“Rolling Through the Struggle: Truckers’ Q&A Special”

 In this episode of The Trucker’s Radio Podcast, powered by Sabren Group LLC, host Stacey Yearout answers real questions from real drivers and their families — questions about the hard truths of life on the road, the struggle to keep love alive, fighting burnout, and the reality of running your own rig in today’s economy. Stacey brings over 30 years of trucking and coaching experience, blending tough love, real-world business advice, and compassion for every driver fighting battles on and off the highway. This isn’t a corporate podcast — it’s the voice of the American driver. Straight talk. Real stories. Real solutions. 

 trucking podcast, trucker questions, owner operator consulting, trucking business coaching, truck driver mental health, relationship coaching for truckers, trauma recovery for drivers, trucking life stories, freight market advice, truck driver burnout, life on the road podcast, trucking motivation, Sabren Group LLC, Stacey Yearout, Trucker’s Radio Podcast, trucking lifestyle, truck driver struggles, trucking business education, mental health support for truckers 

 #TruckersRadioPodcast #TruckingPodcast #OwnerOperator #TruckDriverLife #TruckingCommunity #TruckerStrong #TruckingBusiness #MentalHealthForTruckers #TraumaRecovery #SabrenGroup #StaceyYearout #LifeOnTheRoad #TruckingSupport #CDLDrivers #KeepOnTrucking #RealTalkForDrivers #TruckingFamily 

Transcript

Dolores 0:00

Welcome to The Trucker’s Radio Podcast, powered by Sabren Group LLC. Hosted by Stacey Yearout, a 30-year veteran of the trucking industry, recovery coach, and author who’s helping drivers and families rebuild their lives one mile at a time. This podcast is more than talk it’s about truth, resilience, and the real stories from America’s highways. Each episode dives deep into the heart of trucking: owner-operator consulting, business advice, mental health and relationship coaching, and trauma recovery for drivers and their loved ones. Welcome to the Trucker Radio podcast. Today we're gonna do another session of q and a and we got Leah from Kentucky. She is going to help us out with the Q and a. You with us, Leah? I am here. All righty then. So how's everything going for you today? It's been busy. It's been a very busy day. Now we're going to do some podcasts. Oh, joyful podcast, huh? Yeah, definitely. Alright, just let me know when you're ready to start out with the first email. I will go ahead and head into number one. It is from Mike in Oklahoma City. His question is, everyone says trucking is a freedom. The open road, your own boss, no clock to punch, but sometimes it feels more like a cage. Do you think trucking gives freedom or takes it away? I think a lot of that just depends on how you look at it and what you're taking from it. It's not a one fit. One size fits all type of thing. You know what I get out of it, enjoy mud and the freedoms and the things that I like about trucking may not be what you like about it. We have some people that go out that are home bodies. Those are guys that predominant they like to run the local jobs. And then some people prefer to be gone. If something. It ain't really hitting right with you. Maybe look around and see if you can find a better fit. You gotta be happy with what you're doing. You can't be miserable trying to run up and down the road if the job's not fitting. That'd be my best advice to just kinda look around and see what you got. Options. Sounds good. I couldn't do it. I couldn't sit still. Like you all sit still for hours upon hours and on the road. No, I'm a passenger princess. Yeah. I couldn't it is definitely something that gotta be cut out for, it's, getting up and jumping around in the truck now. You can get up and walk around if you're not driving and you're the passenger and you could go back and read a book or get on a laptop or watch tv. It all depends, most of it just all depends on how you got your truck set up and if you're going cross country or what, it can definitely be fun. I'll take your word for that. I'm not going cross country in a semi anytime soon, I promise you that. You never know. You may just wake up tomorrow. You ready for number two? You may wake up tomorrow to decide you want to become the next female truck driver. I don't think so. Okay. I'm going to the next question. It is from Randy out of Fort Worth, Texas. My dispatcher says, keep the wheels turning, but my body's giving out. How do you balance making money with not running yourself into the ground? That's actually a pretty decent question, but is one of'em things that you just got to find the right balance of money in what you get paid for the amount of work you do. You can't just work for low dollar. And I understand, I'm not sure how many years you've got out here, but there's places that pay a decent amount to where you don't necessarily have to kill yourself to make a living. And I would suggest you do just that. If a guy wants to pay you chicken feed and expects. Your soul. In return, I would say find myself another job that paid me for what I was worth. Instead of making, the old saying is if you wanna make more money, find something that pays you more for what you put out in the long run. You don't always make more money when you work more fine. Alleys that makes you more money for working less. You want to, you gotta live too. You can't just go out here and say, Hey, I want dedicate my whole life to a paycheck.'cause that's no fun. And at the end of the day, you're going to get burned out and you're just not going to, it is just not gonna