Trucking Risk and Insurance Podcast

A New Way To Pay Truck Drivers? Wellington Motor Freight

October 22, 2021 Michael Zelek Season 2 Episode 5
Trucking Risk and Insurance Podcast
A New Way To Pay Truck Drivers? Wellington Motor Freight
Show Notes Transcript

A huge Thank YOU to our guest Michael Zelek.

You can contact Micheal Zelek
mzelek@wellingtonmotorfreight.com
Wellington Motor Freight: www.wellingtongoc.com


And you can reach John or me here: 

John Farquhar
Summit Risk Solutions: summitrisksolutions.ca
1 226 802-2762
John@summitrisksolutions.ca
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-farquhar-9b88771a2/?originalSubdomain=ca

Chris Harris
Safety Dawg Inc: safetydawg.com
Chris@SafetyDawg.com
1 905 973 7056
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/3764255/admin/

Hey, welcome to another episode of the trucking risk and insurance podcast with your hosts. Chris Harris and John Farquhar, and our special guest today, Michael Zeluck of Wellington motor freight Wellington group of companies. And Michael is the director of human resources. Now, interestingly enough, we don't have it on the screen, but Michael's full name is Michael Zed period. Zeluck and I understand the Zed does not stand for zebra. Is, am I correct? You're correct. I wish it did. That'd be cool. That would be a guy named Michael zebra Zelek. Like what more could you, It's gotta be xylophone Xylophone. Isn't that an ex? There you go. What do I know? Glockenspiel Good and zipper Michael's zippers LA, but no, it's Michael's Zachary's so welcome, Michael. Thanks for coming on the trucking risk. The insurance podcast. No, thanks for having me. It's fun to be here and I'm looking forward to chatting transportation with you, gentlemen, Michael, I have a request. Can you move your head out of the way so I can see the sweater behind you. I want to see what time it is or time it is. Thank you. Thank you. Yay. The great Johnny Bauer. Perfect. That is Well. So yeah, out here. Well, mash, There you go. Alright, Mitch martyr on the other side of an office, I've got a, at the three, three jerseys. Nice. Well, John and I have a mutual friend and I'm sure you know, Kim Richardson and he's a damn Boston fan. So I'm, I'm happy to have you on the show. Yeah, I mean the Boston Bruins have had the last laugh the last little while, but I pulled me inside a little bit whenever I hear someone likes the Bruins. Yeah. So I'm happy to see a Johnny Bauer shirt. So Yeah. Well, after Chris was on the show, last time we had to cleanse the studio of any Boston Bruins, you know, smell and odor and anything like that. So yeah, it took a while. So, you know, I didn't, anything else like leaves and whatnot. All good. Yeah. I'm a Leafs fan through and through. All right. Perfect. Thank you for that. Just one story about the Leafs or one story about Johnny Bauer. When I was a much younger lad, I actually caddied for Johnny Bauer. When he played her golf course privilege of carrying his clubs. He was in a, a Pro-Am golf tournament. He was a good, you know, good enough to give his time and come up and play golf and, and sign a lot of autographs and things like that. So always had a great deal of respect for Mr. Bauer. Yeah. He had a lot of respect for the fans. It seems like he was always getting his name out in the community and you know, he'll talk to anyone. They'll sign anything. He's a, a good man. And I'm a champion, Johnny, where are we going? Well, well, let's let Michael introduce himself and give us a little bit of history on his background before we start quizzing him and driving him crazy with questions here. So Mike, tell us, tell us a little bit about yourself. Cool. Well, I've been working in transportation for 10 years now. I started at a non-asset based three PL from there I went to a trucking company or the boat 500 trucks. I was there four or five years that everything from brokerage to dispatch to recruiting, went to another company with about a thousand trucks, was there for about a year running their driver, recruiting and retention. And then that's what brought me over to, or leads me to Wellington where I've been. This is my fourth year with the company, their director of human resources. I look after all the hiring, mainly for truck drivers, but as well as for office staff. And it's been an awesome journey so far at Wellington north got amazing people in the office, amazing people on the roads, just rockstars and every department. It's a, it's a great place to work. We'll throw you the welcoming confetti. There you Go. Wellington been in business might. So we've been in business for seven years, the first three and a half of them. We were a non-acid based third-party brokerage. And then in may of 20, sorry, may of 2018, our current president, Derek cozy came over and we started getting assets and we've grown from there. So we've been around seven years, but most of our growth has been in the last three and a half Publix, the fleet size right now, We've got around 35 to 40 company units and then we've got a sprinter vans. We've got straight trucks, we've got a company in Roberts, Wisconsin. I think they've got around 40 trucks and then we've got