Trucking Answers on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBLTOE0xkbIyGFFryPsE0Lg
Website: https://www.truckinganswersnation.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/truckinganswers
Twitter: @TRUCKINGANSWERS
Keeping it Safety Dawg Simple! safetydawg.com
#truckinganswers #truckdrivers #trucking
Trucking Answers on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBLTOE0xkbIyGFFryPsE0Lg
Website: https://www.truckinganswersnation.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/truckinganswers
Twitter: @TRUCKINGANSWERS
Keeping it Safety Dawg Simple! safetydawg.com
#truckinganswers #truckdrivers #trucking
Mark
Mark, Trucking Answers: Did you see this? There was a large company. I don't know if you want me to name them. So during COVID right. People couldn't get a bus in the United States. We have Greyhound. And so, and these companies shuttle unit us like cattle. And that's one thing I tell people just when they
Chris, Safety Dawg: shuttle you in like cattle, that is Mark robes, trucking answers his YouTube station.
Mark. And I sit down for a discussion about trucking today in the midst of COVID. Join us. Let's get on with the show.
Welcome to the dog on it. Trucking podcast. When it comes to trucking safety, the dog is on it. What did we do on this show? I get to talk to some of the most influential trucking executives in our industry so that we can pick up new tips and tricks. Can use in our everyday businesses with that. Let's get on with the show.
Mark. Welcome to the dog on it. Trucking podcast. How in the heck are you going?
Mark, Trucking Answers: Great. Like it always does every day.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Mark. I got to say thanks so much for being odd. you, I don't know if you checked out my YouTube channel. You have like 20 times more subscribers on your YouTube channel than I have. So I appreciate a large star helping out the fledgling little, a little guy.
Mark, Trucking Answers: I don't know about large star other than in the actual physical size. I think it's great. And for the listeners out there, Mark has his YouTube channel is, trucking answers. And I'll put a link to that in the show notes below, but Mark, what made you start trucking answers?
Well, you know, I see so many drivers on YouTube recruiting for their companies.
That's one thing, all they do, they've put out how great their company is and stuff. That's all garbage. Some drivers make more money recruiting than they do driving. And they're basically lying about the company just to get you to come on. Cause they get 500 bucks as soon as you take your first load and there are tons of other drivers have been driving.
Three and a half weeks given out all kinds of trucking advice. Oh, well, you know, I started in April, so, you know, I can get so that I figured, you know what I can just get on there and, do stuff too. And here I am today, all these days later.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Well, all these days later, right? You are in your high thirties yourself.
Mark, Trucking Answers: You say my extreme upper thirties. That's correct.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Extreme up to 30. Shoot. You say you started driving at 21.
Mark, Trucking Answers: That's correct.
Chris, Safety Dawg: And so how many miles do you figure you've written?
Mark, Trucking Answers: That'd be close to 4 million.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Okay. And how many, I just want the listeners to know how many accidents have you had out of that?
4 million?
Mark, Trucking Answers: None. None, no accidents, no tickets.
Chris, Safety Dawg: I mean, let me, hold on. I, I, I've got to find the button here for that
sound effects.
Mark, Trucking Answers: There it is.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Well, we got to have a little fun, but not 4 million miles and don't accident.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Yeah.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Well, just while we're talking about accidents and crap, that could happen at there. How many tickets?
Mark, Trucking Answers: No tickets.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Yeah.
Mark, Trucking Answers: It's look, it's not, I'm not saying I'm some kind of great driver. Certainly when I start driving it's a lot of it was luck.
Okay. I remember blasted through the snow going. I wonder why, but he's going so slow. When I started driving, it turns out I'm an idiot. So, so certainly starting out a lot of it was luck and didn't get a lot of luck out of it. So I'm not saying, Oh, look at me. I'm so great. You know, I got lucky I'm part of it.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Yeah. But as you got more experienced you, I imagine maybe the safety became part of your everyday routine.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Oh, absolutely. It's all safety now. And plus. SA have some kind of incident. Now I'll never get those miles back. I'll have to drive to my extreme upper forties, you know, I mean, Holy moly.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Well, and this is my thing for the listeners out there is it is possible to go.
millions of miles and be crash free.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Absolutely. There's none. I'm not the only one. There's lots of drivers, you know, you see them on the side of trucks, three, 4 million, 5 million. I have seen on a yellow truck before, so, you know absolutely.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Yeah. And yet there is I'm in the safety and the things that you have ICU drivers have had two and three minor incidents a year.
Like that's crazy.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Yeah, you're a professional. I mean, you should want to be safe. That's your job. That's why they give you the keys to the truck to be safe with it.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Well, yeah, well you bring that up, but keep the truck and everything. what do you think of safety bonus's?
Mark, Trucking Answers: I don't think they do any good.
