How to Make Trucking Great Again with Kevin Rutherford

Episode Transcript
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Kevin Rutherford (00:05):
It's business 101, for the most part, here's a
statistic, over 90% of singletruck owner operators have no
accounting system whatsoever,none, none. They wait. They
throw their receipts in a bag ora box. They wait till the end of
the year. They dump it on theirtax preparer and say, I need a
tax return done. That's theextent of their accounting, and

(00:26):
it's over 90% welcome

Blythe Brumleve (00:32):
into another episode of everything. Is
logistics, a podcast for thethinkers in freight. We are
proudly presented by SPIlogistics, and I am your host,
Blythe Milligan, and we've gotanother great show for y'all
today. We have Kevin Rutherford.
He is a CEO of let's truck. He'scoming back on the show. We're
going to talk about how to maketrucking great again in 2025 and
beyond. So Kevin, welcome backto the show. Well, great to be

(00:53):
here. So 2025 already, huh? Iknow we are recording this a few
days before Christmas. Foranybody who is listening, we
plan to drop this episode thefirst week of January. So Kevin
and I just just had a goodlittle therapy session before we
got started about social media.

(01:13):
And you know, a lot of justholiday stress that's going on.
And you know, stress is reallyno different, I think, than any
other. Well, stress in thisindustry, there really is no
time frame for it to exist. Itkind of is just always there,
right? It is. And you know whatI would even say in our in our
life today, stress is just sopredominant, and it's stress

(01:39):
that our body's not used to.
This is actually a big topic ofmine. I spent about two years
working on a stress protocol tohelp people deal with stress,
because what we were seeing was,we started about 10 years ago,
helping drivers get healthierwith diet, and we had tremendous
success, and people havemaintained it for the last 10
years. Right around the end of2020

Unknown (02:02):
we started seeing people with with bad results
that hadn't had bad results inyears. Some of their markers
were starting to change. Theywere gaining some weight again.
And at first I thought, Well,okay, you've just kind of fallen
off the bandwagon. We just gotto tighten things up. And it
wasn't the case at all. And we Ijust kept digging and digging,

(02:22):
and I thought, You know what?
This is just stress. And I mean,2020, was a pretty darn
stressful year,and that's when we started to
notice it. And I started workingon a protocol. One of the things
I figured outmost advice about stress is to
just try to avoid it, like yougot to go, take a walk in the
park, and you got to go, youknow, meditate and go, you know,

(02:43):
watch a good movie or whatever,which is fine, except what we
were finding was you could taketwo weeks off and meditate all
you wanted, and an hour afteryou were back into the stressful
situation, You were a wreckagain.
And I realized that the best wayI can describe this stress is

(03:05):
like a muscle. Our stressresponse is like a muscle, and
the more we have to use it, theweaker it gets. And if you were
to sit around on the couch allthe time and all your muscles
got weak,sitting around on the couch more
isn't going to fix it, andthat's that's what we are
seeing. People just keep usingthese strategies to avoid
stress, and it worked as long asthey could avoid stress.

(03:31):
But what we have to do insteadis we have to build that stress
response so that we're able tomanage more stress, because you
can't get away from it. And itturned out to be things like
cold plunges,short duration, high intensity
resistance training, someinfrared therapy, some breathing

(03:52):
work, and we track it throughHRV, and we were able to get
people's HRV back up, and thenall of a sudden they would say,
Well, you know, things justaren't as stressful anymore.
When nothing really changed, thestress was exactly the same. It
was their response to thestress.

(04:13):
The problem is that you got todo these things pretty often and
and then people are stressed outlike, well, I don't have time to
do my stress protocol? Well, Idon't know what to do about that
yet, so that was a big deal forus. I spent a lot of time on
that, and I'm glad we're kind ofjust getting right into it,
because one of the bigger topicsthat you focus on, especially

(04:36):
with let's truck, is that you'vebeen helping drivers for years,
helping them get financially andphysically fit, and it sounds
like mentally as well. And Iguess it's sort of, you know,
my, my to piggyback off of whatyou just said, because I want
to, I want to know how peoplecan get started. But maybe
you've already recognized thatthere are certain issues in your
life. So how do you how do youknow where to start? How do you

(04:59):
know.
If it's physical, if it'smental, if it's, you know,
something financial, if it's allof the above, how do you kind of
give your yourself a lifeassessment? Yeah, you know the
the one thing, and you said thisthe way we've always said it. We
should probably stop doing this.
We've always separated.
Everybody does it. We separatephysical and mental.

(05:22):
Why do we do that? It's ourbody. Our brain is an organ. Our
heart is an organ, our kidneysan organ. We don't treat any
organ differently, except thebrain. And we thought that the
brain functioned differently,and it really doesn't. All of
the problems we see in the brainare the same metabolic problems

(05:43):
we see in the entire body. Sowhen we feel physical pain in a
joint or a muscle, we knowthere's inflammation, right?
Well, your brain can't feelpain,
so when your brain is inflamed,there's no pain. What there is
is dysfunction, brain fog,Alzheimer's, all of the mental

(06:06):
conditions involve inflammationof the brain, and the same
things we do to get somebodymetabolically healthy for their
body also fix the same problemswith the brain. The other issue
with with a lot of the stress inour thought process, is how many
people today are on SSRIs,antidepressants, anti anxiety

(06:28):
medication? It's rampant. Ithink it's like the second most
popular class of drugs. Now wehave kids on them. Now, what
turns out, the neurotransmittersthat they're trying to
manipulate with these drugs. 80%of them are created in our gut.
It's our gut bacteria thatcreates our neurotransmitters.

(06:50):
So if you've got a how manypeople do you know with
digestive disorders? Now, ifyou've got a digestive disorder,
you've got a brain disorder,and that's where a lot of the
stress comes from. So, so we canjust, we can treat the human
body as one, one entity, and thethings we do to fix all the
metabolic stuff, which is just areally clean diet, is number

(07:11):
one. And clean, that word getsso overused, but, but what it
means to me is the more foodsyou can eat that doesn't have an
ingredient list, the better off.
You're going to be real wholefood, the way we see it, Nature
doesn't have ingredients,and the more of that food we can
eat, the healthier we're goingto be. And that's brain health.

(07:34):
It lowers stress levels. It'snot a fix all, because the
people that I first identifiedthis in including myself, have
really cleaned up their diet.
We're coming up on 10 years now,and a lot of these people have
been doing it for 10 years, verysuccessfully. So the mismatch
now is our nervous system. Sohere's the other thing that I

(07:58):
think helps people understandthis,
every stress response in ourbody is really the fight or
flight response. That's whatstress is, when, when we when we
are in what we call the theparasympathetic mode, which is
also the rest and digest mode.
That's that's out of stress.

(08:18):
Stress isn't affecting our body,when we go to fight or flight,
that's when the body releasescortisol,
adrenaline. You know, we getthat that rush. Now, can't you
see that that fight or flightresponse feels a lot like
stress? That's really what it isstress. The fight or flight

(08:40):
response shuts down ourdigestion immediately. So the
longer you're in stress, theworse your digestion is going to
be. And then it's a viciouscircle. When your digestion is
messed up, it's going to mess upyour stress response.
So we just have to understandthat that our fight or flight
response, which served us reallywell as hunter gatherers kept us

(09:02):
alive, is destroying us intoday's world, because we're
surrounded by stress. Somepeople never get out of that
mode.
And it all really starts withyour diet. It does. And so it
starts with your diet. And so ifyou, if I because what you're,
you're, I coincidence. I justgot the Callie or Casey means

(09:25):
the book for my mom, because shewas going through some health
issues they wanted to put heron, you know, pre diabetic
medicine. She suggested maybe Icould change my diet. And the
doctor literally told her thatif she wanted to just focus on
her diet then, then she couldfind a new doctor. She said, To
hell with him. And she started anew diet, and she's lost 20

(09:48):
pounds since then. And so I gother this book, hopefully, you
know Well, this show will airafter Christmas. So I got her
this book forChristmas to help her with that.
In that regard, that is a great.
Book, by the way, and I hadCasey on my show. Oh, that's
awesome. Yeah, she wasfantastic. And I think I got
really lucky. I had a prerelease copy of the book, and

(10:10):
then I asked her to come on theshow, so I had her on the show
pretty early. And thenobviously, you've seen how
popular she has become. Nowshe's doing podcasts with Joe
Rogan and Tucker, and I'm prettysure I, although now I have the
relationship, I could get herback on the show, but had I not
gotten around early, I probablywouldn't have, wow. So because,

(10:31):
yeah, it was just ringing truethat, you know, I had heard her
for the first time on Tucker,and it that episode kind of
changed a lot of things for me,you know, diet wise, just mental
health wise. So some of thethings you were saying, it
sounded like that, a lot of thethings that she had been
preaching, how, how long, Iguess, to have a lot of these. I

(10:51):
guess, sort of, because what shereally speaks to, and I'm sure
your episode covered, that isjust the the infrastructure, or
the institutionalinfrastructure, of our diets, of
our food systems within thiscountry, you know, just really
have a negative impact on all ofour bodies, not just truckers,
but it seems maybe, you know,truckers with their, you know,

(11:13):
sedentary lifestyle, it impactsthem the most. Is that a fair
statement, it is, but I'll tellyou, it's not as much the
sedentary lifestyle as peoplethink. It really is the fact
that look at their access tofood.
The worst place you can eat intoday's world is at a
restaurant. They are awful. Allof them are awful. They all use

(11:37):
seed oils. They all use allkinds of preservatives and pre
packaged foods, and eating outtoday is just toxic, and these
guys are gone two and threemonths at a time. For some of
them, they're eating every mealout. They're eating the wrong
foods when they eat it, but evenif you eat the right foods when
you're out, you're still goingto struggle.

