Episode 152 - Safety First and Learning from History

Music.

What's up, JFW family? Welcome back to the Channel 23 podcast. The purpose of this podcast is to reach out and touch the fleet, to engage and inform everyone with all things JFW. Man, the room feels empty today because we had JR with us last week. That was five. And the week before, we broke the record with the amount of seats in here with the CDL 303 guys here with six people. So back to the small crew here. Well, welcome, Jim White, Brother Dave White, and Super Dave.

Glad to be back, Jim. Good morning, team. Love the intimate setting. Yes, it's quiet. These Wednesdays can't come soon enough. They seem like they come very fast. Happy podcast day, everybody. Yeah, absolutely. If you're driving around town or you're on a treadmill in the gym, why don't you stop what you're doing and join us for the pledge. Don't stop in the middle of the road, though. Pull over. Right. Just say it with us. You don't have to stop what you're doing. Just say it with us.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and the two-word republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I just want to wish Jason Gamage some condolences for him and his family for the loss of his stepfather before we get into the truck of prayer. I know that's got to be tough. Thoughts are with you, Jason. Yep. Absolutely. Father God, we thank you for the opportunity to go out and do some trucking today.

We pray for the safety of our fleet, all of their families, and all the other families and individuals we come across on the road today. We pray for the patience and the making of good, safe decisions. We pray to be accident-free, and that we all make it back to the comforts of our homes this evening. We pray for healing and 100% recovery for all of our family members that are ill. No matter what, we trust you, God, and it's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen. Hey, speaking about 100% recovery, Rico Christensen's back. He is. Isn't that awesome? That is a 100% recovery. Yep. Yeah, and he was stopped by the office last night, chatted with me, and he said he thought he would be a little more tired, but he said a couple of days feels good. He says his energy is actually coming back. That's awesome. That's good. He'll feel better and better.

Yep. Lose it or lose it. Well, I tell you what a road he's traveled, and he's come out on top, And a true survivor, true winner. Yeah. You know, he's got to feel great. Yep. You know, and then in Rico fashion, he had to talk about his bowels. Right. And I was like, you know, Rico, when are you going to learn that's too much information? I don't care if you have to run to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Yeah.

He was talking about it. I was expecting something. I haven't even had cancer and I have to run to the bathroom in the middle of the night sometimes. Are you kidding me? I think it's like his number one fear. You know, he beat cancer, but he sure as hell isn't going to poop his pants. That's funny. As a reminder, anything you hear on today's podcast is just the opinion of the men in this room or our expressed opinion. Episode 151, 296 downloads. We're at 82,000 total downloads and 634 followers.

Nice. So Bella makes up her own jokes.

Some of them are good. some of them aren't so hot this one's not bad, she says she says what does one cat say to the other cat if that cat's checking them out and looking at them weird. Are you checking me out? That's awesome. That is so good. That is so good. She's a trip. And then I got one more, guys. This isn't really a joke, but the fact that Keith Richards has outlived Richard Simmons really makes me question this eating healthy and exercising. Touche.

That's good. It's time for the Die Joke Challenge. What do you got, man? Well, everybody knows the best time on the clock is 6.30, hands down. Boom. Boom. Hands down. That is a good one. And then Holly said I should do some lunges to stay in shape. I said that would be a huge step. Ah. Bada. Bada. Man, I was struggling so bad for jokes this morning. I was on highs and lows

this morning already. It's been two hours of a roller coaster for me for some reason, but I finally just went and printed, like I found a page and printed them off. So I'm just going to read them. Great. Otherwise, the two that I have are totally politically incorrect. Charged. Like they are. They must be good. They are pretty good, but they're like, I truly think the one I could offend some people. Good. I'll bow out. It's not my expressed opinion. I'll just bow out. And we'll be right back.

All right so what did one hat say to the other top of the day to you you wait here i'll go on ahead, and i i should have known that i've i've read that one before yeah i've actually told that one on the show but it was years ago what did the shark say when he ate the clownfish, this one's pretty obvious that's funny that's excellent i've never heard that one No, that's a good one. You guys will get this one. Why did the frog take the bus to work today?

Oh, his car was towed. Exactly. Oh, good one. Touche, Jim. I knew you'd get it. I did kind of like this one. And I don't know if you'd get this or not. I don't know. It's obvious, obviously, when you get it, right? So what did the, what do you call a train carrying bubble gum? Choo-choo. Choo-train. Choo-choo train. Choo-choo train. Exactly, exactly. And then this one's just kind of a dumb one, so I'm going to finish with it. What do you call a can opener that doesn't work? A can opener. Bingo.

Nice job, guys. All right, let's get to the good ones. All right, this one's good. Did you know there are three types of people in the world? There's only two, Dave. Sorry. Those who can count and those who can't. I like that. All right. One more for everybody. Did you hear about the guy who invented the knock-knock jokes? No, this has got to be an obvious one like I just did. Yeah, he won the Nobel Prize. Nobel Prize. Nice. All right.

New employees. We got Valentino Barry and not such a new employee, but a new driver, Dustin Romero Jr. Nice. Yeah, welcome, you guys. Dustin's dream finally came true. Yep. He is.

Been talking about it for years. transferred from the mechanics division to the driving division very cool so he's he's gone through the whole gamut he started in the wash bay then went to diesel school went into the shop then got his license yeah went to cdl school and yeah he's gonna start in a truck he actually started his free labor for dustin senior right yeah yeah riding around in the truck since he He was little. Dustin probably made him do all sorts of things.

Yeah, we got a shovel around the nose. Here you go, son. Right? Here's the shovel. Didn't that trail the boy?

Celebrations, anniversaries, work anniversaries. We have none. So I don't know what you were doing this time of the year, every year for the last 20 or 30 years. Super day. Me neither, because this is usually a busy time. It is kind of weird. That would be ironic because if he always took a vacation this week every year, you know what I mean? Or the week, yeah. That would make sense. Absolutely. We do have a big anniversary, though, and that is Kathy Rutherford.

She just celebrated 16 years of marriage this past Sunday, the 29th. Nice. Congratulations, Kathy. Congratulations, Kathy. Amazing, Kathy. Wonderful. Yep. Birthdays, we got Dale Boyce, Mike Cisneros, and Nelson Rivera all have birthdays today. Yeah. Happy birthday. All today, too. Yeah, yeah, on today. So happy birthday. Yep. And they're all the same age?

38 yeah 29 you look good i i confirmed that with nelson this morning they're old, and i'm old too so i'm not really putting them down but i gotta tell a cute little story on dale oh yeah he was looking out for a sunday he was running coors delivering some preloads, and i've been working on an old pickup jim actually jim has been working on my old pickup. We got it running enough that i could drive it but it's all full of like spare parts in the back right?

So driving it, you can't really drive it unless, so big, long story short, ran down to the shop here, stored all the stuff in the shed, unloaded the truck. And I happened to notice Dale had fueled a truck and he was pulling out of the fuel aisle. I pulled up and backed up to the shed and opened up the door and was unloading stuff. And the next thing I know, my, my phone buzzed in my pocket and I pulled it out.

It was Dale sending a text to Jim and I, and it was a picture of the truck and the shed open and he goes hey i don't know if you know these people but there's someone here should this guy be here oh yeah we know him and the funny part was is it was like it was almost a covert picture like he took it from hiding behind the dumpster yeah he wanted he wanted to catch him it's like no he shouldn't be there and dale was gonna get him it was cute i replied like it's me brother dave dale

so that truck used to be the truck that was It was stored in the shed, right? Yeah. Okay, that's a truck. Yeah. So what'd you do? You put a new engine in it?

Uh-huh and then some jam yeah it's a work in progress okay i mean what's the ultimate goal what's uh to make it drive but yeah make it drive away i think i'm struggling no i don't know well you are cleaning house you've been getting rid of a lot of stuff i'm for simplifying my life anymore yeah it all started when you got rid of sam that's right yeah yeah yeah let's see here family birthday celebrations.

Man, I miss these last week, but Tony Martinez' son Alonzo and Jeff Soto's daughter both had birthdays last Friday. Jeff, I didn't write down your daughter's name. I'm sorry. And then Frank's wife, Lori McCoy, she had a birthday Sunday. Nelson Rivera's wife, Colleen, had a birthday Monday. Steve Barnes' son Gavin and Gheorghe's son Nicholas had birthdays on Monday.