Like it doesn't, I don't get one and it doesn't change the fact that I'm still safe. I would like to get it. I would certainly take it if they gave one, but I'm not going to be more safe because of a bonus. I might lose the bonus, you know, that's never, I don't think that's in anybody's mind. Oh, I better look out here because otherwise I'm going to lose my $300, whatever.
I don't think so.
Chris, Safety Dawg: And I look at it. There's a lot of companies in my neighborhood that give out bonuses for cleaning inspection at the scale.
Mark, Trucking Answers: No, that's not a bad idea that might encourage drivers to actually get out of their truck and, you know, do a pre-trip rather than just getting in it and making sure the oil gate works, which is, I know something.
Sometimes you do a it that way.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Well, sometimes in my neighborhood it seems it's all of the time they do the pre-trip
Mark, Trucking Answers: yeah, the colder it is, or the worst weather then. That's how you do the pre trip.
Chris, Safety Dawg: And, you know, I wish, you know, speaking from a safety point of view, if a driver would actually do a pre-trip the way it's meant to be done 90% of the time, then on a really bad day, like you're talking about weather wise, I can understand them cutting it short.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Oh, you're absolutely right. Just on a rainy day or whatever you could pass on it because you pretty much keep track. It's not like you go out and check your oil in your car and every single day. So. Absolutely.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Yeah. But most drivers that I see, never do a pre trip and that's rare when they do a proper one.
Mark, Trucking Answers: That's correct.
Chris, Safety Dawg: so Trucking Answers. What are you? I've watched several of the videos there. you usually have an opinion that you expect express, especially your Sunday rants. which are usually shot at a car dealership. Every one that I've seen is that a yes, Sarah,
Mark, Trucking Answers: I like looking at cars too, so I'm not looking at cars in Indiana.
The dealers are closed on Sunday by law, even though I don't agree with that law, but they're closed. And so I'm not looking at cars and, I'm not getting the paper anyway to get the coupons and I'm figure I'm going to talk about something no matter what it is.
Chris, Safety Dawg: and I find your, your Sunday ranch, what was your.
Well, let, let me get to a rant. I'm not on a rant really, but, the new hours of service Sutter are about to change. And what I read today, they go into effect September the 28th, right?
Mark, Trucking Answers: Because it's 120 days from publication in the federal register.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Right. You had a rant, about this equaling
Mark, Trucking Answers: bore unpaid time for trucks, right?
Yes, absolutely.
Chris, Safety Dawg: What do you mean? Why do you think it's going to be more on face time?
Mark, Trucking Answers: Well, the 30 minute break basically goes away and they're allowing you to, you know, be on duty or anything other than driving. Well, drivers are not going to get paid for that. And the split sleeper is I think, where it's really going to hurt him because now both parts of the split don't take away from your 14 hours.
You get to stop your clock. Well, Company a is going to be like, well, you're at the dock there. You can just let your sleeper. And instead of paying you, you'll be like most drivers for some reason, think like they should work more to make more money. And so drivers are like, well, I'll just sit here for free.
And then I can drive more miles rather than griping at the company to get them paid for the time that they're already doing. Sitting here, but that's how that's going to work. There's just going to sit around for nothing so that they can drive more. I totally agree with you. And, and until I watched that video, I'd never thought of it that way.
Chris, Safety Dawg: So what I think you, because it's a huge issue. I worked a lot of hours for free when I was driving and I hated it. You know, why are we as human beings called truck drivers? And we get to give away time all the time, like two hours out of loading dock, flipping and ridiculous. I know people do it though.
Mark, Trucking Answers: They volunteer for it. You get in anything, you get what you accept. So drivers that accept, they're getting it. They complained to me about it. And, but they won't do anything about it. Accompany couldn't get people to do it. They would have to pay. They would have. That's why, when drivers go from being over the road to being a local driver, you rarely see it go the other way.
Like, Oh, I need to go back on the road and sit around. If you realize that, Oh, didn't, you know what, all this time could actually be paid. And that's how the road companies lose drivers to local local work. But you're out of just mentioned growth drivers and local drivers you're out in the last year. What is the employment?
Chris, Safety Dawg: We're taping this in the middle of COVID the pandemic still in both countries. Right? I almost saw one going by. So I was going to look around for him. What's the employment history like in the area right now? Well, employment is driving. Of course. It's no problem here in Lafayette. We make Subarus. So there's a huge plant Wabash Nash Shinola, which I'm sure you've heard of trailers.
Mark, Trucking Answers: The plant is here in town. So there's tons of employment here. No problem. Still truck drivers are in demand. Oh yeah. Always. How was other than last month where a bunch of us got laid off. As you saw on the news 90,000 drivers or whatever were laid off, but depending when you're watching this, I guess, right.
So maybe not last month, but all those jobs will easily come back here in the next few months, I think as everything opens back up. Yeah.