work out for you. Great. What good is it? If you're miserable and you're always working and you're always running, what is the purpose? What is, what does that serve exactly? You have no home life. You have no marriage, you have no I, no time with your kids. You need to find something that pays you a good enough wage to where you can actually go home. Be a dad, be a mom, be a mom. I know we got female truckers out there probably feel the same way. You gotta get out there and find something that pays you for what you're worth. And we do have companies out there that really want a lot of you for a whole lot less than what you're worth. And and I understand you gotta pay your dues, but paying your dues ain't your whole life. That ties into the next question a little bit. So it is from Jess in Macon, Georgia. My wife says she's tired of being a trucking widow. How do you make a marriage survive this lifestyle? A trucking widow? That's some pretty serious words there. I think she's a little fed up. I'm just saying, trucking widow, she's already got him killed off. I don't know. I don't know if he needs to go home or try to fix this. He may wanna stay out on the road. He may. He may. That sounds pretty serious there. There again, they have multi levels of trucking. You've got OTR, you've got regional, you've got local. And I get most of your local stuff, you're going to take a pay cut somewhere along the line. Somebody's gotta make some adjustments. And if your spending habits does not allow you to come home and work a local job, you need to start looking at the way you're living, the way you're spending, and the way, what's more important? Being home or living a lavish lifestyle that. You're trying to live and you also gotta figure in when you work a local job, there's a great deal of money that you're technically not spending out on that road. You know that cost a lot more than people wrap their head around. They don't understand the actual cost to living on that road. And yeah, you're gonna make a little less money, but at the end of the day, what are you going to have left to work with? That's what you really gotta look at. I will say as the ex-wife of a trucker communication the wife's at home doing everything on the home front. And yes, the man is out working and doing what he needs to do, but it doesn't take much to do. A phone call or a text in the evening, or if you're on, break or whatever. We understand you can't be on the phone all the time with us and talking to us, nor can we, because we're, a lot of these homes are too income homes, so we're out working just as hard. But when it's very little communication and I think sometimes they come home and. They want to unwind and decompress and so there's even little communication when they're in the door. I think that's where the breakdown happens. Yeah, most definitely. And I think, when you live out on that road like that, you definitely can become detached. Feelings can start the old saying is, distance makes the heart fonder, but not always. Sometimes it starts to detach after a while, the feelings that you have for someone. If you're on that road and you're not communicating and you're not keeping the kindling, in the fire, you're going to definitely tell a difference in your relationship. And I think that has a lot to do with self, not necessarily trucking, because we have people out here in different industries that. Do the same thing. We have construction workers there. They work all over the country, and they're gone two, three weeks to a month, two months at a time. Also, we have people in the military, they do the same thing. Sometimes they're gone for a year or two at a time away from their family. Trucking kinda gets a catchall, everybody wants to blame the truck. Everybody wants to blame. The road for the relationship issues, when the relationship issues was already there before you ended up getting to the truck. The truck just found the weaknesses, and I think that's a big part of it. We find weaknesses in their relationship when it's put to the test, but yet we always blame the truck. It's, that's not always the case. You definitely gotta look at yourself the relationship of what you're doing on the road, how you're living. Communication's huge. Just like Leah said, communication is plus, when I started driving back in the day, I feel bad for my first wife, maybe that's why she's my first wife and ex-wife at the same time as shit. We didn't call home, but once a week. Couldn't afford to, you didn't have cell phones. It was back in the day when you sat down at the booth at the TA or the 76 or the Flying J and you had the little phones on in the booth and you had a calling card and you called home and them calling cards was pretty expensive. We didn't have cell phones. We wouldn't readily available at a second phone call like we have now. The people out on the road, now's just getting in the trucking. Man. You guys got it easy. You got. You got FaceTime, you've got all kinds of communicating skills. You can make videos, TikTok, what you're doing. There's all kinds of stuff that you've got that's so much more better than what we had in the day in the day. Make us sound old. I am old. All right. I know we forget to, we forget that sometimes I am getting old, I put in a lot of miles on this road. I may not, I probably got a lot more miles on me than I am age. But, I got into the trucking industry when. Things were still very primitive to a degree. I've drove trucks. I know damn well a lot of these people would never drive. I hear my son complaining about some