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How Trucking Works · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we're coming to your town, so you better
• 0:05
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• 0:07
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• 0:14
  Speaker 2: in Orlando, Florida on August twelfth, Nashville, Tennessee on September sixth,
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: and wind it all up here in Atlanta on September ninth.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Yes, and you can get all the info you need
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: and links to tickets which are on sale now at
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: our website Stuff youshould Know dot com on our tour page,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: or you can go to linktree slash sysk.
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast Good Buddy. I'm Josh Clark,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's here too,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: so that makes us a route tune an episode of
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know?
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Was there anything more thrilling as a child being on
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: the highway and getting that trucker to pull that horn change?
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was very thrilling. You felt drunk with power,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: didn't you?
• 1:10
  Speaker 4: Sort of that as a kid it was.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: It was like, wow, like they paid attention to me
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: sort of, you know.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And the only time I ever tried that,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: though the trucker flipped me off.
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: No really kidding. I totally bought that.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: That would be a Josh Clark childhood story though for
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: sure it fit. Yeah, for sure. So was that it?
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Is that all you wanted to talk about with truckers?
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I know, I don't know if this
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: came specifically from a specific trucker as an idea, but
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: I know that we've gotten a few emails here and
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: there from long haul and regional shorthaul truckers that say
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: they listen to us, and you know that they're out
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: there and they'd love to hear something about it.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: So to that, we say ten to four, ten to four.
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: Good.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently stuff you should know is the greatest thing
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: that's ever happened to the trucking industry in the history
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: of the trucking industry. As far as the truckers who
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: listen to us, they're concerned. So hello out there, everybody
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: driving trucks listening to us. We appreciate you. In fact,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: we appreciate you so much. We're doing a whole episode
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: on your industry. And it's one of those things, Chuck,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: that I mean, you drive alongside truckers, you tell them
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: to get the heck out of the middle lane. You
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: see them unloading shipments and just doing their thing. They're
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: just a part of life. But it's definitely one of
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: those things that if it goes wrong, it becomes apparent
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: very quickly. Because truckers and trucking is the way that
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: America runs, not just America, we're talking Eurasia. Basically, the
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: whole world runs on commercial trucking. That's how stuff gets
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: moved around. Yes, we move stuff by sea, that's true,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: move stuff by rail, that's true too. We even fly
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: stuff somewhere once in a while. But for the most part,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: the vast majority of stuff that goes from a factory
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: to a store in most countries, it's it's carried by trucks.
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: I think the Grabster helped us with this, and I
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: think he found a stat that said that long haul
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: trucking carries about seventy percent by weight of everything that
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: we ship in the United States.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, eleven billion tons of freight in a year. I
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: saw that maybe about six hundred billion dollars. That's how
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: much the industry makes gross of course, But the I
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: think the key here is that trucking has created that
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: the world that we live in today. Like the grocery
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: storees you know it today, you can thank trucking for that.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Box stores for better or worse, thank trucking for that.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: They they've allowed it. Like as trucking is advanced, it's
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: allowed the United States economy to advance as well, and
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: it's just created all sorts of new things that you
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: probably couldn't have predicted along the way.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's why, even though it can be frustrating,
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: you should try and be very patient and understanding when
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: that semi truck gets over in the left lane to
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: pass somebody, and which they have to do sometimes, and
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: they find themselves all of a sudden going on a
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: long uphill stretch right and they just don't have the
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: engine power to go as fast as you want to go.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: I used to get pretty frustrated with that stuff, but
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: I try to understand now, they didn't mean to do that.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: They don't want to be on that uphill, stuck in
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: that left lane, and they're trying to get you your
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: dumb package or oranges or whatever.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: I have respect for truckers in the trucking industry, but
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: I think being asked to be patient about that is
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: a bit of a stretch.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: All right, Well, we should probably go back in time
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: some to the early nineteen hundreds, specifically the nineteen tens,
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: when what we think of as the modern tractor trailer
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: was basically invented by a guy from Detroit named August Fruhuf.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: Something tells me he's German, I think so. And he
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: built a trailer to move lumber around. Called it a
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: semi trailer.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you don't call it a semi.
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: Well, a semi trailer. I call it a semi.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: You call it a semi No, I call it a
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: semi okay?
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: Was that just a gas lid?
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Maybe?
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: Okay?
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: And then about a year after that he licensed this
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: fifth wheel design, which is which was kind of changed everything.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: It made a uniform method for very quickly and easily
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: attaching a trailer to a truck. And back then it
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: was called the fifth wheel because I looked up old
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: pictures of these things. It looked like a wagon wheel.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: It looks a lot different now, but that was where
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: it got its name.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you've ever seen a naked semi driving along
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: without a trailer, there's a big round steel plate on
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: the back and that's the fifth wheel. And like you said,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: I mean it revolutionized everything because it allowed trailers to
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: be swapped out very quickly. And also it came up
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: it might come up again later. It it underscores the
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: whole point of everything is that all you need now
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: is the tractor, the semi, the trunk, and you can
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: interchange that with all variety and manner of different trailers.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: You can pull all sorts of different things. So because
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: it's modular and swappable and you can collect all fifty
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: that that also allowed that the whole industry to grow too,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: just in that one little invention.
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and do I understand in this correctly that.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: A tractor trailer is the name of you know, the
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: front part in the back part, and it's called a
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: semi truck and a semi trailer because it's like part
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: of that like semi.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Literally that's my understanding, all.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: Right, if we got that wrong, and I feel really dumb,
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: but I think that's the deal. And like you said,
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: now people will generally just call them semis.
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: A lot of times like a shorthand.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: But there's you know, there's been a lot of developments
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: since that fifth wheel, Yeah, to come along.
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: To make these sort of the go to.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: The first big one was just you know, air tires
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: rather than rubber wrapped around a steel wheel, right, that
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: was a big deal. And then refrigerated trucks, which came
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: along in the nineteen thirties courtesy of a very successful
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: and prolific inventor on an African American Army veteran named
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: Fred Jones, who developed the refrigerated truck. And prior to this,
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: it was like how much ice can we fit in there?
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: Kind of thing.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they would take like barrels of brine along I
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: guess to lower the melting point for the ice, and
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: that stuff would just drip out of it and onto
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: the truck and it would rust the truck quickly. Even
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: if you did have a very successful run, it was
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: a very short run. All that stuff was any perishable
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: stuff was very local. Like if you bought something, yeah,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: fish especially they did not have fish in Georgia at
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: the time, certainly not saltwater fish. But if you bought
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: something like at the store that was produced, it was
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: probably grown within twenty miles of where you were, probably
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: even closer than that, in large part because they just
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: couldn't ship it further than that. And then if you
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: have a truck breakdown, you're in big trouble because that
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: whole shipman was just just a wash.
