Rates, Leases & Negotiation: Surviving a Tightening Capacity Market

In this episode of The Trucker’s Radio Podcast, we break down what drivers are really facing right now — tightening capacity, rate pressure, leasing pitfalls, and the art of negotiation in a market that is no longer forgiving mistakes.

We talk openly about:

• Why capacity is tightening and how it affects rates
• The difference between leasing smart vs. leasing desperate
• How brokers negotiate — and how drivers should respond
• Why too many drivers leave money on the table
• What owner-operators and leased-on drivers must do to survive this cycle

This isn’t theory. This is real-world trucking, real negotiations, and hard lessons learned on the road. If you don’t understand how rates, capacity, and leverage work together, you will get squeezed — and this episode explains exactly why.

Whether you’re an owner-operator, leased-on driver, or considering leasing for the first time, this episode gives you the tools and mindset needed to protect yourself in today’s market.

🎧 Real talk. No sugarcoating. Just trucking truth.

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• freight rate negotiation
• tightening capacity trucking
• owner operator negotiation
• trucking lease agreement
• leased operator advice
• freight market capacity
• broker negotiation trucking
• trucking business podcast
• rate per mile trucking
• trucking industry analysis
• freight market discussion
• truckers radio podcast

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Drivers — what are you seeing out there right now?
Are rates tightening where you run? Are brokers negotiating harder?
Drop your experience below — real drivers helping real drivers.

Transcript

Dolores 0:00

This is The Trucker’s Radio Podcast the voice of the road. Where real drivers talk real life, real rates, and real survival in the trucking industry. From owner-operators to leased-on drivers, from freight rates and negotiations to mental health, life on the road, and everything in between this podcast brings you the truth they don’t teach in orientation. Hosted by Stacey W. Yearout, a veteran of over 30 years in the trucking industry, entrepreneur, recovery coach, and advocate for the men and women who keep America moving. No sugarcoating. No corporate spin. Just real talk from the driver’s seat Welcome to the Truckers Radio podcast. We got Mike. We got Mike from Georgia, and we got William from Washington on here today. And we're going to talk about capacity rates and what is taken to make a dollar out there on the road today. And we're gonna go ahead and start this out with the tightening of capacity. This is something that I think we've all been waiting on. In light of a lot of the illegal truckers and CDLs out here, that's been running our industry into the ground for years now, and that's getting cleaned up by the help of air transportation director over there. And I think everything's kinda working itself out and I think our capacity is. Dwindling back down to where we can actually get our rates up. Now we just have to play our part. Mike, you wanna tell us what it's looking like out there right now? It capacity's definitely tightened up a little bit. I don't think that the freight is right. I it, it's gotta be right behind it. I just think that the holiday season is playing a factor in that, at least in the open deck game. Where it's normally slow anyway. Probably March will probably give you a better idea of what's gonna happen. But right now, I, I just see that there's less trucks in the road as far as,, available trucks and that being said too they've taken out thousands and thousands of the illegal undocumented CDLs out here, the CDLs that's been put into place just simply because somebody exchanged a couple of hundred bucks and all of a sudden they're a truck driver with a CDL in their pocket and they're out here in a killing machine. And I think that's been a bigger problem than just safety., It's wreaked habit on, companies, big companies, and it was ran the rates down to the point to where, if you're not, if you're out there running up and down the road with a truck. And you're not even legitimate. Chances are you're not gonna pay any taxes. So on a level play field that makes it hard for us to survive, people that actually do things, but also with the tariffs too., You got a lot of pieces of this puzzle are coming together and they're the timing of it. When these tariffs were put in place, it takes a while for a company to move here, have a hiring, time where they're opening the doors to hiring in their new location and moving all their equipment and finding a building, you gotta, but it's happening right behind the scenes right now. And that's what is going to change that capacity. Once all that takes place. You got all these businesses coming here, investing money. It takes time. Oh yeah. Yeah. And what was you saying there, William? To further on Mike's point, it's infrastructure. They still have to have infrastructure in place to build stuff, to get things manufactured. You either have to buy, rent or lease a building. And that takes time and, whatever your business is, whether it's steel or manufacturing of washing machines or. Or anything in between., It takes time to get all that infrastructure in place before you can be productive. And that being said, there's a, there's some companies that,, there's a very small percentage of companies that can come back in, I think General Motors and. Ford has done some of this. There was a steel plant, I'm wanting to say, up in Michigan that came back in and started firing up their furnaces again. I think the biggest misconception with the tariffs, it's not to punish other countries. It's not to punish the American people and drive the pricing up. It's to make things uncomfortable on these companies that has taken their jobs. To other countries for cheap and slave labor and turn up the heat and force them to bring our jobs back to our country. That's the grand leverage scheme of what needs to happen, and I think that's what Trump's got his eye on. And with any kind of change, there are going to be some things that's uncomfortable,, to start with. And. I think if we follow the lead and set back and just take in, I think a lot of people don't even realize the amount of good things this man's done in his not even a year. That says a lot,? And not to mention the things that was done before he got in there that he had to go through and fix. If we just stayed another. Four years under a corrupt democratic presidency president, we'd been in trouble. We wouldn't even have been a country anymore. We'd have been a third world event., It's crazy. And don't get me wrong, I know there's a lot of anti-Trump and a lot of this I'm not trying to get political with any of this, but the bottom line is you can sit there and bury your head in the sand if you want. He's done a lot of good and some people are going to be on the wrong end of that. I know a lot of the Democrats are pissed in the pudding. Yeah. I mean, a lot of the Democrats are pissed off'cause the