of these tractors and all. It's, that's a 23 model or 24 model. I don't want that one. I want the new one. I said, I remember a time driving an 87 cab over damn thing. Didn't have no heat. Barely had any, I don't even remember it even had any air conditioner, barely any kind of Jake brake man. But you know what, we drove it. You had a roll a crank window. You didn't have crews, you had a throttle stick over here. You just cranked it up and got it going, the speed you wanted to go and, cranked it back down real quick when you needed to stop. There was a lot of shit that we put up with back in the day that. Man readily available at your fingertips in these trucks. Now they got wifi, they got satellite radio. Shit, man. They got big screens, TVs on the side of the, in the sleeper. And man, you got a lot of technology out there that makes life way more bearable. Then let's go to the next question because this can tie into that, and I think especially for men. So Carl in Sioux Falls said, I don't talk much about my feelings. I never have, but lately I just feel empty out here. How do you deal with that? That's kinda, yeah, that's kind of part of where you're detaching. I would say Carl, I think most definitely you need to find something to do, something to occupy your mind. I'm not sure if Carl's married or Carl. Carl has a girlfriend. I would like to know a little more information about that. You don't necessarily have to detune yourself out here. It's easy to do without a doubt. You can fall in that rut real easy, and it's easy to detune yourself to just be a zombie. You just run behind the wheel. You stay in that truck, you detach yourself from the truck stop, and most of the truck stops. I don't really blame you'cause we got a circus going out there right now, that's for sure. But you gotta communicate, you gotta be a human, you gotta live, and I'd say, Hey, try to get on the phone with some of your buddies. I encourage, getting on the phone with multiple calls, it's just communication keeps your mind healthy. You can go into a dark place. I've got several clients,'cause I do, counseling, mental health. I do all the different things. I offer that across for all the truck drivers, and I don't always talk about it, but it's there. It's on our website. I don't really try to shove it in everyone's face, but that's what I'm here for. We offer trauma, we offer, all different sorts of counseling. For you guys. And that's one of the things that you can get into a bad spot in that truck. You're living your life in a truck with a third of the size of a federal prison sale. And you don't realize it until you stop and think about it one day and say, man a guy in prison lives in a bigger space than I live in on a daily basis. Okay. He don't necessarily get paid for his time, you can get into a bad place, and you gotta do something. That's one of the first things that I tell my clients, Hey, you gotta talk to people. You gotta get up outta that truck. You need some friends. You need to, find things to do, audible books. Something to keep your mind occupied off of what's going on, and quit detaching yourself from the world I'm thinking. I just go to the next question because I, it just, I don't know. I think that people oftentimes dehumanize the truck drivers and they think that, you don't see them out of the truck a lot and they, people don't realize what all you all do in the hours that you put in. So I think you all are underappreciated you are humans, and I think you all forget that sometimes that you're human and you're allowed to be human and you're allowed to stop and exhale. Like you have to have something that can just let you decompress, whatever your hobby would be, or whom, whomever you would need to speak to, have some form of outlet because otherwise you're gonna explode in your little fishbowl. Most definitely. And that's, you hit the nail right on the head there. This industry is really bad about dehumanizing and treating the truck drivers like a third class citizen, and I've seen it many times and you'd think it would get better, but I think it gets worse at times, and I always tell people, Hey, hold your head high. Don't ever be ashamed of what you do with this industry. This is probably one of the biggest, largest industry, probably one of the most important parts to the infrastructure of our entire country. And if you wasn't out there doing what you're doing, man, there gonna be some serious empty shells in Walmart. That's for damn sure. Yeah, that is a very true statement. I know for me, like you go back to what we talked about earlier, and I'm the ex-wife of a trucker, so he gave me such a jaded opinion of what truck drivers were. So now that I have more friends that are truck drivers. And I work in an industry that I speak to truck drivers on a daily basis. I see a whole different light. And because I was not a fan, because people, they just put you all into a small category of what just a few in that industry are. And everybody, like you said, they treat you all like second class citizens. And that's not it at all. People need to. Give you all a chance and speak to you and understand who you all are as people, not just what you're doing for a living. And they need to really understand this. Like we would shut down if you all weren't out doing what you're doing. Most definitely. The thing about Dizzy, even speaking for myself, they are some of the best people on the planet that I've met out here in these trucks. And a lot of people, they discredit truck drivers for being uneducated and everything. And you know what