Chili Dog's daughter, Sammy, has a birthday day tomorrow and she was by here last week if you guys didn't see her she's funny we still missed them both last week we started a band did you yeah me and sammy what's the name of it she called us a lightning rock stars or something i can't remember some creative little girl name and then john dean's wife monique she has a birthday this friday wow fantastic happy birthday yeah happy Happy birthday, everybody.

So it's like birthday week at Nelson's house, right? Yeah. And his wife also. Yeah. Wendy and him today. Kind of convenient. Like go out for your birthdays on the weekend, right? No doubt. Yeah. Tara Wright, we want to thank you for your thank you card. Or thank you text. She sent Joanna thank you text. Oh, nice. That's nice. Yeah. That is very nice. Want to give a shout out to Ray Davis for jumping on a night course last minute the other day. So good job, Ray. Thanks, Ray, Ray.

Also, keep Ray in your prayers. He's sick and he's not doing so hot. I think he said he thinks he has COVID. Oh, man. That's going around. It is going around. Yeah. That being said, there's no tips and tricks from Ray Davis this week. Yeah. I think I've got COVID right now. Yeah, you do. Psychosis. Yes, COVID psychosis. I have long COVID.

That means like i had covet and i have the after effects i do like i can't remember things and my nose runs and i can't taste and i was getting nervous this time of year to get covered just because of my own troop coming up right every year it's just like we're gonna get sick i hope i don't get sick like right that's when you get sick right well agree about it if i was gonna get sick i need to get sick like right now,

it's a timed thing now i mean if it's gonna happen or it's gotta wait till november, one or the other i don't have time to get sick that's right don't don't be shaking anybody's hand you know keep your distance from everybody wash your own hands a lot yeah usually you wash somebody else's why wash your own.

I know linda was sick last week and then holly's been sick for a week and i said do you think it's coven she goes does it matter right yeah i mean i've i felt funny a few times in the last few weeks where it's like oh that's really weird the way i'm feeling who knows what that is yeah that's what me and super dave just talked about it a couple weeks ago he's like do you think i do you think you get coven you don't even know because it's you just you're

off a little bit and who knows yeah i totally think so, Because people don't check anymore. They just say, well, I've got a cold. And the COVID isn't near what it was at the beginning. You're just basically suffering from flu symptoms, fatigue, headache, congestion. No doubt. I want to give a shout out to Uriel Salas. Yesterday, or maybe the day before, I seen him parking 001. And man, he wasn't too sure. I watched him get out and look. He had a lot of room.

And man, he backed his thing up. No pull-ups. I went over, gave him a spot, but he was being super careful, and I just appreciate it. It's good to see somebody getting out and look and just wanting to do a good job. It is. That's outstanding. Yeah, that is outstanding. It's very good, and 001 is no picnic, right? And to hit it with no pull-ups, I mean, that's always impressive. Yeah. Because I'm a pull-up. I love pull-ups. I just pull up all the time.

I pull up 15 times when you pull up one time. You know and then dustin romero wants to give a shout out to dustin romero jr he says congratulations son it feels good to watch you chase your dreams and achieve your goals that is good i was very well i've got very well said i've got a diaper joke because you're talking about pull-ups okay you know so my daughter's gonna have a baby in a little over two weeks and jackie said here go on to Amazon and buy some diapers for Sarah. I was like, okay.

And her, her baby's a little bit small. That's just, she's a higher risk pregnancy because she's 36 years old. And so I was looking through these preemie diapers, right? Cause they're going to actually induce her like three weeks early. And, uh, don't know the difference. I saw this little blue green package that said pamper swaddlers and i'm like okay swaddler that's got to be for a small baby so i bought it.

Aren't those like the canvas diapers or something no it's this little thing you wrap around the baby so jackie got it yesterday while i was at work and she sets it right on the table and i get home she's like dave look what you bought and i'm like well so what it's swaddlers right picture so i looked at the picture and his baby's all wrapped up in this little blanket thing and i'm like well that's what you get when you ask me to

buy diapers right right you guys didn't return those did you i'm sure you could use them no she's just gonna give them to sarah but she got on and ordered diapers of course yeah worked out good for the baby there's just some things men in shouldn't do right right that's one thing yep large is another just.

Case he wants to give a shout out to grisbeam for to chris beam for helping don out last week, Don Keller had to swap the blue gland hand with the red gland hand to get the truck and Don back to the yard. It was Don's last load and his red gland hand broke on the trailer. So thanks, Chris. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, and it was. That's a little truck trickery trick. It is. It was pretty impressive because I started to explain to Don what to do with the airlines.

And then Don corrected me and informed me that, listen, it wasn't the airline that broke. It was the glad hand itself broke off of the trailer. So Chris was, Chris not only did the trick I was talking about, but actually swapped the air, you know, had to swap the glad hand, took it off the service side, ran home with no service breaks, which no big deal. Pinch the line, you're empty. Yeah, you're empty, right? Yep, no doubt. For sure.

I want to give a personal shout out to Special Youth Challenge Ministries. We talked about a little bit last week.

What a great ministry. street these guys take you know special needs children hunting you know so the kids are between 12 and 17 years old they either have you know physical or mental handicaps that or challenges i should say not even handicaps but they're just challenged and what a great group of caring sincere genuine people and the kids you know aka the hunters no complaints from the kids and then just the volunteers were amazing it was just really good fellowship i feel like i got more

than I gave, you know. Isn't that awesome? It was just such a blessing to be there. So, you know, if you want to get involved next year, if you are an experienced hunter or not even experienced hunter, but you like to serve other people and help, we can figure out a way for you to do that. Just get with me towards, I'm sure I'll be talking about it a lot next year, but they'll be looking for more volunteers.

And they do a fundraiser. I think they did, you know, a shotgun thing or whatever they call it, skeet or clays, or they did one of those things this year and you know raised a decent amount of money for the for the foundation so very cool that's awesome yep and, Jam, when we were talking, you mentioned aren't a lot of the kids terminal? Yeah, so, you know, this group specifically, a lot of the kids have muscular dystrophy Duchenne's, and that's like a degeneration of your muscles.

I guess you start losing, like, I don't know, your ability to use your muscles. So, you know, when they meet these kids, they're walking, and then the next year they might be like in a manual wheelchair.

Wheelchair there was one kid there this year was his first year in an electric wheelchair then there was a couple kids that have aged out you know and they're like in the even bigger wheelchairs that tilt back and you know change positions and yeah they only live to their late 20s early 30s and you know the kids the kids are aware of this too they're the kids are sharp you know when you think about these challenges these kids i mean they they are mentally they're sharp

as a tack you know what i mean and yeah you know just seeing them you know three out of the five kids got bucks and you know just seeing how happy they are and such a cool thing you know they killed more bucks than i have this year so far so yeah i guess when you made the comment that's what i wanted to touch upon jam is that they're they're they're aware of their future yeah and they their future hopefully is bright for the short period but it's not it's not very long no

you know and and what they have to overcome, you know.

When we when we get the complaints we get around here sometime high society problems yeah right right first world it's such great perspective for me jam i've been on a roller coaster like i said this morning just dealing with stupid stuff and it is truly just stupid stuff you know when you step back and realize what these guys are facing right you know it's it's good good perspective you have to put your chin up and be like life's pretty good yeah and

then there was a couple other of the kids there there was two brothers there they lost their dad this year you know to to alcoholism i believe you know so you know it was just good to have them out and for them to you know be you know surrounded by love and just people that care about them and then the hunter that we had it was actually a 16 year old girl her brother had the muscular dystrophy to shane's and like her life is like taking care of her brother you know she's such

a good sister like the brother's her best friend and they're writing a book together and like most of her friends are also in wheelchairs because she's with her brother so much those are his friends you know what i mean and like she just gets a shoot you know she just gets forgotten about a little bit you know what i mean and it seemed like there might have been some mental health stuff going on there a little bit so to be able to get her and like you know the attentions on her

and you know she's being served it was just an honor to be part of that yeah yeah so check it out if you guys want to. Check it out just go to uh syccolorado.com and that's special youth challenges colorado.com and they're nationwide each state not every state but iowa has one i think other other states have them is it syc or snc sy but it's special youth oh special youth yeah special youth challenges okay colorado yeah so you guys have any shout outs.