cookie jar lid got closed on their hand. They was just a big ride up the other day about Schumer. This cat here, he never ceases to amaze me. He's embezzled and hell, they, there's a bunch of them that's embezzled and ski owned money. That Doge is found and they're sitting there, like the deer in the headlight look like, oh shit. And then they get pissed off and try to block up, their budget and everything because they're not getting theirs. That's just wrong. Should be in handcuffs. I don't understand why they're not. Well, that's above air pay grid. Yeah. Yeah, obviously they're above the law to a degree and it's been proven time and time again. But back to the rates and everything, I mean it's,, with the capacity slowing and getting to where they're not covering the loads we need to do air part as a whole, as owner operators, and. We need to start negotiating a little harder. Quit being desperate. Those days are starting to go away. You don't just have to take the first thing that comes along. So negotiation is key. Hold your ground and know where you stand. Now, if you're in a shit state, middle of Montana, you might not wanna, hold the cards too long. But if you're in a good spot and you know where you're at, your truck to load ratio, you've gotta know these things to operate a business. That's the bottom line. If you're sitting in a good spot and your truck to load ratio is right, hold your ground, get your money, and if we all do this, it will force the rates up to go along with the capacity, right? The pro, the problem is you still got too many people out here that, that don't know anything about the business and that, that were told they could buy a truck and make a lot of money, but they don't know how. So they just keep taking loads at severely reduced rates and driving the other rates down for the people that are out here making this a career. You're exactly right. And that's where we offer the consulting into their industry here. I put it in the email. All you gotta do is send me an email, lemme know I'll get you set up. We don't really even charge a whole lot, so don't get freaked out that we charge thousands of dollars. We want to see you survive, and we do have to be paid for a time to a degree. But, it's very reasonable and you can call in and we'll set you set up on a weekly, maybe a couple times a week. Where we sat down with you, we go through your settlement sheets and we kind of fine tune your truck and see where you're losing money. I, if you're with a bad company or if you're in a lease program that's just not profitable, we can help maybe direct you to somewhere that is profitable. I know the oldest saying you can't make no money with the lease. That's not true. I've made a lot of money over the years and helped a lot of people, made a lot of money with leases and stuff like that, which I wasn't always i've helped a lot of people and I've made a lot of money in certain cases when I did lease trucks before I ever owned a truck. And, and I'm not even saying in some cases that it's not even better to lease a truck. If you got problems with a truck, you're married to it can drown you. If you're with a lease. A lot of times you can trade that lease back in and get you a different one. They are such things as problem childs and trucks that, that will put you outta business. I've had many of'em. Trust me. You don't want to be, I bought one truck, I was married to it and held within 30 days. It blew an engine and another 30 days. It eat. The fuel system cost me another 10 grand. Trust me. It can happen. What? Murphy's Law. But,, anything mechanical, man, it just, it doesn't matter how well you take care of it, at some point it's going to eventually fail mm-hmm. And, and that needs to be built into those rates as well, and knowing your cost, like you were saying. Right, exactly. But do people truly know their cost? See, I think a lot of people, they just say, well, minus the fuel, this is what I made. There's a lot of other things that go into it. What about the replacement of that equipment you're using? Like you just said, Willie, that you know you got, it's gonna fail at some point. You're only gonna use it so long and you're gonna have to get a new one. What about that? What? What? Are you putting money back for that? What about your trailer? I agree with Mike there. Yeah. I definitely agree with Mike there'cause you, if you don't have any money saved before you even go into this or don't have a business mind sense to save money, you're in the wrong industry. This business will eat you alive if you are unprepared and quick again. Very quickly. Very quickly. And if you can't have six to$10,000 set aside for a major repair, you will fail in this business. It's not a question of if it's when. Nowadays. And that right there goes back to, that goes back to you, Stacy, where you're talking about the consulting, teaching these newer, entrepreneurs how to, budget and set up for their truck costs so they know what they're making and what they're losing because it's like, I've had several businessmen in my family. My grandfather had a seventh grade education and ran a concrete business for over 30 years. He told me, he's like, you always need money saved. You need to have a kitty. You need to have a piggy bank and'cause things will break in a business. I don't care if you're doing concrete, a mold will break. You're in trucking. And he had a fleet of 21 trucks. He's like, any one time you have 21 different problems. He was like, you've got to be prepared. Well, and I think the biggest thing too is. People get this misconception when they go out, especially in a lease truck. They go straight from a company driver to a lease driver, and they get that big paycheck and all of a sudden Wow. Yeah. They lose their mind. Yeah. They go, it happens a lot. They go three different directions and they forget all that money ain't yours and they forget about the taxes. They forget about maintenance, they forget about. I know a lot of lease takeout, maintenance fund, but, that's a very minimal fund just in case you still gotta put up mm-hmm. Money on the back end there and, well, it's like I said, six to 10,000 for any kind of, and that's not gonna replace a transmission. No., That's gonna replace a clutch, uh, a light assembly. Um. Smaller repairs. You get into an overhaul. Last time I heard they're probably, they probably caught up now, about$25,000. Well, that, that depends on what you're working on. Because, I had a, I have a 16, uh, excuse me. Yeah. A 16 model Western Star with a DD 15 De Detroit in it, and it's$38,000 for a full overhaul. Yeah, and I believe it. Like I said, that was the last time I heard I haven't owner or opt in, well, six years. Yeah. So it is, a person. Reserves can vary depending, like you said, Willie, it all depends. Like somebody running a drive, van's gonna be a little different, somebody running a three axle stretch, that's right. Everything has a niche, everything has a different payout. Like when I owner opt. I ran refrigerated part-time and I ran, uh, hopper most of the time. Mm-hmm. And I did very well running Hopper. We got paid by the ton and you ran those states like Montana, where if you got a hopper, you're getting a load outta Montana, you got a flatbed, good luck. You're probably bouncing down to Boise, Idaho or something to get a, a wood load or something like that down there. So onions in season. Yeah, exactly. Lumber well, pretty much. Well, another thing, talking about, depending on what you're running mechanically, the DD 15, you're, you said 38,000 for a full rebuild and you of gotta ask yourself some questions there before you get into. That rebuild. Okay. Have you owned this truck since it was brand new? Yes. How have you taken care of this truck? Have you run full synthetic? Have you just stretched out your oil changes to the point to where you've got a lot of wear on your bull gears? All that? Me, myself, if I've taken care of a truck its entire life and I put a million miles on it, that first in frame, I'm not going to do a full.