Chris, Safety Dawg: And thank God they're starting to open up. you know, as I said, I'm a Canadian, so I'm on the other side of the border, but, for Southern Ontario auto freight is huge.
and we just lost GM out of in, they're closing their plant down. So. Or they've already closed it, I guess. You know, that's literally, I don't know, a thousand couple thousand loads a day. Yeah. That's a problem. Yeah. It's a huge problem on just hundreds of words. do you, I'm just looking at my questions here.
Do you have other channels on YouTube or other. Methods of, expressing your opinions?
Mark, Trucking Answers: Well, sometimes I go outside and just yell my opinions randomly to people, but that doesn't seem to work as much and I don't reach as many people that way. I have a website@truckingentersnation.com. I have a lot of questions.
People going to ask a new company, you know, that they're going to, and stuff like that. I'm on Facebook, a trucking answers. Also I have an Instagram, but I haven't posted on there. So I always hesitate to tell people about it and also on Twitter, everything, a trucking answer. So tweets sometimes come out for me as well.
When we're yelling at people randomly, does it work? I mean, those are my favorite videos of yours.
Chris, Safety Dawg: When you kicked going on a. the company, what was the company of the week or, I don't want to say shitty company of the week, but, you know,
Mark, Trucking Answers: we used to do crap company of the week.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Here we go. And you no longer do that.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Now we don't do that anymore. I do like things to consider about a company. I'll do that kind of stuff. There's just so many. I mean, you can almost lump if the company says the American trucking association somewhere that they're a member, you could pretty much lump them all in there. That's basically how it works.
Chris, Safety Dawg: And, I know that believe it or not, I am a fan of the trucking association, but I don't think Europe the same opinion. No, I think because if you look at the member companies of the ATA here, those are the ones that don't pay you for your time. They don't pay you for your time. No, those are the large companies that have all this unpaid waiting time and 20, 30 hours a week.
Mark, Trucking Answers: And they are the ones that go to Congress and say, Oh, we're, you know, the boo us, we can't get drivers. Yeah. Well, yeah, when you don't pay them anything and forced them into a contract that they then can't work anywhere else because they were there like the mop. So other companies won't hire you. If you're on a contract, they just won't touch it.
And so then they wonder, Oh, well, wonder why we can't get drivers. We have to recruit from, let's recruit from overseas or whatever. It's all ridiculous. It's totally ridiculous. They should all close tomorrow.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Well, I hope it'll close tomorrow, but I agree that their employment practices need to flip and change.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah.
Chris, Safety Dawg: So I don't know if you have the same thing in Canada here. We have this what's called a driver, inc. So drivers incorporate and then they drive company trucks. The advantage to the driver is that he's self employed. So he pays less tax. The advantage to the trucking company is that I'm paying a contractor.
So I don't have any withholdings, all that kind of stuff. and it creates an unlevel playing field it's been deemed illegal and yet it's rampant. It, most companies, many companies I'll pitch it. At least 50% of the companies here in Ontario are doing,
Mark, Trucking Answers: yeah, there's tons of 10. Now they call that 10 99 in the United States where companies will pay the driver, you know, as a 10 99 employee, which is an independent contractor, no withholding, no workman's comp.
No insurance. And then if you get hurt on the job, the company is like, Oh, well you're independent. So we have sorry too bad for you. It's illegal here as well. It's against IRS regulations and there's no oversight. The government doesn't do anything about it because trucking, they, the ATA goes and pays all this money to government to keep trucking, you know, to keep the government out of their back pocket.
Chris, Safety Dawg: No, it's and again, it's another sin. That's similar to not being paid for the work. Because now when you need insurance, when you need. Health coverage when you need, if you do get hurt and you're going to be off a couple of weeks, wouldn't it be nice to get paid God sakes. This is another thing drivers volunteer for in the United States.
Mark, Trucking Answers: They constantly, because the company pays you more money. Theoretically, your check looks bigger cause nothing's being withheld, including taxes. Until the end of the year. And probably, you know, at the beginning of each year I get all these letters. Oh, what do I do now, Mark out the government, $14,000.
I'm like, I guess you make a payment plan with them or something. I don't know what to do
Chris, Safety Dawg: and no, I'm sorry. I'm not sympathetic to them because they should know. And I pay my taxes that I must pay. I don't like to overpay sleep, probably do pay them.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Oh, absolutely. I mean, to the IRS, we all pay the exact amount that we're owed and even some extra, just for the heck of it sometimes.
And because we love them,
Chris, Safety Dawg: this was me off, but some people try to cheat. In your, in your country, the IRS up here, revenue, Canada, try to cheat it because we both live in Greek countries and unfortunately we need tax dollars to support it all. I totally support the IRS and 100% cause I'm sure they're watching.
Okay. Let's say I don't think that the YouTube channels quite popular yet on my side, maybe on yours, you, they could be watch.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Drivers just do this because they think they're getting more money and it works out until there's an issue. Like you see a home loan, like, so you don't, you're not employed. So it's tough to get a loan because you don't have a job.