they can say what they want. Even I look at myself, I'm very educated, I have accomplished more in my life than most people that I see all day long in, in any of the businesses, I have a book out. That I wrote. I'm a counselor. I have multiple businesses across the page, and yes, I still do drive. That's just part of who I am. But it's all what you allow yourself to be. And I'm gonna say allow yourself to be, because you're steering wheel of you. And if you allow yourself to sit there and wither away to nothing and become what every one of us' opinion is of you, that's on you. If you think your way through it, you can do it. That's what I tell everybody. If you can think your way through it, you can do it. Just rip the bandaid off. Let's get it done. I'm gonna go to the next question. It is from Tanner. He is 24 from Spokane, Washington, and he would like to know. What is the biggest mistake rookie drivers make when they first hit the road? Probably, where do you want me to start now? I'm just messed away. The beginning. Start at the beginning. Yeah. It is not even so much, there's so many different directions we could go with this and I think as a trainer and I trained for a lot of years and I taught a lot of you guys out here on the road today. I'm sure there's a whole lot of cats out there that I train. Probably still listens to my show, but the first thing I usually see'em do when they get on the truck is they spend every dollar they make and then they're broke. Then they're trying to figure out how to eat on the, bologna and bread. You see'em, you know they're broke when they come back to the truck with a blown pack of bologna and a loaf of bread. That's the number one thing. Even in training they get a little bit of money and man, it is gone. They go three different directions with that paycheck. That's probably one of the biggest things I see right out the gate. Number two, money management. Oh yeah, money management. This road is is worse than Las Vegas casino. That truck stop is not your friend. I'm gonna tell you that right now. Everything in that truck stop costs three times as much as it does anywhere else. And I know it costs money to Uber and stuff, what I used to do is I try to plan out and think ahead, and I would get myself as either as close to a Walmart as I could to a truck stop or something like Uber. Maybe six or eight,$10 over. Okay. You're gonna spend 20 bucks, but you're gonna save yourself two or 300 bucks when you go to Walmart and stock that truck up. So you go figure the math. And then they are Walmart that does allow truck parking. They have truck parking. If you run across country. There's a couple I think across, wyoming and Nebraska that actually have truck parking. You go in and get your groceries and stock your truck up. That's your biggest thing you need to do. You need to start trying to eat outta that truck. That's the biggest thing. Start eating out of that truck man. Stay out of that truck stuff. Once in a great while, go and get you a steak dinner. Great. But, I bought a$30 skillet outta Walmart and I can fix all kinds of steak in that skillet for, buy me a new skillet a year. And it's a hell of a lot better eating. It's a hell of a lot better eating, but very good advice. Probably the next one would be, every damn thing. That's the biggest thing right there I see is the minute you get that CDL in your hand, you can't be told nothing, when you come outta that school, you are the farthest thing from knowing what you need to know. This is a ever changing business, and I'm sorry to bust your bubble, but you won't ever know a hundred percent of everything you need to know to drive this truck because it changes every day. And you just gotta, you gotta keep an open mind because if you don't have a good open mind and a good attitude and ready to learn. This trucking industry's going to school you, it's gonna school you real quick. You definitely need to humble yourself. Take advice, listen to people that seem viable. I'm not saying listen to everybody out here tell you to go jump off the bridge because not everybody gives good advice, but find people that sound like they got some pretty good common sense. And there again, we offer. Counseling 30 minute sessions. It is not just for mental health. We offer owner operator consulting and new truck driver consulting. When you're going into the industry, we offer 30 minute sessions. If you've got questions, it's a very small fee. It's not that expensive. It may cost you a whole lot more money to not know than it does to learn. We're here to help. We give, counseling. Across many different things. Even and there again, if you got a specific question, I have an email. Send me an email, right? I put it in every podcast, all of my advertisements. Shoot me an email. It may take me a minute to get back to you, but I'll help you out. That's what I'm here for. But just try to humble yourself. Learn everything you could learn from the most reliable. People that you can learn it from. Not everything you hear is right. So you wanna make sure you can sort through the bullshit a little bit, but learn you don't know everything, trust me. Sounds, it sounds like they need to find like a very reliable mentor. Just somebody to bounce their ideas off of, or questions or concerns. But make sure it's. Somebody trustworthy. Exactly. I know that you have a few that do that with you. Yeah, most definitely. And that was one thing, even when I'd teach a student, when they get done with training, I'd always tell'em, look, I offer free after training support, because I'd