$38,000 in frame on it. I'm gonna leave those bull gears alone because chances are they're probably not needing to be replaced. I'm gonna do a fairly simple in frame liners, pistons, rods, mains, possibly if, if it's had a turbo, chances are, if it's had a million miles on it, it's got a pretty fresh turbo on it. So you could kind of cut your cost down. There's overkill and throwing money at a truck that you're not going to get back out. If you can get that truck back up to where you get another seven, 800,000 out of it without spending 38, let's say we can spend 20 20, 23, 24. I believe, I'd keep my other money put up. You know, sometimes you don't have to roll out the red carpet to rebuild something and go over the top when it don't actually need it. Not at all., But you are gambling when you do it. And for example, case in point, I bought a 2003, Freightliner Classic, short hood, the FLD short hood. Mm-hmm. Nice truck. They just did an in-frame in it, they put about 26,000 into the in-frame, but they didn't change out cam sensors when they did it. And the cam needed to be replacing the sensors. Now, that wasn't really that expensive for the parts, but the labor was gonna involve me being a week and a half down. Right. And over$8,000. And it was like, good gracious. That's like, I almost wish they would've just done it then. And you're gambling, but like you said, if you've owned the truck, which I did not, that's the key thing. Um. From the beginning, you can kind of get a better sense and feel for those things. Well, you cam, but this day and age is different though. With repairs, what you're talking about rebuilding a motor, you can't even get people to hit all the erks on a grease job. Well, and you want to give them piston liners and it's up to change. And you talk about micrometer. Calibrations, I don't think I'm talking about, you guys can ate some of them. I don't think he's telling you. He'll go down to the local TA or Petro and have him do your I know that. But even your, even shops that, that doubt that they're good shops. Oh yeah. You could, you get in there, you drop 20 Gs, you roll down the road, 300,000 miles, boom. PI shoots through the the block. Now you go back, the guy's gone. He's out of business. What do you do then? Well, that's one of the things that you don't do, that you don't do that you don't go to your. Ma and Paul to get an engine rebuild. You take it down to Cummins or Dero it or a certified shop that has a warranty, things like that. You do. There's certain things. Yeah, there's certain amount of money you are going have to spend, you know, kind of look at some reviews, how long they've been in business. Look at the reviews of the Shop Man. You go to someplace, wreck it. Ralph's overhauls our us. And you notice they haven't been in business that long. You might wanna steer away from that too. That's just another, but this is where I kind of take a lesson from the mega carrier. I don't follow everything in my opinion, but I really believe you warranty your way through this business anymore. I don't think you go that route because it's a risk for a guy that's a single maybe you have two trucks, maybe you have one, maybe you got five. But you're, you just, I think it's risky to do that because. I just, I feel like use a truck 700,000 miles, 800,000. You got a lot of other things that I wear on it too. And chances are technology has come up so far that you need to get up to speed with technology. It helps your bottom line, it helps your downtime, so maybe sometimes it's better just to get rid of it. Get into something newer. Mm-hmm. At the end of the day, you use a truck, say four or 500,000. If you're easy on it, you probably haven't even changed. Drive tires. Guess what? You're gonna have to. That's a good 10 grand steers drives. It's gonna have to get changed anyway. Get yourself into something newer. It comes with'em, you know what I mean? Everything else is new now too it's a logical point. I can agree to that. And there's not all, there's not just one right way to do something. You can survive rebuilding engines, you can survive on used trucks and. Things. I mean, it can happen. I mean, and, and you can have good luck with it,, but you do have a point there also. And that's where I say leases ain't always bad either because you're not married to that truck. You run that truck two years, not at all. Give it back and get another one. You know, so many people in this industry, and I see it all the time, they'll go lease a truck from Prime or da da, you know, Joe Small, I'm not naming one particular company. And they look at it, oh, I'm gonna buy this truck. That's the shittiest idea I've ever heard. Why do you wanna buy that truck? Yeah, for one, if you're gonna lease that truck through a company, you're going to pay about three or$400,000 for that damn truck. Way more than it's worth. Don't ever try to buy a lease truck. It's a lease for a reason. Yeah, it's a write off. It's a hundred percent. Write off, dollar for dollar. Use it as such. It's gets you to the step in this whole thing. It's a piece of equipment. Use it as it is intended to be used. It's a lease don't try to get you all up into that buy-in. Yeah. That's where these companies really get you lease it, keep yourself in a new truck, it's got a warranty, then you're gonna save money on maintenance tires, everything, you know, trade that truck in every two years. You know, a lot of companies nowadays, they offer either or do you wanna buy the truck or do you wanna lease the truck? You know, and you get sucked into that thinking, oh, I'm gonna buy it, I'm gonna own it. But do you really want to own it? And how much is it going to cost you to own it at the end of the day it's not always everything. That glitters ain't always gold. You know, it, it is. You. Well, you're making a good point there. I mean, you wouldn't go out and buy a rental car from like Herts. It's trying to marry a hooker and you gotta ignore the cigarette burns. You just, there's some things you don't do.. So, you know, but it all depends on the situation. There's like, like in normal circumstances, yeah, but