Episode Highlights

Unknown we? We’re four years in to the freight depression of all time. 00:00:03:10 – 00:00:03:15 Unknown it 00:00:03:18 – 00:00:05:00 Unknown sucks. You know? It 00:00:05:09 – 00:00:05:23 Unknown sucks. Amy. 00:00:05:23 – 00:00:21:17 Unknown from this we can tracking. This is profit per mile. And I’m Amy. Today we are joined by Jason Putney, owner of Downey Shipping LLC, to talk about how he’s running his business in 2025. But before we get into it, don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an update. 00:00:21:19 – 00:00:25:18 Unknown Thank you so much for joining us, Jason. Basically, he’s rolling. 00:00:25:18 – 00:00:32:07 Unknown Jason, tell me a little bit about how you got started in trucking and what led you to start, Downey shipping. 00:00:32:07 – 00:00:43:23 Unknown I got to get a job that can don’t I still don’t want to get a haircut, you know. So truck driving was up there. You know, it was just, you know, I never, like, loved trucks or like, really thought about it or anything like that. 00:00:43:23 – 00:00:48:22 Unknown I was like, I just need to work and I need a job that will hire me with this. Stewart here, you. 00:00:48:22 – 00:01:01:02 Unknown I got started, I was working at a deli. I was a delivery driver at a deli called Jason’s Deli. If you’ve heard of them, they got, like, a few more locations. 00:01:01:04 – 00:01:21:03 Unknown And I would talk to the truck drivers that came in, like, Jason’s deli has its own distribution center, right? Like, they, you know, other companies use, like, Sigma or Cisco or PFG or whatever. And Jason’s only just uses their own. They set up their own shop. You know, it’s Jason’s Deli distribution. So I would talk to the Jason Deli, just the truck drivers when they came in. 00:01:21:08 – 00:01:34:03 Unknown And I was the one throw in the truck. Right. They would like deliver all these boxes. And I was in there just like 5 a.m. or whatever. Could no like the Swiss cheese away in the walk in cooler and whatever. I’ll talk to the truck drivers and they’re like, yeah, it’s a good job, you know, if you can. 00:01:34:03 – 00:01:50:08 Unknown Yeah, it’s a good job. So I ended up helping relationship with the twins production manager at the Jason Deli distribution center, which just happened to be like an hour away from the deli that I worked at. And they would send me down there some, you know, we were like, run out of paper plates or whatever 00:01:50:17 – 00:01:54:06 Unknown and they would send me down there to get whatever we needed. 00:01:54:07 – 00:02:18:02 Unknown And so I just talked to the manager there. I was like, dude, if I move to Charlotte and get my CDL, will you hire me? And he was like, yeah, so I just did it. You know, I just, yeah, I just moved to Charlotte and got a job at the warehouse. The distribution center is pulling orders, writes the warehouse job, and while I was doing that, they let me cut out early so that I could go to truck driver school. 00:02:18:03 – 00:02:33:01 Unknown Right. I just went to one of those schools there. So was Rockman. Super hard? Super hard because I’m like 20 and I’m just used to being a delivery driver and, you know, like, getting stoned at night, you know what I mean? And just you know, just being kind of 00:02:33:07 – 00:02:35:21 Unknown shithead and then all that, you know, that all has to stop, right? 00:02:35:21 – 00:02:54:17 Unknown Like, you know, you can’t do that. My wife’s pregnant at the time, right? So I, Yeah, I just went from like, man, I was working. I think the shift started at like 3 or 4 a.m., and then you work until like 7 a.m., and then I go to truck driving school for an hour, days, like 4 or 5 days a week. 00:02:54:19 – 00:02:56:03 Unknown And, man who’s rude? 00:02:56:03 – 00:03:14:11 Unknown Anyways, I got my, I got a young. And I started working at Jason’s Deli distribution as a food service truck driver. And I did that for, like four and a half years. And all my experience that I ever had in trucking, I didn’t do anything else at all. I did those four and a half years at Jason’s early distribution and then 00:03:14:11 – 00:03:16:00 Unknown and then I bought a truck, 00:03:16:00 – 00:03:26:21 Unknown which is, yeah, just huge mistake, you know, if any, if you know that owns a truck, it’s just it’s a bad idea 00:03:26:21 – 00:03:29:05 Unknown and 00:03:29:07 – 00:03:32:08 Unknown Yeah. So that was it. That’s how, that’s how I got started. 00:03:32:08 – 00:03:46:06 Unknown started. Pay for your truck. It was $80,000. And, you know, I probably, I don’t know, I was always I was putting down, like, the minimum amount that I could, right? I had I had saved up like 20 grand. I was like 24, 29 years old or something. 00:03:46:08 – 00:04:01:16 Unknown And, yeah, I had saved up that 20 grand and that’s all I had. So I just put like a minimum amount down to on a truck. And I bought a reefer trailer. So the truck was 80 grand and that was like 35 grand or something like that. And, you know, it’s mostly just financed. 00:04:01:16 – 00:04:04:20 Unknown And then right now, what kind of freight are you hauling? 00:04:04:20 – 00:04:19:13 Unknown we’re just doing drive in and flatbed and some intermodal. Yeah, we’re doing a little bit of intermodal, a good amount. We have, I think four flatbed drivers, and then maybe like 13 people doing drive ins and then, like, you know, I was just, like, mixed up in that, 00:04:19:13 – 00:04:24:01 Unknown And total how many owner owner operators are leased onto you right now. 00:04:24:03 – 00:04:25:03 Unknown Right now we have nine. 00:04:25:03 – 00:04:28:17 Unknown Are your drivers mostly regional or OTR? 00:04:28:17 – 00:04:44:21 Unknown Everyone’s got a different definition of over the road. Right. And it just depends on I would, I would personally call a regional and, and local and over the road like some there’s a when you’re an owner operator down you shipping you’re booking your own freight. 00:04:44:23 – 00:04:57:05 Unknown And so some. Yeah we’ll go way out. You know they’ll go to I mean we’re based out of Charlotte, North Carolina, for the most part. And some guys will go, I mean, to like Arkansas or like, you know, Illinois and stuff like that. 00:04:57:05 – 00:05:03:12 Unknown most guys just go out and back. They go out and, you know, for like a drive shift or whatever, do their ten hour reset wherever they are. 00:05:03:12 – 00:05:09:05 Unknown And then they come back. And that’s how I run the car works. And that’s how a lot of the owner operators run. 00:05:09:05 – 00:05:19:03 Unknown But it’s, operators are kind of all over the place. They’ll, they’ll do whatever. You know, some of them are just chasing money. Some of them like to stay local, so they’ll just, you know, they’ll stay within like a half a mile radius. 