I do. I have a couple. I got to give a shout out to Rich Trimble. He's been on the show before. Our buddy, you know, that works at, worked at Garney and I was talking to him last week about some other stuff and he gave me a pretty good pep talk. He said, I listened to last week's podcast. He goes, man, it was rough, you know, about the accident and stuff. And it was just a really good compliment.

He, he, you know, let us know that God, he said every time I see a JFW truck out there on the road, he said, you guys are doing it right. And he goes, I see him everywhere. wear. So he said, you had an accident, get back up on the horse, keep on going. You know, he said nothing was malicious about the accident. It truly was an accident, you know, and it was just a good, it was a good, it felt good. It was a good pep talk. And he's just such a good leader. It felt good to hear, you know,

from a guy like that. So thanks Rich, appreciate that. And then I have another one for Sam.

He's been listening to the podcast while he's riding his bikes on Saturday, day since he's still not fully in the active in the pool with his two shoulder surgeries shout out to you sam you had a great ride it sounds like saturday did 30 miles and you know met met the constraints of what he what he had and been listening to the podcast so good plug for you sam keep grinding buddy i appreciate you that's great yep so he just had to find other ways to stay in shape and keep his cardio up yeah

yeah he's he's in the pool he's on a kickboard He's kicking, but still no shoulder use until the 1st of November, you know, and. He does, Jam, and it's going to be a slow, gradual increase once they allow him to start using the shoulders. What I mean by push is he's wired to push. Yes. So he can't push in the pool. Did he just go out and buy a bike and be like, I'm pushing? He's had a bike, and that was part of his deal. I mean, I kind of laugh because

he's, like you said, Jam, he's wired to push. Right. So he was running. He got shin splints. Jeez. You know, because he was. Running's bad for you. He's like stroking out, you know, five, six minute miles on stuff. And I mean, he's. Yeah, that's cooking. He doesn't do anything slow. Right. As far as that competition. He's a competitor and I'm proud of him for that. That's good. It's how he's wired and that's what's made him who he is. And that's how he's become successful.

Awesome. Good job, Sam. Yeah. Appreciate that. Any shout outs, Jim? Yeah. I want to give one quick shout out because it was a shout out to all of us. So I got an email from Joseph Johnson with Comerica Bank, goes by JJ, and he said he wanted to contact us as a business contact to possibly do business with us. But as he was going through our website, he seen the podcast and listened to it. And he just said that he wanted to commend us because we were entertaining, well-spoken, and down to earth.

And I just wanted to tell him, JJ, if you listen to another one, glad to hear that. Hopefully we can, we can, uh, make contact, but it's nice to hear that, you know, a total stranger, you know, and obviously he wants to do business with us, that kind of stuff. But, you know, take the time and listen to the podcast. That's, yeah. Clearly he was talking about you three. Not me. You could tell it was thought out because he said we had a good format.

You know what I mean? Which we've worked on for a long time. Right. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's, you know, when you, all of us have dealt with, I mean, he's a banker. I mean, he's trying to promote his business and stuff like that. But instead of somebody comes in here and goes, oh, so what do you do? You know, when they try to, people try to sell you things or talk to you and you're like, what do you do? And I'm like, you don't know anything about us and you're here.

And, you know, JJ took the time to learn about us and that's important. Also, JJ, we like crumble cookies. Wow. Or what was it? Parlor donuts? Yeah, parlor donuts. Yeah. Too funny. Just kidding.

There was a girl that came in i should say a lady that came in for you yesterday from from penske you know is dave here you got an appointment no you know and i almost threw the crumble cookies out of it i just felt like i couldn't stay serious enough for long enough you know i was gonna tell her oh i thought you was a crumble cookie delivery because Because Ryder's here with a meeting. Wow. I just couldn't pull it off, man. That's funny.

Soup, any shout outs? Nope. I got no shout outs today. I didn't know it.

Oh, wait a minute. I got a shout out for the wash bay. Oh, cool. Yeah. I've got a bet of a hundred bucks that somebody bet me they couldn't wash 10 trucks a night all week this week. So 50 trucks come Friday night and I bet a hundred bucks that they could. And I told him if I win that bet, I'll buy pizzas for the wash bay. Wait, so I'm confused. You bet $100 that they can't. That they can. That they can. So if they do it, they get $100? No, no, I bet somebody else.

Somebody else is like, they can't do it. You're going to. I'm like, I'll bet you $100 they can. Got it, got it. So I win the $100 because they wash 10 trucks a night this week. You're buying pizza. I'm buying pizza for them. Got it. So you threw the challenge out to him. I went right in there Monday night and said, I got a hundred bucks riding on you guys. Don't let me down. Right. I'll buy you a $2 slice.

All right. Well, we did bring up the accident from last week, you know, but we want to give you an update. So one thing we found out is the girl in car number two did not break her leg, which is great news. It was just bruised very badly, but I got to tell you, this guy Jim Pinchot from Denver, Boulder. Denver Boulder Collision, I think it's called. He went to her house, you know, to check on her and see what was going on.

And, you know, the mom answered the door and he had a good conversation with her. You know, the mom and the daughter and the daughter just wants to get back to work. She's a florist at King Soopers or something like that or Walmart. Walmart, I think it was. I can't really remember. But, yeah. So, no broken leg there, just bruised. That was a huge relief to hear. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? And even our driver, you know, both you and I.

Yeah, it was funny. We didn't talk about it, Jan, but you were savvy enough like immediately after you told me. Yeah, same with you. Like this is something he should know. Well, it took a couple hours to sit in. Like I'm so relieved. And then I was like, I need to let him know, you know. And then when I did and he said you'd called, I was like, oh, that's cool. Yeah, you just know because I was there when the cop told him like, well, I have to write you a ticket for

careless resulting in bodily injury because she broke a leg. And he was like, what? She broke a leg? Like that was like news, you know what I mean? Right, right. You know, because the cop was like, otherwise I would just give you like a proper lane change or something like that. Sure. So to hear that she didn't break a leg was very good. But I will tell you on the flip side, because I did log in this morning, I was asked, nothing changed, but right now the reserves are up to $37,500.

You know, that's, you know, the property damage and bodily injuries. Pretty low amount right now as it builds. But to think we're already to that point, you know, 37,000 already, so. Yeah, it happens quick. Yeah, the stuff's expensive. Anything else you guys want to talk about that, on that accident? You mean about the injuries or the accident? The accident. You want to discuss, wasn't it, I mean. Yeah, I just, you know, we sat down with the driver and we went over the accident the next morning.

And, you know, we sit there and we watch those videos, right? And everything you have 2020, we always say this, you have 2020 vision after the accident or when you're reviewing it as we can rewind it and play it and rewind it and play it, right? You can sit there and criticize the heck out of yourself, or we can criticize that person. And that's never the intent. I hope no one leaves those meetings thinking we were there to criticize you.

We're there to coach you. And the big thing we promote is we're there to coach you, to help educate you, for you to help educate others. And we had a couple things going against us, and these are no excuses. This is just the facts, you know, and the owner, the owner, the driver owned. It, you know, and, and took full responsibility, but, you know, we were eastbound at, you know, this time of the morning, seven 20 ish, something like that, seven 30, wherever the time was and full

on sun just hammering us in the window. Right. And the driver had a sunglasses on, he had a ball cap on that he had pulled down. So, you know, he was, he was keeping the sun out of his eyes, you know, obviously with the bill of his hat, but limited the vision there to a degree, right? I mean, there's, there's some things that we could have done better, but those are the facts. And then I guess this is where we really preach our blind spot program is to change lanes uber slowly.

You know, we, what, what we think is slow, we almost need to slow down more, you know, And I talked about it last week and didn't have enough time to really dive into it, but I've really paid attention. And if there's any way you can take and not change lanes in under five to eight blinks. That's really pretty darn slow. You know, and, and where we hit the back of that car, when we were changing lanes, we didn't even hit it with a steer tire. We didn't hit it with the wheel.

So the, the driver never felt anything in his wheel. The, the literally the edge of that bumper, we cut that car by inches. I mean, we literally, it was a mere second or two. If, if we had another second or two, the accident wouldn't have happened. I think we'd have changed lanes and been like, whoa, there's a car and hit the brakes and slowed up. You know what I mean? So the, the, when I say slowly, the purpose of changing lanes slowly is your wheel.