(11:58):
So we teach them how to pressurecan their own meat. So they can
take, you know, a month or twoworth of supply of meat with
them without needingrefrigeration. We have them
fermenting vegetables so theycan do the same thing. So the
real key for them isn't the iHere's the other thing I tell
people, typical client for memight be 350 pounds. 400 isn't

(12:20):
out of the question. I mean, Iget this all the time, and I
will tell them right up front. Iknow you've heard it over and
over and over. It's like the twowords are interlinked forever.
Diet and exercise. Stop sayingit. Two totally different
things. They accomplish, twototally different things. We
shouldn't talk about themtogether. The last thing a 400
pound person wants to hear isyou have to exercise how they

(12:42):
can barely get out of theirchair, and you want them to go
to the gym and try to maintainsome heart rate for an hour.
It's not going to happen, andit's not necessary. Turns out,
exercise is not an efficient wayto lose weight. It doesn't work
very well at all, because whileit's burning calories, and
calories are almost meaningless.
It is also increasing appetite,and then you have to try to

(13:08):
starve yourself, and nobodywants to do that, and that's why
it doesn't last. I have helpedpeople lose 200 pounds without
one single minute of exercise. IThey don't change their activity
level at all. Weight loss isabout the food we put in our
mouth.

(13:28):
The other the way it can say,this is there's health and
there's fitness. Those aren'tnecessarily the same thing. At
the moment, I'm not very activebecause I'm busy all the time,
and you know, in the summer, I'ma lot more active. I'm healthy
right now, but I'm not all thatfit. I've been pretty sedentary
for a couple months now, sincesummer ended, and I'm not fit,

(13:51):
but I'm very healthy. My bloodpressure's low, my blood sugar's
where it needs to be. I don'thave any weight issues. I don't
have any joint pain. I'm not onany prescriptions, but I can't
call myself fit. Fit comes fromexercise and activity, and I'm a
bigger believer in resistancetraining than aerobic training,
but, but we do those kind ofthings for fitness. Health is

(14:15):
all about diet and ourenvironment, getting keeping the
toxins out and, you know,cleaning up, think about all of
our personal care products. Youknow, think of all the stuff we
slather all over our body. Ourskin is our biggest organ, and
we absorb things right throughour skin, and we slather toxins
all over our body all day long.
So I help people clean up alltheir personal care products and

(14:37):
cleaning products at home. Youknow, we're to the point now
where we have one cleaner forlight bulbs and we have a
cleaner for a floor, and we havethe cleaner for the sink and we
have one for the counter and wehave one for stainless steel,
and they're all toxic, and we'reusing, you know what works
really good, a vinegar basedcleaner will clean everything

(14:58):
you.
It cleans glass, it cleansChrome, it cleans your your
dirty stove. They make, theymake concentrations up to 30%
that'll almost take paint off.
And yet, they're all natural.
Nothing toxic about them at all.
And you know, so you just lookat our environment has become so
toxic itself, so the weight andthe health is about food and

(15:22):
environment. Fitness is aboutactivity and exercise. But I
think we should separate thetwo, because we always tell
people, you have to diet andexercise. Even the commercials
for ozempic, ozempic, along withdiet and exercise, they always
say, Well, I can help you here.
Throughout the ozempic, we don'tneed it. Forget the exercise for

(15:45):
right now, focus on the dietwill get you to your normal
Are you in freight sales with abook of business, looking for a
weight.
new home? Or perhaps you're afreight agent in need of a
better partnership? These arethe kinds of conversations we're
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(16:05):
I can tell you all day that SPIis one of the most successful
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would much rather you hear itdirectly from SPI freight agents
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(16:26):
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visit SPI threepl.com,and that almost feels more
attainable at first, because Ifeel like if you're if you're
that significantly overweight,you know you have a problem, but
it all feels so daunting, andyou don't know which direction

(16:49):
to go to, yeah, yeah. Andtelling somebody you have to
restrict calories to lose weightwill never work in the long
term, the only way to restrictcalories is to be hungry. If you
weren't hungry, wouldn't berestricting calories. You would
just eat till you weresatisfied. And that's what
people do. When you eat theright foods. That is how you

(17:11):
should eat. I tell people when,when I show you what foods you
should be eating. I never wantto hear you say you were hungry,
and I never want you to think ifyou if you're hungry, but you
don't eat one more thing that'sgoing to help you lose weight,
it won't. If you're hungry, eatif you eat and you're still
hungry, eat more when you're nothungry, don't eat, don't don't

(17:34):
mindlessly snack or just eatbecause you're bored. But if
you're hungry, eat, and youshould not be hungry. And I've
helped people lose and that'swhy they can lose 200 pounds and
maintain it for eight years,because they're not fighting
hunger all the time. If you'recounting and restricting
calories, you're going to bemiserable.

(17:56):
And that that was, you got intoa little bit of drama this this
week, while we're well,during the holidays, where a lot
of people were not too happywith your you know, calories
don't matter. Sort of, you know,mindset for people who may not
be aware, you know, I wouldimagine that that, you know,
everything you just said, is whyyou believe that calories don't

(18:18):
that the calories in, caloriesout, don't matter. So what
should people do instead? Is itbecause I know you're on an all
carnivore diet? I believe right.
I promote all carnivore. What Irecommend is some form of we
could call it a paleo diet, andpaleo just means we're only

(18:40):
going to choose from foods ourhunter gatherers ancestors had
access to, so and then you canget into some controversial
things, like dairy and that kindof stuff. But for the most part,
our hunter gatherers there wereno food factories. The only
foods they had access to existedin nature, and they ate them the

(19:00):
way they existed in nature.
That's the start. So, so thoseare the foods we can choose from
if you want to be healthy. Thateliminates preservatives, it
eliminates added sugars, it sothat's the start. But we found
that people are so sick that'snot enough, that the more
metabolically sick somebody is,the more foods we have to

(19:24):
eliminate out of the diet. Theultimate is what we now call the
lion diet. Have you heard ofthat one yet? No, I haven't
heard of that one. So here's thelion diet, beef, salt and water.
Oh, wow, that's it, that that'sthe most extreme we and we
actually call all of these dietselimination diets. We're going

(19:48):
to eliminate Whole Foods, orwhole classes of foods, and
there's been tons of them overthe years. What we're now
learning is the more food.
You eliminate, the more healingthat diet becomes. So the more
sick somebody is. I had a I hada woman on my show just a couple

(20:09):
weeks ago.
She was five nine, and she hadhad mental issues since she was
a teenager, withanorexia and anxiety and
depression and all kinds ofthings. At five nine, she had
actually gotten down to 70pounds. Oh, my God, and had

(20:29):
horrendous mental health issues,schizophrenia. I mean, she was
in bad shape. Her life wasmiserable. She went 100%
carnivore, and it's goneeverything, wow. She She works
out now she strength trains.
She's, she's, you know, reallytall and lean. But you look at

(20:53):
her old pictures, and you lookat her now, and she just looks
fantastic. And now she teachesthis. And you know, that's why I
had her on the show. But thesicker somebody is, the more
foods we eliminate and get downto beef is the most nutritious
of the animals we eat, and wateris the only liquid humans need
to survive, and a little bit ofsalt. And we see people heal

(21:17):
like that, and some of thesepeople decide not to ever come
off of that. And we try to helppeople, you know, add back in.
So I eat a my diet would bebetter described as keto, very
high fat, because I thrive onfat. That's just something I've
found about myself. I can eatabout 80% of my calories in fat.

(21:38):
Oh, wow. And really do well,that's saturated fat, beef
tallow, duck fat, pork lard, allof it butter,
moderate protein for me, and lowcarb. And the lower carb I go,
the better I feel. So mostlymine is animal products. I love
dark chocolate. So I eat darkchocolate every day. I think

(22:01):
their honey has some prettyspecial properties. So some
local honey as a sweetener, alittle bit of right white white
rice, maybe once a week, or onceevery couple of weeks, and
fruit, and that's primarily mydiet, and I feel fantastic. I
mean, 61 no prescriptions, noweight issues, no joint pain, my

(22:24):
digestion. I tell people I don'tknow that I have a digestive
system,and they look at me like what I
don't know that it exists.
There's no feeling. There's nosensation. I it just everything
works the way it's supposed towork, and I went through 50 some
years of fighting digestiveissues, and they're gone, and

(22:46):
it's all from your diet, fromwhat you're putting in your
body, food. Yeah, it we, I, I'm,I'm not a huge believer in
throwing supplements ateverything. There are
supplements that work, there'sno doubt about it. And I sell
supplements, and I usesupplements to help people, but
my approach is, if somebodycomes to me first time we're

(23:07):
talking, they want to know whatto do. Here's the first test I
give them. I want you to see ifyou can go seven days without
eating anything except animalproducts, meat, fish, eggs and
dairy. Eat as much of that asyou want, but don't need
anything else for seven days.
And if I can get them to do it,they're hooked, because they see
incredible results in just sevendays. Joint pain disappears,

(23:28):
their brain fog goes away, theirenergy levels get better. And
once I can get them to see howpowerful that is, then they're
usually hooked, and then it, itmy my next step is do this as
long as you can. When you gettired of this, if we want to add
some vegetables back in, or somea little bit of fruit, depending

(23:50):
on where you are with with bloodsugar, we can do that. But let's
try. Let's try doing this for aslong as you can. And if we make
it to 30 days, then we'll take astep back, we'll review some
things, and there's probablygoing to be a couple supplements
I'm going to recommend almosteverybody needs to supplement.
Vitamin D, just don't get enoughof it, and minerals seem to be a

(24:11):
problem. So electrolytes, otherthan that, I try to use very
targeted supplementation, andthen stop it as soon as I can.
What about Celtic salt?
Absolutely, any of the I takethat every Yeah, any of those,
you know, we have the pinkHimalayan salt. We've got, I'm

(24:33):
actually I, I almost have a saltcollection. I have black salt, I
have red salt, I have volcanicsalt, I have Celtic salt, I have
French salt, I I've got, youknow, we actually have a store
in Portland that sells nothingbut salt.
That's awesome. What are thedifferences between all of these
different salts? I thoughtCeltic was the best, so that's

(24:54):
why I bought that one. So whatwe're looking for is a naturally
occurring salt.
Not the iodized, you know, Calor whatever the technical name
for salt is, like tape regulartable
salt. Table salt, throw thatstuff away. Don't go anywhere
near it, any of the naturallyoccurring salts, pink Himalayan,

(25:17):
Celtic salt. The difference isthere. They've got a lot of
trace minerals that we don't getin other places,
and they don't have the junk andthe, you know, there's some
chemicals they put into saltanti caking agents. And you want
nothing but salt, but all ofthose kind of natural Redmond

(25:39):
salt is a really good brandthat's been around for a long
time.
The one thing I love about saltis you buy a thing of pink
Himalayan sea salt that's beenin the earth for a couple
million years and it has anexpiration date on it.
Boy, I'm glad I got this beforeit expired after two and a half