want'em to call me. Don't screw something up and then call me later. Call me before you screw it up. And that's always what I tried to do the best. So I guess are you ready for another question? Yeah, I do believe we are. This is from Leroy Birmingham, Alabama. When the truck breaks down far from home, how do you keep from losing it? Little temper tantrums. Temper tantrums. I'm not going to sit here and act like I ain't never had a meltdown over some situations in this industry because I guarantee you that I did. I guarantee it. Guarantee, the trucking industry is a rough business. It really, it is. And I think that. When you get broke down far from home, you need to think about Back when you get broke down out here on the road, it is most definitely, your tempers run high, and I don't know exactly what situation you're in financially if you're strapped financially and the damn truck breaks down or you ain't got money for this or that, yeah it can get rough. Trust me. And I bought a truck one time, man, this was probably one of the worst years I ever had in trucking. I bought a truck, thought it was supposed to have been a low mileage truck, and it really was. Thank God it was under warranty, the problem was, is this truck broke down. It blow to the engine, four days before Christmas and this truck was down before they could get the parts for over 30 days. And I just had spent a lot of their cushion money and my wife had to drive all the way to Springfield, Missouri in a damn snow storm to get me to come home for Christmas. I give her credit, man. She never really drove in a lot of snow or anything, but man, she made it out there. And of course, I took over and drove back. But man, that was a really bad time for us right there. And, right after that engine blew or got it back, they were test driving it and it blew it up. It blew again, something wasn't right with it, it blew the engine again. So I had another 10 days to it for them to redo it again, and probably wasn't two months after that. It ate the damn, disintegrated, the fuel pump internally. So that was down for another two weeks. Trust me, I've been through some hard times with these old trucks, man, and it's not always fun. Sometimes you gotta laugh and say, you know what, it could have been worse.'cause dude, it could have been, it could have been a hell of a lot worse. You just gotta be thankful for what you do have in this situation, and, hope for the best. You do what you can do. Our next one is from a female. It is from Maria in Toledo, Ohio. I'm thinking about buying my first truck, but I'm scared of the payments. Is it still worth owning in this economy? I would say yes. And I make money every day, but probably I'd be more scared of knowing how to operate a business than would be of a payment. And the reason I say that is. If you the payment's never going to bankrupt you. Everybody's scared to death of a payment. The payment's never going to bankrupt you. But I'll tell you what is maintenance and fuel, that's what's going to bankrupt you. I used to have very big payments on trucks'cause I liked chrome and paint and fast trucks. But the, and the list goes on, and I think the last truck I ordered, we ain't even going to talk about. What we spend is a payment on it there when we bought it new, and not to mention the trailer that I bought with it, with all the bells and whistles, and that was about 80 grand to go along with the truck payment, but if you operate the truck correctly, you have no problem paying your bills. Your number one expenses fuel. You gotta think when you go into trucking, everybody dreams of having that great, big, long hooded W 900 and I love'em too. They're right there, close to my heart. They are, but they are not gonna make you money. Not like what you need to make, especially starting out into an industry. You have no connections. You don't have the contracts to support a truck like that. Maybe once you get in, get your feet wet and you know you can, you what you've got going on, you get some big contacts, you got produce or whatever it is you're hauling or chicken and you can afford a truck that gets that kind of fuel mileage because you're not going to get that great of fuel mileage with that truck. You need to think economics, right now, not trying to. Brand Pacific, but the Freightliner with the DD 15 in it is probably one of your most fuel efficient trucks on the road right now today. And fuel mileage if you run that truck sufficiently and run it 62 miles an hour, don idle. Make sure your trucks, if you're trying to buy one, I'd be looking for the A PU or some sort of heating cooling unit to where you can keep from idling the truck for one. It costs money to ILE that truck. Two, it costs money when you screw up the death system from idling that truck. That's a big, that's a big repair bill. And I'm not saying that's a hundred percent cause of your death problems and DPF filters and stuff, but it is a large contributing factor to that, is your death system. Idling a truck just destroys a death system. Yeah, if you gear yourself up for success out the gate, I think you will do just fine. Even in the economy, because right now probably would be the opportune time to jump into trucking.'cause the price of trucks are down and the rates are starting to come back up because we're in a major shift in trucking industry right now. And right now is a sweet spot from where I'm sitting.'cause you can purchase a really nice truck at a very good price. And the rates are on their way up. You wanna buy a truck, Lee? You know what you're talking