You feel that right. Nine times out of 10, our, our steer tire or wheel hits that vehicle, not just the bumper, the steering wheel usually hits it as well. And the driver that gives the driver opportunity to, to scoot back like, Whoa, what was that? I hit something and pull back a little bit and hopefully not pit maneuver the car. So, you know, this was almost kind of a perfect storm. A lot of things happened during that, you know, and I hope we're not incriminating

ourselves. I'm just talking about the facts. You know what I mean? If it were to go to a court of law, these are the facts. This is what happened, right? I mean, I don't feel we did anything wrong, but we had a lot of things stacked against us. And I guess my point, this is the safety version of the purpose of this podcast cast is now we need to teach you guys to identify those moments. And what I mean by that is, okay, the sun is hammering my eyes and I need to change lanes.

I need to make not a hundred percent sure that nothing's next to me. I need to make 150% sure nothing is next to me. I need to slow my normal movements down even more to verify everything is clear of what I'm doing because Because everything is like magnified at that point, right? And, and you have more odds stacked against you.

So yeah, that's kind of my, my two cents safety speech is somehow, some way we need to help people identify when they're in that moment, because it's not a normal moment and yet we deal with it every day. Every day we're going eastbound into the sun. Every single day, you know, we're going out to the east plant. We're going out I-76. We're truck drivers. We face the sun. You know, at some point we're going to do that. And we've all been in that moment.

So, yeah, I mean, extra slow in those moments. We need to identify it. Our gut needs to be telling us, hey, slow down a little bit more. Even more, right? As far as the sun goes, there's certain times of the year the sun is just worse. Yes, totally. We're in our time. Yeah, they shut down the highway sometimes. Yeah, it's in October when they shut it down every morning. Yeah, we're in it. Yeah, like going home, that six o'clock going home, it's been brutal the last couple of weeks.

Yeah, I don't want to make excuses, Dave, because I don't think we did anything wrong, but that's what we talk about, the what if, where everything lined up. Because on top of it, that was a tiny blue car.

It was a little bitty blue car. and and that's when you talk about having to slow down and double check and 150 and you know the sun in your eyes because you might have that little bitty car that disappears in the bumper it still doesn't make it right we hit them right you know but it's i mean lined up the way the lanes came together too it's not like they were running parallel for a mile right yeah they were merging Merging together so the car was not.

The car came into the blind spot when it first appeared. Right. It wasn't already there. It wasn't next to him. It came into the blind spot. And definitely not blaming the girl in the blue car, but as experienced drivers like we are here in this room, like when we merge, we might have sped up or done something. Yeah, you just don't sit next to a big truck, our truck, any truck. Everybody should do that in their personal car. are just, if you can not do it, don't sit beside a big truck.

Right. And yeah, I know you said not blaming her at all, Jim, clearly. Right. But. She didn't know it either. Right. No. We were almost in her blind spot to a degree. Yeah. You know what I mean? Everybody, the way it came together. The way the lanes come closer together to become parallel lanes. Right. Right. You're coming from an on-ramp from another freeway and yeah, everything about it lined up. I mean, you, it was like the hands of a clock with all the gears working in

the back, everything lined up and. Yeah, Dave, I tell you, the point you made was the key. And that's identifying these situations that are difficult or not normal. Something weird is going on, like in this case, the sun and the angle and all of that. And that's something we really should play on every time we go into a situation. I like to call it in, when I'm speaking to candidates, I call it your spidey senses.

Right. When you're backing into a tight spot, when you're pulling into an unfamiliar job site or anything that's out of that ordinary, man, kick those spidey senses on and use that to be more cautious, to be more aware of what's going on around you. People, things, all these things play in. And so I think it's all about identifying these difficult moments. Yeah. Yeah. I would like to run through the safety has no blind spot campaign.

Every single driver here has either signed it or will sign it when they come on board. Before you do that, Jim, and I think that's a good idea. I do want to back up a little bit and also say, hey, listen, the vehicles we're buying too are the safest vehicles we can buy. If there's an option for safety on that truck, we've bought it. You know what I mean? It has electronic stability control, so you don't go into a corner too fast. It has electronic traction control and ABS braking.

So you're not spinning wheels in a corner or something like that. If you're on slick surfaces, it has the right hand or right side blind spotter where it should have picked up that vehicle with his blinker on and his blinker was on and it didn't see that vehicle. We have the accident mitigation on the front to avoid, you know, rear end collisions. And I mean, anything we can add to those trucks, man, we're, we buy it.

We make it available. You know what I mean? That one time that saves us, it's so worth it. It will be so worth it and we can save some lives. Yeah. You know, I guess I just wanted to emphasize that before you get into the. Absolutely. Yeah. We even talked, Dave, and it was funny, is that it was so close to missing the car. We talked that one of the Kenworths with the slanted bumper, you know, the slanted front end. We may have missed it. May have missed it. But that square bumper on that.

Yeah, it seems like it just kind of like hooked it a little bit. Yeah, totally. And it is truly from, in law enforcement and in the military and everything else, it's truly a pit maneuver. That's how you take out a car is you just tap it, but you got to be on the very back of the car. You tap it and you'll spin it out. Yeah, just so you know, the driver said he couldn't even, like, he understood, like he grasped, his words, I grasp what you guys are preaching.

I grasped the safety as no blind. Like I grasped the lane change. He says, but until you're 80,000 pounds and you pit maneuver a car and not even know it, never even felt it. He saw it. Right. You know, when the car shoots out to the left and it's like, wow, there's an accident going on around me. Oh, wow. Right. That was from me. Right. Yeah. He had no, like didn't feel a thing. Right. It was, I mean, it was textbook. It was. If you were in law enforcement, that's how you want to do it.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. And I don't think, I don't think anybody, I don't think you can imagine it until it happens to you, Jim, because you just, you don't understand that. It's, you can't comprehend it. I, I had a, I had a high school girl, I've told the story before, run into the back of the trailer as I was making a right-hand turn into one of the pits. I felt absolutely nothing. But as I finished the turn, I looked in my mirror and here's this car in pieces behind me.

And I'm like, oh my God, what, what happened? You know? And then, and then start to figure it out and go, well, I think she ran into me, you know, but never, and I was empty, never felt it. He said the same exact thing, Jim. Not that he never felt it, but the part that he never knew it. Right? Until he saw the vehicle go by on the side. Yeah, I don't think. Never felt it. And until you go through that, that was his point. And it was well, he was well-spoken. I mean, he did a nice job conveying.

It's all the size too. Remember we had that one driver that pushed the car down the road. Yes. And didn't know it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and those are the things, Dave. Hollywood. I guess that's what, you know, our insurance companies has, you know, preached to us for the years. You need to be defendable. You need to be defendable. And I guess that's the reason I'm standing here saying we have done everything in our power to be as safe as we can.

Yeah. to have that blind spotter on the side of the truck, to have the accident mitigation in the front. I mean, we should all be wearing these bracelets. I truly hope anyone who isn't wearing their bracelet, and I asked the driver about the bracelet because he didn't have it on, but he does have it right there on the dash of his truck. It is right there. You can see it right on the camera. And his point, the way he explained it is when he looks to the right, he sees that and thinks about it.

And I'm good with that. You know what I mean? If somebody doesn't want to wear a bracelet, I get it. But damn, everything in our power, you need every ounce of power you have in your being to prevent this from happening to you. And if it hasn't happened to you, number one, great. It is just fantastic. Number two, keep stepping up your safety. Don't get compliant, don't get complacent. So here, our driver said he grasped the concept.

We need to be able to make people not only grasp it, but completely understand what he went through. And like, we'll sit here and say, until you go through it, you'll never understand. But how do we get people to understand without going through it? Right. Right. Because this is something you don't want to go through to learn about. Absolutely. You know? So when you come in and you sign off on a safety as no blind spot. You know, I understand you just went through orientation.

Orientation you're in a new job and you're like yeah i'm gonna sign whatever jfw tells me to sign because i'm part of this coup now and here's a paper talking about how i should change lanes and you know what it seems like it's really slow but okay boom here's my signature and they probably don't even remember what they signed it's kind of like downloading an app on your phone you have to scroll all the way down to the bottom right click the box so you can agree

i don't ever read that shit i go right to the bottom click right let's move on yeah yeah i had to do something the other the day to fill out some paperwork on the computer. And it said, first thing is you have to watch a video, how to do it first. So I hit play, it opens up a new screen. I close that and I go back and like, it was, I already watched the video. I was like, I don't need no stinking video.

