into barbecue. Hell, I'm big into barbecue. I'd smoke a salad if I could, I loved barbecue, so me and him kind of hit it off. I bought a truck buddy minute. He gets out to Shreveport, Louisiana, and he literally pulls up on the platform scale. It runs out of fuel. I can't make this shit up. Oh my goodness. He runs out of fuel. So I immediate, he calls me up, man, you ain't gonna believe this, sir. I run out fuel. I said, okay, where you at? That's the thing. You can't, you ain't going to believe. I, I said, what is it? He said, man, I'm sitting on the scales in front of the building. I said, you at the truck stop. It's gonna be easy to find. Yeah, I thought he was talking about, he was at the cat scale at the truck stop. Like hell, hell no. He was sitting on the scales of freeze port, Louisiana, so I immediately done some damage control. But you know, this old dude, he was saying he was on the scales in front of the scale house in res Fort Louisiana. So first thing I'd done, I went and did. Damage control. I called up the scaled house. I said, man, I said, we just bought this truck. I'm not real sure what's going on. Yeah. I didn't bother to tell the scale master that, he ran out of fuel. So he's you are in luck. He said, I got a meeting and I'm fixing to go to lunch. He said, you got about two hours. He said, now when I get back, if that truck can't off my scale, he said, I'm gonna call a wreck. I said, buddy, I do appreciate that, man. And I caught on the horn with a TA right down the road. Of course you know it, you know what it costs when they're bringing you something to the scaled house. Oh gosh. Yeah. They turn up to heat, man. Yeah, they spare no feelings whatsoever, man. And I'll tell you what, that old boy man, I mean a hell of a nice guy, but it just goes to show you not everybody works with the same amount of crayons. And I'm not trying to poke fun, but I'll tell you what, it is sometimes people, I never knew five gallons of fuel could cost$400. Until I became an owner operator and made that mistake myself. One day shit, try sitting in the scale house at about 600. That's about the tune I paid to get that truck off that scale, and two days later the guy totaled my truck. I ain't gonna lie, totaled my damn truck, man. That's a beautiful truck too. That's makes, that just breaks your heart right there. Oh yeah. Actually, I brought that truck up back in one of my earlier episodes. That was a 3 59 p 300 inch wheel base. Beautiful truck. Beautiful truck, man. I didn't even get the drive. Mm-hmm. Didn't even get the driving man. But, we definitely are looking at a lot of things, we definitely are taking a hard look at all of our non domicile drivers. That's a big thing right now. it's a hell of a problem every time you turn around and something's getting jacked up. Or somebody's parked in the fuel island, or somebody's washing their feet in the sink. It just happens to be a non domicile driver. I don't know if they do this, where they come from, but we don't do that here in America. We like to wash our hands in this damn sink and shave and brush their teeth. That's some shit we just really don't like to take care of. We really don't want to deal with, I respect the person who wants to stay clean, but we got a shower for that. But, they don't wanna spend the money. They don't want to take, I don't know what the hell they're trying to do. But, my biggest issues is, the truck road etiquette, man, the truck stop etiquette, the road etiquette, it's, we're basically living. In a hell of a mess right now, you drive up and down the road, you don't know if you go to pass a guy, if he's going to be, gonna run you in the ditch. I mean, it is just, it is the, basically, you just don't know. It's rushing roulette, it's depending. And I try to start looking what kind of trailer the guys got on, so I'm starting to memorize these guys I'm not trying to mention any names, but some of them are blue and I think we all know who the hell they are. It's just, but whether they're blue or not, whether they're blue, white, and gold or not. I've had my fair share container drivers that have done it to me in the Carolinas. Again, that falls back to, oh, I got Uncle Billy's truck. And I know what I'm doing. You got to be careful and it's one thing that you know. Funny enough, when I came to work for the company I work for now, I actually had a year more driving experience than the guy that trained me, but he actually taught me something extremely valuable. Watch that on ramp as you drive by, look at what's coming down it.'cause you know what's about to meet you in about a one and a half to two seconds. Oh, you ain't kidding. They're gonna be trying to be where you're at. And it's a way for you to kind of predict what's going to happen and stay ahead. And anticipate,'cause anticipating is about 50% of the game out here. You can't just sit there and stop these trucks on a dime. You gotta anticipate what people are going to do. And that is one thing that I learned is being able to watch traffic patterns probably better than most, but like you said, these non domicile drivers aren't really doing that, it used to be just some experienced teenager in a car you'd have to worry about nowadays it's the truck drivers too. I have a truck driver cut, cut me off quicker, or ride in a blind spot quicker than a car will. Oh, you ain't kidding. You ain't kidding, man. And that's a big thing too, is, we gotta worry about the cars. Then we throw in the trucks that don't even look, man, they come barreling down that ramp. And don't get me wrong, when it's another 18 wheeler, man, I do still try to change lanes. But I do still try to change lanes and all that. Because I do know he's a lot heavier than a car, but, I get real aggravated mm-hmm. With these cars, man. You come down that ramp like you got old corn for sale. Dude, I know that old Chevrolet can run better than that, I know. You got a gas pedal there somewhere, instead of taking me all the way down to 30 or 40 because so when you get boxed in, you ain't got nowhere to go. You just, you got one choice and that you gotta slow down and let him come in because chances are he gonna run up underneath your trailer and that ain't worth the paperwork. Yeah., It's, you've got, I've seen that people have ran outta real estate on me and they blow the horn on me where it's my fault. I like, it's not my fault. You have to merge onto highway traffic, not highway traffic. Merge onto the on ramp. And that's another thing we could talk about, but we'd be wasting our breath about how these cars do not teach what they used to teach when we first got our driver's licenses in driver's ed. My wife and I were talking about that the other day. My nephew had just got his driver's license and they asked him some kind of question about, I forget what it was, but I looked at her and I was like, when did that go on the test? It's something you and I, cause I know we're similar in age because we spoke privately, we've never been questioned about these kind of things. It's just this new age of driving and how they train people. Most definitely. And that, I blame that on a lot of these CDL meals and just like you said, you have a lot, especially in the container industry. You do have some of the, mom and Paul Little companies and then they go get their cousin, their brother, and this and that and they don't get no training, and and I kind of blame that on them a little bit.'cause if you own that company. Obviously, you know how to drive enough to get that company, so maybe you are to try to like, maybe help your mm-hmm. Help your guy out there and teach you. We're just simply throwing people out here that just ain't got a clue of the etiquette on the road. And etiquette goes a long ways with safety, that's a big thing. Your safety, because, like you said, merging on and off the highway. It may be etiquette, but it also is the difference between a crash or somebody dying, that's a big thing, but also, what I was fixing to say with that is the non domicile drivers, they will come over here. They'll get a, an MC number, which I know they're getting ready to do away with that, but they're just rolling it into a DOT. It really ain't gonna make a lot of difference. It's less paperwork, I think. I think they're trying to simplify the tracking of the trucking industry and the motor carriers. We got a guy in the waiting room right now and we're fixing to merge him in. He's got some news flash on the trucking domicile drivers here right now. I think they just come out with some new stuff. We'll go, we're gonna bring him in this in just a little bit. But like we said, you know that they'll go out here, and they don't know, they just go out and get an mc, they just, they get'em right outta school. They'll send them to CRST knowing full well. They