about. You wanna buy a truck, Leo? No. I say won, but I'll say it is. I will say that. Don't you tell me you've seen a truck. I would drive it was pink. You know there's a cd l color. It was pink. If it was orange, we might talk. There's the CDL class, like that's close to where I live, and I have seen more females than I've ever seen out of these classes. Are you seeing more females out on the roads as operators? Absolutely. Absolutely. As the industry has progressed and we have gotten a lot more driver friendly trucks. It has definitely started bringing the female driver to the industry. We don't want, anybody to think that we don't want female drivers. You know what? I talked to the female drivers just as much as any of the rest of'em. I treat'em just Hey, she one of the guys or one of the girls, or whatever. I make no differences. In fact, I was wanting to get a couple of girls to like. Email me. I leave the email in the comments. I'm wanting to do a couple of shows that is the female driver. I want to bring their opinion to my show. I want to know what it's like for you to be out on the road working in staying in the truck stops, and how is it different for you versus us out there on the road as a man? Do you take more I'm sure you have to take more precautions. And you don't really wanna put yourself in bad situations.'cause we do have some creeps out there that, that don't understand privacy and respect, I would really like to hear from some of the female drivers. The email will be in the comments. I'd like to do some shows and bring all the, bring them on the show and make them a part of what we do. Yeah, I would be interested in hearing their perspectives. I do have a couple that I'm friends with and her husband started driving first and he switched to a company that did team driving. She missed him, sent it. She went and got her CDL and they team drive. Together. And they love it. Oh yeah. Yeah. Love it. So I'm just interested like. What made them get into the industry? Why now? What were they doing before they became truck drivers? What career did they leave? I'm just interested. I wanna know. That's my opinion. Oh yeah, most definitely. I couldn't tell you the times I've tried to talk my wife in getting her CDL, she just looks at me real calm and quiet and she said, do you wanna be on the news? I said, no. Do you? Oh, you don't want me driving that truck? I said, want take it? I thought maybe he was gonna be putting up with you. He doesn't wanna put up with you in the truck. There is that. There's nothing they do. You might have some road rage. No I don't. No. She'd be the one with road rage. I'm pretty cool, calm, collected. I'm there ain't much shit. Somebody gonna pull the, I ain't already seen 10 times. I don't get too excited. I just kinda really? But yeah, I really respect the fact that we're definitely seeing a lot of women out in the industry, and I love it. I love it. I love to see the women out here and, being part of the industry, it's, it is definitely, put a whole different scene out here. Are you ready for another question? You ready to buy that truck? Sure. I'll, I'll put that, listen, no, I, I love my job, so I think I'll stay. Remember I told you I cannot do it. I'm up and down too much, all over the place. I couldn't do that. No way. Yeah. So Dan in Scranton, Pennsylvania, he wants to know why do brokers always seem to make more than the driver? They don't always make more than the driver, and I know that for a fact'cause I've owned two brokerages. I've been the broker. I've worked right alongside the brokers that I had hired to, to operate my brokerage. Sometimes we think that the load should pay, but ultimately who controls the cost of that load lays between you and the customer. The broker is merely just a middleman that negotiates rates, and if you're not negotiating for a better rate, he's not negotiating for a better rate for himself either or you, if he puts a load out there and say. All right. It's two bucks a mile. And you're saying, man, is that the best you can pay? And of course he's gonna tell you no. And you're gonna just go all right, gimme the load, man. That ain't negotiation. That is not negotiation. You need to know what your operating cost is, and that's a big thing that I see, eight outta 10 drivers. You can ask them, what's your operating cost? And you get the deer in the headlight look because they don't know. They have no clue what it cost them to run that truck down the road and what it cost them in fuel or maintenance or any of the above. So they just shoot from the hip and say, oh,$2 a mile, that sounds great. Let's roll with it. They don't try to negotiate for any better load any better price. That's a big thing in my industry. If you're trying to pull an oversized load, there's permits, there's tart fees. There's all kinds of shit that you may have to, say, Hey, I'm going to need a little more money here or there to pull this load. And most of the brokers, they're going to tell you, okay, how much do you need to pull this load? And if you're constantly saying two bucks a mile, two bucks a mile, you're never really asking for any more money. And he may have$3 a mile in that load, but if you're not asking for it, you're not getting it. I have this saying that I tell everybody, closed mouth, don't get fed. You got the, you got to negotiate. If you don't wanna make$2 a mile in a$3 mile world, keep doing what you're doing. You have to become a good negotiator. You tell them, Hey, I need this much money to haul this load, and he's going to come back and meet you higher than