00:05:19:05 – 00:05:27:20 Unknown And some people will call that local. Now, people would call that over the road if you have to, like stay a night over the road, then people consider that over the road. So yeah. Yeah. 00:05:27:20 – 00:05:34:17 Unknown And how are they finding these loads. Are they direct customers. Do they use brokers? Yeah, both. Yeah. 00:05:34:17 – 00:05:36:13 Unknown A few of them have lined up. 00:05:36:15 – 00:05:39:08 Unknown You have like a ton of autonomy. Like if you’re working it down, you shipping, 00:05:39:08 – 00:05:43:02 Unknown you have all the autonomy, right? We give you a tablet 00:05:43:02 – 00:05:48:02 Unknown that is like remotely managed. And we just put a bunch of tools on there. Right. So we set you up. 00:05:48:02 – 00:05:52:11 Unknown We set you up initially, right? You get a company email address. So it would be like a the page. 00:05:52:11 – 00:06:10:16 Unknown You see your last name Chavez Charles Chavez. So we like a Chavez at Downey shipping.com. And then we give you a company phone number. And we use that information to set you up a bunch of accounts just to get you started. Right. So you get like an Uber freight account, you get a Transfix account convoy. All right. So oh, there’s like 15 of these things. 00:06:10:16 – 00:06:17:17 Unknown Right. So these are all pre-loaded on a tablet. And you have, you know, you can just start booking freight. 00:06:17:17 – 00:06:28:12 Unknown So whenever you book something comes to our dispatch email, we put it in the system, dispatch it out to you and that’s it. And then from there, if you want to, you can just you kind of you can run however you want. 00:06:28:12 – 00:06:44:13 Unknown If you have direct customers that you want, you keep working with that you already had that you want to work with over here. You want to start doing intermodal, whatever you want to, you know, however you want to like, go from there. We just start you off with, like, all the tools to kind of make it easier on you because 00:06:44:13 – 00:06:46:23 Unknown a lot of a lot of owner operators, 00:06:46:23 – 00:06:49:21 Unknown they’re not really running the business. 00:06:49:21 – 00:07:07:19 Unknown They’re kind of they’ll like listen to a company and then the company feeds them. Right. And so you don’t if a company doesn’t provide the word for them, then they just don’t have any work and they don’t know how to procure the work. Right? They don’t know how to run their truck or like get a customer or who even is the customer. 00:07:07:19 – 00:07:18:08 Unknown You know, who’s paying for what to watch it. And so you end up running. You end up learning a lot if you if you work at Downey Shipping as an owner operator, if nothing else, you’re about to learn a 00:07:19:07 – 00:07:23:02 Unknown yeah. Do you know how many miles you run each month? 00:07:23:02 – 00:07:28:04 Unknown average miles so far the year for the year, we’ve run 1.3 million miles. 00:07:28:04 – 00:07:35:06 Unknown so I pushed that out to the end of the year. It probably something close to 1.7 1.7 million for the year, which is 00:07:35:06 – 00:07:40:21 Unknown this is the owner operators have done 533,000 and the company trucks have done 778,000 00:07:40:21 – 00:07:42:03 Unknown so far this year. 00:07:42:03 – 00:07:44:06 Unknown Do you know how many load you’re moving weekly? 00:07:44:06 – 00:07:47:18 Unknown I mean, it’s it or I if you do. I think we have, like, 17 trucks right now. 00:07:47:18 – 00:07:52:00 Unknown And then probably each day, you know, they’re probably to doing like five loads of each. I’m just guessing. 00:07:52:00 – 00:07:58:07 Unknown let’s get to the big numbers. Can you tell us what’s your total gross revenue as a company in a typical month? 00:07:58:07 – 00:08:03:00 Unknown All right. Total fleet is averaging $325,000 a month. 00:08:03:04 – 00:08:22:11 Unknown So yeah, we’re broken up. We have, we have eight company trucks and nine other operators, and it fluctuates. You, you know, like a lot of people, the company trucks don’t fluctuate because we just have eight leased trucks from Ryder and Penske. Right. So let’s just say it it must be ads on the leases article, why 2028 or something like that. 00:08:22:11 – 00:08:23:21 Unknown So that’s it. That’s all we got. 00:08:23:21 – 00:08:27:16 Unknown But the owner operators I kind of come and go. It just fluctuates because 00:08:27:16 – 00:08:45:10 Unknown someone robbers have been here for, you know, six years or, you know, four years or year whatever. And so they’ll just start to fall off that either find a new opportunity or they’re just done with trucking or they just can’t take it anymore because that’s the environment where, you know, so anyone just being an owner operator, then that’s what’s happening. 00:08:45:10 – 00:08:46:03 Unknown You know, 00:08:46:03 – 00:09:02:03 Unknown and we bring on a lot of guys that like I, I’m taking phone calls every day from people, a lot of people doing intermodal that are is saying that the work has dried up. You know, every day I’m getting this call, the work’s dried up, you know, we’re running out of the ports, we’re run out of the rail yards, and there’s just no more work. 00:09:02:05 – 00:09:19:03 Unknown And so that kind of person, we’ve we saw a bunch of guys like that that are just kind of starting from scratch in terms of learning how to book freight, you know, learning how to run it themselves. Right. Where do they like to go? Learning what certain lanes pay and how much you need for that lane for it to make sense. 00:09:19:03 – 00:09:20:01 Unknown You know, like, you know, if 00:09:20:01 – 00:09:28:13 Unknown you’ve been doing this any amount of time you know, not to go to Florida at all unless it’s paying, you know, $4 a month, right? Because you know, you’re going to eat a dead get out, you’re going to eat 00:09:28:16 – 00:09:29:06 Unknown you’re going to eat 00:09:29:08 – 00:09:30:17 Unknown coming out no matter what. 00:09:30:17 – 00:09:36:01 Unknown And that’s the kind of thing that guys that have been run intermodal or haven’t been running their own stuff, they don’t know that. 00:09:36:03 – 00:09:36:16 Unknown Right? 00:09:36:16 – 00:09:44:02 Unknown on that note, do you know what the average rate per mile across your company trucks and also the least on trucks is? 00:09:44:02 – 00:09:46:20 Unknown don’t really know, man. I have like what I have is a weekly, 00:09:46:20 – 00:09:48:15 Unknown I have like a spreadsheet per truck. 00:09:48:15 – 00:09:49:21 Unknown For the company trucks. 00:09:49:21 – 00:09:56:02 Unknown And so every week it’s broken down. So in order for me to get it like go into so there’s like, you know, we’re on week 40 00:09:56:02 – 00:10:02:16 Unknown and there’s eight trucks that go through like eight spreadsheets in like 40 weeks in, like put it in. But my TMS told me 00:10:02:16 – 00:10:05:09 Unknown Said that our average rate per mile is $2.30. 