ain't gonna go through no training. The minute they get that CDL, they're on a Greyhound bus back home. They don't care. They just use a CDL mill to get their mm-hmm. To get their CDL. They don't worry about training. They'll figure it out is what they think. And by doing that, they're just simply not getting it, and another little trick they do too, and I've seen this over the years of training for these bigger companies, they will go through the school. And they will know what to do to get that company to fire them. And once that company fires them, and a lot of the fine print those contracts, it releases them from any obligation of that CDL school. So they're technically kind of getting a free DL, free CDL as long as they get that license and they get fired before they, they get trained or something to that degree. I had a guy get on my truck and it was a particular company. If you got caught with your, with no seatbelt on, they flatly would fire you. They didn't care if he was a student or not, or they were no forgiveness whatsoever. They would just simply fire you. Every time I turned around, didn't have a seatbelt. I said, come on man. I said, what are you doing? And he finally just told me, he said, man, I'm just trying to get fired, dude. He said, I don't want, I don't wanna work here. He said, I got other plans. He was, at least he was honest about it, he didn't wanna be here. That's what he done. I said buddy, that's what you want to do, bud. Knock yourself out. And that's what he done. He went back home and he went to North Carolina. He keeps in contact, but he was a good kid. He had a lot of talent. He would probably be just fine. He done a real good job. He did get through about three weeks worth of training before he got caught without a seatbelt on. They sent him home. But, he done pretty good and I feel that he probably did. And there's a handful of people that will do that does make good drivers, but there's a lot of them that they don't give a shit. They don't even wanna learn. They want to just do it and go home and be done with it. But anyway, we got another caller we're getting ready to merge in. We got Daniel from Florida. Y'all here with us? Daniel? Yes. Stacy, how you doing? Ah, yeah, I heard you, you called in, you was telling their assistant there that you had some breaking news on the domicile drivers. So what do you yeah, I'm sure a lot of people have already, heard about it. It's all over social media. As they had the press conference the other day, the Secretary of Transportation, F-M-C-S-A lead. Was talking about, and I guess they were starting with California, but from the looks of things it's rolled out. I'm seeing a lot of, New York, even California, places like that. They're showing the driver's license and it says, no name given or something, along there's actual no name on the driver's license on the CDL. That's interesting. I can't imagine for the life of me, I mean, what did I do to earn my license and keep it all these years, to prove who I am. I'm certified and somebody can walk in and get a license that doesn't even have their name on it. Wow. Georgia the other day, coming out of, my buddy here was coming out of South Carolina, back into Georgia. Nine five there. And usually those scales are closed. They even, they just bypass his company all the time. But they pulled him in and, he said he was in there for 30 minutes. The line was backed all the way out on the interstate. He said there was hundreds of police cars, DOT in there if you ran it. They chased you down. Basically looking for non domicile CDL holders. Making sure everything was legit, making sure that they were, legal citizens or here legally on a visa. Of course he waited in long lines and he pulled up on the scales. He wasn't there two seconds before the guy looked up at him and, saw what company he works for, a large retail company and rolled him on through. I'm waiting to hear now. Are we gonna start hearing the. The liberals, the Democrats, claiming racial profiling. And, I mean, let's face it, if you, they don't have much of an argument there, Mr. Daniel, if they, they're listening to how they pulled into every single driver. I'm seeing that, in one suite there's 140 over here in this state. I think, New York hit 120, just that first day of doing that. It's nice to see it. I think the system is, starting to work. A lot of this, from what I saw in the, the press conference from F-M-C-S-A, it had a lot to do with the accidents we've had. Specifically the one in Florida on the turnpike. So we're starting to see some positive outcome from tragedy. Drivers are gonna have to remember too in all this is don't get mad at DOT when they're tasked to do a job, because every security that's implemented with measure, there's gonna be a small to large basis of inconvenience because they have to vet everybody daniel just said, you can't be discriminating against people. You gotta vet everybody. Exactly. So for, in order to actually work properly. Oh, I'm actually looking forward to that weight. I, I would love to sit in that scale house for a while and just watch the show. We've all complained about these things For years. We've been yelling and screaming that, something's gotta be done. If it's not the immigrant drivers racing through the truck stopped. Parking lots are running us off the road. It's the rookie drivers. Attention needs to be drawn to the safety out here. I drove before there was a CDL and I remember those days, this is the big government controlling us. And now looking back, I think the CDL is a good idea. I think, hours of service rules are there for a reason and, it's a positive thing, so I know we could go off in different directions on that, but I agree with you there I was gonna say I'm ready to pull into my Constantine, so I need to get off the phone so I can give my full attention here to pulling in here and making sure everyone's safe. Yeah, you do. So y'all have a wonderful day and I appreciate you having me as a guest. It's been a pleasure. Basically going back to what we were saying, can you imagine what it would be like right now today with all the non domicile drivers coming over here, we still had a chauffeur's license. Oh, wow. That's pretty mind blowing. I didn't think about that. Now I'm gonna have a scary day because man, that's and I, I ain't got a problem with DOT because you know why I do my damn job, I do my job and that's what we get paid to do. As drivers out here, professional drivers, we get paid pretty dang on. Good. It all depends on what company you choose to work for. And you do have to pay your dues to really get yourself up and into the industry to where you can make a good living. And that's with any industry. You've gotta climb that ladder. And, but when you do climb that ladder, you can make yourself, a good living. And the effort that you gotta put out to do. So how hard is that to do your job, man? I mean, seriously. Get out and go look when you're backing in a hole, just don't take a guy's damn hood off and then drive off. Just like you didn't Oh didn't see that. Sure you didn't. You knew damn what you done. That's why you took off so fast and get the hell outta there. Why didn't you just go, when you go back there and look, there's a lot of little things. That I think sometimes laziness plays into a big role, and not just non-training. It's just lazy. We have a problem with that with a lot of our newer drivers. They just, sit there in the seat all day, they don't want to get out, they don't wanna go look, and then you got cockiness. Sometimes that plays a big part into it where I don't need to get out and go, look man, I've been doing this 30 years. I still take my big ass back there and go look.'cause you know what? I don't want egg on my face. I don't wanna look like a dumb ass when I hit somebody's truck. If I'm coming up to something that's a little low clearance or something, you know what? I stop, I get out and go, look, Pay attention to what you're doing out here. That's the number one thing. It don't take a rocket scientist to do the things that you need to do. It's your eyes, your ears, most people's head does swivel look both ways. Look around, observe your surroundings when you go to pull in or you're making a turn or whatever it is you're doing, look. Listen, learn, pay attention to what you're doing. I think some of us came, was cut from the old cloth and, I get that and they don't make that cloth anymore. But we can make the new cloth into a lot, just education. And that's one of the things, and don't get me wrong, I am not, but no means trying to. Come at the the new driver, but no way. And I think a lot of the new drivers, and one of the things I preach demand to be taught, don't let these companies just put you out there. And when you don't know who's at