what he had on the board. I can guarantee you that. And you gotta know your lanes also. That helps. I'm not saying every single battle you're going to win. You also gotta know where, the old saying is, win to hold and win to fold. Because if you're in an area where your truck to load ratio is, you've got five trucks to three loads, you might want to take that$2 mile load and move on with it, or you're gonna be sitting there for the weekend. But if you're in a, in an area where there's five trucks and there's 10 loads, the odds is in your favor to negotiate. He's either gonna come off that money or somebody else is going to, get your truck. And if he loses that truck, then he's not going to have a happy customer. He can always go back to the customer and say, I got you a truck, but he wants this much money. Chances are they're going to do it.'cause they need their load moved, and you gotta remember, he's not the final say and he knows there're probably more money in that load. And the average broker makes about 10%. Now, I'm gonna tell you, the brokers do work hard for their money. Don't just think they sit there. It's kinda like everybody saying a truck driver just sits on his ass all day. I hear people say that broker, he just sits on the couch with his laptop and his pajamas. But that's far from the truth, just like it is with us. You put a lot of time into getting the clients taking care of the client. Not all brokers are bad. We do have some people out here that give brokers bad names, but so do we in the trucking industry too. I've wore both hats. I know how it works and there's, you need to find yourself better brokers to deal with somebody you can negotiate with. If you do yourself a favor and start negotiating, you will start seeing more money. That's where people in the industry lose a lot of money. They never negotiate. They just take what they're giving and they run. They need to do their restart and they need to advocate for themselves, not just sit back and let their broker do whatever and just be like, yeah, okay. Know your stuff. Exactly. Know your stuff. Know your worth you gotta work smart. I got an old saying, if working hard was the key to success, the mule would own the farm, because that's not always the case. You gotta learn how to work smart. You want to get paid maximum amount of money for your efforts, and if you're constantly doing everything on the cheap. Brute force is not always going to be the winner. You're going to end up bankrupt because you don't have money for tires, you don't have money to put back for this. It costs money to operate these trucks. And if you're constantly breaking even, you're not paying yourself. What are you doing out there? Like I said, if brute force made you a millionaire, the mule would heat on the farm, period. That's not the way it works. You gotta learn how to do business and do it right. Next question, and I am anxious to hear your answer and I would love to know other people's this, Heather from Bowling Green. Do you ever regret the time you lost on the road? I would have to say yes and no. That's a very touchy question and there are a lot of things that, I raised five boys and I'm very proud of'em, and they've all turned out to be very good. They've done very good things with their life. Ain't none of'em in jail. Thank God. Work hard and live on their own. And I feel like there was a lot of parenting I did from the road because I was in tune with everything that was going on. I was in the middle of school functions. Even when I wasn't home. I knew what was going on. I kept track of, as the boys doing their homework, are they doing their chores, and that's a big part of being on the road. You do have to be part of the life you have back home. And I think that's where you see a lot of marriages fail, is they detach. Once they slam the door on that truck, pull out the driveway, they detach from that life and it ain't nothing but trucking, truck stops, shippers, receivers. They tune everything out. And that's where the detachment comes from when you're on the road. And I don't think you should do that because that detaches everyone, your kids, your wife, and after a while you're standing there wondering why your marriage fell apart. And everybody wants to just chalk it up and blame it on the truck instead of taking some responsibility for their own. And when you detached, that's what created. It ain't the truck done nothing. Yes, it is a job. And you did choose to do that job and I feel like when you sign up for trucking you have to make it work. The truck is just a piece of equipment and you know your obligations before you get in that truck. And if you're not married, when you get in that truck and you get married, they knew what they were signing up for. So they have to make. Adjustments and I feel like you can be a parent and you still can raise kids.'cause I did it. I was very successful at it. I love all of my kids. And they knew that I loved them and we, I might not have been home on the day of their birthday, but you better bet your ass. We were celebrating it when I got home or before your birthday when I was home. I did miss some ball games and things like that, and there, there's just some things you just can't help. But, you still was there, you still was on the phone, you still were a part of their life. You still was there, pep talking on speaker phone. There, there's just things you can do to be involved and I think a lot of times, parents don't do that. And then when things fall apart, oh, it's a damned old truck. Not really, this is damned old