(25:59):
millionthat was one of the dangers,
like, or,because my mom has been started
on on this diet journey, andjust, you know, she's, she's
trying to find those littlelifestyle tweaks, and I'm a
little bit further along in thejourney, so I'm trying not to,
you know, sort of nitpick a lotof the changes that she's
making. So I guess, how do you,how do you balance that

(26:21):
approach, where it's like, oh,no, you're wasting your time,
because she bought Himalayansalt, and I kind of told her
where you got to be carefulabout where you get it from,
because of the way that it'smined, and there's a bunch of
chemicals in it and things likethat. And how do you, I guess,
suggest nicely or point them inthe right direction? No,

(26:42):
I'll tell you the question I getall the time that I can't
answer, and it's almost thisone. People will do this. Their
results are incredible. Theyreally are. It's hard to
describe this change untilyou've gone through it, and good
human beings, the minute theyexperience this, they want to
share it with everybody. And,you know, carnivores, we can get

(27:05):
pretty annoying and obnoxious.
And, you know, we're alwaystalking about food and, you
know, so I tell people, Look, Idon't know how to influence
somebody else to start this orto stick with it. I can do it on
the air, because I just talk andpeople will come to me. The
hardest part is when you try todo it with somebody. You love
somebody, the closer you are tosomebody, the harder this is to

(27:27):
do. And I even know most of thepractitioners I know won't work
with their relatives. Theypartner with other practitioners
and they swap relatives so theydon't have to work with their
own because it just doesn't workwell. And people will call me
Kevin. I'm so glad I did this.
You told me this. I they give meall their results. They're so

(27:48):
excited, and they're go. But I'mso frustrated. My wife just
won't listen to me, no matterwhat I say to her.
So that that's that's astruggle, I tell people, look
the the best thing I know is todo it yourself and be a good
example. Don't be obnoxiousabout it. Don't try to push it
on everybody else. And hopefullysomebody asks you, and when they

(28:09):
ask, don't try to overwhelmthem, you know, and I'm bad at
that, because I could go on andon and on for eight and 10 hours
and tell you everything I knowabout all this, and I just have
to take a step back and say,look, let's, let's make this one
change for seven days and seewhat happens. And then you can,
then you build some trust. Iknow it's going to work. If they

(28:31):
do it, I know it's going towork. Then you build some trust.
They see the results now they'rewilling to try the next thing I
recommend. And I think what thebig advantage for me, why I've
been so successful at this issimply the fact that I'm on the
air every day, and people cancall and ask me these things
every day, and then they cancall back and say, I tried this
and it worked great. And thenother people hear that, and then

(28:54):
they'll say, but I tried thisand it didn't work. And I'll
say, Okay, well, then let's trythis. And there are people I've
been working with for over ayear, you know, a little bit at
a time, and that's the bestadvice I have. Try not to
overwhelm people, try to be agood example, and try to meet
them where they are.
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Yeah?
Because.
I think just, you know,personally speaking, my mom is

(30:03):
much more, you know, I'm furtheralong on the process. She's
definitely come a long way. Andthen it's, you know, trying to
convince, you know, dad andbrother that, you know that he
my dad famously has had a Reesecup and a Dr Pepper as his
breakfast for 20 years, andgetting him off of that, we have

(30:23):
successfully, finally got him,him off of that. So now he makes
one egg in the morning and henotices a difference. And so
that little bit of a change isalready noticing a difference.
But he also works outside. Heowns his own lawn care business.
He's, you know, run up for 40years, and so the sun, and he's,
you know, 61 years old, the sunis just brutal in Florida. And

(30:47):
so I worry about him, and I'mlike, You need to put some
Celtic salt in your water. And,yeah, vegetables. And he doesn't
want to hear any of it, no. Andthat's awesome. And I love the
way you're doing it. And Iyou're doing it. You're making
progress. You got him to changea lifelong habit. That's a big
deal. I mean, that's a that's abig win, really, is you brought

(31:08):
up something that shocked meabout this. So 10 years ago, I
made the changes joint paingoes. I have no markers of Ra
anymore. And I had RA in my 20s.
I have markers arthritis, right?
Rheumatoid arthritis? Yeah, hadmarkers my whole life, until I
changed the way eight and thenmy joint pain went away. And

(31:29):
after a while, I thought, youknow, I wonder if I should check
for the markers. And I did,they're gone, no evidence that I
ever had rheumatoid arthritis.
So it's pretty incredible whatwe can accomplish with it. But,
you know, I go slow, takeit a little bit at a time, but
there was something else I cameacross and I was reading online

(31:50):
one time, and somebody wastalking about how they gave up
all this stuff and that they nolonger burnt when they went out
in the sun. And I said, What?
Come on, that's just stupid.
Yeah, let's not get ridiculousabout this stuff. And then I

(32:10):
went and did the research, and Ihad not, I had not been eating
the thing that they claimedcaused this problem for about
six years, when I'd learnedthis, and I thought I have burnt
my whole life. I mean, I am sopale, and 15 minutes in the sun
and I am beat red, and then twodays later it's gone, and I'll

(32:34):
burn again. And I've been thatway my whole life. And I love
being outdoors. I love watersports. I used to put sunscreen
all over, which is horrendous.
That stuff is toxic. Then I atleast switched to wearing, you
know, long summer kind ofclothes, fishing shirts and that
kind of stuff. And I would avoidthe sun. And I thought, could

(32:58):
they be right? So I went out inthe sun that day, and I, you
know, I can feel it when I starttingling. And I was out in the
sun for like, 30 minutes, whichwas a long time for me, and I
thought I started to panic. I'mlike, I'm going to be burned. I
know it. And so I went in laterthat night. I'm like, I'm not
feeling anything at all. Wentout the next day and tried an

(33:20):
hour that is unheard of for me.
After an hour, nothing. And Ijust kept pushing it all this
summer, I have a I've got a sixacre homestead in Washington
that I garden out there, and I'mdoing a lot of land clearing all
summer. No shirt, no hat, nosunscreen. 678, hours a day out
in the sun. I never burned. Wow.

(33:43):
What are you doing? Seed oils?
Oh, that's what causes it. Buthere's the problem, when you
quit them, it takes almost 400days for all of it to clear your
system. Oh, wow. So we didn'trealize there was a change,

(34:04):
because the change happenedyears after we stopped consuming
them. But once this was pointedout to me, and I tested it, and
I started telling it, it worksevery time. People I know who
burn all the time, redheadstotal, freckles, get seed oils
out of your diet. Give it acouple years to clear, and that
all goes away. Isn't that crazy?
What is, what is technically aseed oil? Okay, so anything that

(34:27):
they've tried to call avegetable oil, and they use the
word vegetable because wethought vegetables are healthy,
so vegetable oils must behealthy. You can't squeeze a
carrot and get oil out of it.
You can't squeeze a canola, notthat there is a canola. Canola
comes from the rapeseed plant,but you don't squeeze the

(34:51):
vegetable to get oil. The oilcomes out of the seeds and go
look up the process, just forthe fun of it. Once.
Time, how what it takes. There'schemicals, there's crazy amounts
of heat. The fats are so damagedby the time we start consuming
them. And here's the thing, thisis why this is such a big deal.

(35:14):
Every cell in your body, thecell wall, is made of fat, and
when you build every cell withbad, damaged fats, you're going
to be sick. It's actually seedoils. This. This isn't quite
proven yet, but I think it'sgoing to be the the root cause

(35:34):
of diabetes is not sugar. Sugarbecomes the problem, but the
root cause is seed oils, becausediabetes is really insulin
resistance. Your body won't yourcells won't accept any more
sugar, because insulin is thelock that opens the cell and
lets sugar in. But your cellsstop responding to the insulin,

(35:57):
and then the sugar stays in yourblood, and that's when you're
diabetic, well, that the cellwon't accept the insulin because
the signaling part of the cellwall is damaged, and it was
damaged by bad fats. It's allthe seed oils in our diet. Is
what about? Like avocado oil.
Avocado is not a seed oilbecause one avocado is not a

(36:19):
vegetable, it's a fruit, and wedon't get the oil from the seed.
We get it from the flesh, okay?
And it and it should be expelyour pressed, not, not heavily
processed. That's why olive oilis okay. Olive is a fruit, and
we squeeze the olive itself, notthe seed or the pit. Oh,

(36:42):
interesting. I guess I justassumed that avocado oil,
because of the seed that'sinside of it, was also a seed
oil. It we get the oil from theavocado flesh is loaded with
that.
So avocado oil is okay. It'sone. There are only three oils
that come from plants that Irecommend. That's avocado, olive

(37:06):
and I would be care really,really careful with olive oil.
Most of the olive oil in thiscountry is fake. It's seed oils.
And even really good olive oilgets damaged by light. It's not
a really stable oil.
Coconut oil is the other plantoil, and coconut oil is amazing.
It's loaded with saturated fat.
It's got all kinds of good stuffin it. It's an antibacterial,

(37:27):
antifungal, antiviral. So thoseare the three. And I would just
be very careful of olive oil.
I use some olive oil cold. Idon't cook with it, and I buy it
directly from a family farm inGreece. Oh, wow. And the cans
are dated. When it washarvested. They only put it in

(37:48):
cans, not bottles, because thatprotects it from the light. But
for the most part, I use all theanimal fats, butter, lard,
yellow duck fat. Duck fats, oneof my favorites, man, duck fat
is so good, yeah, so you shouldbe cooking in all animal fats.
Okay, so we have spent thefirst, I'm looking at the clock,

(38:10):
36 minutes talking about diet.
And I think that that's areally, honestly, a good place
to kick off. What, you know,some of the other, you know, I
guess drama that's going onwithin the trucking industry.
Because if you have, you know,good diet, if you're taking care
of your body internally, ifyou're starting to, you know,
figure out your fitness plan andworking that all in as a driver,

(38:35):
then it's going to help you tobetter be able to deal with a
lot of the stresses that youprobably in control with a
point, yep. So speaking of thestuff that maybe we can't
control, there are a few topicsthat I have seen on x, and have
seen, you know, in in LinkedIn,and a lot of different
discussions. And I wanted tokind of get your feel of it, you

(38:57):
know, a couple of the big ones.
And so the, the first big one isbroker transparency, yeah, one
of my favorite for, I guess, ahigh level Eagle view, if Eagle
Eye View, sure, what is, what isthe drama around broker
transparency? You know, let'sjust be real and upfront.
Because I've been doing this for40 some years, I was afraid

(39:17):
broker for a short time. We cango all through that, but I think
the drama is really justfrustration on so many carriers
that got into the business. AndI'm talking about one truck
guys, and that's my sweet spot.
That's my market. That's whereI've always worked. They get
into business with no plan, veryunder capitalized.