Right. But how do we get people to more than grasp the concept, you know, and we preach it and we preach it and we preach it.

But like we talk about in the interview, Super Dave, drivers make this his company safe because we could preach it all day long if you're not out there doing it we aren't safe right so we provided it day one at orientation right you've signed off on it at orientation day kendrick goes over it days two and three discusses it i i'm not sure if he plays a video on it as well too and i don't know that kendrick does i i don't know i know he shows some other stuff Oh, does he? Some other.

I know he's got his model cars and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can show a pit maneuver pretty easy with a couple of cars. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So anyway, yeah. I mean, we're how, what a. What's the next step up in that? You know, we have signs on our gate when you leave and when you come in. Yep. Safety has no blind spot. Safety has no blind spot. But what does that mean? Ray Ray talks about it every week in his tips and tricks. Yep. Except this week.

Yep. But let me read this to everybody. Sit in your stool. Don't be a fool. Yep. Look up and lean. Lean up. Yep. All that. All of it. All right. Safety has no blind spot. Like I said, these are six things that every driver signs off to if they're driving a truck here. And they get the bracelet. it. Number one, the most important one. I will change lanes like my family is in the car next to me.

Man, if you just did number one all the time, if you care about your family, you would never pit maneuver them. Number two, my turn signal will flash at least four times before changing lanes and I will leave it on until I have completed my lane change. Number three, I will look several times and make sure nothing is in my blind spot on my right front corner and side of the truck.

Number four, I will check all my mirrors, side mirror, spot mirror, hood mirror, and curb mirror before starting my lane change and then I will check them again. Number five, if I am unsure if there is a vehicle next to me, I will slow down to confirm it is safe before making my lane change. Right there. Number six, I will change lanes slowly just in case there is a car next to me to minimize the severity of a potential accident.

Then it says, I'm completely committed, devoted, invested, and engaged to changing lanes safely. I am willing to do anything to achieve a safer JFW. Safety has no blind spot and neither do I. Man, if you change lanes like that every single time.

Right i mean it's a win we've we've there i don't think there's anything else you could do to change lanes safe safer right if you did these six things so no and i i think they're jammed the the when i was talking about the realizing until you go through it you can't realize it is the damage and how easy and not feeling it but realizing that you could cause an accident i think you can grasp, Because the first one there, change lanes, like you believe your family's beside you.

If you can't grasp that concept, that's, that's you're, you're, you're missing it. You know, that's, that's, that's too important. Whether you, whether you like your family or not, you probably don't want to hurt them. I'm just visualizing this, visualizing this right now. Boom. Put my blanket on. Is my mom, is my mom over there somewhere? Right. You know, is my, is my dad. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. I don't want to, I don't want to hit my mom. I get it. You know what I mean?

Is my uncle over there? Oh, a little rub. There's my one cousin. Ate all the turkey last Thanksgiving. He still owes me $100. Anything else on the accident, guys? No, just be careful, you guys. I mean, we've been doing really well. You know, and if you believe in the jinx or not, I can knock on the table. But, you know, and, and every, all the stars lined up and we made a mistake, you know what I mean? And, and, but we can do better.

Yeah. Always. You can always do better. Absolutely. It was preventable. Absolutely. I mean, here, here's the other thing, right? Like any accident could turn into a fatal accident. Right. Yeah. You know what I mean? Knock on wood, those two other people and our driver went home that night. Right. You know what I mean? What if there was a motorcycle? What, what, what if one of the, what if the car shot out to the left and hit a motorcycle?

I mean, the first thing that went by, I don't know if you paid attention on the video. The first thing that went by as we were pulling over was a big truck. It was a van pulling a van trailer, you know, like a 48 foot van trailer. If we had pit maneuvered that girl and when she came out from in front of our bumper, it went under that trailer of the truck. Done. What would have happened? Yeah. Yeah. So. So. I guess when we think it just can't happen to me or it won't happen to me,

man, if it does, may God be with you and those people that you hit. Right. Because things could go, I mean, sometimes you look at something you can't believe the person didn't get hurt. Like that one accident on Highway 85, the guy got out. I mean, he had to go to the chiropractor. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Other times, you can't believe somebody died. Like, well, what happened? That didn't look that bad. You know what I mean? You just never know. I mean, some of it's spiritual,

but listen, man, you don't want that. You don't want that on you. Yeah. You don't want it on you. Jim, I vividly remember it probably about, well, Sam's 19 now. He was probably eight or 10. So, you know, nine, 10 years ago, he'd qualified for a trip, his first trip to senior zones out in California, and he qualified to go early. So it was him and another girl. So I volunteered as a parent to go with the coach. So it was just four of us, myself, the coach. and these two kids.

And we took a bunch of supplies out, supplies out. Cause we were going out two or three days earlier. And we had like a four hour drive from where we landed in California to where we were headed. And coach Andrew rents this little Prius. Like he was as cheap as could be. It was the cheapest car. We shove all this gear in there and we're like shoved against each other. And we had a lot of time to kill in that little car, right. With two kids and listening to music and drive for four hours.

And he goes, so, so Dave, just walk me through your day. What do you, like, what's a normal day look like for you? You know, and I explained to him, like, you know, get to the yard at five and, you know, help anybody out if they have problems, you know, whatnot, stuff like that. And, you know, make sure everybody showed up, deal with any truck changes, truck issues, stuff like that. And then I said, you know, the number one thing is we've got to make sure we don't kill anybody.

And the look on his face was like, oh my God, what do you mean? What do you do? Right. And I'm like, we drive like 80,000 pound vehicles down the highway and if we have an accident- We have to teach our drivers to be as safe as they can be. And the look on his face made me realize the gravity of that. And that just, that comment has always stuck with me.

I mean, I'm telling you a story from a decade ago, right, that I can visualize our car being with him, the kids in the back, the whole nine yards. And, you know, it's the truth of what we do. I mean, there isn't a move we don't make in those trucks that we couldn't severely injure someone. And it's, it's powerful. What we do is dangerous and we need to have all our faculties about us. You know, it kind of leads me to bring up distracted driving, man.

Are we on a roll with that? I kind of feel it's getting better. It's better. It's better, but it's better. It's, but you always get that one person. Yeah. It can't happen to me. Not this time. Right. It's worth it. Right. Yeah.

Hey, uh, shout out to George Pocketer. because anytime he calls me he kicks the conversation off with hello sir i have not been in an accident and i just love that right you know i just i just love like anything else you say after that it's gonna be easy to deal with right you know right what's he leading up to he's gonna ask you for something didn't he no it's just i've mentioned that a lot of times when my phone rings it's

just like it's an accident yeah right an accident right you know and where Where are you at? And, you know, sometimes I get the call and it's like you hear the hazards are on. You just hear that. You know what I mean? And it's like. Oh, totally, Jim. What's going on? Right? Where are you and why are the hazards on? Yeah. You know?

So thanks, George. Yeah. Bye. Before we go on, Jim, since we talk about the safety and the programs and stuff, and obviously we can kill people, but I want to mention to the shop and the wash bay also if they're listening. And then we're heading into winter here, so we're going to have some slick in the trailer, slick as we walk through the yard. But the shop, hopefully you guys all listen, you need to be just as careful

because you're working around big things. You know, the super tandems having, having the boxes up in the air. Pinch points. Yeah. They're new. We have the, the solos or the lift axles, you know, and same with any one of the tractors. You guys will do a set of steers and, you know, be reaching under there for the jack and have two front tires off and clutches and, and rear ends and stuff.

And so please, you guys watch your hands, your fingers, make sure you're jacking things, make sure you're, you know, you've got stuff secure. And if you're working on something that could fall or pinch you, don't put your hands where it's not supposed to be.

Don't be under it. Yeah, don't be under it. And especially the. Don't have a body part under it, right? Yep, yep. The super tandems there, you know, with that box, that's, I mean, we started out as having all tandems and that's, you know, nobody really had tractor and trailers and through the years people have been killed by the boxes coming down, you know, they didn't have the safety features we do. Yeah. Remember that big block of wood we used to have that we'd throw on the tandem

bench, Jim? Yeah, and boy, did it get crunched and crunched, you know, through the years, right, Dave? But it was an oil-soaked, hard-ass piece of wood. Yeah, it was. It was like a 10 by 10. You'd hope. It was huge. You'd hope by the time it finally broke, you had enough time to get out of the way. Right, right, yeah. Because it was harder to lift it into place than anything. Oh, totally, yeah.