like, let's say you just needed a car that, hey, I'm gonna take people to like medical appointments. So I don't care if it's got a bruise. I don't care if it's, but you know what? They're gonna sell me this used rental car for a song. So guess what? It's gonna serve a purpose., Probably a reason they were selling it for us. Five other reasons, you know, it might not fit five other scenarios, but this one, guess what? There's somebody out there that will have that scenario, well this Mike, this is openly debatable and it's at best, but the thing is falls back to is making wise business choices. Do you want to buy something? That some young teenager rented and drove a hundred miles per hour everywhere he went. And then some older guy drove 10 miles under the speed limit everywhere he went. And then some middle-aged guy drove a hundred miles per hour wherever he went. And that car has had so many people in it and has been driven so many different ways. It's just not, it's not a sound business choice. Yes. Well, there's better places to find equipment for a good deal. And that's the same thing that transposes into bigger trucks. You know, you're gonna look alright. This truck was a fleet main tra tame truck from, I, I hate to say it, swift, there, there's an if there, if it, but you know, it's fleet maintained. So you got that. And if you lease it, and then at least it's coming with some kind of warranty. Like Stacey says, you can write the truck off, write the maintenance off. Utilize the equipment for two years and move on. If you buy that equipment, then you're married to it. And if that guy gr grinded every gear in that truck and they never replaced it, well then now you're out$5,000 for a clutch, or possibly worse. So it's, it goes back to making sound business choices and again, having the money. To begin with, and this is what a lot of new entrepreneurs don't grasp, is having that money put away to begin with, to cover costs. There is a lot of startup costs. You will not profit your first year. You know, so you just gotta sit there and get a plan. Circumstances too. You might come from a different place in life where, very true, you know, you, it, it doesn't apply to you. Like, well, let's say, you know, you're a trust fund baby. So you got some money to throw around. Maybe you're not, maybe you come from, you didn't have nothing, so you don't know. Everybody's got a different starting point, you know, too. You're right, they do. But that again, it's still, it doesn't change the foundation of how you should start no, it's an out, well, it's back to what I said earlier. There's several right ways to do something. Not everything is cut and dried, right or wrong. Okay? You can go with this business multiple different angles and still. Succeed. The key factors is in it all common denominators in survival is knowing how to operate a business no matter which way you come at it. The common denominator is you gotta know how to operate a business to survive. It doesn't matter if you're a trust fund baby. That trust fund runs out. It doesn't matter if you buy a truck. Mm-hmm. Fleet, truck, whatever it may be. If you prepare and you operate your business in a sufficient manner. You will survive 90% of the time. That's pretty much it. But a person's gotta be honest with themselves on where they actually sit too. If you live in a fantasy world and you'd say, you're looking at this guy over here, you gotta be, you gotta know when to decipher who you are in that. Right. And not play,, fantasy games.'cause that's, a lot of people get in that trap too. That's, they watch this guy over here running down the road mm-hmm. With a big stretched out Peter built and that's not you. Well, it doesn't mean you're wrong, like you said, there's more, you can't start out in that Peterbilt and that's what everybody wants to do. And I hear people time and time again. I have people call up, say, man, I'm gonna go get me a big W 900. That's my dream truck. Well keep it a dream.'cause you're not gonna be able to start out, you do not have the connections, you do not have the mental knowledge you need to operate that truck. And afford a truck to that degree. Until you've been in this for a while, you're going to have to get, into the shed a little deeper before you're able to afford that dream truck. And that kind of goes back to making shitty decisions. You just can't, I always say, I, every shitty idea I ever had involved a truck. And that's the truth in such a way, but. You got to learn how to make money in every market. People go out of business because they're not prepared. They go outta business because they don't know how to run sufficient. I mean, how can one guy make money and pay his bills? And the guy beside of him file for bankruptcy, isn't it simply, I think that falls' under overhead. Personal overhead too, Stacey, which a lot of people don't account for. It can, personal overhead. If you're uping your knees and back child support and, uh, you got a repossession of a car on your hand and you're facing tons of personal debt, owning a truck might not be for you because obviously you're not good with money and budgeting. Now that same person very well might have came across a string of bad luck where he lost his job and that's why he ended up the way he is. More times than not. That's a person that can't manage money. Mm-hmm. Doesn't have no business trying to manage a business because, a car will nickel and dime you to death. These trucks will$10,000 you to death. It adds up quick and,, it could be one of the best choices you make in your life to be an entrepreneur. Be free and run a business, or it can cripple you. And it all really depends on how strong of a person. You are and how well you can think on your feet and how well you are to adapt to go to Mike's point, you've got to be adaptable in this business. You got to be able to grow with the technology. You cannot sit there and be stubborn or you will be left behind. Mm-hmm. You gotta be teachable. You have to be teachable at all times. You don't know it all. You never will. That was my next thing. Okay. Just because somebody don't know how to do something, that's kind of where we come in., If you're going to spend a little money, some of the best money you'll ever spend is find somebody that provides a service at a reasonable price. Not mention any names. I wouldn't know where one of those are at or anything. I'll leave the email and comment. But, um, find you a consultant. Don't just drown holding on to your pride. Ask somebody. It's not as expensive as you think it is too. Get help without drowning. There's a reason. There's a reason business consulting is popular. There's also a reason why people go out and to get degrees to become business consultants that major in, um, marketing and business organization because that's what you need to succeed. It's not just driving the truck and holding the steering wheel. It's not just managing the money. You are wearing five different hats. Running that business. Mm-hmm. You're your own accountant, you're your own maintenance