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, if you ate like a swordfish steak
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the nineteen sixties, you're lucky to
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: be alive. Yeah, exactly, Actually, not the sixties. I should
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: have said that the eighteenth sixties. Let me try that again.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: If you ate swordfish Until's Oklahoma in the nineteen twenties,
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: you're lucky to be alive.
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: You're lucky to be alive. Anyway, If you're alive, then.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: I think Swordfish in Tulsa is a great album.
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: Now, Oh yes.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: I can see a guy with a pencil thin mustache
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: seated at a table, an intimate little table with the candle.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: He's wearing an ascot and sunglasses even though it's indoors,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: and he's toasting you the viewer of the album cover.
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: Oh man, Aaron Cooper get busy.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: So I guess we're trying to say here is that
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: it's really difficult to overstate the impact that the refrigerated
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: trailer had on not just the trucking industry, but just
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: the economy and the way that we consume food. Now.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, truck farming started a couple of
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: decades before, which was the idea that you could now
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: put fruits and vegetables on trucks that didn't necessarily need
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: to be refrigerated.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: It does not mean growing trucks from c.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: That started a while before, which meant all of a
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: sudden farming went you know, regional and then national. But
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: then you know, a couple of less than a couple
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: of decades later, when these reefer trucks is what they're called,
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: came along, then you could have cold goods shipped more easily,
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: and then basically everything was on the table as far
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: as getting it from here to there.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Right, And that's another example, like you can haul a
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: dry load and a regular trailer one day and the
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: next day you could be hauling a reefer truck thanks
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: to that fifth wheel, like I was saying earlier. Yeah,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: another big, one, huge, huge change not just in trucking
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: but in shipping in the global economy in general, was
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: when the standardized shipping container came along. We have to
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: do an episode on that. I can't believe we haven't yet.
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah we should.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: The closest we came to was the floaty friendly floaties,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: the rubber ducks that went overboard once.
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: That's the coast we came. But so when the shipping
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: container container became standardized, that meant that when you shipped something, uh,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: you packed it and sent it off and it was
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: lifted on a crane to a ship, it was lifted
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: off the ship by another crane on the other end
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: onto a tractor trailer, and then it was just taken
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: straight to the store. No one needed to touch it
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: after you packed it, which really cut down on theft
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: damage that kind of stuff. It also put the long
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: shortman profession essentially out of business forever. But it also
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: it allowed trucking to expand. I guess in in kind
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: starting around the seventies, I think is when they really
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: caught on.
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: Aren't there still long shoremen?
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: No?
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: I thought they were.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: They just like now, they just managed the loading and
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: the loading of containers.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Yes, of the containers. So yes, there are still long shoremen.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: There's still Steve Doors, but they the number of them. Sure, yeah,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: of course, I mean decimated times nine.
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: I was just imagining a long shoreman working right now
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: listening to this, going what I.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Don't exist, and he just pops right out of existence
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: because he stopped believing.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: Another big thing that made trucking possible, obviously, was the
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: Federal Highway Act I'm sorry, Federal Highway Aid Act of
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: nineteen fifty six, which you know we've talked about it before,
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: created the highway system, very big boon and then getting
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: rid of way stations. It didn't increase trucking, but it
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: really ramped up efficiency because back in the day, every
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: state had their own weight restrictions for trucks or you know,
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: they weren't literally all different, but they all had their
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: own and you had to stop at every state line
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: at a way station and sometimes sit in a long
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: line and get weighed, and you could be delayed hours
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: and hours, especially well if you were overweight like you would,
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: they'd say, sorry, you got to pull over there probably
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: and we'll handle this.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: But vomit.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: The Surface Surface Transportation Act, well, I guess in the
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: fifties they made it. They had a federal limit imposed,
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: but states could still have their own individual limits if
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: they if they wanted to, they were allowed to keep those.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: And it wasn't until nineteen eighty two of the Surface
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: Transportation Assistance Act that they made it completely uniform. There
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: were still way stations because I remember them when I
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: was a kid. It wasn't until the nineties that they
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: got that. They became smart essentially, when they got these
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: weaight in motion scales and radio frequency ID transponders, and
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: truckers didn't even you know, they didn't have to stop anymore.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: I was alive for that too, that transition in it
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: took me a while to catch on. I didn't understand
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: what had happened. I thought that they'd just done away
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: with playing all together.
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: No, I didn't. I had no idea until like yesterday.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: But that was like a familiar scene from when we
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: were young. Just trucks lined up at the way station,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: you know, just idling and releasing tons of greenhouse gas
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: into the air, and you just try to pass and
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: make that pull down motion, and they'd just be like,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: leave us alone. This is not the place for that.
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: I know.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to come down off of an eight hour
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: cocaine binge.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Right So one of the other things though, in addition
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: to RFIDs, is like that's a really good example of
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: how just technological trucking has gotten. And another example of
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: it is that they used to up until like not
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: very long ago, last few years, I think truckers kept
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: logs like they actual They kept like actual, like like
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: written logs of their their time on the road and
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: how many miles they drove and all that, and to
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: get around like laws and regulations, which we'll talk about
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: in a minute. They would they would some of them
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: keep two books, and they called the one that they
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: showed an inspector, which was a doctor. They called it
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: a comic book. But they'd also keep a real one,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: which I didn't understand why they would keep a real one,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: but they maybe get paid, I guess, so yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: because you wouldn't mess around with the truck company owner
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: like that. That's true, great idea, but they they can't
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: do that anymore.
• 15:23
  Speaker 5: Now.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: It's all very much tracked and kept on tabs, and
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: it's just because of that a much different industry. It's
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: also much safer, but it also has had an effect
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: on their ability to make money. And I just touched
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: upon like ten things that we're going to talk about soon.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: So I say we should catch our breath and take
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: a break.
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: Let's do it.
• 15:56
  Speaker 5: Well, now we're on the road in your truck. I
• 16:00
  Speaker 5: want to learn a thing or two from Josh Chuck.