But yeah, for the wash bay and the shop, you guys represent the company also, and you're part of the family, and we can't have you guys make a mistake either or get hurt. Yeah, you're talking about mostly life, but limb too. So remember, if you want to put your pee-pee there, don't put your fingers there. Yep. Absolutely. I mean, look at Scooby. All right, well, I was going to mention another one. There's a couple others. Steve Barnes, he's another one.

Kendrick's another one. Yeah, Kendrick. Yeah, they can all tell stories. That's, in fact. You know why we're so safe now. Yeah, exactly. Live and learn, huh? Exactly, yeah. So everybody, please be careful, you guys. It's a thing.

And I wanted to mention, I don't want to beat it to death, But when I mentioned that all the stars lined up for this accident, because we're going to talk about the driver on I-70 there, and I think that's where all the stars align, is it doesn't make it all right for the accident. Right. What I mean are the stars aligned that made the perfect thing of where you really had to look, right? The sun in your eyes, your sunglasses on, your cap pulled down.

Maybe we should. The two lanes merging, the small car, you know, the Peterbilt, no, it wasn't a Peterbilt, it was the Freightline or a Western Star bumper being square. Just all of that, everything came together on why you really have to be more careful. Yes. That's my point. I'm going to go with the perfect storm. Yeah. Instead of the stars, you win the lottery when the stars align. Stars are good, storms are bad. Right. This wasn't the lotto. So this was, this was the, uh, perfect storm.

So maybe that was a better description. Good call, Jim. Sure.

Yeah. Cause we can, I guess I want to, want to move it around a little bit, Jim. We can talk about the leafers, but I, the, the semi driver that was, that rolled over on I-70 there in Wheat Ridge. You know, the, the family lost their family members and stuff. I think that's, has a lot to do with what we've been talking about. Right. And it's, it's. That was the perfect storm, wasn't it? Yeah. I actually moved that up on the outline.

Did you? Did you? Okay. Okay. Yeah. There's next. Take it. Yeah. I, I guess what we've learned in case a lot of you don't know this, that, and I'll just read this, the semi driver won't be charged. Just back up and where at Jim? What accident? What are we talking about? Well, I said that just a minute ago, the one in I-70 in Wheat Ridge. With the blue pipe. With the blue pipe. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Just that, I don't know if you guys all remember it, it's been what, a month ago or so, two months.

Maybe a month. But it's, it's, yeah, I lost my train of thought there, Dave, go ahead. But whatever you were. Yeah, no, I just wanted to be sure we were clarifying what accident we were talking about. And yeah, the, so the, the semi driver and the the company will not be charged in that accident. They went through and they've done a comprehensive investigation. I'm assuming the state patrol did the investigation.

It turns out that the truck was just through a level one inspection within the last 30 days and it passed with flying colors, had no issues with the tractor or trailer. It was through the port of entry 50 minutes before for the accident. And he was 8,000 pounds underweight. He had more chains on the load than was required for the load.

When he got down there and had the accident and was involved in it, the black box proves that he was going one mile an hour under the maximum speed limit or the posted speed limit. And both the driver and the company complied with anything that the investigation asked for. They were very cooperative and everything. And he was released from liability. The company and the driver was released for liability for the accident. And what's amazing about that is because they did everything right.

Absolutely everything right. The company was doing it right. The driver, the driver was especially doing it right. He wasn't 81,000 pounds at the the port, he didn't have just enough chains on. He had more chains than required. The truck was obviously in great condition since it just passed a level one inspection. I mean, the driver wasn't over hours. There was, they found nothing in that incident. Yeah. That's just the perfect illustration that you can be doing everything right

and it can all go wrong. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's a scary thought. There's a lot of controversy on social media about this. Some people still feel like, you know, there's no justice being served and the driver should have been held liable. And, you know, other truckers are getting on this and, well, I would have been doing, 10 miles under the speed limit. But if you don't go through that turn all the time and you're doing the posted speed limit, you don't know how messed up that is.

A lot of people are calling for CDOT to be held liable because it's a dangerous turn. I don't know if you guys remember Mark Snedeker. He came up here for an interview. This was a friend of mine.

He's on our page and he's on a lot of social media stuff, but he says he's followed vehicles through there and have seen trailer tires come up off the air oh wow through those turns before you know and there's it's just a dangerous area and even we had one driver here thought you know that driver should be held responsible so yeah it's a little controversial but yeah i mean at the end of the day it's it's sad because three people lost their lives i believe

in that accident yep you know it's good to see that the driver is not being held liable because usually we're hung out to dry like right Big truck driver, you're wrong. But the fact that he was doing it all right, everything was done the right way and legally, I mean...

You can't help but to, you know, root for that driver a little bit, you know, and he's got to live, you know, the fact that he was doing everything right without me knowing anything about this driver, he's probably the type of guy that's not going to be able to really sit well, you know, knowing that other people lost their lives in that accident. I bet. I bet. Were they all from the same family? I know two of them were, they were husband and wife or something like that. No, it's horrible. Yeah.

Newly married on their honeymoon, one of their moms, but then the granddad and the baby are the only survivors. That's right, Jim. Yep. I remember now. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. It's good to see that the company and the driver was doing everything correct. Yeah. That was a win. I mean, as, as unfortunate of an accident as it is in the lives that were lost, definitely, definitely sucks. I mean. Just goes to show you how driving is dangerous. Yeah.

Whether you're just jumping in your car and going to the store or whether you're doing it every day for a living in a big truck. Yeah. Chris Beam. It's just dangerous. Agreed. Yeah. Chris Beam brought up, I mean, when that, when they started that area, he told us all and we announced on the podcast that it should be 45 through there. Right. And then he does 45 through there. Smart. Right, right. And I mean. It is a relief, like you said.

Like typically we see this, and lately it's been like, no CDL, you know, one track outfit, you know, used to be called something else, but got shut down by DOT. Now it's like. No insurance. Yeah, like, yeah. So to see a company actually doing things the right way is a relief for sure. Agreed. Anything to add on that, guys? To me, it'll be interesting to see how it pans out.

With CDOT? Yeah. I mean, it just will. You know, I can't sit here and they have a part to play in that for sure because I'm assuming, right, and this is, you know, your thoughts and wonderings is they're the ones that dictate those speeds through that. So do they have a criteria of, hey, this is this corner at this angle, so that'll be the maximum speed. Like this amount of distance. Right. They have to have an engineer that figures those things out.

Yeah. Well, they immediately lowered the speed limit by five miles an hour. So that to me, that's an admission of guilt. Right. And is five miles an hour enough? I don't think so.

So, yeah. So everybody, please keep being careful through there.

Quite the area you know we don't have on here the is the runaway truck from yesterday yeah it's the very next thing yes i moved i moved up as the rollover accident on i-70 oh gotcha 70 yeah so got a call from mandrick the other day he was pumped up and told me uh he just witnessed a truck smoke their brakes and roll the roll the truck over and wanted to know if we had it on if if his truck captured it on dash cam and we get calls like this a lot and it's like oh no we missed it or

you were too far away and the truck cut the whole thing on camera you know yep he was uh driving along and looked in the side view mirror and he said here comes this truck smoking its brakes just flying by him and then uh this is coming up to south coming down genesee, approaching the C470 exit, had the truck move from the left lane to the middle lane, passed another truck, moved over to the right lane, and then took that exit. And I want to believe he took that exit on purpose to save lives.

Right. I don't know that. I don't think that's the way he was going. Like, oh, this is my exit. But he did end up laying it over right on that curve. And it was, the video looks fake. I think you said that, Super Dave. No, I didn't say that. It was perfect though. The video was perfect. He, I mean, it could have been a movie scene. It was that perfect, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was like a commercial, like it was shot for, for what to do when

you're, or what not to do when you break smoke. I mean, it was that, that realistic. Cause when you first see him go by, you know, and then it's smoking and then nothing, and then you have to watch whatever it is, 10 more seconds. And then you're like, oh my God, there, he rolled it over. Do you guys think that truck and trailer had disc brakes all the way around? I don't know. I didn't think one thing that I did say though, jam was, I didn't think there was that much smoke.