scheduling specialist. Sometimes you're your own mechanic, plus the driver, you gotta, plus the, booking your own freight. I, I mean, I did it all when I ran my company. I would book, I'd book my own freight. I, I dealt directly with a broker. We had a really good rapport. I made my own appointments. I scheduled my own maintenance. I did sometimes I did my maintenance on the road. I adjusted my own Slack adjusters on the road. I had manual slack adjusters. I'd get under there, do that and save money. When I came home, I had a rule, and this worked for me. I walked away from the truck and I went and did paperwork, and I paid a mechanic to do everything else that needed to be done. It's not that I didn't know how to do any of it. I just paid somebody else. It's a tax write off. So well, and that gave me time to go file my books and that's what worked for me. One thing I've always told everybody, the first thing to get into a truck, you can't own something. You can't operate something unless mechanically something about it. And I tell everybody, Hey, you go out and get you a new freight line of the DD 15 in it. Get online. There's all ton of. Educational videos, learn everything you can learn about that engine. Oh, absolutely. Learn everything. Absolutely learn. Its corks, its weaknesses, its flaws. Learn everything you know, because the absolute death wish is walking into a shop saying, man, I don't know what's wrong with it. You need to know. I was just gonna say that, Stacy, some sort of knowledge. This ain't working. Before you walk up into that shop because they're you basically, you're walking up into a lion's cage. They're going to eat your, you are. And it's not like working as a company driver where you can go bring the truck into the shop and go, I don't know what's wrong with it. They pat you on your head and go wait in the break room. You can't do that as an owner operator. No. You are a hundred percent correct. But even if you pay someone else to work on it, like you just said, you have to know what's wrong with it and you damn sure go up in there and say, as long as it don't cost more than$10,000, we're good because, oh, Jesus Christ. Yeah. Tell me about it. It's going to cost$999 and 99 cents. You better bet your ass on that. Mm-hmm. Actually, that's a friend of ours that did that, didn't we? I think we knew an owner operator that did that kind of stuff. That's what I'm saying. A friend of ours, I think that we all know kinda actually did that exact scenario. We love him to death. Mm-hmm. Pick on him a little bit. He's gonna We'll cut your break, buddy. We'll get it put in there for about$8,600. Like you just said now, long as it won't cost under 10, meanwhile that repair went anywhere else would've been maybe five or, or six tops. All right, William, I wanna kind of poke at you a little bit. You've got a little over a million on your internet or, uh, I almost called you international over there, your Western star. Oh boy. That almost slapping the guy in the damn knee over ain't Oh boy. But, uh, so you got any kind of advice, like what you're looking at, how you got that truck to a million miles without. Catastrophic failure. What kind of maintenance plan do you you'd like to do with yours? Oh, I just, I run a consistent maintenance plan that's, you know, the, the, the oil has changed on time every time or sometimes a little bit early. I, I, I consistently pull oil samples, uh, every quarter when I change the oil, just about. Uh, the truck grease it gets what it needs, when it needs it, and I just don't skimp on maintenance. That's the biggest thing. I mean, one point, one point, 1,186 miles, 1.186 million miles tells the story. I mean, the only thing I've done in that amount of time to that motor is put a tur on it at 650,000. I replaced the starter at 480,000. And, they had to replace a, high low solenoid on the transmission, which they had out, under warranty. So I had'em put a clutch in there anyway to save on the labor. And when they pulled my clutch out, that's 750,000 miles, they said I still had 60% of the clutch left. Mm-hmm. It's impressive. Yeah. That is pretty impressive. And of course, in any kind of truck when you buy a truck, and if the easiest life you can give that truck, the better off you are. I mean, and, and I understand a lot of people's industry, you're gonna roll down the road and 80,000 pound everywhere you go, but not everybody mm-hmm. Has to do that. And everybody, like William, he has his own authority and everything. He can pick and choose his loads and, carrying the lightest freight, the best bang for the buck, the lightest freight really keeps down on the wear. Another big thing, 62 miles an hour, I'll preach it until the day I die. 62 miles an hour is the key to success in a truck. I don't give a damn. People can disagree all they want. It's been proven. I've proved it. I've got many people out here doing it, proven it daily, every day. The most profitable that you'll ever do. It saves on maintenance. I mean, how many miles you got on your steers right now, Mike? 152,000. I still got 10, 30 seconds just scratching on 11 religious, 62 miles an hour nine, nine and a half miles a gallon. Everywhere he goes with a step deck, proofs in the pudding. 2100 miles out of a tank of fuel. I said the fir the first two years that we owned that truck, it ran team service. And that's hard on equipment.'cause that equipment runs 24 hours a day. Right. And just, it goes back to the consistent maintenance, just having a plan. Knowing, knowing, when you pull your oil samples and what you're looking for. And I got a question for William. Yeah. Hey William. So did you do split services where you just changed, just filters and then did the oil with your filters afterwards? Or, and how often did you frequent those services? So I had a b service plan. My a services were the big services where I changed a hundred percent of all the filters, liquid filters and oils and and whatnot. And, greased everything. And then my B services is where I strictly just greased the chassis in the springs. And, I changed oil every 30,000 miles religiously. No filter changes in between at all. And, I pulled oil samples about every quarter, and at 30,000 miles, the oil came back clean with about 20% life left. Impressive. Yeah, that's good. Where was the boron at in that sample? Do you know where the boron was sitting when you did that? I would have to, I would have to pull the, reports off the top of my head. I don't know, but, they were, they were pretty clean according to the labs. There was no issues detected, no fuel, no water, coolant, nothing. Were you running full synthetic? I ran 10 30 synthetic blend at Delo. 400 is all I ran up. And, I'd lose lubricity that bo on it, about 35,000 when it got some age on that. That Cummins I had. Yeah. And then I started changing, then I went to 35. Thousand interval. The full synthetic. Yeah. That's why I went to 30,000 because I pulled oil samples at 40,000. I pulled oil samples at 50,000 At one time, Detroit recommended 50,000 mile intervals, and I just, I couldn't do it. So I started coming up with my own maintenance program, and,, about 30,000 is just about where it was Perfect. I had probably the best thing you ever did. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I had no bypass filters on there. No, nothing. It just changed regular, filters in regular intervals. Yeah. Was the, was the key,, I would like to think keeping good clean oil in there and, paying attention to your oil level now that Detroit never had any blow by, it would 30,000 miles. It never put one gallon in it between services at all. Mm-hmm. That one micron filter though served me well, I mean I had that, that Cummins in that lone star and I never changed the turbo in it and I got rid of it at 785,000 miles. Never had it. And that factory turbo in it. So I think that, and Stacy and I talked about that before that probably'cause that filter kept that oil so clean that turbo never got affected. And it was also driven well too, but that bearing and that turbo is the most sensitive thing right there. The debris in that oil. You know the one micron filter? Yeah. You know that ke that helps keep that, that oil cleaned up. And a Cummins is one, well, the biggest dirty so engine that they ever made. Uh oh yeah. Size of an old grandpa used to hate a Cummins. He used to hate a Cummins. My, my compressor never went bad. Truth be told. It was the actuator that went bad. But Detroit Warranty decided to replace the entire unit under warranty. So. It wasn't an issue with the compressor or the bearing. It was more of a mechanical issue with the, actuator. But because they don't sell just the actuator, they replace the whole unit. Right. Hey, if they're willing to pick up the tab on it, Hey, more power tool. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That was a$3,281 bill for a remanufactured turbo unit. Right. Gotcha. How much, I'm sorry, 30, 3280$1. Oh, okay. Turbos ain't cheap anymore. And is that a normal cost? That's why you don't get rich on Friday as an owner operator? Yeah. Okay. Is that a normal cost for a turbo? I've never had to replace one. Thank God for the Detroits. Yeah. For a remanufactured unit.$3,281 installed with labor and everything. Right? Goodness gracious. Yes. The the. The turbo itself was about 21, if I remember right.$2,200. Rest of it was labor and shop fees. Yeah. Labor will kill you to death, man, I tell you right now, when I almost exclusively either go to Detroit or Western Star and at my local Western Star dealer, labor right now is two and a quarter an hour. Yeah. Yeah. I'm pretty of that. Put down a scalpel. That's the part. No kidding. Yeah. That's the part where the lease truck comes in handy it, some bitch is under warranty the whole time and you trade it in the minute it leaves it last warranty, it runs its last mile warranty. You get rid of it and gets you something else. I mean that ultimately, don't get me wrong with, you're going to pay money regardless, when you do the math on it. Well, you can lease a truck, you're going pay a little bit of a payment. And well, I mean, to give you a, oh, go ahead and you're going to roll that truck down the road more consistently than being in the shop. A lot of people does not take into account a downtime. Downtime costs you money to fix and cost you money that you ain't making. So, it's a, it is a double time. It sword there. Time is money always. And you're averaging six, you're averaging 6,000 to$7,000 a week like I did. That, like I said, for that cam, it was gonna be a week and a half, but you just, you're talking about almost 10 grand in downtime alone on top of the, I forgot what they were gonna charge. I think they said right around almost$8,000 with the time they had labor and parts see you almost$20,000. Well, almost that case scenario right there between your downtime. That case scenario right there was just that was nonsense. I mean, if you're gonna rebuild an engine, rebuild that engine. Yeah. Kinda what I thought., I turned the truck in, I ran the shit out of that truck. Stacy, I luckily never had a problem with the cam and I, I sold the truck right before COVID and I haven't known her OP since. But, I was quite successful when I did, it's just. Now I, I got different goals in life for business. So, well, here's the thing with a cam sensor and bulk gears. Bulk gears doesn't necessarily wear like that. Especially if you're doing your oil changes and all that, usually the first in frame I do on a, on an engine, I won't change the bulk gears unless there's a significant wear pattern on them Now, cam sensors, things like that's just kind of a no brainer. You change that shit out, put a new cam in it, put a new head on it. You trade the old head in you, you get you a new reman, head with a new cam, fix it the way it's supposed to., I'm not saying just mm-hmm do dirt cheap. There's a lot of people they just want to go through and just do as cheap as they can to understand that everybody's gotta work with what budget they got to work with, but. If you can do it right without spending an astronomical amount of money doing things, that doesn't have to be done. Now that, that second time around, I'd say, yeah, you probably want to change out your bull gears on it, but you don't always have to do that. Just it at the, at a million miles, those gears are made to last. If it makes sense, then do it. Yeah. Right. You could throw money at something. And of course you go in and they're going to price you the deluxe package'cause that's what they want to sell you. It's a deluxe package, but the reality package is probably more where you need to stay. You know that, that goes back to knowing what you're doing. Mechanically learn. You've got to learn these trucks, you gotta learn the dos, the don'ts. You go into a shop, man, they're going to brew up The biggest. A bunch of, oh man. Oh Lord, it's got this going on man. We may have to replace the cam. We may have to do this. In all reality, it may have been a single Lloyd bat. Hey guys, I gotta let y'all go. It's been good chatting. Y'all take care of me. Safe Catch y'all next time. Yeah, will do. But, the other thing too, Stacy, is like we're talking about, uh, it, it all depends. Like you might have your brother-in-law's, the head over there at Detroit. Their engine rebuild department. So you got an ace in the hole where those, the other guy, he don't know a soul in the industry, but he wants to go just as much as the other guy. He has advantages in his pocket that the other guy doesn't, but each guy could be successful. Exactly. That's, I said there's not one particular success route. You can do this, many different ways, but the comma denominator. Is operating a business. You have got to learn to control your expenses, be conservative, and operate as efficient as you can. You're the main tool that goes down the road besides the truck. The way you operate. That truck can make you more money or it can drown you. One of the two. And I know a lot of people growls every time they hear the word 62 miles an hour, but I'm, I have seen it, I have taught it. I have helped many people out here on the road. You