• 16:04
  Speaker 5: It's stuff you should know.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: All right, Hey, real quick, before we dive in, we
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: were talking about technology and people logging things. I had
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: a recent I'm gonna tell the quick version, but a
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: recent dispute with Federal Express. Oh yeah, because they had
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: a freight shipment delivery delivered to my house and that
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: was you know, prepaid by the shipper, and then they
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: sent me a bill for a few hundred bucks after and.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, is this They do that a lot. Well,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: that's happened to us multiple times.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: Well did they tell you what they told me, which was, hey,
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: the trucker was there for like an hour and twenty minutes,
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: and that's like long. They said, that's the longer charge,
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: or you get charge extra or whatever if it's over
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: a certain amount of minutes for a certain amount of weight.
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: And I was like, no, he wasn't.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: And we went back and found like video doorbell camera
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: stuff and text messages that like the guy was in
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: and out of there, or at least delivered in like
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: seven or eight minutes. I was like, I don't know
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: if your trucker was sitting out in the road for
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: an extra thirty minutes.
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: I don't remember that part.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: But you know, here are the text messages that say, hey,
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: the truck's here, the truck's gone. Yeah, and as of now,
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: I don't even know if it's been resolved.
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: They just sort of ignored me after that.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: That's also apparently so that's what's called detention time pay
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: right where if you are a trucker and you're sitting
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: around or you're doing the actual unloading, you're very often
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: not paid for that time. You're paid for the time
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: you're actually driving. That's it. Usually some companies pay detention time,
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: but it's at a lower rate than you're driving rate.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: But if there is like a built in detention rate
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: into like a shipping contract, it's usually on the shipper
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: to pay it, the person sending the thing. It's part
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: of the contract that if there's if you go over
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: this great period, it's off in two hours where the
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: trucker is just sitting there not driving, and it's your fault.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Because your dock or your warehouse is backed up after
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: two hours, you have to pay this this detention time rate.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: It sounds like FedEx tried to pass their detention time
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: rate onto you even though they shouldn't have even been
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: paying it. So because you brought that up, I wasn't
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: gonna say this. We like, we have a lot of
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: stuff like delivered, and FedEx has become awful as a company,
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: not as the drivers, nothing like that. We've not had
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: any problem with drivers or any delivery guys or anything
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: like that, but as a company doing stuff like that,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: being impossible to get in touch with, just being they've
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: really gone downhill from the FedEx that that you know,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: we we were brought up with like they exactly and
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: then he gets lost and looked what happened?
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: Well, and just to put a button on this, I
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: don't want to go on and on about it, but
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: the initial charge was for like an hour and fifteen
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: or twenty minutes or something.
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: It was like three or four hundred bucks.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: And then they came back and said, oh, well, we
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: checked the closer in the logs and it was actually
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: like a seventeen minutes.
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: So it's really just eighty dollars.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: I was like, I'm like, you know what, I'm not
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: paying that even because that's not true. Yeah, but if
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: I would have paid that to begin with, you would
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: have ripped me off for four hundred.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Bucks, right, Yeah, No, it's rible. So how did it end?
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: They've ignored me since I sent in these text messages
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: as proof, so for all I know, they're turning me
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: over to like a creditor.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That's really terrible.
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: But okay, I'm flush in the face. I'm coming down there.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Man. You need to keep everybody posted on your ongoing
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: saga with FedEx.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: Okay, all right, so let's get back to this. I
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: guess we can talk about the trucks like themselves, because
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: they used to be, I guess, prior to World War Two,
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: mostly short haul trucks and fairly spartan and basically of
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: the same design. Thank you Mac Truck and Peter Built
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: and Kinworth trucks that really kind of figured out that
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: early design and shape. But these days, as we all know,
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: and for a while now, you can get a pretty
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: sweet sleeper cab situation going on. And I know I've
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: mentioned this before on some episode, but I was obsessed
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: with those when I was a kid. Yeah, me too,
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: because I love tiny, small spaces, and I could just
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: I didn't know what was in there.
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: I'd never been able to look in the What you did?
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: You're like, WHOA?
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: I was like, what is it?
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: Well? I finally did because our buddy John Pindell, my
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: friend that always sees us in Brooklyn, he was a
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: regional trucker for a while, and he showed me his
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: little sleeper cab. Nice would you in bed in TVNBCR.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: His was, you know, not like super lux, but I
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: could see where they could get, you know, pretty gussied up.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, some of them are. Basically they cut the mid
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: section out of a very nice RV and then put
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: it onto the back of a tractor, a semi truck. Yeah,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: like it can get that nice. But I think by
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: and large, not just because those are expensive, but because
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: it also takes up space so you can carry less
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: of a load, and it's heapier so that you spend
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: more in fuel. Most people have that bunk, and it
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: might be a nicer bunk than the one that Johnny had.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: I'm not throwing shade here, I'm just saying there are
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: some really nice bunks out there. Yeah, but I think
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: that's you know, more often the sleeper integrated sleeper is
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: what they call it. Where you're sleep you're laying down
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: right behind the chair the seat.
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: You know, what's comfy is that seat?
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks like it.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: I had never been in one, and John, let me say,
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: in it of course, and it was. They are very
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: comfortable and supportive and springy.
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: It was. It was awesome.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: They're very supportive. They whisper things like.
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: You're doing great, driving great.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: So yes, as far as I'm concerned, just from the outside,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: the sleeper cab is the most fascinating thing of the truck,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: but there are some other cool things about them. Something
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't think about is when you have a truck,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: it can only be a certain size and a certain
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: weight depending on the type of brakes you're using. So
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: they had to invent like a completely new type of brakes.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: Actually I should say they stole it from trains, but
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: for the same reason. They took air brakes so that
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: you could make the truck larger and allow it to
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: carry heavier loads and still slow down very quickly aka
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: brake using compressed air. Essentially.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's also something called jake brakes and exhaust braking,
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: and it's slightly confusing, and we're not going to break
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: it all down, but it basically means that you can
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: slow that engine down without even using the brakes, so
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: less were on the brake pads, less wear on the tires.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: And speaking of size, generally they're about forty eight to
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: fifty three feet long, about eight and a half feet wide,
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: thirteen and a half feet tall without a load out
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: ten thousand pounds and I believe the upper limit in
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: the United States loaded is eighty thousand pounds.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: That's four hundred tons. And I looked it up. There
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: were four generators moved separately via truck from California to
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Utah that weighed four hundred tons apiece. That's so big,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: that's enormous.
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: That's is that.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: It's seventeen trillion billion ounces.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: If you and we'll get into the you know, whether
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: or not you work for a company that gives you
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: a truck, or whether or not you're a freelance you know,
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: Devil may care independent, I don't need any friends anyway.