fault, you're right. And we were at one point or another, no matter who's out here on this road, how long they've been out here at one point or another, we were all new drivers. Some of us had our daddies to teach us, or our grandpas. Mm-hmm. Some of us went to a school, some of us had complete stranger teachers. I used to train back in the day and we didn't have GPSs. We had map books, we had atlases, we had, written directions. And, a lot of this generation today could not survive., They would not be able to find their way around the country without, A GPS. And the sad part is their trainers don't even know how to drive without A-A-G-P-S. And I tell everybody, you know that I said the young guys, when I see'em backing in at the truck stops and they've got that phone up and I see the map on it, don't use Google Map. It's not for a truck. It's not gonna tell you where that low bridge is and Moline or up there in Chicago, anywhere around that area. It's not gonna tell you these things. No. It's gonna take you down routes for cars. They don't understand the mentality because they're reading the ads. We'll get you your CDL, the streets were paid with gold out here. They'll make a fortune. Like I said, I believe you said it earlier when I was waiting, but you got a lot of guys that are training other men and women to drive that really haven't been driving that long theirselves. I drill, I trained for a company, I think I heard you say you trained for him one time, one of your earlier podcasts that, you couldn't train unless you had so much winter driving, so many years of winter driving, which is, something they need to bring back. Especially for the guys that live down here in the southeast, that they don't know about cabbage or gone or any of these mountain passes in the wintertime. They've never chained up. They probably, a lot of'em probably never will. But it's still good to I'll tell you what, I have literally run into drivers that's been driving for years, some of the southern drivers and I took'em out, Hey, I'll grab a chain off the thing here and I'll show you how to do it. It is not hard to do. I mean, it's a pretty simple thing. It's a pain in the asthma's, 20 degrees outside. Don't get me wrong. It is definitely not something I want to do. And I've been that guy that skated over the other side of that mountain with no chains on, and I know better, but I did it anyway and thank God I made it to the bottom. But, I was a little more seasoned. I was a little more confident in my, in what I was doing, in my ability. On 4th of July, I took him down the other side about the time I got to the top of the hill. I seen outta my peripheral vision. The chain up sign light up. And I just ignored it. And I went on and I went down the other side and man, we were rolling in some pretty deep snow. The truck would break loose a little bit and I'd feather it, get it back under control and, a couple different times. And this old dude, he was sitting in the jump seat over there, man. He was about to have a heart attack. And we got over to Seattle. He booked him an airplane, took it back home. He said, hell with this shit. He's, I'm like, man, I kind of felt bad about that, but I scared the cat to do. But you know, I mean, you could have looked at it one or two ways, you could have learned a little something, when a truck started sliding a little bit how to bring it under control because it broke loose about three times, going down the hill. I didn't get real excited about it, I mean, I'm a pretty cool, calm, collected person in the snow. And that's one of the biggest things with driving in adverse weather. You gotta stay calm, you gotta think, don't get excited to make rash decisions, and that's within the rain, the snow, ice, I hear people, Hey man, I'm going, I can fly on ice, man. I can drive on ice No, you ain't gonna drive shit on ice. You going to point it in the direction you hope to go in and hope that it goes that way. But don't fool yourself when you hit that black ice. You ain't going to drive nothing on that black ice, and when you hit that one spot and you're in the ditch, you're gonna learn a hard lesson. You wish you'd listened, you gotta respect the road, the weathers, and all the things out here, and this is all part of the training. Again, I keep racking on this training, but this is a big problem. Across the industry that I'm seeing day in and day out. I'm out here every day with you guys. I don't just sit here in this office and look at the camera and talk to you guys. I'm out here elbow to elbow with you, and I go into a truck stop and it's wow. It's like, where did, how did we get here? And unfortunately a lot of it is they're non domicile drivers. And I hate to keep kicking at'em, but damn. We gotta stop this somewhere. We're on a mer go round here. And I really like the direction that we're going in right now with the driver's license.'cause I think that's where we're gonna start right there. And the training that needs to be brought up, the park even, your training company is like. I don't really want to get into name calling, but you know who the training companies are out here. They're the big monster companies that predominantly train and get your CDLs. And that's a good program. But they need to tighten up their game, they need to actually teach people what they're doing. They have bad reputations for a reason, put a little pride in your training program. I know there's some companies that do have good training programs. Mike said he worked for a company that had a hell of a training program, and that's something to be proud of. It really it is. It's something to be proud of. And that also goes to say, when you're getting into the trucking industry, do your homework. Make sure you're not just signing up for some Jake leg SCDL meal, because at the end of the day, who pays the price? The guy that didn't get trained. You go to these mega carriers that you're talking about. You go through orientation. You sit in a room with about 7,500 other drivers, and all along the walls its safety, safety, safety. It's, safety's their big important thing. Yet you might be sitting next to a guy that got his CDL in a week and a half. He's fixing to go out with a trainer for three, four weeks and then they're gonna cut him loose. Sometimes with another driver that's been the same situation. And, what they're doing is, I understand they got contracts and they gotta fill seats. They got a lot of trucks, they gotta fill these seats. You're gonna push safety so much. Yet here you are filling with seats, guys that, got maybe less than two months of experience behind the wheel. To me, that just seems like a big part of the problem right there with a lot of these companies. The thing that really got me is we knew a long time now that you could go in, in certain places, certain states, and basically buy a CDL. Didn't matter who you were, especially if you were here illegally, you could buy a CDL. It just blew my mind. Since yesterday evening and all through today, the stuff I'm seeing that you can actually get a CDL without a name on it. And, bill, how's that happen? That for me I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it and, it is right. How does this happen?, Who are the politicians who in their right mind would allow this? I mean, what's the governors of these states? Should they be held accountable? Mm-hmm. And I'm not gonna, I'm not saying red or blue states because I believe Texas was on the list too. Yeah. It makes me wonder is it something maybe the politicians didn't know about, is this corruption at the DMD levels?'Cause I'm trying to picture Texas, where is this happening? Are we going to find out It's around the border? The border towns, the DMVs there where, maybe Manuel comes across the border and the lady at the DMV is his cousin, and she might be here legally and working here legally, but he's not, she's sympathetic to the situation. I'm curious to see down the road here, and, I hope you'll do a more expensive podcast on this as we. See more of this going on. I am curious to know too, if I was thinking about this government shutdown, how's that gonna affect the way stations, the scale houses? Is this a move by, the Democratic party to maybe slow down, this administration and what they're trying to do is, getting illegal, immigrants off our roads, out of our trucks. Yeah, without a doubt. We're seeing a lot of that,, everything good that I think Trump's trying to do. And there again, I'm not trying to get into political, one way or the other, but, I see, Trump has done some good, great things, I think., And some people may say that's not the truth, but I feel like he has, and when they get into this, and then you always see the opposition, it's come on, dude. Like why do you keep trying to just work against