include it, that it has proven it's point, time and time again, and it's not just about fuel mileage. It's about maintenance, it's about all in cost. Your fuel is your biggest expense across the board period. And if you can't control fuel mileage, your success is going to be very thin. And why would you wanna spend another thousand dollars on fuel a week? Just because you want to go fast and look cool. That's a personal part. And time. What about, and the time part of it too is you're spending. If you pick loads correctly, you watch your fuel, you don't have to spend as much time out here to make the same kind of money. Then the guy that's running down the road, you know, balls to the wall every day. Mm-hmm. Exactly. You don't have to do it like that. Exactly. And that's another thing too, you know, back to kind of what we started out with the start, the fending of the capacity that's bringing that ball back into our court and that's where we need to start taking their part and saying, Hey. We're not taking that dollar 80 a mile run no more. We gotta, we need more money. You gotta know your worth. When the capacity is on your side, utilize it with just letting these brokers ream you. We, as owner operators especially, we control this market a lot more than we give ourself credit. And if we all across the board learn how to negotiate and say, no, I'm not hauling that cheap shit. I need this much money. If you stop and think about it, you don't go to the grocery store and go in and say, Hey, I'll give you$2 a steak. They're gonna say, hell no. I'm not taking that for that. They couldn't survive. They'd be outta business, and that's kinda what they're telling you is, Hey, we'll give you$2 a mile or a dollar,$50, 60 a mile to operate your entire business and stay in business. If you go outta business, that's on you, but that's what they're saying. Mm-hmm. They don't care long as they make their money and their customer is happy and makes their money. But you've gotta learn to make your money. And where that comes in is saying no, knowing your cost per mile. That's the biggest thing. Exactly. What does it cost to operate that equipment? Mm-hmm. And turn a profit, pay yourself, put money away for your replacement equipment. Mm-hmm. All of it. Eight outta 10 people. You asked out here, what's it cost you to run your truck up and down the road? They'll look at you like you, you got three eyes. I do it sometimes I'm out here in the truck coming, Hey man, what you, what's your operating cost? Because I know the look I'm going to get and I do it on purpose just to kind of. It'll get the rise going, but, and they don't know. It changes too. It changes. The guy's lying to you too, when he tells you the same operating costs three years in a row, he's not calculating it. He just conjured it up because it changes. Exactly. It changes. It's changed for me about seven, eight times this year. Mm-hmm. It does. It does it's, and that's the biggest thing is, you got to know how to operate your business., You wouldn't go out here and buy a convenience store. And operate that convenience store and sell candy bars all around the candy case and all that. If you didn't know what you needed to price'em for to make money, you know you're not going to price those candy bars for what you paid for'em. You gotta turn a profit on and if you don't turn enough profit, paid a quarter piece for'em, you might pay many cents for'em now. Yeah. If you don't turn enough profit on'em to keep the lights on and the let you know the mortgage paid on that convenience store, guess what? Your ass gonna go outta business. And the same thing with a truck. People think, oh man, I'm gonna go be an owner operator. And that's the end of the, that's where it stops. I wanna be an owner operator., Yeah. Why do you want be an owner operator? Do you know how to be an owner operator? And they think there's just, oh, well I'm gonna go lease a truck. And it is like, wow.,, There's companies out here. That will put a guy through truck driving school. They'll run him through a trainer's truck and they will put him straight off that trainer's truck into a lease truck not knowing how a thing in the world about being known or operator. He don't even barely know how to damn drive, let alone be an owner operator and expect him not to fail or they expect theirself not to fail. I've ran across drivers. I'm not gonna mention any companies, even though I'd love to, I just really don't want to get sued. Even though they're a shitty company and they know what they do, but you can spot'em. You, you know who they drive for. That's the guy that's walking across the store at the truck stop with a handful of vane sausages in the can. You know exactly who he works for, and like I said. You know, that those people, I've seen people lose their house, everything, and they got their wife and their kids living in a truck on the road because they've hung onto this boat anchor and such a shitty lease deal that they've drowned their entire family and had to put'em in a truck. And now all they're doing is they're eating, they're depending on. Cash advances on the next load to feed their family and eat. And most of the time that's not a lot. They're in there buying any sausages. You're on your, you might as well just hang it up then because that's over. They're coming back from that. If you got to that point, you're done. Yeah. But these companies, they, Buffalo. Oh you, you're$20,000 in the whole, we're going to come after you. We'll sue you. We'll do No, they can kiss my ass. Yeah. You going to just eat that? Just no. And that's part of our program too, is we take a look at the lease, and it is a lot easier if you call us or send us an email and get in touch with us before you go do it, because we can save you a lot of heartache sometimes. And getting with a decent company that absolutely is geared for success. That's the thing, you just can't come out here. There's a lot of scam. Anytime there's potential to make a significant amount of money, right, there's potential significant amount of scam. That's just the way it works. The lease program, I personally, I don't think it's a bad thing because not everybody's got the credit, nor the down payment or any of the above to go out and grab a, go buy a truck and my biggest argument to a lease truck is. If you are a company driver and you have no clue how to be an owner operator and you're trying to learn, are you sure you wanna go out and marry a truck? Because that's an awful big step to go out and see if you want to be a or can survive as an owner operator because this business ain't cut out for everybody., It's a labor of love. There's a whole lot of it. And not always are you going to always make more money. Right. And that's a good point too, that you gotta know when and have the ability, I think sometimes to weather the storms properly. And I would admit the last three years, I'd say maybe two and a half, maybe not three. The last three years has been survival. Mm-hmm. It's been, take care of your equipment, don't run it into the ground, pay your bills, put