five or six owner operators working for us as well. Wow. So yeah, so, so quite a different fleet size compared to what your history is when you were working for a fleet of 500 and then a fleet of about a thousand. Now you're down under 100 power units. So you know, quite a unique dynamic now from what you were doing before. Yeah. I mean there's pros and cons to big companies and small companies. And I mean, what I really like about a smaller company is I know all the drivers very well. Most of them have been with us for several years now. So I've started develop your, not just your standard relationship with them, but a pretty strong friendship with a lot of them anyways, whereas at bigger companies, you know, when I was in dispatch, maybe we had a fleet of 40 drivers. I looked over that I'd have special relationships with, but you know, there'd still be another 400 drivers that I really couldn't pick out of a crowd. I kinda liked the, you know, the, the word families overused a lot when people talk about their company, but it is more of a family feel. And I mean, just yesterday I was with, I don't know, a dozen of our drivers. And we went out to Boston pizza just to watch football and have some garbage, well, not garbage. That's bad for you. It was cool. You know, you could shoot the breeze, you could watch the game, you could talk about some work stuff, but it was never, no conversations were forced. You know, people didn't have to come like, you know, we obviously picked up the bill for them, but it's like, Hey guys, that's just hang out. We can finally get together again. Might as well, might as well do it A great appreciation opportunity. That's right. Yeah. You Say about 40 drivers showed up. No, no. We had, we had a dozen drivers show up, like this was a, we did it in London, Ontario or drivers are fairly spread out. So the Windsor guys did make it out. The GTA guys could make it out. Quebec fleet couldn't make it out. So right at 12 of about 20 to 25 drivers come out. So decent attendance for a Sunday. Yeah. Because everybody's got family commitments and everything else on their days off. So that's, that's excellent. Yeah. Yeah. When you want to spend time with your coworkers on your, on your time off that's, that's proof of a good relationship, you know, when they're not being forced or to see my ugly mug. So true. So true. So I had the opportunity to Give me a break. I had the opportunity to, to hear Michael speak here just last week at the one of the central chapter fleet safety council meeting, and a lot of great things that Michael is doing over at Wellington. And I didn't want to touch on everything. Mike, I want to touch on a few things in particular, one being your recruitment process and to your compensation package, which is quite unique in the industry, as well as we're going to find out here. But it's an, I both believe heavily in that the industry needs to change to a pay package that is similar to what you guys are doing at Wellington. But yeah. Give us a little rundown on that. Then the, tell us what it is you're doing differently from a recruiting practice to start. And then we'll kind of jump into the payback is Yeah. W when it comes to recruiting, I mean, I, I've got a budget that I'm, I'm allowed to spend on different recruiting ads or different ways to attract drivers. And I haven't touched it in over a year, partly because we've got a good reputation in the industry. So we've got, you know, a few drivers kind of lining up, waiting for positions to open up and partly just smarter ads. Like I, why I say it's like fishing with a spear instead of fishing with a net, you know, I'll put up a, an ad that's very specific. It's looking for a specific type of driver that maybe they want to be home every night or they want to be out for a long time, whatever it is, every driver's got their preferences. So, you know, instead of getting a hundred applications just for, you know, a truck driver, I post yet as specific as possible, and maybe only get eight or 10 applications, what they're all really good fits. And then I can kind of get Nicky and actually have, you know, a selection process where in the past it's kind of been, you know, your drivers abstracts pretty good, your work histories, okay. Then you pass the road test, you know, here are the keys, you know, we can make sure someone's a right fit for our culture. We can make sure that they haven't bounced around from company too much. And, you know, really pick the best, most professional driver out of the bunch. Michael, I got a, you said the best fit for the culture of your company. How do you determine how, how do you figure that out? Cause that's a huge thing. If you can do it well, then your turnover's low. Yeah. It's a little tougher than, than most aspects of hiring because you know, in a job interview, it's like if you have a kid and they want to get a puppy, you know, they're, you're going to promise to walk it every day. They're gonna wash it, feed it, all that sort of stuff. In job interviews, you get a lot of people that just agree with everything. So you kind of have to dig a little deeper. It's like, well, you know, you might have to