everything that needs to be done? As a country, majority of us that come out here, blue collared workers or whatever you want, you wanna make, call us. We see the problem. But we have this handful of people out here that make a lot of noise with the rose color glasses on that wants to say, no, no, no, no, no. We need to be more compassionate and this and that until one of these people wreck and kill one of their family members. And then they take off the rose colored glasses and then they're over here on our side saying, Hey, let's get these people off the road. But. It is a problem. Rights right and wrong is wrong. If you bought your damn CDL, you don't, it's not a valid CDL. It needs to be revoked. That's bottom line. If you're here illegally, you're here illegally. There's no other way to say you're here, in a good light. You're not, I don't think anybody has a problem with people coming here. And it's not fair to the people that do take the time to do it in the right manner. It's not fair to them, because they spent the money, they took the time. They went through all the ropes, all the hoops and everything to get their self here legally. I've bend over backwards to help somebody that came here legally. And did things the right way, but when you go and you come here and you buy a damn CDL, then you go out here and you wreck and you kill some people. What about the people down in Texas there? Guy, non domicile driver, again, ran through all those, right? Those cars killed all those people injured. God knows how many, and the list just keeps going those cars that got killed, I mean, all them people in those cars got killed in Texas and the list keeps going on and on. Sean, how much of this have you heard about? Yeah, I'll be honest with you, man, I really haven't paid that close attention to the news lately. I've been a little busy and wrapped up in my own mess, I guess, but I hadn't even heard anything about the accident in Texas or the one in Louisiana. Yeah, they definitely heard Texas, I believe was March, wasn't in March. Yeah, that happened. August was the one in turnpike and. Okay I think we were talking, call Sean there talking about wrapped up in his own stuff and then, I feel you on that, Sean, if you're still here with us. I'm down here in Florida and, we're still reeling from that accident on the turnpike and I've got a lot going on, in my own home. I've got some teenagers, a couple of boys that aren't, acting right. And then on top of that, this accident down there hit me pretty hard. I think anybody that drives down around Orlando at all, whether the turnpike or I four, knows the stress and frustration of that area alone, and then you compound problems at home. Problems that are going on in the news that you see every day. It weighs down. We're out here by ourselves looking at this world through the windshield, and, the problems just kept constantly weighing it. Who do we talk to? There's nowhere to go. All we have is that CV and other drivers. And, nowadays most people aren't even on the CBS anymore. And if they're, it's just play and act silly. That was one of the reasons that I started savoring group, for the mental health. And we brought this into the trucking industry, to give people, a place to come, relationships and mean we deal with it all. Yeah, actually I looked into that and, I was reading into some more. I'd like to get some more literature on that. I have a, mm-hmm. A son that I believe has a, drinking problem. I know he suffers from depression and, look at getting in some dope as well. And, I know another driver that, been going through a divorce. While he's on the road. His wife's been cheating on him. Imagine that. He's taking it pretty hard. He's had some mishaps, some accidents out here lately. Mm-hmm.. Just had so much on his mind, wasn't, paying attention to what he is been doing. Something he's been doing for the last 25 years. And, he was just saying the other day that he might have to take some time off to get his head right. Yeah, I think that's a good program. Something I'd like to look into myself. Most definitely. That's what we brought it hip with. That's what we brought it to the trucking industry for. We started it out. I went through, got all the certifications and all the schooling and everything to do that, cross-reference working with a lot of different people outside of trucking. But you know what, this is where I've been in the logistics industry. For 30 years. So what? I help my own people. That was one of my biggest reasons, and I also, I've got a book that I published, it's called Silence of Humanity. It's all about child abuse and how, mental disorders and so forth. You can check it out. It's on Amazon, all your big platforms, Barnes and Noble. But, yeah, we definitely got a good program. One of us will help you out, take care. You definitely wanna catch the drinking problem with your son early, most definitely. Yeah. I think it's, just beginning. He just graduated high school a year ago and since then. Gone wild. Him and his boys, they're a bunch of country boys and that's what they do, is go out and build the bonfires and drink. But he's now drinking alone by himself at home. He's been injured, so he hasn't been able to get out lately. And, he's already, like I said, had depression. Alcohol's not helping in situation. No. And if you ain't, the hostility. Yeah. If you ain't careful, that shit will get outta hand real quick and get ahold of you. And then it's a lifelong problem. Right now it's a teenager problem. And while they have a lot of laws in place, and the people that's helping him get this alcohol, that's another issue right there, teenagers, think they're grown, but they don't make good decisions. They never do. None of us did. I think we probably made a little better decisions in some cases, here and there. But even at that, at best, we're still teenagers and most of the things that we thought we knew when we were teenagers wasn't at all the right thing. Very few people ever. Yeah, I heard make it. Past her teenage years without screwing something up. Yeah, I heard a thing on the radio the other day. Something about the human brains not fully formed until the age of 24, 25. I believe that. I don't think mine was fully formed until I was about 35. I don't think my brain fully formed until I was in my forties. Yeah. I think my brain, I'm still even question, I think I only got half of one. Yeah. I don't think I thought about much, but money and girls until I was about 35 and I decided, settled down a little bit and quit with all that dumb, dumb crap there, you spend a lot of money and a lot of mistakes. If I had back all the money I spent on mistakes over the years, shit, I could probably retire early. Yeah. You and me both. All the crazy shit that I've, I loved my cars back in the day. My hot rod cars and Corvettes. When I got a divorce, that's the first thing I did. Get me a damn Corvette and then one wasn't enough. I'd buy another one. I had two of'em. That red one had the glass top. I went out and I said, shit, I'm gonna buy me a convertible. I mean, damn convertible one. I think it was pretty, it was white with camel leather and tiered everything, camel top. It was a good looking car, it definitely catches a lot of attention, especially the kinda attention I wanted back in the day, yeah, I've had a lot of cars. I grew up, my old man, he loves his pastime, building hot rods and, I grew up in that industry, in the time where man, he was building 66 Super Sports Chaves and 57 Chevrolets man, that was some good times. I learned a lot of mechanical skills that kind of carried throughout my whole life on into trucking and helped me learn about the engines and everything too. That knowledge, as you grow up, that's what I'm talking about. Good roots, good roots don't just come and truck driving school, you gotta, as a person, you gotta set down good roots and, I know a lot of our kids nowadays, they love these video games, but they're just a negative thing. They really are. And I hate to say it, but, I'm in my fifties and I have to say, I'm proud to say I've never played a video game on a TV in my life. Maybe a pinball machine or something in a pool book billard, but I just never could. Get into something like that. When I was growing up, we were fishing and hunting and even as a small kid ship daylight, we were outta that house. You didn't see our ass til dark. You wanted something to play with, hell go find a damn stick. And that was just the way it was. We was poor, poor as hell growing uphill. We didn't have money for toys and shit. We figured it out. We get up in the damn woods and dig a hole somewhere. Yeah, make a fort, build a tree house out of scrap. Those are things that built character as a human being. We don't see that out at all anymore. I'd