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: What do you call them? Just an independent trucker.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: There's another name for him, no, I think they're owner operators,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: is yeah, owner operators. Okay, yeah, that's what I was
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: looking for.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: But if you are throwing down cash on just that
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: that you know, tractor part, that front part, you can
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: pay a couple of hundred grand. You could pay more
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: than that if you get the you know, the deluxe ones,
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: if you get amused you know, twenty thirty fifty up
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: to one hundred and fifty. But these things are an
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: investment because it's not like a car.
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: These these trucks are meant.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: To go for you know, eight nine hundred to over
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: a million miles sometimes and they say, at about seven
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: hundred thousand miles, maybe you should get that engine rebuilt.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: One of the other things about those engines is they've
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: they've are diesel engines, like diesel is just they're bigger engines,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: and they can haul more, they can accelerate using heavy
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: loads faster. They're just better for that kind of thing.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: But the problem is diesel is so dirty that if
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: you have a diesel car or truck in a state
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: that requires emissions checks, they don't even bother with you
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: because you have diesel, because you're going to fail the
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: emissions inspection In two thousand and six, the EPA said
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: enough is enough. We're going to try to do what
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: we can with diesel, and they basically force the industry
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: to come up with ultra low sulfur diesel, which really
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: helps cut down on the greenhouse gas. And yet despite that,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: between twoenty twenty and nineteen ninety the amount of CO
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: two released by the trucking industry increased by eighty percent.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Despite those gains in efficiency, they still there's so many
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: trucks out there now that they added an extra eighty
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: percent of CO two. So electric semis just cannot come
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: fast enough.
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but yeah, it will happen.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: It probably will, or it certainly will someday, but who
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: knows exactly when is the question?
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: Speaking of electric and kind of cool stuff, I went
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: back in January. I went to the boat show, yeah,
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: which I had never been to a boat show. I've
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: been to one car show in my life.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Oh, jump, indell, you've never been to a boat show.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Aren't they fascinating? It's like this sleep was awesome cab
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: in a semi, but in a boat it.
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: Was pretty cool.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: It's fun to look, you know, walk around on those
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: like enormous boats that you would never get to, you know,
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: ride on much less buy. But there's one company that
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: was making there's a lot of companies making some electric
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: boats now, but there was one that made these like
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: super duper like old school Chrisscraft looking boats but long,
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: like twenty five footers that are all electric. That are
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: it was like three hundred and fifty grand. It was
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: one of the most beautiful machines I've ever seen. And
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: I asked the guy, I was like, what what does
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: it sound like out there? And he went, all you
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: hear is the water.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Oh man, that's cool.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: He said, you can hear like, you know, some sound,
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: but he said it's it's basically like the sounds of water,
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: because that's one of the problems with those big boats is.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Just like, oh that's all you here. You can't talk
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: or anything anyway like that.
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: Go go go electric.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: So that's pretty much the trucks, Like we said, there's
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: a bunch of different types of trailers, flatbeds, refrigerator like
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: low boys I think is one. Because you have all
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: sorts of height regulations, weight restrictions, there's a lot that
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: that is kind of laid over the trucking industry for
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: good reason, because you don't want a truck taking out
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: a bridge when it drives under it. No, but the
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: business as a whole, it's kind of fascinating in its
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: own right too, if you ask me.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like we mentioned before just a minute ago, sometimes
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: you work for a company that we'll say, here's your truck,
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: here's your keys, we got our own fleet that we'll maintain,
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: and we'll pay forward and all that stuff. Very rarely
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: you will be earning a base salary. It's exceedingly rare
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: from what we found it. It's generally a pay by
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: the mile gig, whether or not you work for a
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: company or if you're an independent owner operator.
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: But that is the other method.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: You can say, all right, I'm going to go buy
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: my own thing, or at least my own tractor. But
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: then you know, I'm my own business. I gotta get
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: these jobs. I gotta track them down. I gotta, you know,
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: figure out the scheduling of make making sure that I
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: can get another job on the heels for this one,
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: or ideally a return trip from where I just drop
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: something off. There's a lot of figuring out to do.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: You got to pay your own expenses, you have to
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, you are a business that all comes out
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: of your pocket, and you got to figure out how
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: to make that all work. And there are it's not
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: like the old days, like where you were just on
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: the telephone trying to call and get routes or as
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: we'll see, actually purchase routes from people, which is happening
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: in the seventies. Now they have like websites and apps
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: and things where you can get hooked up with routes,
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: and it's a lot easier now, but I imagine there's
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: still quite a bit of work that goes into your
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: scheduling and your planning and all that stuff.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and depending on how often you're willing to drive,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: how far you're willing to drive, how long you're willing
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: to stay out, a trucker will typically stay away from
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: home for four to six weeks. Yeah, two at a minimum.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: From what I can understand, it's basically not worth going
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: out for anything less than two. For over the road truckers.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: And I don't know if we said at the outset
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: specifically over the road truckers or long haul truckers. That's
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: the one in the same term that describes truckers who
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: drive a minimum two hundred and fifty miles below that
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: is regional and short haul trucking. That includes less than
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: truckload trucking, which is like a delivery truck or delivery
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: van like FedEx.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, my old across the street neighbor was an OTR
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: trucker and very nice guy, but we would you know,
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: sometimes that tractor was parked in his kind of front yard, right,
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: and many times most times it wasn't, you know.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, for sure. That's a huge part of it
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: is you're away from your family, and you have to
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: have a very patient, understanding family that is willing to
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: be like, okay, see in a month and a half
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: while you're out on the road, you know, making money,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: especially if you're an owner operator. That just sounds so
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: stressful to me.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's like any freelance gig. I imagine it's
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: pretty stressful. But while I don't know this for sure,
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: I imagine that you get like a lot of freelance gigs,
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: you get hooked into a sort of a regular thing
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: and it's not like, boy, I don't know if I'm
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: gonna have a route on next week, you know, like
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: you probably get these sort of regular routes and regular
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: jobs as long as they last, of course, But that's.