work weekends. Is that going to be a problem? Do you go to the cottage every weekend? You know, does junior have a ballet recital or a sports Canaanite that you need to go to, you know, asking the questions to make sure that they're they're fit from that stance. And then in terms of culture, you know, I bring most people to our office. If they're getting hired from anywhere around here and they can kind of see what we're like, where it's like similar to the Boston pizza this weekend, it's people that want to be here. They see everyone's getting along the one extremely frazzled at their desk. I'm going it's transportation. So there's going to be some stress in the air sometimes, but you know, the, the drivers see what we're like. They, they hear the feedback from our other drivers. If they've had the, the road test already, it's by, you know, one of our local guys, you know, they're, they're all kind of preaching the same thing. That it's a good place to work, but you know, if you're not going to be putting in the effort, it's not gonna not going to work for either of it. That's excellent. I was going to say, I liked the language you were using there. When we were, were asking the driver, you know, will the schedule fit you rather than saying, Hey, here's how it's going to be. If you don't like it, there's the door, you know, but here it's like, Hey, how can we accommodate you? How can we work with you? Because if this isn't the right fit, maybe we got something else because you seem to be the right driver. Yeah. I use the square peg in a square square hole mentality where, you know, you're not going to get a driver with 10 years experience to all of a sudden say like, Hey, I'm sick of local. I want to go to New Jersey all the time. You know, you gotta find that driver that wants to do that. And I've had it many times. In fact, there's a gentlemen. I just offered a position to that. I've been in contact with, for probably two and a half years. And it just, it hasn't been a match yet. And then finally the position wind up that you'd probably originally applied for two and a half years ago. And it was a no brainer that I don't have to post an ad. I don't have to, I can basically send one text message, make one phone call and say, Hey, you know, Larry, this, this position is available and you know, I'm going to go in two weeks and then start with you guys pretty much like it's a really cool process when it's that seamless. And you don't have to stress about finding a driver and having an empty truck and failing your customer. And then, you know, worst thing you can do is make the wrong hire because you're rushed into it. Then you've got some inexperienced driver or again, someone that wants long haul doing local and they're unhappy. And you know, they're going to, going to be gone in a month and a half anyway. Yeah. Yeah. So, so it almost sounds like you don't have a huge focus on recruiting because it doesn't sound like it's an everyday task. No, it's a, it's not, I mean, we put a lot of effort into our, our driver retention, staying kinda with a finger on the pulse for how our drivers are doing. And each year, like, you know, let's say I hire five or six drivers. It's because of expansion. It's not because of we're, we're losing anyone. We, we once went 18 months without a single company driver leaving our company. And you know, that that streak unfortunately came to an end last March, I guess, about six, seven months ago. But the numbers have stayed pretty consistent. Like we've got a 98% driver retention rate. Don't leave. That's awesome. You know, and that's the thing you focus you. I think if you work more on retaining those guys you'll work less on recruiting because I don't need to keep hiring drivers. So, so what, You, you kind of stepped out of the room later, John, I'm going to come back, hang on. Here I come. So see, that's what happens with the internet deep in the south. Yes. You're deep in the south of Southern Ontario. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Anyway. And my back. Yes. What was your question? Okay. So what are some of the other things that you do as part of your retention program? One of them you've already mentioned, Don is inviting the guys out to Boston pizza for some pub grub and, you know, watch the game, watch some fun and have a couple of drinks with your comrades. You know, that's huge, but what are some other things that you guys are doing to work on? Because again, you're not having to do a lot on the recruiting side. So what are you doing to retain these guys? Yeah. One thing that we did that was a big success is just our first year doing it. This time we had a driver appreciation month where in August, every day we had a different sort of promotion or giveaway or a contest we're going to drivers could win 2, 3, 4, or $500 for participating. Sometimes it was just, Hey, everyone, here's a $10 subway gift card. We're going to put in a swag bag for you. I, I mentioned in my other presentation where a lot of companies will have a driver appreciation barbecue, but it'll be at noon on a Wednesday when all the drivers are out on the road. So it's just the office staff there and maybe