love to see a number of the kids out here nowadays that actually has built a tree house. I'm sure they've been a lot of broken arms and tree houses, but you know what? I think it done more good than that. Video game builds character. You're damn right. It does. And we're coming into a point to where it is not distant trucking. It's a, you see it everywhere. And I think people needs to grasp and get ahold of what's going on. We're just not teaching across the border kids. We're not, and I'm not trying to dog anybody or anything like that, I raised five boys and all five of'em are different and you have to handle all five of them a little different. And each one of them was, disciplined a little different. There was no one shoe fit all. My next to the youngest one just turned 26 yesterday and. My youngest one the day before that turned 25, they're, they was the same age one day a year. But you know, we're real proud of all of our boys. You done good. You didn't waste no time. Did you stay? No. Hell no. I told you my biggest problem was chasing women. I ain't, I wasn't lying about that, I grew up, it was, baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, the good old American days, and the trucking. I know a lot of us remember being little boys riding in the car and back seat. You pass that truck and you give'em the fist bump and, trucking was. It was a magical thing, it was that big rig sitting up high, all that power underneath. Every little kid, wanted to be a fireman, a police, officer or astronaut or a truck driver. And, now I look at my industry and it's how it's changing. It's almost like the Death of America. To me, truck driving was the last. American stronghold, that I see it fading away. And a lot of it is because of, left or liberal views. And then the changing of, the. There are a lot of people that are sensitive. We don't spank our kids anymore. We give them time out and counseling and those kids grow up and they still see those big trucks and want to drive them. In pajama pants and flip flops and slides and they don't understand. We're not just. Being assholes about, why you don't wear that stuff. We've all seen what the fuel island will do to a pair of tennis shoes. I'm pretty sure if it can eat up the bottom of a pair of tennis shoes, it can damn sure eat up the bottom of a pair of flip flops and your feet. Not to mention, I mean, trucks and steps, everything are made out of metal. It's easy to get hurt or cut on. These companies, the number one accident, the number one money causing accident is what? Slip trips and falls. You gotta have on the proper PPE, whether it be the gloves or. Eyeglass. There's places we, I think we talked about it before. You couldn't go into a Caterpillar plant without steel toe and safety glasses, earplugs and hard hats, our safety vests. I know that's a little excessive for the fuel island, but I mean, to have on a regular pair of shoes and, something that's non-slip because when you get all that spilled diesel fuel on the bottom of your flip flop, if you get into that truck and you go to hit that brake pedal and your foot flies off, you don't stop in time. And, that might be my family that you're driving next to it's been a big cultural change out here, most domesticated and and non, imported, I guess you could say. The whole industry has changed. It's completely changed. I don't feel like, that great American truck driver anymore. Yeah, he was talking about the little kids out there, man, I just ran into one the other day. I was over in New Martinsville, West Virginia. This old kid out there, boy, he was just giving it hell, man. I had to blow my horn. I did, man. It was a cool little thing. I mean, that little cat boy, you know he's gonna be a damn truck driver when he gets older. He was loving it, loving it, but I don't pass it up, man. I see a kid doing that, man. I gotta blow the horn. Do it. I gotta blow my horn. Yeah. I always say there's benefits to some of the, when a 3-year-old hands you a, fake telephone, you answer it. When an 8-year-old pumps that fist, you blow that horn. Mm-hmm. Yep. That's right. Yep. We got Mike here. Oh, yep. Stop one kicked off and onwards the stop. Two. Mm-hmm. I'm about five miles away from my first stop. Yeah. Good deal. And unlike some other inexperienced truck drivers, I already planned my route, so I knew I wasn't gonna go through a scale. So I didn't wave my wagon because I knew I wasn't going through a scale. I don't know if you guys touched on proper trip planning when I was absent from the phone, but that's something these new drivers could really benefit from too. Yes, we did kind of touch on that a little bit. Yeah. I think planning, see it at the truck stops, you see guys, don't even do free trips. A lot of, no, I told you once before. Stacy about a friend of mine that, he had to go get his class A-C-D-L-I was gonna train him for a year. He went through the company I was working for, paid for his school there down in, green Co Springs, Florida. And he was with a group of American drivers, get their class a's, they had a separate group off to the side that was, muslim drivers and they didn't do hardly anything. They didn't do any really road force. They just stayed there on, on the yard. These are the same guys. You see'em at the truck stop and they just get the truck and go. They don't do a pre-trip. They don't check their tires. And you see'em with the blowouts and stuff down the road, and a lot of the rookie drivers. I talked to a safety officer one time at a company and he said it's amazing that it takes exactly seven minutes to do a pre-trial. Every driver, exactly seven minutes on their log and that start rolling, he knows they're sitting in that seat, ghosting those pre trips. They're not doing pre trips. They're not trip planning. Yeah, that's something you're sitting in a truck stop and you get out and pop at the hood and grab your hammer and your flashlight and everything start going around. You talking about getting some funny looks. People look at you like you got three eyes on your head. People don't see it. They think that's something that you just did. Passed a test that people have asked me, have you just started? Because they see me out there popping the tires, hood pulled, twisting lug nuts. They go, what are you doing? I said, I'm doing a preread. This is what my company policy requires me to do. And I said, and if you check into some state DOT regulations, they require you to twist lu nuts. I, it is stupid as it sounds. That's what they require. You're getting paid to do a job and people wanna, excuse the expression half ass the job, but then they wonder why do things go wrong for'em all the time. Proper trip planning can save you a whole bunch of time going down the road. It don't take a few minutes to pull up Google Maps, put it on the satellite view, and look at where you're going to see how to get in and out of there. You go to some of the tighter locations that we go to. It's not too forgiving if you go in the wrong way, right? Some of these younger cats, the inexperienced drivers, man, they'd have a rough time. And that's one thing they stress is, do a proper trip planning, take five minutes to know where you're going. A lot of, and how you're gonna get there. They're just about there to pull up that Google map while they're driving and mm-hmm. That's where you see a lot of the accidents happen too. Yeah. You can't, absolutely, Daniel. I agree. Google Maps is a tool just to be used in the right place, in the right time. It has its place, but it does not serve as a GPS. You gotta be very cautious with the satellite view because I mean, you can definitely use it. I use it all the time. What I wanna see, what's what I'm looking at, you can get a bird's eye view of the place you're going I went into a place the other day and nobody said a word about the street being closed. I had to pull it up on Google Maps and see the way I needed to get around to get back around to the other side of the building to get around it. They, there was no signs, no nothing. All of a sudden to get to the street I need to go on is closed all. So now I gotta think quick and pull that up real quick here when I was sitting in the middle of the turn lane. Look at it, then move on. It just one of'em things that you've gotta be able to think quick to recover a situation, and that all goes into training again. You can't cheat the system. I agree. You can't cheat the system. And that's where we see a lot of people. They're cheating the system. They're just going through the motions. They're not getting the training. They're not taking the time to learn the industry.'cause they think it's just, oh, we just, you know the age old thing you hear out here? Oh man, you just ride around all day. Look out the window, man. There are a lot more