00:10:05:09 – 00:10:06:17 Unknown that seems to be like 00:10:06:17 – 00:10:19:23 Unknown all of it, like loaded in empty. So I don’t know what the loaded miles are versus I know that the T and the sold me how many like empty miles percentage we’re running. Well, that seems to be like the average rate per mile loaded in empty. 00:10:19:23 – 00:10:23:07 Unknown And do you know what is that? And the miles percentage. 00:10:23:07 – 00:10:31:06 Unknown And also, are you doing anything to mitigate that percentage? We’re always trimming. Always. So when you know the 00:10:31:06 – 00:10:51:04 Unknown owner operators just have, like, full autonomy over what they do. So if they want to drive to Florida for $4 a mile and then deadhead all the way back, while they can do that. And so, you know, 80% deadhead there, but right here it says, in January it was 7%, empty. 00:10:51:06 – 00:11:04:07 Unknown It was 9%. March was 16%, April was 16%, 16, 20, 24, 23, 20 and 20. So it looks like if you average averaged across a year, it looks like it’d probably be close to like 15%. 00:11:04:07 – 00:11:12:10 Unknown And then what kind of insurance does Downey’s provide for their leased on owners and what what type of insurance do you need for your company drivers? 00:11:12:10 – 00:11:15:03 Unknown Just all the regular ones that you need, right. So 00:11:15:03 – 00:11:19:12 Unknown you need that cargo. You need that liability in the general liability, all the liability. 00:11:19:12 – 00:11:22:02 Unknown You know, on trucking liability, they call it, 00:11:22:02 – 00:11:27:09 Unknown NCL bobtail and, yeah, I think you carry 50,000 in trailer interchange. 00:11:27:09 – 00:11:29:18 Unknown But this year we’re doing something different. 00:11:29:18 – 00:11:30:19 Unknown we’re doing like, 00:11:30:19 – 00:11:32:01 Unknown a mileage reporter. 00:11:32:01 – 00:11:33:23 Unknown So I insurance insurance is a 00:11:34:07 – 00:11:37:03 Unknown man. And you know people complain it’s like 00:11:37:03 – 00:11:40:15 Unknown the highest costs. You know everyone’s everyone’s pissed about it because it keeps going up. 00:11:40:15 – 00:11:46:03 Unknown we’ve been successful at getting our insurance to go down every year. And it’s it’s 00:11:46:08 – 00:11:47:04 Unknown up. But 00:11:47:04 – 00:11:52:22 Unknown I just always switch insurance providers. I always switch, man, because 00:11:52:22 – 00:11:55:01 Unknown that’s how that’s how you get it to go lower. 00:11:55:01 – 00:11:59:10 Unknown Right. Insurance season sucks is like our our renewal is in February and 00:11:59:10 – 00:12:14:01 Unknown every year I shop super hard. And so I’m a horrible customer. You know I’m a horrible customer agent or whatever because insurance agents like you work really hard to get your business and because they know it’s going to last, they’re going to, you know, they’re gonna make money off you for years or whatever. 00:12:14:03 – 00:12:18:09 Unknown And it’s just not the case if, if you’re working with me because someone else is 00:12:18:12 – 00:12:30:05 Unknown up, dude, like insurance agents, they have the lowest price that you can get until somebody else comes in and gives you a lower price. And then all of a sudden, the original agent is like, oh, well, we can beat that price. 00:12:30:05 – 00:12:37:16 Unknown And it’s like, well. And then so I always have 2 or 3 agents every year shopping out the IT. Whoever my 00:12:37:16 – 00:12:38:20 Unknown agent is right now 00:12:38:20 – 00:12:46:07 Unknown is the incumbent. They get first dibs, right? They shop me out to however many markets they have. And then I get whoever how many markets they don’t have 00:12:46:07 – 00:12:50:00 Unknown or, you know, they’ll pick like eight markets that they really think are going to give us a good quote. 00:12:50:00 – 00:12:56:04 Unknown And then I’ll get a different agent to shop out like seven different markets. And if they’re missing any, I’ll get another agent to shop out whatever markets are missing. 00:12:56:04 – 00:12:57:11 Unknown And that’s how you get a lower price. 00:12:57:11 – 00:12:58:06 Unknown Yeah, I know it’s 00:12:58:08 – 00:13:04:13 Unknown up, but like that’s it’s anyone listening. That’s how you get a lower insurance premium. You have to hit them against their 00:13:04:13 – 00:13:06:03 Unknown to get them to give you the best deal. 00:13:06:03 – 00:13:09:12 Unknown And it works. You know like they’ll, you know, they’ll come back and be like hey man, 00:13:09:12 – 00:13:10:09 Unknown great news. 00:13:10:09 – 00:13:12:22 Unknown Insurance premiums only went up like 7% this year. 00:13:12:22 – 00:13:25:11 Unknown And my dude, that’s not good news. I’m I’m not I’m not getting pumped on a 7% increase I want lower. Yeah, I’m I’m safer. I’ve been work. You know I’ve worked on it a lot every year we work on it like getting just being safer and safer. 00:13:25:13 – 00:13:42:01 Unknown Right. Like getting your CSA score down and being more on top and scoring everybody. And just there’s never any incidents. And so it’s like, why? Like why would it go up for instance like well that whole industry went up 15%. So seven’s not bad. It’s like I’m not punt on it. You know I want a lower premium. Do it. 00:13:42:01 – 00:13:46:11 Unknown Talking about compliance, how do you manage compliance in Downeast shipping? 00:13:46:11 – 00:13:48:10 Unknown We have a really good compliance person 00:13:48:10 – 00:13:50:20 Unknown who wrecks everything, and there’s 00:13:51:06 – 00:13:53:04 Unknown lot compliance, right. 00:13:53:04 – 00:13:53:17 Unknown So 00:13:53:17 – 00:13:54:14 Unknown how do you manage it? 00:13:54:14 – 00:13:58:02 Unknown A lot of it is just we use Monday.com. If you’ve heard of that. 00:13:58:02 – 00:13:58:20 Unknown when it comes suite. 00:13:58:20 – 00:14:02:14 Unknown It’s just like a work platform. It’s basically like a really pretty spreadsheet, 00:14:02:14 – 00:14:04:04 Unknown and it just wants to 00:14:04:07 – 00:14:17:09 Unknown for you so you can put everybody’s information in, like their, you know, their hire date and their med card renewal date. And, oh, there’s a bunch of stuff that needs to, like, be renewed for that. You have to be checking up on periodically. 00:14:17:09 – 00:14:22:04 Unknown And Monday.com will just alert you when that stuff needs to be updated. Right. 00:14:22:04 – 00:14:27:09 Unknown Yeah, compliance in general, what I have is a scorecard or every driver. Right. 00:14:27:09 – 00:14:29:10 Unknown we use motive that yield right. 00:14:29:10 – 00:14:34:23 Unknown we track everybody’s logs. So every morning you look at everybody’s logs and 00:14:34:23 – 00:14:36:11 Unknown you score it right. 00:14:36:15 – 00:14:45:18 Unknown So we have like a scorecard system. So if you have like a 14 hour violation that hits your score super hard right. Or 11 hour, 30 or 30 minute or whatever. 