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: Just me sort of speculating, But I bet that's the case.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Well, they also now today they've taken basically dating apps
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: and turned them into apps that connect truckers to loads
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: that need to be hauled one so one way or
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: the other. Exactly. One app is called one two three
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: load Board, and there's a bunch of other ones. So
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: it's not it's gotten exponentially easier to find a load
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: exactly where you, you know, are dropping one off. Because
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: anytime you're driving around, like you said, you're dead heading
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: without it, without a load, you're just you're just wasting money,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: like you're you're not only wasting money, you're also wasting
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: time away from your family too. I'm sure that just hurts,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just I'm sorry. I'm still thinking of the
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: thirteen different jokes I came up for trucking app names.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: What can we hear any none of them? Oh okay,
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: they're all dirty, every single one.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Text to me then okay, okay, sure. So one of
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: the other things, too, is all the unpaid hours that
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: they have to deal with. Yeah, there's like we said,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: there's that detention time, which is downtime, whether it's government
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: enforced downtime because there's regulations about how how much you
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: can drive over how much time period. There's downtime where
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: you know you're just going to pick up or deliver
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: the load and they're backed up, so you have to
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: sit there and wait. Sometimes I saw a day and
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: a half once where you're just sitting there not getting paid. Yeah,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: there's times where you know, if you want to stop
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: and eat, that's downtime too, and a lot of times
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: you just not paid for that at all. Apparently the
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Biden administration made getting better treatment for truckers like a priority,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: and one of those things was getting like basically getting
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: rid of unpaid detention time. It's just so on its
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: face unfair. That's it's just a flaw of the industry
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: that's actually keeping a lot of people from making a
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: career of it.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, And like you said, there are a
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: lot of reasons why you might be waiting around and
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: even though you may not be required to like help
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: even load and unload, sometimes you're doing that just because
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: you want to get on the road quicker, because you
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: know you earn more money and you're you know, you're
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: away from home.
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: You just want to get done.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: Speaking of the regulations for hours, the Federal Motor Carrier
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: Safety Administration, these days, the limit is eleven hours behind
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: the wheel ten hours off and because of that, and
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: we heard I remember emails from trucker couples.
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: A lot of people pair up.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: To do their truck in so they can kind of
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: just go NonStop or you know, almost NonStop and switch
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: off driving. And a lot of these are like actual couples,
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: like you know, people that have gotten together and said
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: I would I love you and you love me. Let's
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: make a life together, and let's drive this truck together.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, unless you're married. I don't think it makes much
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: sense economically because you're sharing whatever rate you're getting for
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: the for the hall, right.
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but you can drive twice as much.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you're still so you're driving twice as much,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: but you get half of that. So it's the same
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: I would think as driving alone now.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: Because it's basically like if you're driving eleven hours and
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: your wife's in another truck driving eleven hours, you're doubling
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: your money, and that's essentially what you're doing because instead
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: of having to wait that eleven hours someone else is driving,
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: So I don't like to you're earning two wages in
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: one truck.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: Yes, but okay, So to keep this from devolving into
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: a crossword esque conversation, I'm just gonna stay like totally,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: I gotcha. But back on the regulations. You said that
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: you can't drive for more than eleven hours before you
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: need a ten hour off, like mandatory ten hours off
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: to rest that also takes place within a certain time.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: You can't stretch those ten hours beyond fourteen hours, So
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: you can't go fourteen hours without taking ten hours to rest.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: And then you can't drive more than seventy hours in
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: a seven day week or eighty hours an eight day week,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: and you can't go beyond eight consecutive days of driving
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: unless you take thirty four hours off afterward, which resets everything.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: Did you get all that?
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: Sure?
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: But I mean you have to keep up with all
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: of that. And not only not only do you have
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: to plan like where you're you're taking your load and
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: picking up your next load and try to figure out
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: the best place to get fuel for the cheapest and
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: YadA YadA, you also have to figure out exactly when
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: you're going to sleep, strategically, you don't want to just
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: be like, oh man, I ran up against my wall.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: I've got to pull over here on the side of
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: the road and sleep for ten hours. You have to
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: plan that kind of stuff. So not only are you
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: working with logistitions, you have to be a certain amount
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: of a logistition yourself to drive a semi.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you got to map out all those roadside
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: attractions you gotta see.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: You want to see the biggest ball of aluminum foil.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: You gotta plan that kind of thing.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: All right, let's take our second break, and uh, we
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: got a lot more to talk about, which is a
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: lot to do with trucking, and we'll start again in
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: two minutes.
• 35:54
  Speaker 5: Well, now we're on the road, driving in your truck.
• 35:59
  Speaker 5: Want to learn a thing two from Josh Chuck.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: It's stuff you should know.
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: All right, all right, let's talk about CBS.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Okay, we talked about them on our Ham Radio podcast,
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: and we'll get into the sort of the seventies CBE
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: craze here in a little bit. But truckers still sometimes
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: communicate by CBE. There's a lot better technologies out there
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: now and a lot of truckers apparently say that the
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: CBE band has become you know, pretty toxic, a lot
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: of road ragers and people just sort of spouting off
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: on their soapbox about things.
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: But apparently about a third of truckers still.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: Do use them to check out like highway conditions and
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: stuff like that, or if they're on a like a
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: team with other drivers, you know, for a company like Oversize. Yeah, yeah,
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: to communicate with them. But I imagine, you know, cell
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: phones and stuff and apps have replaced a lot of that. Yeah,
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: it sounds like to the tune of about seventy percent.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: And then we need to talk about truck stops because
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: these used to be ubiquitous and it was a you know,
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: it was more than just a place to park and sleep.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: It was a respite, a place to socialize sometimes and
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: get a shower, maybe play a little video poker, or
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: backcammon and backcammon and get a meal. But apparently the
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: a lot of big chains have bought up a lot
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: of these independent truck stops, and you know, when that happens,
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: a lot of times they will be closed because maybe
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: they aren't as busy as they should be, or the
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: amenities are just not kept up like they should be
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: because they're not taking individual pride is like their own
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: little business.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: Or they shave awful lot of the amenities to and
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: pair them down.