to this job. And I think they figure that out once they get out here. Now it's too late. Training's over with class is over now. They're struggling now they, now they don't know how to ask. They don't know how to learn, so now they're in trouble. Well, Stacy, you brought up an excellent point about cheating the system. Eventually, as well as I do, as well as Daniel does, as well as Sean does, you cheat the system for so long. System's going to cheat you. We have evolving traffic alerts on our GPSs at the company I work for. Just last week I was down there towards Macon, Georgia and they had road closed due to construction. And this, evolving GPS forgot to evolve. And tried to take me down a closed street. Luckily, because of the training, I was able to think quickly and maneuver away from that and get turned around. Had to call safety at my company and have them walk me through a new route over the phone. But you know, again, if you don't have the training, you know you gotta be resourceful out here and constantly adapting. If you don't have the proper training to call safety or call somebody that could walk you through that, that could have got bad really quick. You could have ended up on a weight restricted road, low clearance. Not all of us go to giant warehouses. Some of us do very rural deliveries, and when you're doing a rural delivery. You gotta go where the store is. And that might be down in Podunkville USA. So you gotta be able to route, plan that trip and know where you're going and what you're getting into. And the other thing is, is some drivers will try to turn around and unbeknownst to them, they think it's harmless. They end up turning around in a lot that they think is big enough. Isn't big enough. They can get hung up on a low clearing wire or something like that and end up ripping a telephone pole down for all, mm-hmm. Yeah, that happens. It sure does. You just gotta observe your situation. That's the thing, and, and I kind of spoke on that just a little bit earlier. You gotta look up. Side to side look in your mirrors. I mean, you gotta look all the time. Your head turns for a reason. Your eyes have got to be everywhere at once and not just to pick on other drivers. I'll give you an example of something that happened to me back in 2022. I was coming into a store in a very highly congested area. I had hung up the phone with my wife'cause I told her I was about to make my turn and enter the store, and I needed to be off the phone. Went to make my turn, waited to make the turn into the store. Some vehicles have slowed down to allow me to go into the store, and as I looked in my mirror to see the green light go, everyone started pulling forward except for one car who wasn't paying attention on their phone. I didn't see that one car. I started to pull in the store and my trailer clipped just a tiny little bit. Of that person's taillight on their, on their pickup truck. And I was at fault for that. I mean, your eyes have got to be everywhere all the time. And I mean, that can happen to anybody, whether you're experienced or not experienced, but that's just one of the many attentive things that you have to pay attention to out here. Oh, yeah. I mean, without a doubt. An ever changing world, you're never going to master the industry because it changes day by day, and anybody tells you, Hey man, I, I've got this tiger by the tail, they're full of shit. You may want to take yourself, a little pause there because you're about to screw some shit up. It's important to take that pause, because if you don't. You can end up getting into a pickle really quick if you don't take that pause, that's for sure. You definitely gotta get to that next mile down the road. Yeah. And another big issue I see, switching gears here is parking. Parking and don't get me wrong, I'm not pointing any fingers at any politicians or any of that. I don't need somebody auditing me on my taxes, that's for damn sure. But man, what the hell does these states do with the money that they get, man, I mean, you see every year there are allotted millions of dollars to make parking for truckers and. We have currently about 3.5 to 3.6 million truck drivers, and we have roughly around 300,000 parking places right now. And that's a problem because I mean, if it, yeah, that, and then you've got a clock that's running wild, you can't stop it. And if you get somewhere in a situation where you need a parking place, what are you going to do? And then you have these cats too. This is something else I wanted to bring up. What, what is going on with this uptick on drivers? Just pulling off the side of the road, and I know this is what they're doing. They're full of shit. They're not broke down. They're pulling off on the side of the road. They'll raise their hood put out their triangles and go to bed. They get up, you see'em come out, pull up their damn triangles, close their hood, and go back to work. I actually, seen the guy do that the other day. He got out raises, hood, went to bed, and I ran through that area multiple times that night and he took his 10 hour break. I kind of took note of the time, when I went by and he was throwing his. Things out. There were never a service truck there. They were never a repair or anybody out there working on that truck whatsoever. He just opened his hood, threw his triangles out. Yeah, but you're seeing a lot of it. You're really, you're seeing it, but people don't think much of it'cause it looks like they're broke down. They're not broke down. They're taking their damn 10 arm break there. What? What's going on with this? That's the first time I've heard of that, but I don't doubt it for one minute. You don't, I mean, you probably wouldn't pay much attention to, I think people trying to get away with that. You probably didn't pay much attention and you're probably right because they got their triangles out. It is slick. DOT may not pay much attention to it either, but they doing it, it just goes back to, but why is that driver having to do that? I am not gonna sit there and blame that on that driver. You know why? That's a lack of training and a lack of trip planning. I'm not even gonna say a lack of any of that. It's a lack of damn parking's what it is. Because what if the guy did trip plan? What if the guy rolled up into two, three truck stops that he thought he had options and they were no options? No, you make a good point. I can't dispute that. That's an excellent point. Because I've had that happen to me. I've been down in Florida, and Florida is horrible for parking. Mm-hmm. And Daniel will probably agree with me. Oh yeah, I was down there and outside of Brooksville and thought I would have parking, went to another truck, stop, thought I would have parking, thought I would go to a rest area, thought I would have parking, had to annotate my logs and call safety just to make it back to our terminal. Which I had drove by originally thinking I would have time to go up the road a little bit and make more productivity to get further up the road for the next day, and none of which had parking. So I mean, it goes to serve your point there, Stacy. You're right. Mm-hmm. I mean, it's not always about the in experience, it's not always about the trip planter because I can be the best trip planter in the world and if I get to that truck stop and there's nobody. There's no spots. What am I going to do? Go to the next place. There are no spots. Go to the next place. Now I'm getting in trouble. I'm getting into the red. Because we have no way to stop the clock, which, I understand rules are rules, but if they would stick some of this funding into parking, I know I've watched for years on end, these states getting funding. For, creating parking, but the numbers don't ever seem to go up. If you go across Wyoming, ever so many miles, you got a big lot. They got parking, and even some of those big lots, you know what they do? They put a set of scales in there for you to axle out your truck for free. Imagine that. That scale costs a hell of a lot less than it does to repair that road. Pretty smart to Wyoming me there if you ask me. But they make these big lots, right aside of their arrest areas. They put, garbage cans, they put, porta-potties or whatever they are out there. But they give you a place to park. When you can count on those lots are big enough, man. They don't get filled up. Why can't some of these bigger cities make these allotted lots outside of their belt loop of their city?'cause they know all these cities, they want their goods, but they don't want you there. They want you, they want you gone. Let's take North Bend, Washington, for example, that TA parking lot out there for years. That guy has been trying to expand that, that parking out there. The town won't let'em. They are pretty much, from what I've been told, of