(39:40):
They have no accounting systemwhen they get started and and
all they hope to do is, youknow, run enough to pay the
bills, if they can pay the billsthat they're probably not
complaining when they start tofall behind on the truck
payment. Or they, you know, theyneed a tire, and they have to go
buy a recap or a used tirebecause they can't afford it.
Then they get frustrated. Andthen.
Start looking to blame somebody.
And you know this, the firstplace you got to look is the

(40:05):
mirror. What am I doing wrongthat I could make better? And
there's always something beforewe go blame somebody else. The
easiest place to lay the blameis the broker. Because, you
know, that's where the freightcomes from. They're stealing all
my money, you know, the wholething. But I think the

(40:26):
frustration comes from is wehave a lot of people that get
into this business and don'thave any business sense, and
then they don't seek out anyeducation. I think the solution
to all this is education, notthe government. The government's
not going to fix any of thisstuff education will let me give
you a number that just shockspeople, and this is it's a
little bit of an outlier, but ittells us what's possible. I have

(40:49):
a single truck owner operatorthat I work with. He came to my
big conference, CMC, back in2010 I think his wife now works
for us. She's one of ouremployees. He kind of works for
us, but he he runs one truck byhimself, one driver, one truck,
and his net profit in 2023was $274,000

(41:17):
Wow. Yeah, he does. He droppedout of high school in the ninth
grade. He's smart. He's reallysmart. He just didn't like
school. He just doesn't liketraditional learning. But he got
hooked on learning about hisbusiness and accounting, and I
take a little bit of credit,just because I showed him the
ways to do this. But then hetook off with it, and he, that's

(41:42):
the kind of money he makes now,I mean that that's just
incredible. The average singletruck owner operator out there
probably isn't making 80,000 ayear, and he did 274,000
and so, I guess, for folks whomay not be able to, you know,
connect the dots, brokertransparency was some kind of

(42:04):
law that was passed. Yeah, let'sgo back to that. So we're going
back to the motor carrier act of1980
that's what we call deregulationin the trucking industry. The
one thing people have tounderstand when we say
deregulation, the only thingthat was deregulated was the

(42:24):
financial aspect of theindustry. So people say, What?
What? I don't even know why theycall it deregulation. We have
all these regulations. Well, ofcourse, you do. Everybody does.
We deregulated the financialpart the government. Prior to
1980 the government controlledthe rates in trucking,
it was government controlled.
And the way they did it was theydidn't set the price. You

(42:46):
understand supply and demand,right? This is that. This is the
one I try to get these guys tounderstand. What the government
did was, when you filed forauthority, they just turned you
down. They just wouldn't givenew trucking companies
authority. So they controlledthe supply, which controlled the
price, because if there aren'tenough trucks on the road, the

(43:10):
price just keeps going up and upand up. If you wanted authority,
you actually had to go out andfind shippers who would write
letters saying they needed morecapacity in that lane. And then
you might still go to thegovernment, and they might say
no. And your authority was notblanket authority. It was lane

(43:30):
by lane. You might haveauthority to move freight from
Cleveland to Dallas, but notDallas to Cleveland.
And then what you had to do isyou had to trip lease. You had
to go find a trucking companythat had the authority in that
lane, and you would sign a leasefor one trip. And we used to

(43:51):
have magnetic door signs for ourtrucking companies. We would
stick them on the door whilethey were working that one trip
for us,it was a horribly inefficient
system, and it cost us all a tonof money. What would happen
towards the end? There would betrucking companies that were
almost bankrupt, and they wouldsell for millions of dollars
because somebody wanted theirauthority. That's how bad it

(44:14):
got.
1980 they said, Look, we don'tneed to protect this industry
anymore. The original idea was,we have to. We can't have too
much competition. This is toobig of an industry, and it could
just fail. So we're going toprotect some carriers and let

(44:35):
them become stable. And then in1980 we decided, You know what,
we don't need to protect themanymore, that this can work as a
free market, and that's whatchanged at that time. There were
no freight brokers,that industry didn't exist. Thus
people would go, Oh no, that'snot true. Ch Robinson was a
broker in the 20s. They were aproduce broker, not a freight

(44:57):
broker.
H Robinson started as a producecompany. They brokered loads of
produce, and then brokered themove of them too, but they owned
the produce. They were a producebroker. Well, once, once, all
these new carriers flooded intothe market after deregulation,

(45:18):
which is a good thing, we got abunch of new, small carriers in
where are they going to gettheir freight? The old legacy
carriers had sales teams. Theywould go out and find the
freight for the carrier. Well,in the beginning, the broker
worked for the carrier. When thebrokerage industry first

(45:40):
started, the broker did not goout to a shipper. They went to
carriers and said, I'll go findyou freight, and we paid them a
percentage. So the transparencywas because we were the one the
carrier paying them direct. Wehad the right to see.
But once that whole marketshifted, which took time. Now,

(46:03):
the brokers go to the shipperthat is their freight. They
signed a contract. They are theones that have a contract with
the shipper. Then they go find acarrier to move it. The problem
is they, they left that clausein there about the every, every
party to the transaction has aright to see the documents that

(46:26):
just it was just a leftover thatwas in there because of the way
the broker industry worked. Thenit makes no sense now, but try
to convince somebody of thatthey just think they should have
the right to see this because ofthat one clause. Do you know any
other business that has todisclose its margins to anybody?

(46:46):
Yeah. I mean, or Yeah, I agree.
I try to think of one. Nobody inbusiness has to disclose their
margins to somebody else,especially the person they're
negotiating with. But that'swhat these people are asking
for, but because they don't evenhave the basic understanding of
free market and how businessworks, they're stuck on this one

(47:06):
paragraph in 370 1.3that they're allowed documents.
First off, it's only after thetransaction is over, you don't
get to see it before.
Then what happened was brokerswhen, when people started
pointing out this and sayingthey wanted to see the

(47:29):
documents, brokers said, well,we don't like that. So the
broker contract, it almostalways now includes a waiver,
and the waiver is waiving yourright to that clause. And then
some of the groups, a wide and abunch of others came out and
said, You can't wave away yourrights like that, except you

(47:51):
can. Supreme Court said. So. TheSupreme Court said when, when
the law or the regulation iswritten, if it doesn't
explicitly say that you can'twaive this, then you absolutely
can waive it, if both partiessign the contract with the
waiver, the waiver islegitimate. So what would have
to happen now is Congress isgoing to have to take this up

(48:12):
again and change the regulationand make it non waiver able. I
don't see that happening.
And so that's where I guess alot of the arguments are around
is, you know, should this be athing, or should this not be a
thing? What are the rippleeffects on the rest of the
industry? I think there were,you know, I have some, a couple
questions on Twitter about thisin particular, or x, but there

(48:37):
was one from Stephen Roo. Heworks over at freight 360 great
group over there. And he said,If carriers get transparency as
they wish, what is the benefitto them? If there is any
benefit, what's the effect onthe overall market? Will
transparency actually combatfraud? There's a few questions
in there. So just curious onwhat your comment would be,

(49:00):
sure. And I actually knowStephen and him and I have
discussed this and talked aboutit. And so here's a couple
things. First off, let's, let'stackle the fraud issue.
I solved freight fraud a longtime ago.
I don't I, you know, had anybodylisten to me, we wouldn't even
be facing this right now. Sowhat I try to teach my small

(49:21):
carriers and owner operators isthe load board is a tool. It's
not where you get your freight,and they're like, What? What?
That's what it's for. No, it'snot. Here's how I think you
should use a load board. That'swhere your your potential
customers are, and they'll belike, what, what, what. There's
hardly any shippers on there.
No, your potential customer is abroker. What that freaks them

(49:41):
out, but that's absolutely true.
You're providing a service tothe broker and they're paying
you. How is that not yourcustomer? They don't like that.
But I said, use the load boardto find the brokers that have
freight in your area, and thekind of freight you want that's
your.
Contact, reach out to them andstart building relationships. I

(50:04):
even say, if you want to putyourself in the top 1%
schedule an appointment, go seethem in person. Nobody ever does
that. You know how relationshipswork. You could talk to somebody
on the phone for 20 years. Thefirst time you meet them in
person, the whole relationshipchanges. Yep. So go meet them.
Your truck has wheels. You cango anywhere you want. You know,

(50:25):
go meet them. They'll be reallyimpressed. And they are your
customer. So, and then I say,Find three to five good brokers
like that that you build arelationship with. They
understand you, first off,you're going to get the best
rate that never makes it to theload board. The best stuff never
gets posted. It gets moved withrelationships. So that's the

(50:46):
first thing you're going to do,is you're going to cut all your
time and headaches down and allthis onboarding, and you're
going to get better freight. Buthere's the other thing, if I'm
only working with three to fivebrokers, what does that do for
freight fraud? It almosteliminates most of it.
We know who we are. You know thefreight got on the wrong truck,

(51:07):
where I pull your stuff everyweek. The the one freight fraud
we don't address with this isthem stealing carrier numbers
and that kind of stuff. But ifthey steal my number and they go
to a broker I work with that'snot going to work for him
either. So had we just workedtogether brokers and carriers as

(51:28):
a as an industry work together,this freight fraud may have
never even occurred, but we leftthat wide open because I have
single truck guys that that workwith 50 to 60 carry or brokers
in a year. Wow.
And I identified that CRM tokeep up with all of that. Oh,

(51:49):
and they don't have one, so theydon't keep up with any of this.
They can't tell you the last 10brokers they worked for. They
don't even remember them. Ifigured this out because one of
my early businesses was doingtax returns, and I would get all
these 1090 nines for and I'mlike, What are you doing? And
here's what they do. They go tothe load board, they search for

(52:11):
the load they want. They thenext click. And I know this
because I work with the loadboards, and they store all this
data. The next click is sort byrate, and they just start
calling the highest rate on theboard. Well, if I do that today,
and then two or three days fromnow, when I need another load
and I do it again, what are theodds I'm going to get the same
broker again, just about zero.
So this is what they do. Weactually have a term for it. We