the local guy Or whatever we Want to include everyone. So it's easier these days, you know, you can email gift cards or, you know, get more company shirts made up. And yeah, sometimes it'd just be, you know, cold, hard cash. We'd have a cool contest, some sort of trivia. Or we had a, my favorite one was anyone who sent in a picture of them picking up garbage, whether it's their backyard, their neighborhood at truck stop, they got entered into a draw for 500 bucks. So it's cool. You know, you're out helping out the community, helping out the world, making the industry look and, you know, good chance to win some money. Sure, sure. How do you, how do you fund the retention program? You'd mentioned you have a budget for the recruiting side, which you haven't had the touch. Do you have a budget from the retention side as well? Truthfully, there's no hard budget on it. Our company, right from the top, we kind of all buy into the, the value of drivers and how much they mean to a company. So it's never really been an issue where it's like, Hey, we want to, you know, send Larry to the blue Jay game. He he's been with us for two years. He's, he's been a rock star. It's like, okay, no problem. And even smaller things where if someone wants an extra shirt, it's just, they just, you know, they love wearing the welding gear. It's hard to say no to that. When, when people are proud to fly the welds in colors, you, you know, you almost want to nurture them more and you know, you get more people doing that. It's just, you know, you look more professional when you're like that. And if it keeps the drivers happy, it's even better. Yeah. Yeah. And driver happiness is, I think it's a major key to retention. So I was going to say, it's, it's not hard to connect the dots here. When you talk about recruitment versus your retention programs and how you're able to fund all this. Well, I find a lot of people spend more time and effort recruiting and less time retaining. And if we took half the money we did in recruiting, invested into our retention programs, we'd probably have more time in the day. Oh, for sure. If it's, I feel like in the last few years people realized, you know, how much a, an empty truck is costing you and how much effort goes into recruiting and how much you're probably spending on ads and training. And, you know, the, the other costs that you don't always associate with it, but you know, your insurance premiums are probably going to go higher. If you're lowering your standard to hire drivers. Like there's, it's such a, a wide web of, of where you can go with that. So this work companies have started doing something about it. The, the other companies, they might talk about it, but you know, not necessarily do a whole lot about it. And it's going to be crystal clear who comes out ahead. When, you know, there's a lineup of drivers at one place and you know, the other places, oh, you know, we're paying an extra cents per mile now and think that'll solve the problem. Don't get me wrong. But it's, it's not the, it's not everything. No, no. Well that, and that leads me into the compensation package that you guys provided. It's on a unique level versus what the industry is and it's, and it's definitely on a level that needs to shift in that direction. I can get away from what the industry norm is. So, so tell us about your big buckets. Yeah. So we pay all of our company drivers, a guaranteed salary. So, you know, when we started this program at, it raised a eyebrows from, you know, the drivers I've talked to as well as just different people in the industry. Like, you know, how's that going to be sustainable? What if there's not enough work? What if there's no back calls and, you know, pretty quickly the drivers bought in, when we hired our first eight drivers, seven of them being full-time, they all kind of saw the, the benefit to the salary and, you know, you can work out your math, however you want to figure out, you know, what you earn per hour, if this is what you work. But you know, the fact that it's guaranteed, when you, when you're going for a mortgage or credit or a loan of some sort, you know, you can show them, Hey, I paid for the last 52 weeks identical, you know, there's no good weeks. There's no bad weeks. You know, our guys are gonna be happy coming up because with Christmas coming, you know, a lot of our customers are closed on the 23rd or the 24th. So their trucks aren't going to be spinning a mile, but they still get paid their regular salary. Sure. So that raises the eyebrows from the industry. People like, well, how can you make money if that's the case? And what we do is the oldest is off of the truck driver. You know, we expect their drivers to come to work between Monday and Friday and to be ready to work. You know, we, we cater to their schedules as much as we can, but we've got customers to service. We've got trucks that have to be making money for us. So the owner switches from the driver to the planner, to the customer service team, to the executive team to make sure that we're w that we're running these trucks efficiently. And so far, it's been going amazing for us where, you know, the drivers have a kind of all OD in where, you know, let's say they're averaging 50 hours a week. They no longer grumble if they have a 12 hour day, because they know there's going to be an eight hour day coming up, or there's going to be a day off on new year's Eve or what it may be. Cause initially don't get you're on. I had the guy saying, Hey, Mike, you know, I'm doing 14 hours per day. It works out to this per hour. And it's like, right. But I know, you know,