00:14:45:18 – 00:14:49:09 Unknown And if you’re missing a trailer number in there, like there’s a bunch of 00:14:49:12 – 00:14:55:09 Unknown with logs, right? Like if you’re missing a trailer number in your logbook is a dot violation, and those dot bodies 00:14:55:13 – 00:14:56:13 Unknown you up bad. 00:14:56:14 – 00:14:57:20 Unknown Like they really. 00:14:57:20 – 00:15:02:03 Unknown if you are missing a shipping document number in your logbook? That’s a dot violation. There’s a 00:15:02:07 – 00:15:05:17 Unknown of duty by this. If you didn’t sign your logbook, that’s a duty violation. 00:15:05:17 – 00:15:09:23 Unknown So, like all these things and they’re all weighted, right? So, like, if you get an 11 hour, 00:15:09:23 – 00:15:11:13 Unknown drive ship violation on your logbook, 00:15:11:13 – 00:15:13:14 Unknown that’s a weighted a lot heavier in your score. 00:15:13:14 – 00:15:19:13 Unknown And, you know, if you didn’t sign your logbook about the yacht violations, but like, one’s a seven pointer and one is like a one point. 00:15:19:13 – 00:15:21:22 Unknown everybody at Downey Shipping has a logbook score. 00:15:21:22 – 00:15:31:01 Unknown And so see, at any given time we do a quarterly, you know, it resets every quarter. You see at any given time which driver has the best logbooks. 00:15:31:01 – 00:15:37:12 Unknown Right. Someone’s at the top and someone’s at the bottom. And then we put that out so they can see who is Wick. 00:15:37:12 – 00:15:46:11 Unknown that’s like one third of the score. The other the other two thirds are safe driving, which is just, drive score pulled from the EOD. Right. It like, tracks your, 00:15:46:11 – 00:15:48:17 Unknown like, close following and heartbreaking and running. 00:15:48:17 – 00:15:50:12 Unknown Two stop signs and typically 00:15:50:15 – 00:15:54:20 Unknown an inspector, we take that score and put it in weekly. And then it averages out to whatever it is. 00:15:54:20 – 00:16:05:17 Unknown the other one is just straight up on time. So you’re you’re like, every driver at Downey Shipping has a score and it’s made up of your score, your safe driving score and your on time performance score. 00:16:05:17 – 00:16:12:07 Unknown And then it averages into whatever your actual score overall is going to be. So we know who like the best driver is at Downey Shipping and who’s the worst driver. 00:16:12:07 – 00:16:16:15 Unknown it lets everybody see who it is because nobody like nobody wants to be at the bottom. 00:16:16:15 – 00:16:17:19 Unknown Even if you won’t give a 00:16:17:22 – 00:16:22:15 Unknown in general about sort of things, you still don’t want to see your name at the bottom of the list. 00:16:22:15 – 00:16:26:22 Unknown So you think you’re doing real well. But whatever you’re still at the bottom and nobody wants that. So 00:16:26:22 – 00:16:32:00 Unknown the part of it anyways, is how we’re as part of how we’re dealing with compliance, trying to keep people compliant. 00:16:32:00 – 00:16:34:23 Unknown And do you offer any safety bonuses? 00:16:34:23 – 00:16:38:11 Unknown I mean we did we tried a bunch of stuff and it’s kind of tough. 00:16:38:14 – 00:16:55:03 Unknown Yeah we did we used to do like a quarterly safety bonus where you just get three in a box per quarter, but then each incident that you had would deduct like 50 bucks out of it. Right? So if you got a 14 hour violation we would take, you know, we take $50 out of that 300. And we were doing that for a while, but that fell off. 00:16:55:05 – 00:17:05:19 Unknown And right now I don’t think we have a bonus for like a safety bonus, other than I mean, you do get a, you get a $300 bonus if you get a clean dot inspection 00:17:05:19 – 00:17:14:14 Unknown So you get that, but. And you’d all pay that every day, man. Every. It’s like a miniature celebration. It should be every time someone is like the things are really important, 00:17:14:14 – 00:17:15:02 Unknown you know. 00:17:15:08 – 00:17:31:21 Unknown Yeah, we we don’t. I’m still like, I guess it’s like a work in progress, you know, right now, what I want is for the people with the highest score to get paid more. Right? Like your pay has to correlate with performance, obviously, for this job or any job at all. And if it doesn’t, then there’s no reason to do better than anybody else. 00:17:31:21 – 00:17:45:13 Unknown You know, it’s like my is at the bottom of the list. Who cares? The person at the top. So you pay the same as me. And so there’s a big gap there. And it’s just a work in progress. Right. So the longer that you to a figure out like what I was going to be 00:17:45:13 – 00:17:51:21 Unknown then, now that we’ve got this beautiful overview of Downey shipping, I was wondering if we could, 00:17:51:21 – 00:17:52:22 Unknown go down, 00:17:52:22 – 00:17:54:16 Unknown into one specific truck. 00:17:54:16 – 00:17:55:10 Unknown Or maybe 00:17:55:10 – 00:17:59:20 Unknown a structure of the revenue as to see what an owner operator takes home. 00:17:59:20 – 00:18:08:05 Unknown For example, what structure do you pay like a percentage split a flat rate per mile or a mix to them? And what is it that they take home? 00:18:08:05 – 00:18:11:07 Unknown every owner operator is super different, 00:18:11:07 – 00:18:16:17 Unknown the pay structure that we have is so we set you up with a pre pass 00:18:16:17 – 00:18:19:22 Unknown like for tolls and an EOD and dashcam. 00:18:19:22 – 00:18:23:16 Unknown and you end up renting a trailer usually from Bowman Leasing 00:18:23:21 – 00:18:25:21 Unknown like they, you know they book all their own freight. 00:18:25:21 – 00:18:34:17 Unknown And let’s just say that like a $5,000 a week where the revenue. Right, the only shipping takes 10% of that revenue just off the top. That’s like our fee basically. 00:18:34:17 – 00:18:41:17 Unknown Right. So you were 80% of all the revenue that you earn. And then minus your options, 00:18:41:17 – 00:18:50:11 Unknown are as low as we can as long as we can have them. Right. I fight super hard for that insurance, like I was saying every year. So your insurance comes out of your it’s usually something like 200 bucks a week 00:18:50:11 – 00:18:56:19 Unknown See you. You, you know, you have a $5,000 week and that is actually 4500 to you because we take that 10% 00:18:56:19 – 00:19:00:16 Unknown and then minus fuel on your trailer rental trailer rentals, usually 100 bucks 00:19:00:16 – 00:19:01:22 Unknown and insurance is 200. 