(52:34):
call it one and done. We call itwhen you go to the load board,
you're chasing the rate. Andthen when you call it, it's one
and done, and you move on, andyou wonder, why the brokers
don't care about you. Why wouldthey you're never coming back.
So the freight fraud, I think,would would go away. But here's

(52:55):
something else here. You know, Iuse this phrase a lot on this
topic, be careful what you wishfor if we got transparency? Have
you ever, did you ever watch theshow shipping wars?
No, okay, don'tI'm trying to think of which
channel that I have seen thosecommercials, and I've said to
myself, I need to watch it, butI have done, don't, not, not as

(53:17):
entertainment. I watched itbecause, you know, you can learn
a few things. So basically, theway shipping wars works is
these, these guys on the show,whether they were a hot shot or
a tractor trailer or whatever itwas, they would follow these
little owner operators aroundand kind of document what was
going on. But they were allgetting their freight from a

(53:40):
website called you ship Yes, youship it. You could go there if
you needed to move a car or abig piece of furniture, or you
could actually connect directlywith carriers that could move
this for you, even as a as anindividual. But it's a bidding
site, so the rates are alltransparent. Somebody bids on
that load, and I see what theybid, and I can bid. What does

(54:04):
that do? When you can see therate a bidding war drives the
prices to the lowest possiblepoint, and then somebody takes
it. Everybody in trucking makesfun of the show. Oh, look at
those idiots taking that. Whowould pull that kind of stuff?
This is what you're asking foryou have total rate
transparency, and I can see whatthat carrier moved it for. I'm

(54:25):
just going to go in and cut itby two cents,
and then the next person isgoing to cut it by two cents.
And so once I can see the rateand look, the more efficient you
are in running your business,and the lower your cost is the
more you can undercut theseguys. So the worst operators
should be the ones hoping wenever have rate transparency.

(54:49):
That's an interesting way oflooking at I never even thought
of seeing it from from thatperspective, but it makes total
sense. I wonder, why do youthink so many you know single
truck operators? You.
Know, owner operators. Why doyou think they follow the same
path of just relying on the loadboard,
just an ignorance of of how torun a business really well, it's

(55:11):
just what they know, becauseit's what everybody else does.
Oh yeah, I got my authority. NowI need an account at the load
board so I can get freight. Andthen that's all they do. The
other thing they do is there,you've probably interviewed
people from either truck stop ordad or both. Right soon, there
we are in we are in talks, but Ihave actually interviewed the

(55:32):
CEO or the former CEO of youship. So it's she's not the CEO
anymore. She's going off toother paths. But it's an
interesting conversation,nonetheless. Yeah, so you know,
the like I said, the load boardis there to for. I think it's a
great place to find good brokersto work with. And if you've got

(55:53):
those three to five once in awhile, you might hit a dry spot
and somebody might not have anyfreight, and you've already got
an account, go to the load boardand grab a load I'm fine with
that, but it shouldn't be thebulk of your freight and and you
know, the load boards have alsocreated incredible tools around
rates. I can dig down into everylane in the country, and they

(56:18):
have carrier negotiation tools.
And if I go in there, it'll say,Look, here is your negotiation
power in this lane, and they'rebasing it on supply and demand.
And it's real time data. Ifyou're in Chicago today, Chicago
is loaded with flatbeds, andthere's hardly any loads posted.
Well, guess what that's going todo. The rates coming out of

(56:39):
Chicago today, they're going tobe awful. Maybe you just want to
bounce over to Cleveland orsomething, you know. But all of
the data is in the load board togo figure all that stuff out. So
these guys pay for that. Don'teven know it exists. Never use
it, and they're using the loadboard completely wrong. It's why
I have such a strong partnershipwith truck stop, because the

(57:01):
whole point is to try to educatethese guys on how to use those
tools. Interesting, yeah, Iguess you know, for for, maybe
for a lot of folks, they justget into a habit of doing it one
way, and it's difficult for themto very similar to their diet.
You know, they're they get usedto the thing and change is very
hard, and they don't want toaddress it, and they don't want

(57:23):
to to your first point that youmade look in the mirror and, you
know, kind of address thoseissues with themselves first.
They don't, you know, it's verydifficult, I think, to admit
when you're wrong or maybe thatyou've wasted a lot of time and
money. You know what? That's areally good point.
I learned early on in businessthat not only was I going to

(57:45):
admit when I was wrong everytime I was wrong, because it's
the only way you're ever goingto learn and become right, but
then the other thing I learnedwas I learned way more from my
mistakes than I learned from mysuccesses. Successes sometimes
are just pure luck, right? Andyou look at you go, wow, that
was great. Look at that, but youhad nothing to do with it, and
you don't learn anything fromthat. Mistakes will always teach

(58:07):
you something when, when you dosomething wrong, there's usually
a consequence, and you canusually look at that and say,
Okay, why did that happen? Andwhat can I do better? So I
actually have a model that says,if I have a new project or a new
idea or something I'm workingon, I want to make as many
mistakes as I can, as fast as Ican make them. Yep, and then I'm

(58:29):
going to get up to speed and I'mgoing to and a lot of people,
their ego just will not allowthem to do that. Here's another
clue. My most successful clientsby far in the 30 years I've
helped people get into thisbusiness and run small
businesses. My most successfulclients are always somebody that
came outside the industry.
They're not longtime drivers.

(58:51):
The long time, drivers get allthe worst habits, their ego is
too big. You can't tell me howto run a truck because I've been
driving a truck for 42 years. Mydaddy drove a truck, and he
taught me when I was seven. Andlook, I'm not trying to teach
you how to drive a truck. I'mteaching you how to run a
business. But, but they can'tseparate the two to them, they
know everything there is aboutdriving trucks because they've

(59:13):
been doing it a long time, and Iagree with them. They're really
good at it. Driving a truck hasnothing to do with this
business.
My most the easiest clients towork with, I can make them a
success every time, 40 to 50years old, with a business
background, I can make themsuccessful every time because
they just listen. They'll justdo what I you know, I lay out

(59:35):
the plan. They follow it. Theysucceed. And the next thing you
know, they've got 10 trucks andthey have almost no experience
in the industry.
So would you, would you say thatTrucking is still because I
hear, you know, I follow a lotof drivers on social media, and,
you know, a lot of them havekind of made the comment that
trucking isn't what it used tobe, and that, you know, there's

(59:59):
a lot of.
Stuff that's going wrong in theindustry, and why would anybody
even want to come into thisindustry? Do you think that it's
still a good job to haveprovided you are willing to have
the business acumen behind it? Ido. I we can talk about that a
little bit, but let's start withthis. Tell me anything that's
the same as it used to be? Oh,true. Yeah. Nothing is or

(01:00:21):
everything about our world, ourlife, everything has changed.
Because these people are talkingabout three or four decades,
that's how long I've been in it.
And the biggest group of driversright now are baby boomers that
are about to retire. So theseguys that have been around for
three and four decades. Ofcourse, it's changed. Everything
does it is? Is it as good aswhat it used to be. Now I don't
like the industry as much as Iused to. There isn't the kind of

(01:00:44):
camaraderie, and you hear that alot, although that was never a
big thing for me. The one placethat I spent the least amount of
time when I did drive was attruck stops.
The only thing I did at a truckstop was get fuel. That was it.
Nothing else. I didn't parkthere. I didn't buy stuff there.
I didn't take shower there. Idon't like them. There's nothing

(01:01:05):
about them that made me want tobe in a truck stop. I went in
and got fuel. I'd park at a restarea. I'd park at a in the back
of a mall. I'd park anywhere Icould find, and I'd eat from
grocery stores so I can controlthe price and the quality you
know better. Andone of the things I try to tell
people if, if I could tell themone thing,

(01:01:29):
try to understand what it meansto be a contrarian,
and it will work really well foryou in so many areas of life. I
teach people investing, if youwant to be a decent investor, do
the opposite of what you seeeverybody else around you. Doing
it will work better thananything else I could teach you.
I had a I had a saying, when Iused to do a lot of the

(01:01:51):
financial planning, I would say,as soon as your grocery store
clerk is giving you stock tips,it's time to get out of the
market.
That's a really good sign. It'sjust time to get out. Stocks are
so popular. The market must bedoing so good. If your grocery
store clerk is talking aboutstocks, it's time to get out.
So I have a contrarian belief intrucking. I this right now,

(01:02:15):
right now, today, right where weare is the absolute best time to
get into trucking.
I helped somebody get in lastJanuary. You should probably
have him on your show. This guywas really interesting. He'd
never been an owner operatorbefore. Maybe had been a little
bit but he wanted to become acarrier. Went got his own
authority. He went through someof my programs. He would call my

(01:02:37):
show. He asked me a lot ofquestions. I help him do this.
You may even see him on xbecause he's really active. He
posts since he got his ownauthority and became a carrier.
He started on day one. He postsevery single load HE books. He
puts a post up and says loadnumber 37 since I got my
authority, I'm going from hereto here, and then he'll comment

(01:02:59):
like, you know, this wasn'tsupposed. My appointment was
until Tuesday. I got thereMonday in the afternoon, and I
called him, and they got me in.
So now I'm on to another load,and he, you know, the other
thing he does at the bottom ofevery one of these posts, and he
posts every load, and he's got astandard format that he does it
in, and at the bottom it saysit's a, it's a kind of a shout

(01:03:22):
out to brokers. If you'relooking for a good, small
carrier that cares about yourcustomers kind of thing, call
me. Wow. Who is it? Ilyaon exits. I believe his handle
is millennial truck. I swear Iwas going to guess his name
because I've seen some of hisposts, and I thought, Oh, wow,

(01:03:44):
he's doing, you know, reallygood social media. So shout out
to him. Yeah, I wrote down thatthat name. So, yeah, awesome.
That's awesome. Reach out tohim. Get him on your show. Brent
huttos had him on his podcast,and it's another guest I need to
get on the show as well. Yeah, Idon't know if you know this or
not, Brent's my co host onMondays. Now, I did not know
that that's awesome. We do ourMonday show together. It's all

(01:04:06):
about rates and lanes and what'sgoing on in the industry. And so
Brent's actually the co host.
Now that is awesome. Okay, yeah,you know, I think I have one
two, yeah, at least two guestsout of here you go. There you
go. Yeah. So. So that idea ofI'm not going to fight with the
brokers, I'm not going tocomplain about the brokers. I'm

(01:04:26):
going to market to the brokersbecause they're my customer. He
the broker carrier Summit. Hewent to that. You know what he
did at the first broker carrierSummit, he put out an offer to
all the brokers there, I'll pullyour first load free.