At least from what I could see, it wasn't like thick, it was just thin. That's why I asked, David. Yeah. Because the disc brakes can't smoke as much as a drum brake. Because they're so small. Drum brakes just smoking like a chimney, like thick, thick blue smoke. Right. Yeah, at that, I would have to ask, Super Dave, and I know you're just asking, did it, because of the speed, did it look that bad? Because what I've seen- It was getting dissipated, right?

Yeah. When we've seen, the truck stopped and you're like, oh my God, look at all that smoke or it creeps by you or, and you're like, dude, you can't see that smoke. You need to stop or, or do something. Well, that was kind of the reason I asked about the discs, Jim, is because there was very little smoke. And then I had to watch it two or three times because there's barely any smoke coming off the trucks, off the truck, I should say.

I didn't see any off the truck, you know, when I quickly look at it. Yeah, very, very little. But there is some, and I'm like, I, I, I would, I don't know the percentage, but I would guess probably, wouldn't you think the majority of tractors have disc brakes today? Or do you think companies still aren't doing that for a safety aspect? Cause was, do you remember, was it a Freightliner? And it doesn't really make the brand, but a big company truck. You know what I mean? Like where

you're saying. I didn't, I didn't see the name. Yeah, I didn't either. I didn't either. Yeah. But a lot of the people I do interview, they are surprised that we have discs. I think it's still a kind of an early in the changeover, I guess. Well, it's expensive. Yeah. It's more expensive, but we believe in it because it gives us better braking ability. Now, to dive into this a little deeper, we had Dustin look up how far back the

runaway truck ramp is that he passed. passed because this truck passed a runaway truck ramp that they've just spent. How many millions CDOT just spent? Yeah. Rebuilding or thing. You're redesigning the whole runaway truck ramp there on the right side as you're coming down. And it was, I don't remember the mileage, right? But we all, well talked, it's got to be less than a mile, right? Is what we thought a mile and a half. Yeah. Dustin gave it to me. I can't remember what it is, but it was,

was it three minutes and 51 seconds? from the runaway truck ramp to where he passed Andrick. Right. So from the runaway truck ramp to there, three minutes. Do you guys think that guy lost control? At 35, right? At 35, yes. That's how long it took Andrick to get from there to where he, from the runaway truck ramp to there, it took Andrick three minutes and 51 seconds. Yeah, that's how he got that time, yeah. Exactly, exactly. Good point, Jim. This guy came through in probably two minutes.

Because he was going 60. Right. But my point is, why didn't he take that truck ramp? Why didn't he take that runaway truck ramp? Did he think he was good at that point? Like, oh, I'll make it. And then passed it. And it was like, oh shit, I'm not going to. Well, Dustin said there was cones. Exactly, Dave. And here's my, here's my question. Why does CDOT have cones in front of the runaway truck ramp?

Right. Well, I wish we could, we probably should just watch the video or if Dustin have it, because Scooby and Kendrick came down from Young Ranch and they both made the comment to me that the truck ramp was open. Huh. And yet Dustin was saying there was cones in front of it. And I said, and Scoob's like, well, they might've been working around there, but the ramp was open, but Scooby knows it's a ramp. Right. You know what I mean? Does this guy? Right. Right. This is his first

trip. If he's not from here, he wouldn't know. Yeah. 20 or 30. Wow. I'm dating myself. 30 years ago, you know, I was told if there's a family and children playing in front of that truck ramp and you need to use it, you need to use the ramp. So run the cones over, I guess. Yeah, I get it. And they're tiny little cones and they're, they were spread out in the video, Jim. They're, they're, you know, it's a cone every, I don't know, 40 feet. It's not like a whole row of 35 cones.

It's like 10 across and that's a lane change. You know what I mean? That's a, you're working your way out there into that. So yeah, I mean, I just, I can't imagine being in that spot. And this is just another reason how important, you know, 303, a little plug for 303. About to bring those guys up. Absolutely. For their mountain driving. And, you know, and again, we talk about it, you guys. Your brakes are not designed to be used coming down that hill.

Your engine brake is. Right. Your whole process coming down that hill is to not use your brakes. And I'll be the first to say it. We have drivers here that use a shit ton of brakes coming down those hills. And it's just not good. Do you think that truck had a Jake? I mean, engine brake. It might not have, huh? Yeah. I mean, that would be, it would be really curious to know that. I'm, I'm, you know, there's so many questions you have. Where did he come from?

Because I, you know, I was sitting here thinking a few minutes ago as you guys were talking about it. You know, did he come from California and he made it over Vail? And he made it over Eisenhower and he lost it here? Right. Right. Or did- Did he miss a turn somewhere, you guys, and he's loaded and he had to go up to, I guess there's a turn there, an exit before Genesee that he could have got off and turned around and come back down.

And he was just in a hurry because he missed the 470 exit or something stupid like that. I'm just, I'm talking out loud and spitballing, but you know what I mean. I don't know. But yeah, I did send a video to Scott Marr and Joe Trussell at CDL 303 and, you know, Scott's fired up and, you know, he's like, he's sick of seeing this. Yeah. You know, everybody needs this mountain driving training there. You know, there is a sign coming. I'm not exactly sure, but I think it's right out of the tunnel.

It said truckers be aware, 44 miles of steep grades. And I had never, I mean, we've been through that area a thousand times, probably more. That's a long freaking way. 44 miles before you flatten out coming into town.

Where's this sign at? Right outside the tunnel. when you come out of the tunnel and it said truckers be aware 44 miles of steep grades i'm like holy crap yeah yeah the fact that the guy took the ramp i mean this would have been a whole other story oh my gosh yeah so a little bit of social media geeking me so we posted that video it's been played 5,847 times. It's got 148 likes, 23 comments, and 23 shares. Wow. And we posted it on the JFW page. Yeah, Nine News shared it on

the news this morning and said video courtesy of JFW Corp. Oh, cool. Wow. So I don't know to be proud of that or, I mean, if you're into social media with numbers and I geek out on that, you know what I mean? So yeah, I mean, nobody's happy this guy crashed, but we did capture it on video. So, but hopefully it reaches somebody from not here, right? You know, like you said, Dave, the California truck, maybe the guy goes, oh, I got to go there. Maybe I should YouTube it.

Yeah, I mean, imagine you are a trucker in California and you're over the road and, you know, you're going to Colorado and your coworkers are like, oh, you're going to Denver, huh? Man, be careful out there. A lot of people are, you know, crashing and killing people or rolling trucks or, I mean, you would think it would be like a hot topic. Right. Like, you know, man, people are going to Frye or Walls or Frye. If we're going to Wallstrom or Young's Ranch and we're all like, hey, be careful.

There's a car. I've been parked there for three days. You would think it would be a hot topic that you're coming out here and be careful. Agreed, Jim. People really do overlook the danger. They really do. Like you said, Jim, was it Stevens you drove for? No Jake brakes. But they didn't run I-70. You couldn't go over these passes. Right. If you wanted to go to California from here, you took 40 or 70. I'm sorry, 40 or 80. Yeah, you'd

have to go around. Yeah, you either went north to I-80 or south to I-40. The thing is, is our hills, and, you know, we talked about it. Yeah, coming down into Laramie, that's a long one. You got cabbage, you got grapevine, you know what I mean? And you got to come down those hills and, you know, use your light, steady brake pressure, 5 to 7 PSI of applied brake pressure. And make sure you're two gears less than where you pulled it in. I mean, you want to talk about, you know, focus.

Right. Like, oh, my God, that's eight pounds of brake pressure. I'm going to smoke my brakes. Four is not enough. Right. Yeah, it's just like you want to talk about setup for not being successful. Yeah, it's crazy. The other thing about Stevens is you'd have to have your chain. They had chain banks. So you would stop at like, you know, I'm just making this up. The Flying J, you would get your chains in a bag because you had to have chains on board.

But then when you got somewhere else, you would drop them off. Gotcha. you yeah like just weird yeah really close to home on that thought the jake break thought brie was telling me because she came from cr england to and hired on here they don't have manual mode in their automatics in at cr england so if you're going down a hill you can't put it in manual and hold it that shit that thing's going to shift on you if you let it get too high in rpm And I said, well, how do you do it?