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: So not only can you not get free overnight parking
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: as much anymore, but you know, shipping lots and grocery
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: store parking lots you can't park there, so you're having
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: to park, pay to park and sleep at a lot
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: of these now. And like you said, a lot of
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: them now like don't even have the showers and stuff
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: like that, but there are some. I think the Travel
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: Centers of America is one company that still is trying
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: to promote like not only like hygiene and having good
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: showers and stuff, but fitness as well. Yeah, with their
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: Stay Fit program, which has like medical clinics and fitness
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: centers and stuff, which is a huge deal.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And the reason why you would want a fitness
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: center is because of something the rest of us who
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: don't drive trucks probably overlook. If you're in a semi
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: and you're on a hall, say across country, you're stuck
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: to the highway, you're not allowed to get off the
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: highway and go drive to the grocery store, or go
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: drive to the gym, or go drive to get your
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: rotten tooth fixed, because it's driving you crazy, Like you
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: have to find a specific designated place to park, usually
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: either a rest stop or a truck stop, and say
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: like take an uber if you want, or a lyft
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: less sinisterly that. Yes, that adds up very quickly too,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: so you don't normally do that. So you really do
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: depend on truck stops to have all the stuff you
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: need laundry, showers, and then nicer things like a place
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: to kind of like get some fitness or get some exercise,
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: or get a decent sit down meal. And another problem
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: that they're running into is that these truck stops are
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: having fewer and fewer sit down diners and replacing them
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: more and more with fast food. So you have really
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: limited choices and trying to take care of yourself. It's
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: really hard to stay fit and healthy as a trucker.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: You can do it, but you have to really try
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: hard to do that.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is obviously if you're an owner operator.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: It's on you to figure this out by either you know,
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: hopefully planning stops near like public parks maybe or walking
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: trails or somewhere where you can get a little bit
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: of exercise. There are companies that have their own fleets
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: that are some are doing more than others. In this
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: one article you sent, there's a company called Schneider that
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: has i think right now forty Schneider operating centers in
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: the US that have you know, they're like twenty four seven,
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: three sixty five. They have showers and laundry and cafes
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: and fitness rooms and stuff like that. Yeah, and you know,
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: that's a smart thing because if you're even if it
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: just comes down to financials, and we've talked about this
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: stuff before, like the cost of healthcare to a company.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: If they let their employees you know, you know, get
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: diabetes in their forties or whatever, that costs a company
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: a lot of money and insurance. So it really behooves
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: them to keep their truckers a little more fit and
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: healthy and happy.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: Right, But if you're an owner operator, independent, they couldn't
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: care less. So just go ahead and meet whatever you want.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: And you don't need these fitness centers if you don't
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: want them kind of things. So there's one other thing
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: that we overlook that's a big part of a truck
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: stop and that's a restroom, a bathroom. Yeah, you might think, well,
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: like the other's bathroom everywhere. If you're a truck driver,
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: you're usually not allowed to use the bathroom at the
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: place where you pick up whatever you're hauling and drop
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: off whatever you're hauling, Like they just won't let you
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: use the bathroom. And that's a huge issue too. Yes,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: it's an enormous issue. And like you might be sitting
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: there for hours waiting to get loaded or unloaded and
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: they're just like, sorry, there's no bathroom here for you.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: And again, you can't go drive somewhere to the bathroom.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: So that's another thing again that the Biden administration is
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: taking on to make bathrooms like to basically force through
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: federal law, like grocery stores and distribution centers to let
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: truckers use their bathroom if they want to.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well and not to get to you know, like
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: drilled down on this. But if if you can't go
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: to the bathroom as readily as you should, you're probably
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: not hydrating like you should.
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a big and again this all leads to
• 41:53
  Speaker 4: poor health. I'm I'm glad that something's being done about
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: some of the stuff.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because we're we not really we, but we allow
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: the people who are keeping the lifeblood of the economy
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: going to be mistreated widely in their industry, like their
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: companies mistreat them, like in the whole industry as a
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: whole is generally slanted toward squeezing as much as you
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: can out of the trucker and giving as little as
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: you can and return.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know what, next time I get any
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: kind of freight delivery or anything, I'm gonna say, you.
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: Got a pee?
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's very nice.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: You're welcome to come in my house in only p
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: P please no number two. What I don't want that
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: taco bell laden number two.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: I think it's a fair line to draw, for sure.
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: All right, well here comes sort of some more fun
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: stuff because now we get to talk about the trucker
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: chic craze of the nineteen seventies and a lot of
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: this is a great blog post from a guy named
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: Travis D.
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: In this blog travel Lanche.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: And I even let me look up the picture I
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: took of Travis D's claim to fame. Because Travis D
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: says that he is an author, comedian, critic, director, humorous journalist, MC,
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: performance artist, playwright, producer, publicist, public speakers, songwriter, and variety booker.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: He put that in alphabetical.
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: Order, Traves was it really trave SD So great job
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: whoever you are.
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: Great jobs, Yeah, great jobs because he wrote this great
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: blog post about you know, stuff that you and I
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: remember from when we were kids, which was there was
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: a fascination with truckers among kids. For sure, we all
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: wanted that horn honked and we wanted to know what
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: was in that little thing. But I also remember, very
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: distinctly as a kid, like the playground talk, which is like, hey,
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: you know, you're a trucker. You can make like one
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars a year, which that still a really
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: good salary, but in nineteen seventy seven, that was a
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: ton of money, and I remember trying to reconcile that,
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: like really, like this doesn't seem like, you know, a
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: high paying six figure job, and that's amazing that you
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: can make that money.
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: And it was true.
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: And we'll talk about how that's changed over the years,
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: but I think the salary back then in the seventies
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: was like ninety eight grand a year for the median salary.
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's called way down.
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: But you know, they hit hard times starting in the
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: early seventies with the nineteen seventy three gas crisis when
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: Congress said nobody can drive over fifty five, even you,
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: Sammy Hagar. Yeah, and he said, but I can't.
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: And they said, I'm sorry, You're gonna have to.
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: And he says, well, just you know, every coup that
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: pulls me over is going to love me and not
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: care anyway.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: You know who's gonna love that joke?
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: Aaron Aaron Agar.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: I texted him yesterday actually because I was listening to
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: twenty one fifty while I was doing a big building project.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: Such a great album.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: Anyway, they passed that that took. That put a big
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: hit on long distance truckers obviously, because their whole bag
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: was getting place as fast, And that was sort of
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: what started the It was just in the news a lot,
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: so people were aware of it more and their protests
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: about it, and all of a sudden, it was in
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: songs and TV shows and movies that we're going to
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: talk about in a second, and it just became more
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: part of the popular culture than it had ever been
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: before in the history of the United States.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I don't think anybody whose job or pursued
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: it was to forecast trends projected this. I think it
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: was one of the more surprising trends that ever happened.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, even CBE radios became part of like mainstream culture
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: for you know, and I talked about this on hand radio.
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: My dad had one. It became a thing that suburban
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: families got.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: And this Travis d guy that I think he's probably right,
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: speculates it was for a couple of reasons. One is
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: that it was a wireless communication, which was you know,
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: even though it wasn't a cell phone, people were like, wow, crazy, Yeah, totally.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: But the thing with CBS is it was a pretty
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: short lived fascination with people like our parents because you
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: were sharing channels with other people, so it wasn't like
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: having a cell phone, and so they quickly realized like,
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: you couldn't just get on there and talk to your
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: your partner or spouse about you know, day to day
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: stuff and aarons you needed run. It wasn't for that.