(01:04:47):
Talk about being able to marketyourself that is really, really
smart. Yeah,yeah. So that's kind of the
contrarian point of view, and itworks in so many ways. Don't
start.
Look at all the people who arebeing washed out of the market
right now. They all startedduring COVID at the top.
You start in the top of amarket, and the odds that you

(01:05:09):
can survive the bottom of themarket are pretty slim. Start at
the bottom of the market with aplan that works, and then the
top of the market is just puregravy.
So I helped, I helped Ilya startat the bottom of the market
January of this year, and he'skilling it. That's awesome.
Yeah, that is really cool tohear. Because I, you know, I see

(01:05:31):
a lot of doom and gloom, youknow, on social, especially from
drivers, about how the market isjust, you know, it's crap. And,
you know, they they're not sureif they're gonna be able to
survive. And I feel for them,but I to your advice, I mean, or
to that point, it really, itshines. I think you're helping,
you know, give drivers aflashlight in the dark to

(01:05:52):
understand, you know, whatpathway to take in a multitude
of ways. There was another, youknow, a little bit of drama. I
think I've kind of been I'veexperienced this as well,
especially with the truckparking club guys. I've had them
on the show. Love them, butanytime I post a clip from one

(01:06:14):
of that those conversations, Iget a lot of replies about how
they're a scam and they'restealing money from truckers, or
they are, you know, making thempay extra for something that
they got for free. What is, whatis your take on on that a Blythe
while they're telling you thatthey're probably drinking
bottled waterstressed and they're getting

(01:06:34):
poisoned from the plastic in thebottle and the water, and they
paid more for it than gas. Whenit's it's at every faucet, it's
free. Why would you pay for it?
Why would you pay more for waterthan you pay for gas? But now
you're going to complain aboutparking. But why do you think
parking should be free justbecause it has been and it's not

(01:06:55):
free, by the way, they alsocomplain about how much they
have to pay for anything in thestore at the truck stop. Why do
you think you have to pay thatkind of price? Because they
provide a giant parking lot outthere that is outrageously
expensive to own and maintain,and they don't charge you for
it, so you're going to have topay for it somewhere. My I have

(01:07:16):
been saying this for about 10years, since the whole parking
thing started coming up as acomplaint, and I said then, and
I continue to say it now, and weare in. When I get off this
call, I'm probably going to betalking to Reed over at truck
parking club, because they wantto partner with us. I think
they're going to be a part ofour CMC. And I've been saying
forever, if you want betterparking, be willing to pay for

(01:07:39):
it. It's simple as that, iftruck parking club succeeds,
what are they going to end upwith? Competitors, right?
Somebody's going to look at thismodel and go, Hey, look, this
works. You can actually makemoney with parking. And then a
competitor is going to look attruck parking club and go, Hey,
look, if we put in theseamenities, we can the more that

(01:08:00):
happens, the better parking willget. If you want parking to be
free forever, just get used totruck parking lots with big
holes in them and crashes allover the place and no amenities
and and all the issues we'vealways dealt with. Want better
parking, just be willing to payfor it. I mean, it's always
reminded me a little bit of,like a, you know, like a gym,

(01:08:22):
where if you want those betteramenities, you're probably,
you're definitely going to haveto pay a fee right to access
those amenities, and then theupkeep and the upgrade of it's
not free, and you have to, Imean, that's the cost of running
a business. And so maybe it kindof, you know, gets back to your
point of, you know, if youunderstand sort of business
basics, then you wouldunderstand why a facility would

(01:08:45):
like to charge money for theupkeep of those parking spaces.
And I think, you know, to toplay the, you know, the other
side a little bit that, youknow, their argument is, well, I
used to get these spots forfree. This money is coming out
of my pocket. Why isn't itcoming out of the shipper or the
broker's pocket. This is anotherfee for truckers. You know, the
complaints are kind of endless,yeah, and I get that but, but

(01:09:08):
wait a minute, why doesn't itcome out of the shippers or the
broker's pocket? It does. That'swhere your revenue came from.
You took their money and youspent it on parking. It did come
out of their pocket.
How else? Where else would itcome
from? You kind of have a choicethere too. You don't have to
haul for that shipper either.
And you know, maybe that's anamenity that they could offer

(01:09:31):
you as well with differentpartnerships, where you can just
structure your rate to coverthat true do we ask? Do we ever
say I want the shipper or thebroker to pay my tolls?
Well, why do I have to pay atoll? There's all kinds of free
roads all over the place. Why doI have to pay a toll on this

(01:09:52):
road? Well, you do because thestate said they're going to
build a toll road. You caneither try to go around it, or
you can pay to drive on it. Butwe don't, then look.
At the broker and go, Well, youhave to pay this. No, as a
business person, you look at theload, you should realize, hey,
those are there's some tollroads. I need to calculate that
into my cost. Parking is reallyrough on the East Coast, so I'm

(01:10:13):
probably going to have to payfor parking. And then you price
accordingly. And if there'snobody to pay the price, then
you look for a different lane.
It makes sense. But I'm also abusiness owner, so I think it
makes sense to me to understandwhere those costs are coming
from, and to structure your rateappropriately. I just maybe it's
a little bit of just it. I gotthe feeling because anytime I

(01:10:35):
get those comments on on thetruck parking club posts, I see
it as this isn't just one thing.
It feels like maybe they'rethey're experiencing a lot of
pile on from a lot of priceincreases from a variety of
industries, and this is the thething that they're going to
blame the most they are. Butlet's think about this. Every

(01:10:55):
one of their competitors has thesame pricing problems. Every one
of them. It's not like they'rebeing singled out somehow. In
fact, they have they have farmore control. Nobody has more
control over their day, theircost, everything, than one guy,
one truck.
I understand why employeedrivers would be upset if all of

(01:11:19):
this parking starts to be paidand their fleet isn't going to
pay it. As an employee, youshould not have to pay that
cost, that that should be youremployer. That would so I get
it. It's why I don't. The onlytime I deal with employee
drivers is on the health side,because the rest of everything I
do is business, and sometimeswhat's good for an employee
driver is in direct conflictwith what's good for my

(01:11:42):
customers, which are owneroperators, that when a white a
pushed for mandatory detentiontime the shippers, they wanted
the shipper to be required topay mandatory detention time.
Well, I get it for employees, ifyou're sitting there at the dock
and you have no control overthis, and your employer is not

(01:12:02):
paying you for that time I getit. While you're upset, it's
it's not the right answer to goto the shippers and expect
they're going to pay this, andwho would ever enforce it? We
need to get and you have alittle bit of control. As a
driver, go find a carrier thatdoes pay it, and that's how
competition works. But as anowner operator. The last thing I
want is some group that'ssupposed to be representing me

(01:12:26):
putting regulations and costs onmy customers. That just doesn't
look good. That's my issue. I'llgo to my customer and negotiate
this stuff, and if I can't, thenI'll go find a different
customer. But I don't wantgroups that are just going to
put a bunch of regulations on mycustomers, which is why I fight
so hard against brokertransparency. The system works

(01:12:48):
that nothing about this makessense, and all you're doing is
asking the government to putmore regulations on our
customers.
What do you think is a story intrucking that deserves more
attention. You know, we'vetalked, you know, obviously,
about broker transparency andtruck parking. But is there
something else that you knowthat the logistics audience

(01:13:11):
should be aware of and payingattention to? Yeah, and I don't,
you know, this is what I doevery day. I have almost no
competition, and I think this isthe answer, and I don't
I'm not saying it's anybodyelse's responsibility in the
industry, but I'm just trying topoint out this will solve a lot

(01:13:35):
of the problems we all fightwith, and the one thing I think
we're horrible at in thisindustry is education.
Think about all the things wejust talked about today, and you
not knowing the inside of this,you've never owned a truck, but
when I say it, you go, Well,that makes sense, and you can
see how that would work. Andit's not rocket science. This

(01:13:57):
stuff's pretty simple. It'sbusiness 101, for the most part,
here's a statistic, over 90% ofsingle truck owner operators
have no accounting systemwhatsoever, none, none. They
wait. They throw their receiptsin a bag or a box. They wait
till the end of the year. Theydump it on their tax preparer
and say, I need a tax returndone. That's the extent of their

(01:14:19):
accounting, and it's over 90%you run a business. How could
you run a business withoutknowing where your money's going
or where it's coming from? Butthey do, or they try to, and
then they wonder why they'restruggling with all of these
things. Then they get angry, andthen they just start blaming
everybody else, and this is thestate of the industry. So it's

(01:14:40):
why everything we do at let'struck is really built around
education.
I love that. And speaking ofcontent, what does your what
does your schedule look like?
Are you making any, you know,adjustments or plans for 2025
because you broadcast every day?
I believe, right? I am. I do 15to 20 hours a week on the air.

(01:15:06):
That's just on my radio show. Ido two hours every week of group
coaching. So all the things Italk about on the radio show, or
the questions you can ask me,we're pretty limited in time and
scope. You know, I can't get alot of background data for
someone. They call me on theair, they have a question. I
don't know who they are. I don'tknow background. I've got a
limited amount of time so I cananswer a lot of stuff like that.