you finished at 1:

00 PM yesterday and you weren't grumbling about that. Yeah. That, that's more of the culture. And I don't know, I even had some of the guys saying like, you know, I'll do one more little shuttle run here. Cause if I don't do it, I know Larry's going to have to do it. And you know, that'll give him a long day where vinyl is going to be short. And there's a lot of teamwork involved and you know, guys just staging trailers for each other. It's I don't know. It's if it's not the biggest reason for our strong retention numbers, it's definitely up there. The, the salary is huge and yeah, the driver no longer gets punished if their trucks down or if there's no back haul or, you know, whatever it may be where mileage based pay I'm on the same page as you guys where it just, it doesn't make sense certainly on its own. I mean, maybe you have some sort of guaranteed minimum and plus mileage, I, I wouldn't be against that, but strictly mileage it's a crapshoot. Yeah. Well it definitely puts a, an onus onto the operations team to make sure that, Hey, these trucks are rolling. You know, that these guys are utilizing the time that they got, but interesting enough. And I think we'll all agree on this. It's, it's, it's silly in my mind. And it has been for a long time, why we pay on a mileage basis when we make our truck payments on a fixed monthly basis, our insurance costs are usually on a fixed monthly basis. Our maintenance staff, if we've employed them well, they're on salary and they're on standby. So, you know, if there's no trucks turning well, hopefully they're working on, you know, but if they're all fixed well, then we're sitting up and paying them to sit around. So, you know, trailer payments are the same way. So there's a lot of fixed costs that makes sense to bring the driver into that same approach, create a fixed asset. I can't agree with you more above having that ability to keep that driver happy and give them peace of mind knowing that when I want to buy a house or I want to go buy a car, I can go to the bank and say, yeah, here's what I make every week, guaranteed. Okay. Yeah, that's right. And we have the opportunity for the, for the guys to earn overtime if they were wanting to do work on weekends. But most of the guys there, they're just happy doing their Monday to Thursday, their Monday to Friday, and, you know, calling it the week. And then yeah. If people do want to earn extra money, I always tell them, you know, when you're other earning extra money, you're not spending money. So it's kind of like a double bonus. And you know, some guys love it. It's we have a lot of part-time drivers as well, whether they're semi retired or, you know, they have a full-time job elsewhere. And those guys have been very valuable to the fleet as well, where, you know, they can hop in on the weekends or if someone's on vacation or a sick day appointment, whatever it may be, the flexibility of these guises is awesome. And one other thing I wanted to touch on there, John, when you're talking about all these fixed costs, from an operations perspective, if all the drivers were on salary, there's another fixed cost that you know about. So when you're setting your rates for the customer, you know, you know exactly kind of what you're getting into know, most companies are maybe not most, at least at Wellington, like our, our trucks are all under a maintenance plan. So all of our maintenance is a fixed cost as well. We know pretty darn level what's going out the door so we can better dictate on what's coming in the door. It's I can't believe there's more companies that aren't adopting this method because it's, I don't know. It's it's fair. And it's, it can be a very sustainable method as well as improving. Sure. You got, sorry, Chris. I was just going to say, there's no doubt. You got happy drivers. I'll bet you, they got happy spouses as well. Yeah. It's, it's kinda funny how many times someone's spouse or family member will, you know, either talk to me at the Christmas party or send me an email and just say, Hey, you know, like I'm so happy. Terry's home more often. And I love the fixed schedule and it's just a big relief. I know there's one gentleman that, with that, that drives for us where I feel like we, we kinda kept his marriage together. When he, you know, he got this consistent, regular run, regular page, just so much easier to plan your life when you know what you're doing and when you're doing it and how much you're getting for it. Now, Mike, I had a question you talked early on when you were started on the salary part about some drivers, knowing that they had a short day that they would do a short run or stage a trailer so that somebody else doesn't have to do a longer