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: And then also all the all the CB speak. I
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: think it was kind of fun for a minute for
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: Normi's civilians, and then pretty soon they were kind of like, eh,
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: you know this, I've done it for like six months
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: and now kind of tired of it.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: So yeah, everybody kind of scuttled CBS. But the the
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: trucker crazy, I mean, like I said, it was in fashion.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: It like entire movies written about it, and the whole
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: thing is really crazy. But if you dig into the
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: origin of it, it's just like what Because the whole
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: thing was rooted in a Omaha, Nebraska based bread company's
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: commercial jingle. That's where the trucker sheet craze started.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean explain that bears explanation because it's a
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: pretty cool story.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: So there was Old House or Old Humps are Old
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: Home bread company and they hired an advertising executive named
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: Bill Freeze, and he wrote a jingle for an ad,
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: like basically a minute long song for this ad. The
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: whole ad was just this trucker singing and a waitress singing,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: and it was like a super trucker centric ad song.
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and it was.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: It just became dynamite in that area, so much so
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: that I saw that the local TV stations listed when
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: the ad was going to play.
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: That's so weird.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is weird, but that's how crazy people were
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: for the ad, and the jingle made it onto the
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: Billboard charts, the top one hundred, not just country, the
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: actual Billboard chart, so that kicked off the country craze
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: and Bill Freese was so successful with it that Nashville
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: actually came calling and said, hey, you want to cut
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: an album, So he basically adopted a persona c W. McCall.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: C W McCall was basically the center of the Trucker
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: Sheet Craze wrote the song Convoy, which was the most
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: popular song in the Trucker Sheet Craze and he was
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: just some advertising exec pretending to be a country Western
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: trucker lover.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: It's amazing the song Convoy. The song was from nineteen
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: seventy five, number one of the pop and country charts.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: And a convoy is, you know, like a line of
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: trucks that was taken from the Navy when chips would
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: line up, but the idea was a bunch of trucks
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: would line up like in a big long line, and
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: the cops like they can do whatever they want because
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: the cops can't pull over thirty trucks.
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: Safety in numbers, Safety in numbers.
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: And a big wave of movie and TV shows followed.
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: I think the first one that Travis d mentions here
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: is White Line Fever from nineteen seventy five. But then
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: you know you had Smoking the Bandit. Henry Fonda was
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: on one called The Great Smoky Roadblock.
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: Jonathan Dimmy, the first sort of non Roger Corman movie
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: he directed was called Citizen's Band or Handle with Care
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: had a couple of titles. Chuck Norris one of his
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: first big movies, and it wasn't even a martial arts thing.
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: Was a breaker breaker.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: He was like, can I kick? They're like, no, just stand.
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: There, kick that accelerator Convoy.
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: The movie based on the song, or at least you know,
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: inspired by the song, came out a few years after
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: in seventy eight.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: I don't want to let that walk by too easily.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: They made a movie based on the song that was
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: recorded by C. W. McCall, who was actually an advertising executive.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: Just really want to make sure that it's driven home.
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that when I saw that when I was
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: a kid on I think a few years later on HBO.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: But it was out of all these, you know, had
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: a little bit of cred because it was a Sam
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: peckin Paal movie. No, his biggest movie ever gross wise,
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: and then yeah, biggest grossing. And then I had a
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: great cast at Bert Young of course, Chris Christofferson in
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: the lead, Seymour Cassell, ally McGraw, Academy Award winner, Ernest borgnine.
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: So that actually I mean, of course, Henry Fonda and
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: was legit, but this one actually was. Critically, I don't
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: think it was great, but it was better than the
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: rest of these. And then of course b J and
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: the Bear we've talked about before, the short lived TV
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: show where it was a trucker and his monkey and
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: his chimp.
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't forget every one which way but loose
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: and every which way you can, the Clint Eastwood in his.
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: Orangutang, Yeah, any which way you can.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, sorryry So. And then just like that, like Kaiser
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: So say, just splitting the scene, the trucker sheet craze
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: just disappeared. It just went away. That didn't fade out,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: It didn't do anything but just stop and truckers went
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: back to just being truckers again.
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: But yeah, oh he got his trucker hats now to
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: show forth exactly.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: So that was a huge thing in the seventies. It's
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: just still is mind boggling and kind of awesome. But
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: I think we should fast forward now to present day
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: because trucking in the seventies and trucking today are essentially
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: the same job, but the industry's changed so much that
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: there it's unrecognizable how truckers are treated and respected. And
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: what's really interesting is the best we could find it
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: all is rooted in a nineteen eighty passed by Jimmy
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: Carter or his administration that deregulated. Jimmy Carter deregulated the
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: trucking industry in order to take some of the freight
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: rate off of the American consumer to bring inflation down,
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: and it worked. But what he did was he opened
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: trucking up to competition, like just anybody who wants to
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: start a trucking company, come start one. And it led
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: to a what I saw described as a race to
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: the bottom to cut trucker's wages to stay competitive.
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah. What was what article was that from?
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: I think it was a Business Insider article.
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it was really good.
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: You know, they do a lot of statistics, and from
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: seventy seven to eighty seven, the mean truck driver average
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: earnings or I guess the mean, not the average, declined
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: twenty four percent, and then from nineteen eighty to today,
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: I believe another almost thirty six percent. And like you said,
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: it was it was a out that act because from
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: the nineteen thirties till nineteen eighty there was not a
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: lot of laws passed in regard to trucking at all.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: It was, like we said, you could make a lot
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: of money. Union membership, the Teamsters union was very stocked
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: up in influential and in nineteen seventy four there were
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: more than two million truckers in the Teamsters. Now they're
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: seventy five thousand, so that's a huge, huge drop. And
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: so they didn't have as much sway when Carter came
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: along to deregulate. And you know, there's too much to
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: get into on what was going on before nineteen eighty,
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: but let's just say it was it was a lot
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: harder to get licenses, It was a lot harder for
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: companies to start, like a new trucking company. All those
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: routes were way more locked down before deregulation, right, yeah, yeah,
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: pre nineteen eighty, and since then it's just it's almost
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: the way the Business Insider. They interviewed a bunch of people.
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: The way they described it was it was it was
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: almost a what word do they use? Some kind of competition,
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: like free competition, but like toxic or something. I can't
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: remember the word they use, but basically the competitive atmosphere was.
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, it was ultimately good for the consumer because
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: prices did go down, but it just devastated the truckers themselves.