(01:15:30):
But if you want to go deeper,then I have this group coaching,
and I will go as deep assomebody wants. I have been
working for over a year with afamily run trucking company.
It's been around for about 40years, and is about bankrupt,
and it's really sad. And there'sI've been working with them for

(01:15:50):
over a year. We solved almostall of their problems, but the
family started in fighting, andthey reversed a lot of the stuff
we they did now we're headingback into the problems again and
and I think if something doesn'tchange in the next 60 days,
they're going to be out ofbusiness. But I've been working
with them for over a year. Weworked on a hiring program, we

(01:16:12):
worked on a fuel mileageprogram, we worked on a bonus
program. We went from theycouldn't get a single call when
they when they tried to find adriver to having a list of seven
drivers waiting,that's what we were able to
accomplish. And then theystarted fighting in the family.
I helped one guy who was growingenough that he wanted a kind of

(01:16:34):
a repair shop terminal. I mean,I helped him with the real
estate part of it. You know,here's how we go find the right
property. Here's what we've gotto do to, you know, make sure
it's going to work. So on thecoach, that is my favorite part
of the week. I mean, I get touse all my skills, and I get to
really dig deep andtroubleshoot, not just the same
surface stuff over and over,like my show might be. And then

(01:16:55):
every other week, I do a twohour CMC, because my CMC program
now is a year long program. Soin and we are also now an
official part of mats. I thinkwe are the only, I know that's
their that's their model nowthey're trying to bring more
events in around mats. And Ithink we're the first, we're the

(01:17:18):
third, first third party to bean official so our CMC is two
days prior to the truck showopening, that's live and in
person, and then that programgoes on for another year, where
I do a two hour webinar everyother week for a year.
So that that's really myschedule. I get up, I spend

(01:17:40):
three hours on the radio. I getoff the radio. I do podcast
stuff like because if somebodyinvites me on the show, I go, I
mean, I'll go on anybody's show.
I love talking. Andthen I had the call with the
Volvo engineer a little whileago, and tomorrow, I'll have my
coaching call in the afternoon,and Tuesday, I'll have my CMC.
And so I just, I basically spendmy time talking. I was gonna

(01:18:00):
say, what do you what do youwhat do you do when you're not
talking? No, I'm always talking.
If I'm not talking, I'm reading.
Where do you? And that's a goodsegue into my next question,
where do you get your contentinspiration? Where? Who do you
learn from? Everybody I can,other industries, other
countries. I studied Europe fora long time on fuel mileage.

(01:18:24):
Europe, heavy truck fuelmileage, they've been a decade
ahead of us forever. So I get, Iget more of my ideas from
European magazines and websitesand and people that I know in
the industry.
I've just been a lifelongstudent.

(01:18:44):
You know, I've been followingAnthony Robbins. Been following
Anthony Robbins since I was 20.
And he was probably about 20 atthe time too. But pretty
impressive I did the Have youever seen his fire walk?
No, I don't think so. Is thatjust where you walk across the
fire coals? Yeah, yeah. He'sfamous for it. He does it at his

(01:19:07):
seminars with hundreds,sometimes 1000s of people. Wow.
So I did it first inWest Palm, somewhere in South
Florida, and that was a 10 footfire walk. You know, you had a
10 foot lane, and you had towalk across these hot coals.
And, I mean, they're glowing,and they've got fires built up
there where they're taking newhot coals and putting them on

(01:19:28):
there. And I'm looking at this,going, how can this work? I
mean, and I still don'tunderstand it. So you walk
across, didn't feel the thing,nothing. And I'm like, I don't
get it. I don't understand this.
And it was so funny. About amonth later, I'm standing
outside on my deck grilling, andI was in bare feet, and a coal,

(01:19:50):
a piece of coal must have poppedout from the grill, and I
stepped on it, and I was cryinglike a little girl. I'm like,
Well, this is bizarre. I justwalked across.
10 feet of this didn't feel athing. Then, then in on the Big
Island of Hawaii, right on thebeach, we did a 45 foot
firewalk.
Is it all mental? Like you justhad the brain power to do it? He

(01:20:15):
sets it up as though it'smental, because all day long, he
takes you through these,practices that you do. And then
the the mantra that we use iscool moss. So you start
visualizing that, that you'renot walking across fire, you're
walking across cool moss. Andyou repeat it over and over, I'm
walking across cool moss and andthen you get up there, and then

(01:20:38):
the next thing you know, you'rewalking across it, going, I'm
walking across school logs, andyou get to the other side, and
I'm like, didn't feel a thing.
So I guess it didn't work by thegrill, because you weren't
saying that. I don't know.
That's what I mean. I don'tunderstand why this works, but
it did. So I've been followinghim for years. Authors that you
know, I've been reading theirbooks for years and years, and

(01:20:59):
I'm just, I'm a really bigbeliever in education, and I
just, I really like to educatemyself. I normally don't take a
lot of formal classes orprograms. I just find somebody
that's really good at something,and I start reading, and
sometimes even reach out andtalk to them.
I mean, that's what social mediahas. You know, obviously there's

(01:21:21):
a lot of people who talk about,you know, the downsides of it.
But I think the beauty of socialmedia is that you can directly
connect, or try to directlyconnect, with the people that
you admire, the content that youknow, that you that they create,
that you consume.
I am curious. So are you stilldoomsday prepping?
I am, as a matter of fact. Infact, think about the world

(01:21:45):
we're in right now. Think aboutthe news every day, drones. I
was also asked on Twitter to askyou about the drones. Well,
here's the funny thing about thedrones. I'm all over the news
all day, mostly on social media.
Anymore, I get better news fromx than I get from anywhere
anymore. I used to use a newsaggregator to kind of do my show
prep. Now I use X. I've got itset up so it pulls in all the

(01:22:07):
stuff I want to see.
But if you look around at wherewe are today. Now this drone
thing, I don't know why, but assoon as it started, I did not
read the articles. I was seeingthe headlines, so I knew there
was something going on and Iwould see these videos, but I

(01:22:29):
wouldn't even really payattention to the videos.
And I don't know why I did this,but I started watching
the reaction that people werehaving. Rather, I was paying
attention to the people andtheir reactions, not the story.
So I know nothing. I don't knowany of the details I and I've
purposely ignored it. And it waswild, because just a couple days

(01:22:51):
ago, you could watch thePresident talk about it, the
military talk about it, thegovernment talk the governor
talk about it. You could seethese videos that they were
analyzing. And then there wasyet this whole group that was
saying, there are no drones.
They're just they're airplanes,they're just stars. You guys are
idiots there. And I'm looking atthis going, Are you kidding me?
We can't even agree whetherthere's drones there at all. It

(01:23:13):
was so bizarre to watch this. Soanybody who says they know
what's, I mean, the last twotheories I've seen is we're
searching out a dirty bomb, orsome sort of they're trying to
sniff for radioactive material,or it's Chinese spy drones. But
yet, we still don't know.

(01:23:36):
Yeah, I saw all the it's funnybecause, you know, sort of the
UFOs, UAPs, like the, that'swhere it kind of, I guess it the
drones are kind of a, you know,I guess a segment of that
overall debate. And when thegovernment is denying that UFOs
exist, or UAPs exist, then, youknow, my mindset is, I don't

(01:24:00):
believe you, but now that thegovernment is saying that they
do exist, I'm looking at itlike, I don't believe
well, here's the thing, if theycome out today and tell us what
this is, nobody's going tobelieve them. I mean, I still
got to go to work tomorrow.
Yeah, exactly. Somebody I washaving a conversation with on x
and they were at the airport,and their flight was delayed

(01:24:22):
because of drone activity at theairport. They were going to she
left and went and got on atrain. He's traveling from the
west coast the east coast on atrain. Today, she was even live
streaming, you know, goingthrough Glacier National Park on
a train because she didn't wantto get on the plane.

(01:24:45):
So yes, I'm still prepping. Andyou know, we used to look at the
preppers as the lunatics.
It's kind of the opposite. Now,if you're not prepping, you're
the crazy one, right? That's toyour own demise. You're not,
yeah.
Landing, yeah, you know, the theidea is, there's lots and lots
of things we could need toprepare for, and many of them

(01:25:09):
look like they're biggerpossibilities now than they've
ever been. You know, we couldhave an EMP from somebody like
Iran or North Korea or China.
We could have. They could attackthe electrical through the
through the they could attackthe grid through the internet.
They've already done it. We knowthat every one of those

(01:25:30):
countries has already gainedaccess to our utility systems
through the internet, and weknow what we're capable of. We
shut down the entire Iraniannuclear program through the
internet.
It that could all be done to usnow. And you know where, where I
talk about it more,and sometimes we'll get on the

(01:25:51):
topic of just be totallyprepared, like I'm about as
prepared as I could possibly be.
I bought a homestead.
It's in the National Forest. Imean, there are reasons it's got
a creek running through it. Imean, I I love that lifestyle,
but I also feel like I'm prettywell prepared. I can go hide out
for quite a while out there. Buthere's where I talk about it

(01:26:14):
more. I talk about it more indrivers who are 1000s of miles
away from their home all thetime, and all it takes is
there's so many ways our cellphone systems could go down.
They're really vulnerable now.
You can't even talk to yourfamily at home. Imagine what
that's going to be like. Thebanking system goes down and all

(01:26:34):
you're carrying your creditcards. You can't get fuel, you
can't get food, you're 1000miles away from home. What are
you going to do? So I reallyfocus what I've learned in all
these years of kind of, for me,it's a hobby. I have fun with
it. I mean, I enjoy doing itbecause I like food and, you
know, being self sufficient,gardening and hunting and all

(01:26:55):
that stuff anyway. So this isjust a good fit for me. I
started teaching drivers topressure canned meat, because
it's a great way to have good,nutritious food on the truck.
It's also a great way to put acouple of years worth of food
aside,and it's not all that expensive.
You go buy the meat on sale. Youcan it yourself. It lasts for
years. So I took a lot of theseskills that I've learned and

(01:27:17):
started applying it to if you'regoing to be gone and potentially
1000s of miles away from home,you might want to think about
some of these things. You shouldhave. Mean, I wouldn't announce
it, but I guess I'm announcingit. I don't travel anymore with
usually about less than $5,000in cash, just in case, just in
case, if banking systems godown. You're screwed. Just think

(01:27:41):
about even three days. You'reyou're out in a truck, you're
sitting in a truck stop, youhave no cash. The banking system
goes down. And let's say it'sonly three days you're screwed.
You're three days of sitting inyour truck. And I hope you have
a little bit of food in there,or you're going to be really
hungry too. So I do talk to himabout taking, you can't really

(01:28:01):
carry a ton of water, but wewhat you can carry are good
water filters, a life straw. Alife straw, you could suck that
nasty water right out of thetruck stop mud puddle and drink
it. I mean, I know,I know it is, but you know that,
but I that's the kind of stuff Itry to get them to be aware of.
You know, do you have some sortof a plan at home if this

(01:28:25):
happens? And that's, that's oneof the most difficult
communications and the solutionjust isn't simple. I mean, you
got to kind of get a ham radiolicense and carry around a
portable am radio and, I mean,there are ways to solve it, but
I try to at least get them tounderstand you could be in a
place and you might only bethere for a couple days, but it