day. How did you foster that? You used the term teamwork. How did you foster a teamwork? I mean, I'd say it started with the, the first eight guys that we hired. They were, I mean, God bless these guys because they hopped on the company that they really knew nothing about. And it was just, you know, my word telling them like, Hey guys, like you're gonna be getting paid a salary. It's a good company. I promise you that. Like, I know the people that work here and they, they kind of took a, a shot with us and as we've grown, you know, and they've kind of, well, certainly moved up the seniority ranks within, within the fleet. You know, the, the methods that they had from day one kinda got passed down and passed down. And you know, one gentleman in particular, great Irish guy named Patty, you can call him the quarterback for our fleet and you kind of open, he bleeds Wellington colors. There's gotta be a Wellington tattoo on him somewhere. He's just, he's flying our flag everywhere. And you know, it's, it's like the guys don't want to disappoint him. He's been a rock for a company. And you know, you see how hard he's working and, you know, that translates to the next person to the next person. And if we do find someone that doesn't really fit into that and is out for themselves, and, you know, we had one guy that would put pylons in front of the door that he was going into so that no one would ever be into it. We don't, we don't want those people last week. You know, our retention numbers are strong. So people that have voluntary left the company, but you know, I've, I've had to dismiss a few people cause they, they don't buy in it, you know, with a salary structure, we don't want the driver that's stopping and every truck stop for a coffee and a cigarette. You know, we want the person that's gonna work hard and work smart, work fast and, you know, just buy into the, the Wellington lay. And we've been very fortunate that most of the dry wall, I'd say all of our drivers now are like that. And most of the hires have been like that. Awesome. Beautiful. I mean, congratulations. Seriously. There's so many companies out there. Everybody says there's a driver shortage and we can't hire drivers. And yet it doesn't appear that like Wellington and you have a problem because you, you frame things differently in a way that a driver understands it and wants to come and work for you. Yeah, no, a hundred percent. And even when we did get a new piece of business, that we weren't exactly sure what it entailed. I've gone out on probably five or six trips with our drivers now, just so I can get a better understanding for it. Number one, help them through their first day or two and then recruiting for other positions when we've added more, more trucks to that lane. Now I can say, you know, this is what the run entails. Don't get me wrong. I've never driven commercially in my life. I, I struggled to back up my key to Rio, but just going in the truck, this position had a, you know, a fiscal component to it where you're moving freight to the back of the trailer, you know, going out there and doing the dirty work with them, learning how to strap a flatbed load. I had no idea what that entailed and I showed John a picture when I'm just miserable during the rain wearing an old safety vest and freezing as it, I wanna say it was like November or something like that. But you know, the driver was out there doing it in the rain. They've got to do it rain or shine. So I'm not going to cancel on a, on a learning opportunity. If anything, it gave me more appreciation because I realized, you know, it's not 10, 15 minutes to strap the flat, but it's 45 minutes to an hour. And that's in great conditions. If the freight doesn't need to be moved around, that's been very valuable in both the recruiting and the retention where I've been out there. I know the places that they're going to, I know, you know, some of them are a real pain in the neck to back into some of the freight might be a little difficult to offload, but the fact that I've done it, I can at least prep them for it, where they're in for no surprises and drivers that I talked to after, you know, they have an orientation, you know, ABC transport, they hate surprises because they're rarely good. And it's, oh, you know, I say this much per mile, I meant only this much. And did I say Texas? You know, I meant Massachusetts high there's. If you can limit that, if people know what they're getting in for, they can either make an informed decision not to come to your company or to come to your company. And yeah. The results have been good. Yeah. Well, I'm going to say your ability to get your hands dirty and work with the drivers, even when you haven't done that task before, there's no doubt about it. It brings credibility to your position and appreciation to you and your staff from your team. So, and one last point, I just want to throw in there. I know of a couple of other companies that are paying on a salary or an hourly based compensation package and very similar to what you have, Michael, their is high, very high. So that proves it works. And those companies are also very prosperous and they don't have a shortage