00:19:01:23 – 00:19:05:06 Unknown And then whatever you spent in. So, you know, we’re in the southeast. So 00:19:05:06 – 00:19:09:08 Unknown I mean, there’s no tolls down there, but if you, this you got like Florida, but 00:19:09:08 – 00:19:11:17 Unknown yeah. So if you stay in the southeast and there’s obviously going to be any 00:19:11:17 – 00:19:16:07 Unknown it’s a weird question. And owner operators asked me all the time always owner operator is looking for somewhere to lease on. 00:19:16:07 – 00:19:18:00 Unknown Ryan is like what is everyone bringing home. 00:19:18:00 – 00:19:23:15 Unknown And it just it just completely varies. There’s no like there’s no average 00:19:23:15 – 00:19:33:16 Unknown some guys like we had a guy leased on that was in Greenville, South Carolina. And I mean he must have stayed within like 100 mile radius. He just didn’t go anywhere. He was just running super local. 00:19:33:16 – 00:19:50:11 Unknown Right? Greenville to Greenville. Greenville to Spartanburg. You know, Anderson, whatever. It’s just. Right. He stayed usually within like a 50 mile radius. So he’s not making that much. You know, you’ll do like local runs for like $250 a piece. And he’ll make like $1,500 in revenue that week. And that’s what he wanted to do. You know, it’s up to him. 00:19:50:11 – 00:19:51:04 Unknown You can do that. 00:19:51:04 – 00:19:52:05 Unknown We take 10%. 00:19:52:05 – 00:19:53:22 Unknown It’s $150 for Downey shipping. 00:19:53:22 – 00:19:56:00 Unknown Barely worth it for us to do that at all, 00:19:56:00 – 00:20:08:09 Unknown But this is what he want to do. Some guys get after or some a lot of the guys we run, we run a lot of agricultural stuff during that season. I mean, they’ll just do $10,000 eats every week for like 12 weeks, right? 00:20:08:11 – 00:20:13:09 Unknown And it’ll be, you know, so they those guys will bring home like 5 to 7 grand every week for like a whole quarter. 00:20:13:09 – 00:20:24:05 Unknown yeah. And it is, you know, it is trucking in general is seasonal, right? Everyone makes less money first quarter. It’s just what it is. Everyone makes more money during peak season like October, November, December because that’s just what it is. 00:20:24:06 – 00:20:27:12 Unknown You know, there’s a lot more money. Yeah. So I would say 00:20:27:12 – 00:20:38:03 Unknown throwing numbers out an average you would probably take home if you’re not really working that hard, you know, if you’re not killing yourself, you probably take home two grand. And if you’re killing yourself, you take home five grand, 00:20:38:03 – 00:20:44:14 Unknown Yeah, it’s a huge there’s a huge gap there. So there’s no like, if you lease on here, you’ll make this amount of money. It totally depends on you. You know, you’re a 00:20:44:18 – 00:20:50:23 Unknown fucking eight. Then you’ll make a lot of money. And if you don’t want to work that hard, you want to spend a lot time with your kids or whatever, then that’s fine too. 00:20:51:00 – 00:20:52:02 Unknown You just won’t make as much. 00:20:52:02 – 00:20:57:07 Unknown on the company side, what is your biggest expense after paying your drivers? 00:20:57:10 – 00:20:59:12 Unknown I mean it’s got to just be fuel 00:20:59:12 – 00:21:05:18 Unknown rules like I’ve been tracking like percent the fuel like yeah it will cost as a percent of revenue 00:21:05:18 – 00:21:09:13 Unknown and is somewhere between like 18 and 22% just depending on the week. 00:21:09:13 – 00:21:10:19 Unknown And yeah, 00:21:10:19 – 00:21:20:08 Unknown yeah, that’s a lot. The company drivers earn 33% of the revenue so they don’t get paid. The common drivers don’t get paid like per mile or per hour or anything like that. 00:21:20:09 – 00:21:36:07 Unknown It’s just however much the low pays, they get 32% of that, which is good. Good. You know, I really like it because when we’re making a lot of money, then they are making a lot of money, right? Like we have right now. We have a contract that is like nine. It’s like $5.50 a mile 00:21:36:07 – 00:21:39:08 Unknown for 180 miles. And we do that like 12 times a week. 00:21:39:08 – 00:21:40:17 Unknown And that is, 00:21:40:17 – 00:21:47:06 Unknown whatever, 33% of $5.50 a mile is they’re whatever they’re making, like $1.80 a mile as a company driver. Right. Which is really good. 00:21:47:06 – 00:21:55:06 Unknown But then if they did head back, right, if they don’t have a load to come back with, then they’re just driving empty the whole way back and they make no money way back. 00:21:55:06 – 00:21:56:03 Unknown yeah, it’s very, 00:21:56:03 – 00:21:59:17 Unknown I like it because when we’re making a lot, they make a lot. And when we’re making less, 00:21:59:17 – 00:22:11:03 Unknown it is less expensive for us. Right? So it’s not like selling them at a dollar a mile. And then when the market shifts the bed, which it has been, you know, for years, then we can’t afford to pay it on now, whatever. 00:22:11:03 – 00:22:12:12 Unknown yeah, it’s not a great solution. 00:22:12:12 – 00:22:28:06 Unknown I don’t like how driver pay is structured. Kind of, in the industry in general. You know, I don’t like per mile pay. I don’t like the percentage pay. Really. I would like if it was like pay per hour for every hour worked. But man, if he did that, then you wouldn’t have any money left. 00:22:28:10 – 00:22:39:16 Unknown You know, they’re working on an hours, dude, right. I was never stopped working. And they deserve every you know, obviously you need to get pay for every single hour you’re working and that’s just not how it’s, Yeah, it’s 00:22:39:20 – 00:22:40:16 Unknown system 00:22:40:16 – 00:22:48:08 Unknown Do you have any sense of what your company’s cost per mile is after insurance and factory and and permits and everything? 00:22:48:10 – 00:22:52:12 Unknown Yeah. Yeah, that seems crazy. Don’t talk about like per truck. I think last year 00:22:52:12 – 00:22:54:03 Unknown is strange, man. Because 00:22:54:03 – 00:23:02:03 Unknown So we have like administrative costs right. So like as an owner operator. So like we know what each one of our trucks cost per mile. 00:23:02:03 – 00:23:08:09 Unknown And it will end up being you know, as far as a company trucks goes, they all end up being averaging out around a $1.67 a mile 00:23:08:09 – 00:23:09:05 Unknown is what it cost. 00:23:09:05 – 00:23:15:11 Unknown really. So anything above $1.67 a mile you would think would be like profit obviously is not the case because there’s 00:23:15:11 – 00:23:16:18 Unknown I just wrote this down, then 00:23:16:18 – 00:23:18:05 Unknown I have something like 00:23:18:05 – 00:23:27:13 Unknown $27,000 a month in administrative costs. Right. This my salary, I pay myself barely. You know, I pay myself like 60 grand a year. I think. 00:23:27:13 – 00:23:34:16 Unknown we have, like you also, we have a transportation manager, myself, compliance person, and like, a dispatcher and that. 00:23:34:16 – 00:23:42:07 Unknown Yeah. So for people salaries. And then we have an office in Charlotte, North Carolina and a bunch of truck parking, whatever. There’s a bunch of just other costs 00:23:42:07 – 00:23:48:09 Unknown whatever. Four for one. Cake matching is like a huge expense, right? There’s a bunch and a bunch of PTO, right? There’s like a 00:23:48:13 – 00:23:52:21 Unknown shitload of. I paid like 20 rand so far in paid time off this year. 00:23:52:21 – 00:24:02:18 Unknown it’s tough. I know what it cost per mile for the truck to operate, right? Like, I know what it costs to go down the road, but I don’t totally have it down 00:24:02:18 – 00:24:07:05 Unknown adding in all the other administrative costs. Right. What do I need to run Woody’s truck? 