effort that you didn't put in, and a lot of people don't want to hear that. But it is, you don't necessarily put the effort in to your relationship and it's easy to blame the industry because you hear it day in and day out. And. It's, they are failure rates. It's even in truck drivers, it has one of the highest marriage failure rates besides police officers. My son's a police officer, and they say, he works a lot of hours. They say they have a high rate of marriage failure, the same as us, but he's home every day. But he still works a lot of hours, I think in any industry that you work. A hell of a lot of hours you're going to be at risk to not being present in your relationship. And I think that's where a lot of it goes wrong. So I think too it could be, go ahead. No, I was just gonna say, the answer to that is, is, they can't be no regrets'cause they are some little teeny bits and pieces of regret in any life, no matter what you do for a living. It. But I have to say because everything that I've done, even the hard, the bullshit, the breakdowns, there've been times that, you know what? I lost more than my ass on a deal, but that built me to who I am today. I wouldn't be sitting here without the good, the bad, the ugly, I like to try to find a positive spin on it. I know people that. Or home every day that might work a 12 or 14 hour shift that really spend no more time with their family than someone that's over the road. I think someone like you being over the road may have even helped you appreciate the time that you got at home. So you were more present when you were home because you knew what you had to miss to be gone. Does that make sense? Makes perfect sense. There's parents that their kids are going to, they're going to work before their kids go to school and the kids are in bed by the time they get home. It doesn't, it's not any different than a truck driver that's gone. They're just in different locations. Just because you're at the house doesn't mean you're present. You can be on the rouge and still be present in your child's life or your spouse's life. You could be like, okay, say you park at eight o'clock at night, whatever your shifts are, then why couldn't you have a date with your partner on FaceTime every night, say from, eight to eight 30. That's our time together. That's what we're gonna catch up on our days. That's what we're gonna talk about, eat dinner together, even if it's on FaceTime. Just some level of connection and still you're not going to lose out. You still have that time available. It's just in different locations. Technology, I think, has made that a lot easier for people. That's my opinion. Ready for another one? Yep. It goes with this. You can just, you've probably even answered a little bit on this ray in Billings, Montana. What is the hardest part about being alone all the time? It definitely it, it weighs on you. I think it's humans we're not particularly made to be alone, and that kind of goes back to, finding an outlet to talk and have people. That you talk to on a daily basis and you communicate with, and the old saying is, they are someone for everyone. Just because you don't have someone don't mean that you can't find someone and there, there's women out here, there's men out here, that can find someone. It may not be exactly where we live. It may not be. But you can find someone that will be a part of your life and make you happy. That's something that's kinda you generated there, it's, it is just not gonna land in your lap unless you're in the right place at the right time, but being alone definitely can weigh on your mind. I don't think it's something that you just. I try to do, you just end up getting sucked into this hole to where you're just by yourself, you're alone, and that you just end up getting into this rut where you just don't really have any friends. You don't really communicate, you don't have a girlfriend, and you really just start into a spiral. And that's not good. You we're not meant to be alone as humans. So my suggestion is, you know what? They got a whole lot of dating sites. They got a whole lot of communication sites. We live in a information and technology world today. There's no reason for you to be alone. Just don't be gullible. Don't be sending people your paycheck because there's a lot of scams out there and people just sending them their paycheck too. And I'm not trying to be. Telling anybody to do all that either. That could be a really lucrative business idea for me. If I'm going to, I'm gonna go on the other end of those dating sites. I get those paychecks. Yeah, but you gotta look in the mirror too. I'm No, I would never do that anyways. Make my own paycheck. I think that's about it for the Truckers Radio podcast for this time. I think we're going to fold it up. Keep sending the email. We do appreciate every, all the questions. They ain't no stupid question. Keep sending them in. We appreciate everything. Thank you for tuning into the Truckers Radio podcast asked.*"You’ve been listening to The Trucker’s Radio Podcast, powered by Sabren Group LLC, and hosted by Stacey Yearout. At Sabren Group, we’re proud to stand beside America’s drivers offering owner-operator consulting, mental health support, relationship and trauma recovery coaching, and the kind of real talk this industry needs. To share your story, ask a question, or get connected, visit TheTruckersRadioPodcast.com or email TheTruckersRadioPD@gmail.com Until next time stay safe, stay strong, and keep those wheels turning. This is The Trucker’s Radio Podcast, the voice of the American driver."*