of drivers knocking on it. It, it seems like such common sense. Like more, more companies would adopt this. And like, I use the example of, of a layover where, you know, some companies, they might only pay a 50 bucks till they over. And you know, that's not much money out of the company's pocket. Sure. The truck's not making as much money as he could that day. But you know, it's 50 bucks in a little bit of lost money where the driver's missing out on whatever they could be earning 2 50, 300 bucks. So they're the one that's taking it on. And I assume that's why most companies don't care too much until they Overdriver because, you know, it's not hurting their pocket book that much it's hurting the driver. So I wish it was almost industry standard. And we're like, okay, if you're gonna lay over 200 bucks or 250 bucks, and then that would catch the attention of the operations manager. If they're seeing, you know, there's frequent layovers and say, okay, well, what can we do to get this truck moving? Whether we, you know, go empty and extra a hundred miles, whether we take a little less than we want, but we can't be paying out this much money each time, because right now the drivers are basically paying that Right. That's yeah. Driver abuse again. And, you know, drivers won't stay forever at a company like that. The turnover rate is going to be higher. So congrats to you. And the other thing I wanted to say, Michael was congrats to the upper management who allow you, like, I assume that you said, Hey, I wanted to go out on this new piece of business because I wanted to learn about it. Well, somebody had to say, yeah, or it was just part of the culture that you knew that you had an unrivaled permission to go and do that. So congrats to the, your team of managers that you know, that you can get out there or they say, yeah, get out there and go do that because not every company allows it All. We've got a really good team here that that's really focused on the drivers. And you know, I'm a little more on the one end where I'm very driver centric. And sometimes I will, but heads with operations go to a few things, especially our executive team. You know, they, they know that without our drivers, our trucks aren't going anywhere, our customers, it's not going to be delivered. And then, you know, it's, it's not a good situation if you don't have any drivers. No dope. Perfect. Thank you so much, Michael, last words. I mean, we're going to have your show notes or, sorry. We'll have your contact info in the show notes below in case a driver wants to reach out and find out more about Wellington, but any parting words for us, Parting words is just, you know, tree drivers like there, any other friend of yours or any other staff member there move the lifeblood of your company. It's I don't know, to me, it's just second nature. Like, you know, treat them with respect and don't swear at them. Don't raise your voice. Think about it from their perspective. And even if you haven't been in a, in a truck with them before, you know, it, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out if they've been driving for 12 hours in a day, the last thing they want to do is you'll drop a trailer, just cause you're asking for a favor. Like it's, you know, th they, they work hard. They're driving whatever 80,000 pounds worth of equipment, risking tickets, risking fines, risking collisions. They're, they're an educated bunch. They're great with geography. Great. With mechanics often speak many different languages. Like, you know, give drivers the respect they deserve. Don't fake it. That's so easy to spot someone that fakes it. If you have a genuine respect and appreciation for truck drivers, that's going to attract them. That's going to keep them. And that's going to change the mentality at your company where everyone's going to start having that sort of respect and admiration for them. Yeah. Yeah. The golden rule do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That's right. Thanks so much, Michael, John, you want to wrap this up? Yeah. Well, you know what? Thanks, Michael. This was great information. I know our listeners are going to get a lot of this and a lot out of this. I mean, and I'm hoping that with any luck, they'll really listen to what you've said and take it back and kind to integrate it into their culture, their organization, and start looking at, Hey, how could we do different? How can we do this? So, so again, thank you very much. No problem. I appreciate it. And Hey, let's hope your, your lineup of, of potential potential candidates gets longer. And unfortunately we can't hire them because we've got lots of good guys stay in flux. So now that we're all good thing. Great. Thanks Guys. Take care of joy. Hey, Michael Z. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you of Willington motor freight for coming on the show. Appreciate it so much. If you've made it all the way to this portion of the show, please leave us on lake and a comment down below. It helps the show very much so that's it for this week from my co-host Johnny far choir of summit risk solutions and myself, Chris Harris safety dog. That's it. See you next week.