You have to do all this stuff or you get hurt. And then the drivers are like now, well, what do I do? I'm like, I don't know, buying your own insurance, at least here. Yeah, his health insurance is very expensive to buy it in the open market. You're way better off being a company driver over 10 99 here. Just if you had to buy health insurance, I don't know.
Isn't it free there or low cost for you? It is, but if you go outside of province, no outside of province is fine. If you go outside of the country, you'd better buy insurance. And so maybe up there, your drivers on this driver in kind of a,
maybe a better time of it than you would here. Well, maybe, but most of the drivers that I see doing this across borders, right.
Chris, Safety Dawg: So if they get hurt in the States, they better have third party coverage because they've got no workers' comp it's no good. They're doing the same thing. They just are looking at a little bit more money and they're avoiding taxes and right. You know, like. Hey, get me going on that way. If you're going to have to start a Sunday ran too, because I hate that one.
I used to be a recruiter for a large, fairly large company. We had 800 owner operators working for the 1400 power units and. It used to piss me off that many truck drivers would be taking home more money to their families than I was, even though my salary was higher than theirs, but actual take home dollars.
They were doing much, but yeah,
Mark, Trucking Answers: for that, right then they were, but the government should step in and not allow us companies in the United States advertise this 10 99. Right. That should be enough right there to shut the whole place down because. The company itself is toes in the government, out all this tax money to here in Canada, they estimate it's a billion with a fee, a billion dollar tax problem.
Oh, it's way more than that. Here. There's tons of companies that do that cons of them
Chris, Safety Dawg: generally speaking, anything we do in Canada or anything. The States we look at, we take one 10th of that. So
the
Mark, Trucking Answers: other way it would be a $10 billion loss in revenue. At least for the States. That's why that's how the metric system works.
If I tense. So perfect. Now I understand the metric system. Got it. Yeah, kind of exactly. Get me going because I can never convert leaders to American gal. Right. I just times by four and that's close enough, it's close, but it ain't any good.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Hey, I'm going to put a screen, a picture of a book on the screen.
I'm going to cover my face and put a picture of the book in front of it. And it's called couch to concrete. tell us about coach to concrete, a beginner's guide to getting started in the trucking industry.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Well, I wrote a book and this will get people right from their couch all the way into their first driving job, because.
There's so many wrong ways to do this. When you get locked into a contract with an ATA carrier or whatever, there's better ways to do it so that you can find a good car company, you know, to get you from maybe working in a warehouse to a career in driving that driving will cake take us all the way through to our extreme upper, whatever.
As a whole career and you gotta get started somewhere. Yeah. Well, and I see it. You sell it online into the book. And right now I did sell for five bucks. So I mean, Oh yeah. Everybody, even in COVID, everybody could afford five bucks. Sure. You gotta have five bucks. Well, actually it's eight. Oh, that's the metric system again, you know, But where did you start?
Chris, Safety Dawg: You said, or, sorry, you didn't say it, but I read that you were working for Arby's. I wasn't yeah. America's roast beef. Yes, sir. And I would come home late at night and see these ads on TV. And you're Chicago.
Mark, Trucking Answers: That's said you can make the big money in trucking and get respect of the motoring public. And I'm like, Well, I want the respect of the motoring public, and I went to trucks school.
How did that workout for you? The respect of the motoring public.
I'm waiting for that still the truck school has since closed and I still haven't gotten that, but I still have a career from it and it was $1,500 back then. And, no problem.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Hey, well, again, I do have something relatively new and this is kind of new now.
so when you're talking about the respect of the motoring public, these are actually selling quite well. Alright. And at least up here in Canada. truck drivers have been getting a lot of positive press at the moment because of cold dead. And the fact that truck drivers are keeping the stores stopped.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Yeah. I think a lot of that, you know, let's, I've kind of hyped at least depending where you were, especially now because hours of service are still not in effect for all these emergency loads. You're in the United States. Until June 14th, the stores are full of product and I'm getting letters from people now that are going to like a Walmart distribution center being turned away.
They're not allowed to come in earlier at it because the place is packed full of stuff. So the days of where grocery stores are empty, I think are over. And the days where people like truck drivers are also coming to an end of course, pretty soon they'll be disgusted with us, just like they used to be well.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Yeah. And unfortunately, some of that's our fault because you know, again, I'm involved in safety and I see some horrific wrecks that are the truck drivers fault. I, and I'm very well aware of the stat that at least in fatales, I think it's 71% of the time, the truck driver though. Partial vehicle drivers is not at fault at least.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Yeah. But a lot you've seen the two. Why are drivers four feet or 1.3 meters behind the car in front of them going 70 miles an hour or 120 kilometers. Following this, this is my biggest pet peeve. Let me tell you, I see that's the biggest problem on the road. Really? I think so drivers are right behind other trucks too.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Yeah. And up here in Canada, the driver recently got a ticket. We have a couple of airplanes that pull a major highway up here called four Oh one. And in our highway traffic act, which is what, how you receive tickets. We have a little law that says you gotta be. There's a way, which is like 200 feet. Yeah.