00:24:07:05 – 00:24:08:01 Unknown It’s like, 00:24:08:01 – 00:24:09:18 Unknown I got the contribution margin, right? 00:24:09:21 – 00:24:11:02 Unknown I know what I need to get 00:24:11:02 – 00:24:13:11 Unknown to get to basically our fixed cost or to 00:24:13:11 – 00:24:22:18 Unknown get to where we can start chipping away at the fixed costs. I would call that 27 grand a fixed cost. Anything about $1.67 starts to chip away at that fixed cost. 00:24:22:18 – 00:24:26:10 Unknown You mentioned truck parking. How much do you spend on that? A month 00:24:26:10 – 00:24:27:15 Unknown you were going to code you, 00:24:27:15 – 00:24:30:03 Unknown 858. 00:24:30:03 – 00:24:31:21 Unknown Yeah, 850 a month, something like that. 00:24:31:21 – 00:24:33:13 Unknown For for the eight company trucks, 00:24:33:13 – 00:24:37:17 Unknown we’re like, grandfathered into this situation. Otherwise I’d probably triple that. 00:24:37:17 – 00:24:43:07 Unknown almost at the end. Jason, thank you so much for all the data you shared. You’ve shared with us. 00:24:43:07 – 00:24:47:22 Unknown Is there an ideal number of trucks you want to have by the end of 2025? 00:24:47:22 – 00:24:50:09 Unknown by the end of 2025, ideally zero. You know, 00:24:50:09 – 00:24:52:07 Unknown if we could if we could shut this down 00:24:52:07 – 00:24:53:06 Unknown and get the 00:24:53:10 – 00:24:55:04 Unknown out of trucking, that would be awesome. 00:24:55:09 – 00:24:59:21 Unknown You know, if someone if someone is in the market for a trucking company, you know 00:25:00:02 – 00:25:01:21 Unknown we did? They didn’t truck did 00:25:01:21 – 00:25:06:08 Unknown we? We’re four years in to the freight depression of all time. 00:25:06:08 – 00:25:06:15 Unknown it 00:25:06:20 – 00:25:08:17 Unknown sucks. You know? It 00:25:08:21 – 00:25:12:09 Unknown sucks. Amy. It sucks so good. 00:25:12:09 – 00:25:14:03 Unknown Realistically, probably. 00:25:14:03 – 00:25:15:01 Unknown don’t know, 20 would be good. 00:25:15:01 – 00:25:20:09 Unknown We have 17 right now, and if we just onboarded a few more owner operators, there’s a bunch of people like looking to come on 00:25:20:09 – 00:25:24:18 Unknown and, we’re just I mean, we’re just really busy, you know, I’ve had a bunch of, 00:25:24:18 – 00:25:29:16 Unknown we’re we’re like ten years in business as of January next year. And so I’ve had a lot of, 00:25:29:16 – 00:25:38:05 Unknown you know, I know it’s not that long, but, you know, I learned a lot, and I’ve hired a lot of bad actors just not knowing, you know, not knowing any better. 00:25:38:07 – 00:25:41:21 Unknown And so now we’re just extremely picky about who comes on 00:25:41:21 – 00:25:49:15 Unknown bring on three people between now and the end of the year would be, would be great. You know, if we could pull down to three, like, awesome people, then yeah, it’d be perfect. 00:25:49:15 – 00:25:54:16 Unknown Do you want to tell or share with us any of your horror stories along the years? 00:25:55:18 – 00:25:58:06 Unknown I don’t know, there’s a couple I, you know, maybe inappropriate ones 00:25:58:06 – 00:26:01:09 Unknown either. There’s I’m, I got, I got hit with, like, 00:26:01:09 – 00:26:11:10 Unknown I bought a truck from Schneider, you know, Schneider like the carrier. They their yard is, like, right here in Charlotte and had a bunch of used trucks. And I bought an awesome one. Man, I bought this 2012, glider kit. 00:26:11:10 – 00:26:31:02 Unknown Who’s a Columbia? You know, a 60 series engine is just bulletproof, man. Like, this truck is awesome. And the financing money that, like Schneider gives you, like, a list or whatever of, approved financing companies. And so I just picked whatever one. And I went with the Schneider approved financing company, Second City Leasing. So, hook, 00:26:31:07 – 00:26:33:11 Unknown you guys second see leasing, they, 00:26:33:11 – 00:26:38:07 Unknown they I talked to them, and they set me up with, for Second city financing, whatever it was, man. 00:26:38:07 – 00:26:56:04 Unknown But they set me up with, like, a lease, which I very much no better at the time. I was probably a 525, 86 at the time. And I knew even then I knew better than to even go anywhere near the word leaks. Right. Everybody in trucking knows like lease is bad. You know, lease purchase or whatever. There’s just predatory. 00:26:56:04 – 00:26:56:14 Unknown Right. 00:26:56:14 – 00:26:57:07 Unknown And so I asked a 00:26:57:10 – 00:27:08:18 Unknown shitload of questions to this company before I ever took any set for it. I was like, just making sure that it was a loan. I was like, this is a loan. And not only so like, yeah, it’s a loan. You can pay down the principal ahead of time. You can like, do whatever. 00:27:08:18 – 00:27:11:19 Unknown they just lie, man. They lie, they lie. Dude, I had a 00:27:11:22 – 00:27:19:10 Unknown shitload of questions at, you know, I had already bought a house and multiple cars. Like, I knew what to add, right? And I had already bought a truck. You know, a bunch of 00:27:19:13 – 00:27:23:17 Unknown By the time I was 25, I knew what to ask, what to look out for. 00:27:23:19 – 00:27:28:01 Unknown And I asked all those things, and I got lied to, man straight up, like they just lied to me. 00:27:28:01 – 00:27:30:13 Unknown And so I put like 12 grand down on this truck, 00:27:30:13 – 00:27:33:01 Unknown and I made, like, probably like a year and a half worth of payments. 00:27:33:01 – 00:27:37:00 Unknown And then I wanted to sell it. I was like, you know, I was hired. I was my second truck. 00:27:37:00 – 00:27:57:19 Unknown And so I was just looking to sell it. And so I hit them up for like the what was it? The pay off amount. And it was damn near the exact amount. It was, it was damn near the, like, purchase price. Right. I think it was like 45 grand. And I had put that 12 grand down in like a year and a half worth of payments and they’re like, yeah, you owe like 44 grand or something. 00:27:57:21 – 00:27:59:09 Unknown And I was like, you have that 12 00:27:59:16 – 00:28:05:00 Unknown grand that I put down, you know, like, what is this isn’t like, this doesn’t seem like it is wrong. It doesn’t seem 00:28:05:00 – 00:28:05:14 Unknown legal. 00:28:05:14 – 00:28:07:05 Unknown Whatever. I ended up having to hire a lawyer 00:28:07:05 – 00:28:08:07 Unknown and they took a look 00:28:08:07 – 00:28:11:23 Unknown these contracts, and they’re like, dude, there’s nothing. There’s nothing legal about this. 00:28:11:23 – 00:28:16:15 Unknown Like, they can’t they can’t do what they’re doing. Second city financing, right? 