course, they discriminate against drivers. They don't want drivers out there. But they want their stuff though, don't they? Oh, yeah. And you're still a good I haven't been out there in a while. I don't wanna say about an hour, hour and a half. From certain points of Seattle in the suburbs out there to deliver mm-hmm. By staying at this, which doesn't have a lot of truck stops in itself either. No, it don't. I mean, we used to have to go Walmart or anywhere to park. Yeah, exactly., It's, it's pretty much a crapshoot. I remember we'd have to go in there and do picks outta Seattle and get seafood coming back and you're just praying to God, you got all your picks done and got out of town before your clock ran out. Mm-hmm. Oh, it is horrible. It's horrible. Hey, I, not to break the subject here, but I just got sent something that, I think you guys might find, neuro ironic here. This is from CHP mission grade commercial vehicles. It says Attention commercial driver. Just a reminder that the only authorized light. On the front of your vehicle are white and amber, angry eyes, although cool are not road legal. Let's keep it safe and compliant. And it's showing a picture of the truck with a, everybody's got the little angry eyes or whatever, the sleepy eyes that go in the wind. And I'm just sitting looking at this. This is from California. Let's keep it safe and legal. So when I buy my CDL in California, I just gotta remember not to put angry eyes up in my truck. That's it. You might not want to draw too much attention to that CDL you just bought outta California. Put the angry eyes in your truck. Drive it down the road. You should have checked the box for an extra 15 bucks. They would've waived those angry eyes. maybe that's only for foreign drivers. You can get away with it. Wow. We could only hope we could only in California. We could only hope that they didn't check the box on the back of their license to donate their organs. That's funny right there. Driver, I don't care who you drive for. Yeah, we don't, I don't think we need any of that. DNA scattered around. Oh boy. Yeah. And I know it sounds like we're just picking on the non domicile driver, but damn, it really is a kind of a thing that really makes a lot of us drivers mad out here is do it the right way. Don't come out here. You clog up the whole system. When you don't know what you're doing and you can't tell me that you go out here and buy a CDL and it just comes naturally. You just don't go out here naturally or just figure it out. Okay. It ain't a, it ain't a motor home. Yeah. Yeah. I could probably go buy me a little 24 foot motor home and figure it out, but, don't get me started on some of these people in their motor homes. In Florida, you get, let's go buy this$300,000 bus sized vehicle and not know how to drive it and just tool it down the road. They are that. I'm 80 years old, I can't hardly see, but I got this big truck and this big six wheel camper here. I'm gonna head down to Florida. Then I'm gonna tie up I 75 or I four for a couple of days. Now y'all had to be the damn destination for the retirees. We didn't choose that for you up here. Okay. It ain't our fault. Yeah. Y'all chose that. I was gonna say they have two speeds in Florida. It's I think my pacemaker quit and my pacemaker just quit. Mm-hmm. Yeah., They do. Either they're driving 95 miles per hour to the hospital, or they're going about 15 under the speed limit. In the left lane. Yeah. And that's been my experience of Florida and I've driven a lot of it. Oh yeah. I seen one the other day, speaking of motor homes, it was over on 71, I think it was on 71 or 76. Anyway, this guy, I, I couldn't see what company. It was an unmarked trailer. I'm sure he was an owner operator independent or something. He basically, he hit a motor home in the rear end probably about three o'clock at four o'clock in the morning.'cause you know when you get sleepy, most people's first just, thing that goes is your depth perception, how close you're getting to somebody. He. Hit this motor home and he drove about halfway through it. And then of course, the truck took off up through the woods and all you can see is the tractor way up in the woods looked like he was going squirrel hunting and the trailer sticking out. Thank God everybody did survive. I, I did, I did find out that nobody was actually injured. My goodness. I'm sure that driver took a hell of a ride. I can tell you that. That was a good adventure. I hope he didn't pay too much for that squirrel, that guided squirrel hunt, because that was a hell of a trip. You said you worked a lot out of, Ohio, Stacy. Mm-hmm. Do you live in Ohio no. I live down in Kentucky. I once recalled a joke about between Ohio and Kentucky. And I'm going to tell it, hopefully it won't offend anybody from Ohio. But it says, how do you keep all the assholes out of Kentucky? I have no clue.'cause we still get a lot of'em. The Ohio River. The Ohio River. Yes sir. I don't know. I don't think that deters too many of'em'cause they keep building damn bridges. But I just figured you'd get a tickle out of that. Yeah. It, but driving up there in Ohio, you haven't seen anything at the way station. I know one of the, oh, they're terrible. Where they were pulling the. There's not even the waste station man, that Ohio really ain't big on waste stations, man. They just pull your ass on the side of the road. Your rest areas right. Is a big thing in Ohio, man. They burn them rest areas especially. Speaking of that. When's the last time you've been up there No, those are still good man. I was just up across the turnpike here the other day actually, and man, that I stopped at one of them, they got a lot of sufficient parking in the rest areas and they're ever so many miles, and that's something that they need to take a play out of, I know there's a toll road, but. Why can't they do some of this along the regular highways? If they put a couple of restaurants and some things in there, they'd make back their money. Instead of having just a point blank truck stop, just put a rest area with some, Hardee's or Burger King, or this or that, I don't really eat a lot of that, but, I try not to. I'd rather see like a. Sonny's barbecue or if anything, at least decent food. Lord, man. Now you're talking my, yeah, I have to say no, I know. Sonny's is a chain industry, barbecue, they got some pretty decent barbecue for it. Still beat for the price. It still beats the It is, and it's quick and it beats fast food. Oh yeah. Most definitely. And I eat predominantly a carnivore diet. We're going to dive into that in season two. Health and dieting and so forth, and getting your health together on the road. We're gonna get into that season too. We got that coming up here probably another couple of months. I eat predominantly a carnivore diet, and incorporate a salad occasionally, but I predominantly stay on a carnivore diet. I like to play this little game when I get a salad called, let's hide the lettuce. I like more meat in the salad than I do the lettuce. I love a good salad. I filled up with hardboiled eggs and bacon and steak or chicken if I got it, I just went out and fired up my smoker this morning, I think I sent y'all some pictures. I had to chew some crackers to tie me over until just so I can, get my dinner. I got a bunch of burger patties made. Mm-hmm. Got meatloaf made. See I meal prep mine.'cause like you, I'd say 90% of the time I'm carnivore. I just gotta quit eating so much. I'm too damn big. Yeah. You know the trucks man, that, that's a, that's a big problem in the trucking, industry is weight, and mm-hmm. The, not to mention the cost of eating out of these truck stops. His quad triple. Oh, you can't afford it no longer. That's another reason why we meal prep. Yeah. I meal prep every week, man. Anybody that knows me, they know I love to barbecue, man. I will jump on a barbecue grill. I got a big custom built smoker out here. Wood fired. It's my favorite damn I make my own rugs, my own barbecue sauces. I do it all. I love it. I've been in it for years and all meal prep up about. I'll go with a couple of briskets, some pulled pork and I will pull it all up and portion it out in the Ziploc bags and freeze it and then take it to work. I know it's not as good as you get it off of, but you know what? It's still good, and take it work. Oh yeah. With me and I do up some of the brotts and stuff. I mean, I don't really get too big into the processed food, but I do love the broths. I try to get the good ones, the jalapeno cheddar brot or something., Those are super good. Those are good. And actually the wife just got me some baby back ribs there yesterday. I'm going figure out what I'm gonna do with'em next, next week. I ain't going to do'em this week. I done a big ass ham, bone shank ham this week. I put that thing on the