Late this plane takes a picture and it was for like two minutes long, the video and the guy wasn't 10 feet off another tractor trailers, bumper. Like tell me what you can see if you're 10 feet behind another tractor trail. I don't know what our drivers are thinking. They're going to get somewhere sooner because they're that close.
Mark, Trucking Answers: This is why we're getting cameras in the truck. It's their own fault. Yeah. The company then that forces you to back off because the camera sends an alert back to the company to basically said, tell on you, but you bring up something interesting technology. are you, is your company that you're driving Cornell adopting any new technologies?
Yeah, they're, they're testing out the Lytics camera system. Okay. What's that Lennox camera is a camera that can either face out the windshield or also look at the driver or both. And it has a speaker in it. Lytics is the name of the company. And so widespread use and, you know, Heart or braking or turning too fast or falling too close sets the camera off and the company gets a video about it.
And you can also do a live view Lytics, even though companies always say at Lytics on their website says, absolutely. It's one of our features is that the company can watch the driver driving lives. So this is going through the industry and it's partially our own fault partially. Yeah, absolutely. It was partially.
Chris, Safety Dawg: I mentioned the, I used to work for an insurance company. So, and again, I know that if we had a video of a fan of the driver, I would bet you that in a collision 90% of the time, maybe it's 99% of the time when the driver was doing everything right. and that video would prove just that, that he was doing it right.
He wasn't on his phone as the lawyers. Especially our American friends. They helped lawyers.
Mark, Trucking Answers: They should put them in car Steuben, make them mandatory for anybody that driving. Let's see how that goes. Yeah.
Chris, Safety Dawg: You don't think that would pass some legislation? Well, it'd be great. Wouldn't it? Let's see. Let's see the AAA.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Talk about that then. Yeah. I mean, are you a Tesla fan just to change subjects?
they're okay. I mean, I would never buy one because I like to drive a
Chris, Safety Dawg: car, you know, I'd rather drive a car that you can drive going fast silently to me. Doesn't mean anything really? I just not impressed. I'm just not impressed by going fast silently and plus filling it up is a problem still, unless you, yeah.
And I mean, I'm a big fan and I'd love to buy one. I just can't afford one. But, the reason I brought it up is they actually have a rear facing camera built into the rear view mirror. it's currently not turned on. And I don't know, they haven't explained yet what the use is going to be. So just interesting that they're building it into their car.
Okay. I've heard rumors as to why, but, I don't know why they don't build it into all cars and trucks.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Yeah. The Corvette has a forward facing camera that you can record. Lap times, and that's what it's for, but you can have it on it whenever you want, but otherwise there's not really any built in ones, I think, because they probably have to fix them then during the warranty.
And they're like, well, here's another thing we got to fix, you know, when this thing goes bad. Yeah. let me just, what what's, what's currently your biggest gripe or complaint about tracking. Well, these companies, my biggest group, I guess, is companies that put out there, Oh, your family. And we love you and everything.
And then, Oh, why don't you sit around for four hours and then we'll pay you $12 an hour, you know, for the next four hours. So you sit eight hours and you get $48. And then when you come in, they give you a pen and go, well, we really are really family here. Here's the logo pen. You can have. That kind of stuff is just.
It's just horrible. And the whole industry needs to change. Drivers should get paid for all of their time. The sitting around it's mainly sitting is ridiculous. Plus some of them do here. It's called household goods miles. It's an old way of calculus, adding mileage, zip code to zip code. A lot of large companies do it.
And so your 500 mile drive. Pays for huh? 150 miles or 440 miles. You telling me that a large company doesn't have the technology to go address to address when I can do that on a $99 phone from, you know, the convenience store, come on. They're just doing that to not pay drivers. There's way too much of this time.
That is not paid. That should be paid. It's like this. I mean, as I said, I'm 6.5. It's been like this since I was in my twenties. I agree with you. I agree. And it needs to change that. That's what companies say, well, we've always done it like this. Well, that's not a good reason to do something. There've been a lot of things that have been done that, you know, I'll get changed because people realize it's not right to do so.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Anyways. Last question or one of the last questions before we get off on something else. Drug testing, clearinghouse.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Yeah, the drug testing clearinghouse.
Chris, Safety Dawg: That's something new, a state's product recently. And I don't know if you realize, have you ever done cross border trucking?
Mark, Trucking Answers: years ago, I drove for 3m and I used to bring you video cassettes to Canada VCR tapes.
Oh yeah. Wow. So you could record all your shows.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Can you get a job there again, please? Because we're looking for, 3m n 95 mask and we're having three hearts. I didn't get any,
Mark, Trucking Answers: yeah, we don't have any of those, but maybe I could bring more videotapes and I would bring PostIt notes back.