00:28:16:20 – 00:28:17:09 Unknown you guys. 00:28:17:09 – 00:28:29:07 Unknown yeah. So I got a I got a lawyer to get them to give me, like whatever a seriously decreased pay off letter. Right. And which also there’s no like they, they’re not able to provide like any 00:28:29:07 – 00:28:32:20 Unknown calculations you can say they’re just throwing them. 00:28:33:01 – 00:28:49:12 Unknown There’s like, this is the purchase price. This is like some arbitrary fee. And then this is the lease payments. And you have to pay every single of these lease payments in order for it to be paid now. So there was no such thing as like paying the principal, right. Like they had said that there was. You just have to pay off this lease of however many years it was. 00:28:49:14 – 00:28:50:10 Unknown And so 00:28:50:10 – 00:28:51:20 Unknown he was this lawyer got me out of it. 00:28:51:20 – 00:28:58:23 Unknown Yeah, they ended up all right. It’s just a headache, you know? It’s just like a waste of time and, you know, mental capacity. Yeah. I got this one one time. 00:28:58:23 – 00:29:00:11 Unknown This is. Sorry. One time, man. 00:29:00:11 – 00:29:01:05 Unknown I woke up, 00:29:01:05 – 00:29:15:18 Unknown I, I woke up on, like, Monday morning, early Monday morning. It was when I was an owner. Operator was an owner operator for like two and a half years. When I started Downey Shipping, I had bought that truck and I just didn’t sleep for like a couple of years. And this one morning I woke up like Monday morning and 00:29:15:18 – 00:29:18:16 Unknown I didn’t go to bed until like Wednesday evening 00:29:18:16 – 00:29:20:05 Unknown that was a horror story. 00:29:20:07 – 00:29:22:04 Unknown It’s a short story, but it was really 00:29:22:09 – 00:29:22:17 Unknown up. 00:29:22:17 – 00:29:25:19 Unknown you know, you’ll wake up, I don’t deliver a load or whatever. And I’m like, 00:29:25:19 – 00:29:32:21 Unknown I’m a solo operator, right? So anyone out there knows this? If you’re dude, if you have your own authority and you’re an owner operator, 00:29:32:21 – 00:29:35:05 Unknown then what you have to do to make that work is not 00:29:35:05 – 00:29:35:23 Unknown reasonable. 00:29:35:23 – 00:29:52:21 Unknown You know, because you have to, you know, you have to find the work, which is very difficult, right? Even if it’s just through a load board, it still is still difficult to find people that will work with you as an authority. And then even when you find the people that will work with you, then you have to set up with them, which back in 2016 was slightly more difficult than it is today. 00:29:52:21 – 00:29:58:23 Unknown Right? Everyone just have like PDF packets that you have to sign and fill out. So I’ll be like, I’ll be like on my phone. 00:29:58:23 – 00:30:07:00 Unknown You shouldn’t, you know, it’s very dangerous. But I’d be like trucking down the road on my phone, filling out my PDF files. And I honestly say this and, 00:30:07:00 – 00:30:08:15 Unknown you know, so that I can book out. 00:30:08:15 – 00:30:25:00 Unknown And then they send it to me and I put it through my system or whatever, and I get the details and I just keep trucking, right. Never stop. And then, you know, and then I’ll be like, and I remember in that instance I’m like, whatever. I stayed away for like 40 hours or something. I’m ready to go to bed on like Tuesday night. 00:30:25:02 – 00:30:29:06 Unknown Right? It’s like Monday morning. I woke up in Tuesday night. I’m like in bed, ready to go to bed. I’m 00:30:29:11 – 00:30:34:05 Unknown wasted, obviously. And then the one of my, one of my direct customers hits me up 00:30:34:05 – 00:30:36:19 Unknown and like, hey, can you do this? Run down to like, Knoxville tonight? 00:30:36:19 – 00:30:37:22 Unknown And I’m like, you know, 00:30:37:22 – 00:30:38:07 Unknown yeah, 00:30:38:07 – 00:30:39:13 Unknown And it’s just it’s 00:30:39:16 – 00:30:47:11 Unknown up. But that’s like what it takes. That’s like what it took, right? It was really. It was nasty using nasty. You operator shots, man. 00:30:47:12 – 00:30:58:05 Unknown yeah, then I remember, then I remember I, I did that run and then whatever it was like now it’s Wednesday morning. Right. And I picked up another load in or I went to go pick up another load. 00:30:58:05 – 00:31:19:17 Unknown And that’s when I went to sleep. I like picked up this load on Wednesday morning and then whatever, I’m loaded by Wednesday afternoon. And I slept. I slept for like six hours Wednesday afternoon. And then I woke up and drove like 18 hours to like, Massachusetts or something. You know, the very next day, which is also, you know, not, you know, recommended it was legal. 00:31:19:17 – 00:31:21:01 Unknown Yeah. 00:31:21:01 – 00:31:22:08 Unknown Yeah. It was. Yeah. 00:31:22:08 – 00:31:24:01 Unknown It was nasty doing because a lot of that, 00:31:24:01 – 00:31:27:03 Unknown it was a lot then. 00:31:27:07 – 00:31:38:17 Unknown everybody flooded the market during Covid. It was easy to make mad money. And so, so many people got in. And then two years later, or, you know, a year, a year into the Great Recession, 00:31:38:17 – 00:31:43:20 Unknown everybody, I was like, yeah, too much capacity got in. And we’re just like waiting for it to leave or whatever. 00:31:43:20 – 00:31:46:06 Unknown But we’re like four years in now. And so, 00:31:46:06 – 00:31:51:12 Unknown you know, I don’t know what that means. Like, whatever excuses there were is out the window. You know, there’s no 00:31:51:19 – 00:31:52:05 Unknown way 00:31:52:05 – 00:31:55:05 Unknown everyone has survived this long on 00:31:55:05 – 00:32:07:14 Unknown just this marketplace, you know, that just heading enough to, it just it pays less than what it cost to operate. Just straight up, you know, it just pays less than what you operate in. 00:32:07:14 – 00:32:36:20 Unknown For some reason, truck drivers, all of us are just Kaufman is like, we accept what is given. Is the only industry I know of where we’re kind of taking what is presented. We’re like service providers, right? Like we have trucks and we’re providing a service, and every other service provider charges a rate. Right? And for some reason, in our industry, the customer seems to be able to like dictate what they pay. 00:32:36:22 – 00:32:39:17 Unknown And I don’t understand why it is that way 00:32:39:17 – 00:32:56:14 Unknown supplying them in obviously is there but it’s like nobody I don’t know I don’t know what’s going on because truck drivers can’t charge. Like if we were charging prices, no one would charge. What is like the price that it is at right now. Right? Is hey, this this only pays a dollar 80 mile. 00:32:56:14 – 00:33:08:21 Unknown It’s like we’ll do no charging. 