a little bit of money back and just kind of sit back and, and just don't go and run the same way because you just can't. It just, these rates would've ran you into the ground if you did it that way. We're at your stuff and, but that all goes back to when you were prepared. Were you prepared? Did you have enough put back so that you could do that? That's so important because this business is not straightforward. Hey, just plug it in and go. No, you're gonna have rough times no matter what. It's coming. And that's the, that's where, the strongest survive is preparation. Well, that's another thing. Also is, you know this, like you said, survival. This industry is a rollercoaster and it always has been and it always will be. And if you talk to any large company and the factors of staying in business, they will tell you,, they make their money when the making's good. And that means when the capacity's low, you gotta ask. For more money. You gotta make your money when it's time for you to make your money. And this all rolls back into knowing how to be an owner operator, knowing when to hold'em, when to fold'em. If you're an owner operator, you learn how to, it's almost like being a stockbroker. You gotta know, you gotta learn to watch that market. When that market's in your ballpark, it's time for you to make your money. And when that market's not in your ballpark. Sometimes you gotta fold'em and take what you can get and move on to somewhere better. You can't always be in a great market. You're going to run into areas that's not the greatest to get back out of. And sometimes you gotta look at your truck and load ratio and say, Hey, do I keep pushing this broker? Or do I take what he's offering me, which ain't a terrible rate, and move my truck to somewhere that I can get a better rate. And that doesn't mean move that truck from Pennsylvania to California. That means maybe move that truck from Pennsylvania to North Carolina, or Pennsylvania to Ohio or somewhere fairly short Indiana. Yeah. You don't want to go start taking two 3000 mile damn runs with a cheap as rate., Too many things can happen that's gonna cost you even more money now. You're gonna make no money. In the industry like this, you have to learn to read the market. It's, like I said, it's no different than day trading or stock market or investments. You gotta learn to watch this market, and that's what these new guys need. We get really benefit from what you offer Stacy, with, the education because mm-hmm. You're not gonna learn this. And you're right too. It's hard to learn an industry when you just jump into it, and that's one of the hardest things too., And, you go out there and you jump into the deep end of the pool and you really don't know what you're doing. And it takes some time. It's a learning curve out here, all the do's and the don'ts and all your different state laws, rules, regulations, and expenses that you don't realize that you have. Just like here with Mike he's, he jumped into the compliance on admissions and stuff for the state of California. He started him a little side hustle there and I mean, he, he does a pretty good job with it there. You wanna tell us a little bit about what you're doing right there, Mike, with that? Yeah, we do the carb testing for, California, which they require you now to be, tested every six months to make sure that you're carb compliant. And, it's through your OBD sensor 2013 and newer trucks. We don't do the smog, which is, Which you'd have to have done if you were, 2013 or older. But, all the 2013 and newer trucks, we can plug it in and do what's called a pre-check where,, the test will run through our system first and determine whether you're gonna pass that California test.'cause if you take the California test and you fail, you got about 90 days and they're gonna start hitting you with fines if you don't have it in compliance. We all know how sometimes parts get back ordered and mechanics can't get you in for weeks or whatever and, it just puts you under the gun. But our test, the pre-test will allow you to know what's, hey, you're gonna fail. Go get it, go do what you gotta do and then come back and rerun it. So that's a little extra advantage there that we offer and it's free of charges, comes along with paying for the test. Oh, okay. What's the name of the company you got going on it's Farrow Trucking. And, it, we could be, we could be reached at 9 0 3 3 9 9 7800. And you can email us at carb at CAB dash testing at farrow, F-E-R-R-O dashing.com-trucking.com. Yes. Okay. If you'll send me over that information, I'll put it, all that information will be in the link there in the info. So we'll go ahead and throw that out there for him, kind of help him out a little bit. Yeah, it's kind of crazy all the different hoops and things you got in rules, regulations, and that, that's another part of, learning this industry is. Knowing the loops and hoops and not getting yourself into trouble. You know?'cause when that truck is yours, the licensing, the permits and all the fuel tax and all the different permits and it goes through each state. I mean, how many of y'all ever went through the state Oregon and thought you had the organ permit and got popped? That big ass fine. That smarts a little bit. It don't take a time or two of that., Having your own truck and covering all your own expenses like that to learn some hard lessons. If you don't know what you're doing, trust me, it's a whole lot cheaper to, let somebody help you, give you some inside advice. I've been in this business for 30 years. I've owned trucks, owned companies, brokerages. I've been in the ins and outs of this industry, dispatching companies, been all over. So there really ain't a lot of this industry that I haven't done. That I can't help somebody with. And, that's why we offer, the different angles that we offer. Mike's doing his compliance there, carb compliance. We just try to help people best we can. It's just truckers helping truckers and that, that pretty well. It's what we try to do. We try to keep everything reasonable. We're not out here to get out. We're on nobody, shoot me an email, Mike, an email for his carb compliance. We do the consulting. We also offer through the Sing Group, which I founded. We offer a full line of mental health relationship counseling, all that. We have a whole lot of different things we offer out there. So that all being said, buddy, I think I'm to wrap it up for the, this episode of the Trucker's Radio podcast. See y'all on the flip side. You’ve been listening to The Trucker’s Radio Podcast where the road meets real life. If today’s episode helped you, challenged you, or made you think, make sure to follow, subscribe, and share it with another driver who needs to hear it. This podcast exists for the men and women who sacrifice their time, their families, and their peace to keep this country moving. Remember you’re not alone out there. Your story matters. And your voice deserves to be heard. Until next time, stay safe, keep the shiny side up, and we’ll catch you down the road. This is The Trucker’s Radio Podcast.