Chris, Safety Dawg: So I don't think for some reason, my, wife or girlfriend, Tina, my significant other.
Let me put it that way. Owns a dental, dental hygiene. She cleans teeth and we can't open you up cause we can't get in 95 mess, you know?
Mark, Trucking Answers: Do you, are they required there or something?
Chris, Safety Dawg: Yeah, the RNs are, Oh, okay. This is one of the new things. Cause the COVID-19. They're changing some of the stuff. and in, in 95 mask when they're cleaning teeth and all that kind of stuff, yeah, they gotta start wearing Oh, okay.
To protect the, the, the dental hygienist.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Yeah. Right. They pretty much wore mass anyway, though. It seems like when you'd go in.
Chris, Safety Dawg: So yeah, those were the surgical mask. What they, but they're not very. Sir. You may as well put a scarf on a few things.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Yeah. They're the fake ones that they make you wear in the store.
So everybody feels like they're doing something.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Yeah. That's the one where it's exactly in 95 actually protects the person wearing, well, we can't get any and they're made in the States by three M so can you bring them back?
Mark, Trucking Answers: Yeah, it's been so
Chris, Safety Dawg: long. I'll have to see a three. I'm going to take me back over there.
When I used to cross up there. Alright. Drug testing, clearinghouse. What do you think? Good thing. Bad thing.
Mark, Trucking Answers: It's just a big, another governmental boondoggle. I mean, truck drivers, very low rate of drug use. Certainly when they test them hardly any. Do it, and this is another one of those things that if it's so great and keeping the road safe, let's test everybody when they get a driver's license or when they really knew it, everybody has to go for a test.
This will be another thing I signed up for it because every company has got to go through it every year. So everybody will be in it. But I think it's a disaster waiting more millions of dollars, of course, wasting time on so few people. But like I say, if we can save one child, so then apparently it's worth it.
But I say, no, it's just a big disaster.
Chris, Safety Dawg: And you may not know that cross border truckers from Canada, we have to do the drug testing. We don't have drug testing in Canada. The same as the state. Wow. So as a truck driver, if I didn't cross border, I wouldn't have to be in the drug pool, but many companies have them, but it's not legislated here, but if I cross border, I have legal States.
So then I have to get into the drug testing and the drug. She could work as a driver in Canada without taking a drug test. Yeah. And we've legalized marijuana for the whole country. Not just a few States. Only macro let's all go to Canada. What is Indiana has made me go ice marijuana. Oh no. Okay.
Mark, Trucking Answers: They haven't legalized it and we still can't even be open to some cars on Sunday.
Indiana is still, it's still 1810 here.
Chris, Safety Dawg: I'm trying to think. I don't know if we can sell cars on Sunday, but I sold cars when I was in my twenties. We didn't sell them on Sundays, but I don't know what it is today, but I mean, all of our stores, the malls, other than COVID, although moles are open on everything on Sunday.
So yeah,
Mark, Trucking Answers: we just opened back up. I was able to get back into forever 21 and get some clothes. So that was pretty good.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Well, I appreciate that because I really didn't want to see you sitting here with old clothes. Yeah. I'm glad they opened up last week. So that was pretty nice. We haven't opened her models up yet, but, the store, any store with a store of street front can open them.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Oh, well, that's pretty good. That's so nice of the government to allow stores to be open. That's what I say here. We've asked the crown here for permission to do things too. And we're hoping that they'll allow us to have our 4th of July celebration of freedom. Hopefully the government will allow that. So we're taping this just a few days after Memorial day.
Right.
Chris, Safety Dawg: And I see the flags on the back of your chair, by the way. Yes. Have you ever in the service.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Yes. Army. Yes. Military intelligence. Oh, Hey, that's cool.
Chris, Safety Dawg: That was pretty fun. You may not get thanked often by Canadian, but I, for one, think that U S military, because shit, without you guys, somebody would overran us already, but thank coffee America.
It's like,
Mark, Trucking Answers: it's quite all right. You know, I think everybody should have to go in really. I mean, it's people gave up their freedom so quickly, you know, it's another thing that I've talked about in here so fast because they don't realize, you know what they're doing, it should never have happened. At least not here.
I don't think well,
Chris, Safety Dawg: and you know, you're talking about giving up freedoms. the new COVID trackers, this whole thing about being able to track the people you've come in contact with a huge issue about freedoms and tracking. And people started the meal thicker though, but I don't know if that's going to get off the ground in Canada.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Oh, it's going to get off the ground. Absolutely. And people will willingly download it to be safe. Oh, absolutely. Thanks. I won't be, I will be having
it,
Mark, Trucking Answers: but they'll be tons of people. That'd be happy to be tracked 24 hours a day by the government to make sure that they might be safe, you know, with a 0.0, 2% chance of dying.
So absolutely. Yeah.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Okay. What else we got to talk about? We're just, you know, I'm respectful of your time. We've already been on for
just
Mark, Trucking Answers: over 30 minutes, I think. what else do we need to cover?