(01:28:48):
could get really miserable ordangerous.
I am. I'm not very politicalwhen it comes to lobbying and
that kind of stuff. I'll talkabout politics, but I'm not into
lobbying. I don't see it doing awhole lot of good if I were ever
going to lobby for a law intrucking, and I wish we would
just get it nationwide anyway. Ithink

(01:29:10):
anybody with a CDL should alsobe allowed to get a nationwide
concealed carry permit.
It's insane as a driver tryingto figure out what all the rules
are in all the different states.
And the problem is, and peopleask me this question all the
time, do you know all the rulesaround the country when you
travel? And I'll tell them no,and I don't want to know, here's
why, because I'm going to breakthem anyway. If they tell me I

(01:29:31):
can't carry in thisjurisdiction, I'm still going to
carry. So I don't need to knowthe rules, because I'm not going
to follow and I'll just take mychances. The sad part is, if I
ever get caught breaking therules, then I lose the right to
carry the weapon completely.
So we just need a better law. Iwish we would just have a
nationwide concealed carry foreverybody, drop all the state

(01:29:55):
stuff, but if not for everybody,I think CDL holders should be
able to have that option.
Yeah, especially if you are, youknow, to your
to your point, not even reallydoomsday prepping, but it could
be your own personal doomsdaythat someone is trying to rob
you, or, you know, break intoyour truck or steal your stuff,
and you need some way to protectyourself. And yeah, and yeah, so

(01:30:18):
that when we talk about theprepping, I really focus more on
helping drivers prep in theirtruck. And it's shocking how
many of them said, you know, Inever thought about that.
Imagine what it'd be like. Cellphone system goes now you can't
even call home.
Yeah. So, okay, so water, youhave to have some kind of water
filtration, some kind of weapon,cash, and then that's probably,

(01:30:42):
would you add any more to maybe,like a top a top five, yeah,
what we call and what I have inall of my vehicles, and I care a
Get Home Bag.
What if we actually had an EMPand the vehicles are just toast.
Now, what are you going to do?
So I have probably one of thebiggest tactical backpacks I can

(01:31:06):
get that.
I've got probably a month'sworth of pemmican in there for
food, and I have tents andthermal blankets and six ways to
start a fire and three ways topurify water, and, you know,
emergency stuff and rope and allthose things that, you know, if
I had to survive and startwalking somewhere, I could do

(01:31:29):
it, you know, the rightclothing, depending on the time
of year, that kind of thing. SoI really do try to cover all all
the possibilities that couldhappen. And you know how I look
at this? I look at it likeinsurance. I hope I never have
to use it, but when it happens,I will be prepared.

(01:31:49):
And that's a because I have abug out bag and just in my room,
and I don't the next on the listis getting the Get Home bag in
the car, just to make sure thatI have, you know, some extra
things on me. Here's, here's agreat idea, one year for
Christmas, everybody on myChristmas list got to get home

(01:32:10):
back Oh, that's super smart.
Yeah,next year's next year, because
by the time people listen tothis, that could be your
Christmas present shopping isdone during the month of
January, because that's whatwe're gonna be hearing this
episode. And you know what?
Everybody I gave them to lovedit. They're like, Oh my god,
this is so cool. I would havenever thought about this, but

(01:32:31):
you just, you show them there'sall this stuff, you throw it in
the trunk and you forget aboutit. Well, I do have a funny
story around that, because I notlast year, I had a white
elephant gift exchange with abunch of my girlfriends, and I
got one of those, you know, justsort of all in one, you know,
Bug Out Bag kits, yeah. But, youknow, of course, all the girls,
you know, they've been drinking,and so they start pulling out
all the stuff at the Get HomeBag before, you know, the

(01:32:53):
thermal blanket is being used ina non emergency situation.
You're right, yeah, no, it's agreat way to do it, give it to
everybody else as a gift.
No, I love that idea, and Ithink that this has been such a
fantastic discussion. I came inwith, like, I think I'll have
six bullet points of what Iwanted to talk about. And so

(01:33:15):
this is, these are some of myfavorite conversations, because
I don't have, like, a list ofscripted questions and things
like that. We can just talkabout, I could just mention
broker transparency, and you canjust go, so that's the beauty of
having, you know, other contentcreators on the show. So Kevin,
last few thoughts here. Anythingthat you feel is important to
mention that we haven't alreadytalked

(01:33:38):
about. Yeah, one other thing,you know, I talked about
education.
You know this better thananybody with what you do.
Business runs on relationships.
It just does whether it's arelationship with the broker,
whether it's a relationship witha carrier you might be leased
to, whether it's your shop, yourtax preparer, your financial
whoever it is, business runs onrelationships, one of the

(01:34:01):
biggest changes I've helpedpeople make. And I have a good
example, another regular caller.
I know him in person. I justhung out with him a little bit
done at nastick. He's a he's acar hauler. Started as a, as a
hot shot, a couple cars on a hotshot trailer, and failed, and

(01:34:21):
he'll admit it. He said hefailed miserably, couldn't make
any money, tried to get into thecar. Hauling wasn't doing all
that good. And then startedlistening to my show and just
doing some of the things I wassaying. And one of the things I
convinced these guys is getinvolved, go to the industry
events. And I don't just meanthe truck shows like Louisville

(01:34:41):
and Walcott. That's where youtend to see the owner operators.
How many conferences do you goto, like f3
or where it's it's brokers, it'sadmin, it's tech. You don't see
single truck owner operators atthose places, f3 this last
couple of years.
Probably has done a better job.
And that's Craig being on X,inviting all those guys, you see

(01:35:03):
it, and not with a lot of them.
They were great, exactly. Andwhen they go to these events at
the first they're like, this isincredible. I get to talk to
Craig, or I get to talk to thatguy. So Mark started doing that,
and he started even going tospecialized like little car
hauler events that, and he'd bethe only single truck guy in

(01:35:27):
there, and he'd be i truck stopdid a an event called connected,
and it was mostly for brokers.
And I said, Hey, why don't werun a parallel track with owner
operators, and I'll teach it,and we'll get owner operators
and brokers there together. Andthat was kind of the start of
this movement. Now we have thebroker carrier conference. I do
a show called broker Connect.

(01:35:49):
That was kind of the start ofit. We only had like 20 owner
operators there. There wasprobably 1000 people at the
conference. Those guys were likethe stars. Every broker there
wanted to find those guys andtalk to them. That's awesome.
And I said, should go to your gojoin your state Trucking
Association. Go to these events.
Mark was showing me his profitand loss statement at the event.

(01:36:14):
Most people would agree, we'vebeen at the bottom of the market
this year, right? I would hopeso Mark. Mark's having his best
year ever. Revenue wise, he's20% above any other year he's
ever had. That's awesome. But hebut he made connections. He
built relationships. He he, hehas a relationship with his

(01:36:34):
insurance broker. I mean,virtually everybody that he
needs to help him run hisbusiness. He took the time to
say, I'm gonna go meet them andsit down and talk to him. That's
awesome.
Education is so important. And Ithink as we sort of, we kicked
off the show with talking aboutdiets. And I think, you know, a

(01:36:55):
stronger focus maybe should beon the educational diet as well,
of what you're watching, whatyou're reading, what you're
listening to, and is it? Is itfeeding you and your business
and your family and yourpersonal life, and if it's not,
get rid of it. Blythe, how? Howcrazy would it be for you if you

(01:37:15):
could afford to either read orlisten to audio books for 60
hours every week. I would loveit. That's the that's the
opportunity they have 60 hours.
They complain that's not enough.
They want to work more hoursthan that, but they're working
60 hours a week. They can listenthat entire time. You could

(01:37:37):
easily consume three to fourbooks a week.
Yeah, and that's what I did whenI drove. There was always a book
when I was driving, always,well, well, speaking of
listening to shows and watchingshows, where can folks, you
know, follow you and follow allof the educational content that
you're putting out? You know,join let's truck, do all of that

(01:37:59):
good stuff. Really, everything'sat let's truck.com, I mean, we
have other sites, buteverything, you can find
everything from there our showschedules there, you can find
the links to download our app,to listen to the show, so that's
really where they should go. Andthen you can always look me up
on x because I'm on there mostof the day. That's awesome.
Yeah, I have a post it. Of allof the good stuff that you said,

(01:38:22):
all the different timestamps ofthe good stuff that you said,
and it is filled so I Kevin, Iappreciate you coming back on.
Appreciate you sharing so muchof your time. We're at, you
know, almost an hour and 40minutes here, and you've been
talking all day. And I know, Iknow you got other things to do
so deeply appreciate your timeand sharing all of your
insights. And thank you so muchfor coming on the show. Well,

(01:38:45):
you're welcome. I always enjoyit, and I do have some really
important stuff. I was serious.
I'm gonna go take a nap.
Well, I feel fired up now. Guy,no, we joked earlier, before we
started hitting record that, youknow, we both needed to go take
a nap. But now I go, fired up,I'm gonna go, No, I'm gonna
relax.

(01:39:05):
Thanks for having me. I alwaysenjoy it, and I'll come back
anytime you want. Heck yes,awesome. I'm gonna take you up
on that. So hopefully we'll seeeach other in person again here
soon at a conference in 2025 butthank you again. This was great.
You're welcome, and hopefully wemake trucking a little bit
greater again in 2025 that's thepoint.

(01:39:30):
I hope you enjoyed this episodeof everything is logistics, a
podcast for the thinkers infreight, telling the stories
behind how your favorite stuffand people get from point A to
B. Subscribe to the show, signup for our newsletter and follow
our socials over at everythingis logistics.com
and in addition to the podcast,I also wanted to let you all
know about another company Ioperate, and that's digital

(01:39:51):
dispatch, where we help youbuild a better website. Now, a
lot of the times we hand thistask of building a new website
or refreshing a current one.
And off to a co worker's child,a neighbor down the street or a
stranger around the world, whereyou probably spend more time
explaining the freight industrythan it takes to actually build
the dang website. Well, thatdoesn't happen at Digital

(01:40:13):
dispatch. We've been buildingonline since 2009 but we're also
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your digital ecosystem on astrong foundation. Until then, I

(01:40:59):
hope you enjoyed this episode.
I'll see you all real soon andgo jags. You.

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