250. You might like. What do you mean? You know, like it was like, well, I can’t pay that much. Like that’s what I’m charging. You can’t charge for some reason. New trucking as a service rider. You can’t charge a rate. And I don’t understand why that is. 00:33:08:21 – 00:33:13:19 Unknown I don’t get it, ma’am. We all, you know, we all got cut, and that’s, you know, that’s the situation right now. 00:33:13:19 – 00:33:27:19 Unknown That’s the situation right now. And my last question to you would be because I kind of know the answer to this, but if you did have to start Downey shipping today, what are three things you would do differently? 00:33:27:19 – 00:33:29:15 Unknown Well, I wouldn’t do it, you know, 00:33:29:15 – 00:33:33:17 Unknown I would, you know. Yeah. I would not do it, man. It’s not worth it. 00:33:33:17 – 00:33:37:21 Unknown I wouldn’t I went through, like, a significant mental breakdown, the past couple of months. 00:33:37:22 – 00:33:50:07 Unknown Like this. Like this past month, I’ve been doing good. But the two months before that man was nasty. I’ve lost a couple hundred thousand dollars over the last few years. Slowly, right? Yeah. I just slowly lost that money. 00:33:50:07 – 00:33:57:16 Unknown in that, like, I’m. No. If you’ve ever lost, you know, I don’t think you lost like, 100 grand, but, yeah, it feels bad. 00:33:57:21 – 00:34:11:05 Unknown And when you work day and night to lose that money, it feels even worse. You know, it feels it feels so bad. And it got to me. It got to me a couple months ago, man. Out there. It was. It was. 00:34:11:12 – 00:34:11:20 Unknown I 00:34:11:20 – 00:34:17:01 Unknown was like, yo, I have worked day and night to lose this money like you didn’t. I didn’t just, like, let it go. 00:34:17:05 – 00:34:17:23 Unknown You know, I 00:34:18:03 – 00:34:21:11 Unknown worked really hard. And someone’s going to wake up and lose this money, you know? And it’s me 00:34:21:11 – 00:34:24:03 Unknown what I would do different. Like, realistically, 00:34:24:03 – 00:34:33:04 Unknown I’m not sure because it took all this experience to like, you know, some of the things that we’re doing these days is 00:34:33:04 – 00:34:35:09 Unknown a lot more rigorous 00:34:35:09 – 00:34:37:17 Unknown onboarding of people. Right? 00:34:37:18 – 00:34:41:22 Unknown So onboarding owner operators and onboarding company drivers and setting standards like 00:34:41:22 – 00:34:45:09 Unknown having standard set ahead of time, right. So if you 00:34:45:09 – 00:34:57:05 Unknown if you exist outside of that standard, then you have to go, right. So if you don’t have all those things in place, then there’s a lot of gray area and people live in that gray area. Right. It’s like, can they do that? 00:34:57:07 – 00:35:10:10 Unknown Can they not do that? Is this acceptable? Is it not acceptable? If you will live there and you set a policy right and then stick to and it’s like you’re not allowed to do that if you and then you have like a write up or whatever. And then it’s like, if you do that again, you got to go. 00:35:10:12 – 00:35:16:21 Unknown And that weeds everybody out and allows you to have like, I don’t know, something as simple as, 00:35:16:21 – 00:35:17:15 Unknown Orientation. 00:35:17:15 – 00:35:19:03 Unknown if you start a trucking company, 00:35:19:03 – 00:35:26:09 Unknown you have one truck, you’re going to get another truck and hire a driver. You don’t have an orientation for that, right? 00:35:26:09 – 00:35:47:16 Unknown You’re not even thinking and have, you know, you’re you know how to do the job. You’re assuming this other person knows how to do the job, and you would hope that their standards are close to what your own standards are. And none of that’s true, right? It doesn’t like it’s not true. So all of having all your standards and procedures and everything you can think of written out and then distilled into an orientation is extremely helpful. 00:35:47:16 – 00:35:53:18 Unknown And that way, you know, you go through an orientation with a driver and you know that you have communicated all the important 00:35:53:22 – 00:36:04:06 Unknown to them and that way when they outside of that, then you can let them know. It’s like, do we I know we talked about this because I know you went through orientation and you can do that. 00:36:04:06 – 00:36:07:18 Unknown yeah. So I mean, I don’t know, there’s I guess I would do a million things different, 00:36:07:18 – 00:36:17:11 Unknown but I could, you know, like, if I was going to start again, I would just have. I already have it all, you know, like, I have the infrastructure that it takes to have all fleet, right? We have 17 trucks or whatever. 00:36:17:11 – 00:36:23:07 Unknown And they took a lot to make that happen. So I don’t know. And I don’t know what I would do different. I like what I did, 00:36:23:07 – 00:36:27:16 Unknown I would just straight up not do it. Yeah. That’s that’s what you and I would. I wouldn’t do this 00:36:27:19 – 00:36:29:09 Unknown again, man. This sucks. 00:36:29:09 – 00:36:33:14 Unknown I’m hot. Dude. I’m like my my my granddaddy was a trucker, you know? And I just. This is all I know. 00:36:33:14 – 00:36:36:02 Unknown It is all I know because I started when I was, like, 20, 00:36:36:02 – 00:36:38:20 Unknown on that note, I just want to thank you for joining me. 00:36:38:21 – 00:36:54:03 Unknown You’ve taught me a lot in this conversation. I’m sure this will help somebody out there that’s watching us. Maybe somebody that’s running their own fleet might take some tips from you and what you’re doing. Is there anything else you want to add to the people watching? 00:36:54:03 – 00:37:02:19 Unknown I appreciate, you know, if it’s. I don’t know who watches this. If it’s truck drivers, then, I would, you know, I would say thanks for, you know, I really appreciate the work that truck drivers do. 00:37:02:19 – 00:37:04:07 Unknown Whenever says thanks. You know, 00:37:04:07 – 00:37:08:03 Unknown truck drivers is super hard. Man. Is really hard. Like those hours. 00:37:08:03 – 00:37:13:23 Unknown There’s no set hours. You know, you’re just up for hours of the day and night, and you do a really important 00:37:14:06 – 00:37:19:12 Unknown and no one says next. You know, no one says no one appreciates it’s Truck Driver Appreciation Week. It’s a joke. 00:37:19:12 – 00:37:20:14 Unknown So I would, 00:37:20:14 – 00:37:23:19 Unknown I would just say, you know, thanks to all the truck drivers doing what they’re doing out there 00:37:23:19 – 00:37:28:16 Unknown for everyone watching leave you leave us your thoughts and your comments below. 00:37:28:16 – 00:37:38:18 Unknown I’ll leave a link to Downey shipping in the description. Don’t forget to subscribe to this Week and trucking to learn more about this industry and never miss a conversation and drive safe 00:37:38:18 – 00:37:43:18