Hey, I, you know, I'm here for you. time is not a problem here, so I'm happy to talk about whatever you got, you know, there's what about the turnover?
You know, the turnover. Did you see this? There was a large company. I hope you want me to name them. So during COVID right. People couldn't get a bus in the United States. We have Greyhound. And so. And these companies shuttle us like cattle. And that's one thing I tell people just when they stay Greyhound, hang up on them.
Okay. Professionals don't take a bus. They can't say you're professional and then send you on a Greyhound across one person wrote to me. I went from Virginia to Utah on a Greyhound. Five days. You're not a professional, but this company used their corporate jet to pick people up because their turnover is so high that if they waited a month to start getting new drivers and on the bus, That they, you know, they would be down a 25% of their workforce or whatever.
So they sent their corporate jet around to go pick people up. I assume now they're back on the bus for $38 or whatever for three days. But yeah, that's what, that's what they're doing. The bus they sent, you're a professional, here's a bus ticket. Try not to sit next to anybody doing math and
Chris, Safety Dawg: try not to sit near anybody with COVID items.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Right. They are right right now, which is probably everybody on the bus. That's why they're on the bus.
Chris, Safety Dawg: I tell you, we know that, I, I'm not aware of any companies in Canada that recruit like that only because I suspect that we're not large enough. It's not because we are more moral. Or anything like that?
I wish it was, you know, but our big companies, they either have terminals frequently, like throw. but yeah, I'm not aware of anybody that would actually hire you on a bus.
Mark, Trucking Answers: How do they bring you to the terminal? Then
Chris, Safety Dawg: most of the time for the companies I've ever worked for the drivers, get there somehow on their own.
You want to work for us, come to the terminal on the fly. Huh. You know? and yeah, I'm just trying to think. I don't know of anybody, but we don't have as many huge companies like, you know, the Swiss or. It's not the main company, but, you know, we don't have those huge 10,000 truck fleets as sliders and stuff like that.
You know, I don't know what our biggest fleets are up here at three thousand four thousand.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Well, they do this, I think because if you're going to come there to go to their trucks, school also, You're going to come in for three weeks of that and then maybe be out with a trainer for three or four weeks.
You may be gone, you know, seven weeks before you get home. And so many people may only have one car, right? So whoever you're leaving at home is not going to have transportation. So they bust your butt in. And then here, at least a lot of companies in the United States, let you take the truck home with you if you have somewhere to park it.
So there's that as well. So then you're, you're back home with the truck.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Yeah. You know, you're tight in, Apple bankruptcies in the States. COVID is, let's say we're recording this in the middle of Colton, but hell trucking freight rates of dive because all of a sudden there's an abundance of trucks.
Sitting empty. what do you think the fallout of this all is going to be? I noticed that Hertz car rentals yesterday, I saw that my paper was filed for bankruptcy.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Right? Hertz is bankrupt.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Yeah. So what do you think, the trucking industry, do you see any of that on the horizon for us? For our industry.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Yeah. Trucking companies that are on the edge are going to be closed. They're just not going to make it. And the owner operators, you probably saw them protesting in Washington, DC for higher rates. They didn't understand why the rates went down. They want the government, these are the same people at eight regulation.
They immediately go to the government and say, Hey, do something about these rates. That's not how it works here. All these trucks now are trying to compete for half the freight. And so rates go down. Absolutely. And that's how, that's how it works. The rates have come back up and people that make it we'll do even better because some people will fall out.
So if you can make it through the other side is bright and from everything
Chris, Safety Dawg: I'm reading now and has started to pick up again. Thank God. Yes, people are writing back. Because that's how I can gauge what's going on from the emails that I get. And now the miles are going back up and people were down to 800, 900 miles a week and saying, should I change jobs?
Mark, Trucking Answers: And I'm like, probably not, because wherever you go, it's going to be a thousand miles a week. So you're going, just going to have to hang out for a little bit until it picks back up. I hate recently had somebody reach out. It's like, how do I become an owner operator? I've been a truck driver for this many years.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Yeah, this is right in the middle of COVID coming on our operator. So you can imagine what my response back was. You know, maybe you should wait a year and see what the hell the economy's do.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Yeah. You're going to need to get more than, you know, 70 or 80 cents a mile. That's some low you're paying. If you expect to have any kind of paycheck at the end of that.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Oh, yeah. A mistake. Hey Mark. I'm going to put all your contact information in the show notes below. If people want to reach out to you. did you give me, sort of have to cut that out of, out of the, edit here? Did you give me permission to put your email in there? Yeah, sure. Absolutely. I mean, I get emails all day from people.
Mark, Trucking Answers: I love writing back to drivers and I answer all my emails, me and my staff of which is a cat and she sleeps most of the day. So I answered the emails pretty much myself. It is an orange Tabby cat, right? Gracie she's on the live show that I do and stuff. And so we always have a cat hanging around. No.