smoker and got it. That's what I sent you a while ago. That big old ham. Yeah. That's what we're gonna have tomorrow. She's doing the sun Makes me want breakfast. Yeah, she's doing the boy's birthday dinner today. It's all Korean and Asian food today. So they getting their homeland food. So there you go. Yeah, I think if they didn't have rice or something, I think they die. They, these Asian women got to have their rice. I like rice, but. Okay. I can't eat it like I used to. I still enjoy it, but I might have had it once, I'll tell you how often I have pasta. I can't remember the last time I've had pasta. Mm-hmm. Shit, I ain't had pasta probably about three years. Man. Yeah. It's just one of the worst things to put in your body. And, I'm not saying I don't enjoy it once in a while, but, very limited. And I used to love pasta. I'm from originally upstate New York with a heavy Italian influence and it was hell for me to try to give up pasta. But, it is one of those things to become healthier. Yeah. I don't really eat pasta. I don't eat bread and I don't eat any of that, and once you get far enough away from it, you don't really miss it. You don't. Like I said, in season two, no you don't. In season two, we're going to do a whole big thing, deep dive on dieting. I'm not gonna tell somebody what kind of diet they, that's up to them, but there are tip tips and tricks and things that you can do to help stay healthy out here on the road and vitamins and things like that. I'm actually. Working on some stuff with the different vitamins, for people to take help with the energy levels and things like that. I take a lot of supplements and things to kind of help out. I've definitely came a long ways, for my health, cholesterol and diabetes. I used to be a pretty bad diabetic. I'm not on any kind of medication anymore for diabetes. I'm not even a diabetic anymore. And it all That's awesome. It all comes in time. You didn't get that way overnight and you're not gonna fix it overnight, but it definitely has to do with how you eat and living out on this road. I've been in and outta these trucks for 30 years, man. I mean, I've eat some pretty crappy things out on the road, without a doubt. I think Daniel, he, me trips too, and so do I, it's we definitely, and I know you Mill prep, I think Sean Mill preps, that's the biggest thing to do. But for the guy that's out there for a month, two at a time, that's a little harder to do. But it can be done. When I ran the road OTR and I was gone, you know what I go to the store of, I couldn't find a Walmart that had truck parking or something like that in it. Dude, I'd Uber. You know what that little bit of uber cost right there ain't nearly as much as what you're gonna spend in that truck stop. You can Uber to a grocery store. Oh, you're absolutely right. Grab you one that little 20,$30 electric skillets. If you got an inverter and refrigerator, you could save yourself a lot of money. When I was an owner operator, I had that electric skillet. I took that in a George Foreman grill and I'd make myself a bunch of food. It can be done. And I used to be one of those guys that were two, three months out at a time. Now I'm home every five days, so to make, about six days, sometimes depending if I choose to work an extra day. It's not hard to make two meals a day, which, we're I, because usually the last day I don't eat'cause I'm going home. But, nine or 10 meals, it's not as hard as everyone thinks it is. And it saves you a ton of money and you're going to eat healthier. Mm-hmm. Yeah. For the most part, depending on what you make. Now, if you ate a bunch, you make a bunch of spaghetti and macaroni and cheese that's not gonna cut it. But I ain't going to tell another man what he can and can't eat. Or a woman for that matter. Yeah. No,, I can only make suggestions, but I can't, I'm not going to tell somebody, what they can or can't do., This, it is, it's up to them. I know the results that work for me, but there's things that work for other people, and I know what makes me feel the best and, got my health where it needs to be, and I don't care to help people with that. I think a good combination of being a keto bore, because I do like broccoli and maybe spinach and a couple vegetables, but primarily in carnivore. And fasting. I think you can't beat that combination. If I'd stay disciplined to leave the ice cream cones alone, that's my vice. I remember when I was hardcore on the carnivore diet, I was bringing my blood pressure medication down in milligrams to the point I was almost off of it. I had lost 35 pounds. It wasn't that hard. Was barely taking diabetic medication. I have lowered my A1C down and kept it down because even though I still enjoy an ice cream cone every now and then, I am primarily still on carnivore, just not as strict as I used to be. I urge people to look into it, do the research, don't take our words for it. It's a great diet. I think Daniel's actually been on some of that too. I think he's lost quite a bit of weight since he's been off the OTR but you know, he used to cook a lot on the truck back in the day, training, especially when you got students and stuff like that.'cause they don't have a lot of money. Oh yeah, absolutely. You gotta kind of be a parent figure to some of these students that y'all train, mm-hmm. I've never really had to train nobody. I've never been much of a teacher. I was always, I know what I doing, but I've just never been much of a teacher. I was always that nurturer man. I always tried to help and teach and train and I really enjoyed training. I really did. I tried to help people do the best they can do out here. I, and I know I rant, I've been asked about things because it is kind of my hot spot'cause things has went way downhill since I quit training. Oh, you ain't lying, man. I'm seeing things and I was like, wow. And the sad part about it is most of these guys out here doing all these things, it's not necessarily their fault, they're the guys that's going to pay for it. They're the guys that's getting, yeah. The non-training. They're out here, having accidents and you know that shit's gonna follow them for years on end because they wasn't trained or taught, and that's not their fault. And that's why I keep going back to that's, again, it goes back to the company, right? I work for, they're about their training. They're about their safety. That's the first thing everybody wants to ask when they're new and they come in because even though I'm not a certified trainer, I've been asked to come in and speak on several classes as an experienced driver and talk to the new guys that are going through the orientation process joking aside, one of the first questions they all wanna ask never fails in every class. How much money are we gonna make? How about, don't worry about that. Worry about doing your job right? You do your job right, you'll make money slow as smooth as fast. Develop a routine, be organized, be safe. Do your pre trips, do your trip planning, get that routine. Be organized, and that's what we preach where I work. Boys, I'll tell you what I think I'm about to wrap this up for the day. I think we'll all come back and we're gonna deep dive a little bit more into some more of the domicile stuff that's been to be the happening thing out there on the industry. There Again, I'm not trying to pick on anybody, man, but I mean, we just have a real problem with people running around out here with no CDL. I call it no CDLI mean, you might as well be if you bought it. It's not real. It ain't any different in that fake ID that somebody runs out there to buy beer or getting into a bar, Nick loving. Yeah. It's not real, and if you bought it, it needs to be, they said the other day that. California outta 60,000 non domicile CDLs. They issued 15,000 of them was not legit. Grief. Yeah. That's a big number. With that being said, boys, I'm gonna wrap this up. I do appreciate everybody calling in on the Truckers Radio podcast. It's been a pleasure. I'll see y'all back next time, man. Appreciate it. We do this every week and keep trying to, bring all the news out to everybody, try to help wherever we can that does it for another episode of the Truckers Radio podcast. I do appreciate everybody that tunes in next week. We'll have more to come. I do appreciate everyone tuning in. That wraps up today’s episode of The Trucker’s Radio Podcast. If you found a nugget of wisdom today—or heard something that hit home—pass this episode along to another driver. To learn more about coaching, support, and mentoring through Sabren Group LLC, head over to SabrenGroup.com.And don’t forget—you’re not just a driver. You’re the backbone of this nation. Until next time, this is The Trucker’s Radio Podcast, where real drivers find real support. Stay safe out there—and keep the wheels turning.