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I don't think anybody, including the truckers, predicted
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: that this was going to happen it certainly, I don't
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: think the Carter administration meant to do that to truckers,
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: but that was definitely the outcome of it. And that's
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's largely where we are today. The trucking
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: industry is kind of settled into this, you know, just
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: pinch every single penny you possibly can. And one of
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: the ways that they do it is by treating their
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: drivers not so great. So that's a that's not a
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: great state to be in because there's a lot of
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: turnover today. I saw one year. In one year, there's
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: like three hundred thousand truckers that just stopped trucking. They
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: just went off and did something else, and we actually
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: have a trucker shortage right now in part because of
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: the low wages, bad treatment, The services and amenities are
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: drying up. And but there's enough people out there with
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: valid commercial driver's licenses to make up for the trucker shortage.
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: And then some it's just that's how bad the industry
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: treats them and how bad their prospects are. They're just like,
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: forget that. I'm gonna I'm not gonna use this commercial
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: driver's license any longer. I'm gonna go do something else.
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, oh, here I found it.
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: Actually, they you called it destructive competition, and this is
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: a quote. He's a competition so severe that it undermines
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: profitability to the point that it causes under investment by firms,
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: industry wide inefficiency, market instability, and poor surface quality.
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: Right. And then the other thing is like, well, just
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: organize if you've got I saw anywhere from one and
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: a half million into five hundred thousand to two million
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: to three million truckers. I'm not quite sure. It's hard
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: to drill down because there's so many different kinds of
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: truckers to find just how many over the road truckers
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: there are. But it's not the same thing as like
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: getting the band back together. There's like a whole new
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: generation of truckers that were not raised to be union members,
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: and truckers in general are very independent, very right leaning
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: typically and are not necessarily prone to organize. I saw
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: one trucker describe it as trying to organize anarchists. It's
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: about as easy as that. So that's yeah, it's just
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: the state that things are in right now, and a
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: lot of people are like, well, is this, you know,
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: like the death rattle of human trucking because coming down
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: the pike literally coming down the turnpike depending on where
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: you're standing. There are driverless trucks semis that are now
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: being tested on public roads and they're actually some of
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: them are coming back with pretty promising results.
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I'm certainly not calling for this, but
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: it makes more sense in this industry more than it
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: does driving around a city street because the roads are
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: very uniform. They're you know, have stop signs and pedestrians
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: and cross streets and you know, it's it's it's one
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: where it's it's probably way easier to get a successful
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: test run with an electric or I'm sorry, a self
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: driving well and electric truck on the highway than one
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: driving around San Francisco, which I've seen, And so they're
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: kind of saying like if not, it's not an if
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: but win situation. And they may have just like trains
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: of these trucks with a real driver at the front,
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: sort of leading a convoy almost at a pack, a
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: convoy of driverless trucks.
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: Kind of like Steve Doors today, like there's still some
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: of them, but they're just basically controlling the automation.
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: Now, yeah, what you what were you saying?
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: Kind of like, who's Steve Doors?
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: What is that?
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: It's the boss of the long shoreman, the actual workers,
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: the one who's like the head the foreman, is a
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: Steve Door.
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: Okay, you said that earlier and I pretended like I
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: knew what you meant.
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: So it's it's spelled exactly like it's pronounced too.
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: And it's a word. Yeah, it's not a guy named
• 58:18
  Speaker 4: Steve Dor.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: No, it's it's s T E v E d O
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: r E. And it is a specific type of long shortman.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: Okay, because I thought, see this is a good lesson everyone.
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: You shouldn't just act like you know what someone's talking about.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: Because you don't want to look done.
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: I think that's a great lesson.
• 58:35
  Speaker 4: Look dumb and ask a question because I thought you
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: were talking about a character from the Wire. That's what they.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: Call themselves in the Wire, Steve Doors.
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: It's been a long time since I saw that season.
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: That's where I learned how to pronounce it correctly.
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: Actually instead, but you have to do it with the
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: Baltimore accent, which I don't even know what that is.
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: So I guess the long and short of all this
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: is no one's quite sure where the tucking industries going,
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: although there's some pretty good bets about the future. But
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: in the meantime, regardless, if you see a trucker out
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: there on the road, be extra nice to him, give
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: them one of those honk your horned kind of signs,
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: or a wave or anything like that, or maybe buy
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: them a sit down dinner at a diner a truck stop
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: you're at.
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and if someone in one of those trucks delivers
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: something to your house, open your steep door for them
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: and let them pee.
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: Yes, since Chuck made a hilarious joke, everybody that is
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: obviously triggered listener mail.
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: Uh, this one's short, and sweet.
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: This is from Aubrey rode In because she says, during
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: the recent Selects episode, you were covering terosaurs and Josh
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: used the phrase batching it as in.
• 59:49
  Speaker 4: Like being a bachelor.
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: Uh huh, you know, like like you me went out
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: of town so on batching it for the weekend or whatever.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: I think I was saying we were batching it because
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: Jerry wasn't around.
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: Probably, yeah, that sounds about right. Chuck ponders whether the
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: phrase was new or not. And this phrase jogged a
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: memory that I had in my Bookshelf. I've attached a
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: photo from Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter, published in
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: nineteen forty, and she describes how her future husband and
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: his brother in law were living in the back of
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: their feed store in town with the word batching. So
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: in the very least the phrase was around in the
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: thirties when she was writing the manuscripts and just thought
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: i'd share. I looked it up, or I didn't look
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: it up. She included the photo and it said you know,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: who are busy or no, who were batching it?
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 4: And it said they were batching in the rear room
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: or something.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: But the way I needed more context because I couldn't
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: tell if because batching is also a verb, like you
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: would batch for a business.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: You know, you'd make a bunch of differens together once.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I couldn't tell if it was used
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: in that context or not.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: But I believe Aubrey. So that's what I'm not even
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 4: gonna look for that.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: Have you ever even met? No, but Aubrey seems.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: Great because she goes on to say this, love your show.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: Life has been pretty hectic for me lately. Chasing my
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: two year old twins around me and listening to Stuff
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: you Should Know reduces my perceived stress. Somehow, you guys
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: managed to be informative and calming simultaneously.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: So I believe Aubrey.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: That's awesome. Yeah, I'll believe you to Aubrey, And just
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: the phrase two year old twins made my neck muscles tense.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: Oh boy, me too.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: If you want to be like Aubrey and write in
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: to let us know something that we were wondering about,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: we love that kind of stuff. Thanks again, Aubrey. You
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: dot com.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 5: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 1:01:43
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• 1:01:48
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