You see cat pictures here and there as well, besides the flags. Well, there you go. So we got flags, we got cats. We got a book at a, if somebody wants to know how to get started, I imagine it's got a slight American slant to it, but most of this would apply to Canadian trucking as well. I mean, this is something that Ontario has.
Chris, Safety Dawg: That other provinces have started to adopt. And, the U S has postponed and that's, minimum level of training for new truck drivers. Yes. They postponed it here because our friends at the ATA. Right higher, not a fan, a fan of this minimum level, because here you can become a trainer. There's no requirement.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Even here to be a trainer, you can literally get out of truck school. And now you're a trainer. If a company will allow it and some allow it after just a few months. So, yeah, absolutely. And a lot of it here, I don't know if you have the problem of contracts. Do you have the contract problem in Canada? If you go to a truck school here through a trucking company, You then have a contract, you have to sign and you have to work there for so many months, whatever it says, you cannot get a, I shouldn't say you can't, it's very difficult for you to get a job at another company if you're in contract with them.
So maybe you're making $450 a week. You can't go anywhere else. The company says, sorry, you're on contract. You're just locked in. And that's, that's a lot of what I try to cover. You know, that kind of thing. Don't get this contract. It can ruin you. Yeah. And you don't have as many trucking companies that own truck driving schools, as I think you do.
Chris, Safety Dawg: You know, as a safety consultant, one of the things I got hooked up with is a PTBI professional truck, train the Institute. And so I have I'm the North American audits for that. And so I do audits of truck driving schools to make sure that they're coming, buying with the, the manual, basically that they're meeting the minimum requirements of PTBI.
so because of that, there was a large company that I've already mentioned on the show that had a S I think at the time I did the audit, they have seven. Truck driving locations, schools, and some of them were PTDI certified. And, yeah, they were putting through at each location on average of 30 students a month, I think store a patient, just phenomenal amount of people going them.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Yeah, because on the other end, they're walking right out the back door, as soon as they get to work, you know, for this place probably. Yeah. Oh yeah. They're going right to work, but they're under contract. They did pay for it. But if the didn't fulfill the contract, what I was told is they would have to reimburse the company for the school.
I don't mind. I don't even mind that because they're getting the school free. The problem is when these companies then don't follow what they've said. Oh, you're S you're out six weeks. You sit around at people, send me these checks and it's so sad. They'll send me a $300 check. You'll be getting $300, $400 a week.
And they're under contract. That's not, I don't think the company then has done it side of it. You know, giving you a job, I guess they give you a job, but at such low pay and you're stuck, you can't go anywhere else. I, I would hesitate to sign contracts, but the first job, you know, and I read on your website, you had your first job up in Chicago.
Oh yeah.
Chris, Safety Dawg: And it was local P and D, because you said you wanted to, you got itchy a little while and decided to go, trucking to all 49 States. Yeah, you got it.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Well, I went local, but I had to see, I didn't go any training. That's why, I don't know if I'm big on the training of trucks school. We graduated third per say Monday, I went to work locally in Chicago, never trained or anything like that by anybody.
Chris, Safety Dawg: Well, you said you went to truck driving school.
Mark, Trucking Answers: I did, but after that, now there's this long, the months and months of training, you know, I just went right to work Monday morning. I'm doing 20 stops in Chicago. You know, that's how right out of trucks, school of three weeks and actually less because Friday of the last week was to make up.
Thursday, if you failed, which almost everybody passed on Thursday. So you had a little over two and a half weeks and off you went to work. I was fortunate on that.
Chris, Safety Dawg: I, had a, a car driver's license and I was working for a company that had, vehicles that were regulated under that license. And I went to human resources and I said, I want to upgrade.
And they said, sure, show up on your day off. We'll put you out in the truck. We'll train you. So I didn't have to pay for truck driving school. That's how I got my license. And they could even test me at the time.
Mark, Trucking Answers: Wow.
Chris, Safety Dawg: So, yeah, Mark. Yeah, that was good too. And Hey, trucking has been really good to me and my family.
my ex wife and kids, we all had a very good, life because of trucking and now I'm still making my living and transportation. I'm very happy and proud to be. In this industry and probably still have my truck driver's license in my pocket. Yeah. I think it's a great career for anybody and they'll carry them all the way through their whole life.
Absolutely pay for everything your whole life trucking. Well, if you keep a clean record, you know, and cut down on the tickets and you've got it made, that's all people got to do. Really? Yeah. And I love Mark. I just want to say thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate the time everything can.
With permission. Oh, I chipped back again. Oh, sure. I'm ready to come back. I'm right now we can get started on another show, but yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. I mean, it's been great being on here. All right. Thanks Mark.
I hope you love the show as much as I did. Please leave us a, like a thumbs up a review, a comment, a rating. Thank you so much. And I do really appreciate the time. And join us again next week for another exciting interview.