She goes, I go like five miles an hour down the hill.

Wow. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Huh. Well, there you have it. Mm-hmm. Leafers. The next thing I have is chains. Oh, okay. Yeah. I know I switched things up on you guys. Sorry. If you haven't already checked your chains out, please do it now in nice, dry weather. You don't want to have problems on the hill. So, I mean, good for these guys. We still got guys checking their chains out. I know John Moore actually tried putting his on yesterday, and they didn't fit.

So, we had to get him some. And one of them didn't even have cams on him. It was like some weird deal. Yeah. So, good for him for checking. But there's still chains out there that haven't been checked. Now you got to check them now. Wow. Yeah. If you're listening to this podcast and you haven't checked your chains out, check them out now. Make sure the links are there. Make sure the hooks are there. Make sure you have a cam key. Make sure the chains have cams on them.

Otherwise, make sure you got bungee cords, right, Sue? There's a lot to it. Yeah. There is. Be prepared. Be a Boy Scout. Yeah. Otherwise, failure is imminent. Yep. Have your little bag ready to go. I mean, now's the time. I know it's still hot out, but get in the habit. Bring your winter bag.

All right, leafers. Leafers. Leafers. Let's talk leafers. What's for last weekend? What's a leafer? Let me ask you a question. If you're a leafer, right, you love nature and pretty things, how do you road rage? Because that's the title of this next subject. Leafers on Kenosha and rage road incidents over the weekend.

End somebody had a stat of like yeah you have information on this tyler told me i thought it was 22 or 27 is what i said on the radio you know monday there but i i believe that the leafers are the ones that are calm they're so calm they're just stopping all the road it's the locals uh and then you're you're getting pissed off because they're stopped in the middle of the road and cutting them off break checking them honking at them you know all the rest of stuff i i i believe the leafers are

pretty chill everybody else in a big ass hurry that like you probably said dave a local person that lives there that is like i've seen that leave change you know 50 years and doesn't care you know i i read an article on it a lady was trying to shortcut over guanella pass and the traffic and people were blocking the roads they actually turned around and and went back wow and she kept on saying the tourists the tourists so i'm sitting here thinking well wait a I mean, last weekend,

Jackie and I went up to Leadville, went over Independence Path. I'm not a freaking tourist in Leadville. I live in Denver. I've been there a hundred times. You're from the city. You know? City slicker. You're a shitty slicker. I guess. Yep. Be careful up there. We've seen, uh, we've seen it. We've seen one of our trucks, you know, have to have to swerve. Somebody stopped right in the middle of the road, you know, so can't be too

careful up there. And I think what's the speed limit up there. Do you know? 40. Is it 45? I'd say 45, yeah. But it's like 65 before that. So there's cars still getting it, you know? And then to just come to a stop. Right. You know, and who's prepared when the road is open, that's, that's the worst thing you can run into is, you know, you may be not a hundred percent focused because the road is open. There's only one car in front of you. Why on earth would they stop? You

know what I mean? It's, that's almost distracted driving as well. Right. You know what I mean? But they're not paying attention to what they're doing. They're just like, look at those leaves, babe. And like pointing and bam, they're stopped on the road. And here you come at, you know, 45 or 65 or whatever.

You know, it's not just the Leafs, everybody. So there's a little town called Twin Lakes when you're coming off Independence or well, either way, it's on the highway side, I guess the Leadville side of the pass. And the speed limit slows you down to 30 miles an hour going through town, I think. And you're buzzing along going 45, 50 miles an hour. And then all of a sudden you get this sign and you don't know there's a town. I mean, it's still a mile down the road, but they slow you down to 35.

I had this jackass behind me and he was pushing me and I'm like, why are you driving so fast? We're just enjoying this beautiful Friday afternoon, you know? So I come up on the speed limit sign and I slowed way down because I knew that Twin Lakes, which I don't know if you guys have been up there, there's a little gift shop and a little bed and breakfast. fist. I mean, there's people walking across the road, you know, crosswalks and everything.

And so he was on my butt, like I swear, you know, so much so I could barely see his headlights. Well, guess what? We came around a corner coming into town. It was before town and there was traffic stopped everywhere. And I'm like looking at the road, paying attention. Jackie's watching what's happening from the passenger seat. And there's people, a family standing in the road, like three kids, a dad, a mom.

Well, there was two moose in the river. There was two moose down off the side in the river and everybody was taking pictures of the mooses. And so what if that guy, what if I wasn't there? Right. And that guy was just hooking it down at 50 miles an hour and came up on the traffic there. People absolutely lose their minds over animals. Yeah. I mean, they lose their minds over seeing animals. It's crazy. Yeah. I'm surprised nobody tried to go pet them, Dave. This is going to say,

especially bison and Yellowstone. Right. Those people are confident. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I just was really happy. I was going nice and slow and eased on through everybody. And I hope that guy behind me thought like, wow, I'm glad I was going slow. Right. I'm glad I was following this guy. Yeah. Well, they say we control the traffic, the professional drivers. There you go. So good job, Super Dave.

Let's see. Scooby wanted to bring out prevent crack windshields by backing off and increase following distance. Right? If you're following another big truck, especially a gravel truck, especially one that you don't know, or sometimes even one of ours, back up. You don't need to be on their butt. That's a good way to get a crack windshield. So a lot of times they just kick up from the road. That's how most of these crack windshields happen. But just back on up.

Awesome. Yeah, a lot of times it comes from the other direction. Right. It could be. Yeah. Yep. And then also from Scooby, something he's noticed is avoid standing water at the ready-mix plants. So the concrete plants, it's filled with cement powder. It used to be if you went in there with like a true aluminum wheels, it would screw your wheels up. They would be ruined. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. You wouldn't even be able to polish it out. Yeah. I mean, they would be so ruined.

Now we pay for coated wheels, so that doesn't happen. Right. But it still looks like crap. It looks awful. Yeah. So it looks like crap and it's obviously got corrosive like properties to it. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The cementitious properties in that. Yeah. I said cementitious. Yeah. Yeah. That stuff. Acidic stuff, man. It's not good for aluminum, for bare metals. It is not good at all. And it just looks horrible. It does look like crap.

Right? So if we have to go through it, let's definitely slow down and idle through it. Maybe that way it won't roll through in the duals and go in the wheels. Through the holes in the wheels and coat the wheels, right? Yeah. Listen up, rock tubs, because a lot of this is you backing up to the rubble. Exactly. For some reason, that's where the standing water's at, is where people go dump their leftovers, right? Yeah. So if they're loading you back there, number one, ask them if they can

bring it out to you. And if they can't, yeah, you got to ease on through there. Yeah. Yeah. And just do a friendly ask to the office. Hey, there's like eight or 10 inches of water back here. You know, is there, is there something we can do? Right. I mean, we have no problem calling, calling Brandon and asking for help from them to see if they can clean that area or drain that area. We'll send a water truck. Yeah. You guys got anything else for the discussion before we move on to what's next?

What is next? Well, one thing that's next is Friday is the last day for the calendar photos.

Photos please send your truck pics to ann at jfwtrucking.com so if you don't know there's a chance for you to be featured in our calendar and also win a cash money prize can i take a picture of my pickup truck you could you're not going to win but if you want to send it in ann at jfw trucking.com hey you never know we've put shop trucks on there we've put snow plows on snow plow but that was in front of this really cool locomotive

yeah that you know had the flag on it What if I put, I don't know, like a moose in front of my pickup truck? Would that work? That would be cool. You could just Photoshop it in. Right. Then you probably will win. Yeah. You should go smoking bandit into a creek somewhere and wait for the moose to come by, Dave. Just put an elk rack in the back of your bed, make it look like you went hunting. That would be cool. The other thing that's next is wintertime is coming next.

This job changes a bit in the winter. If you haven't been here through one, you'll find out. It won't be long before we start setting tailgates on top of our tailgate latches to prevent the tailgates from freezing shut. And we'll be pre-treating liners with release agents. So you might want to start to get that winter mindset because even though it's going to be fall down here, it is going to be winter up on the hill pretty quick. You know, I went to grab a truck for a test drive.

I'm trying to remember it was it could have been ghost he had his tailgate outside of his latches already starting yeah there you go good good idea to get in the habit yeah once you start don't stop until March that's it there you go that's just a good habit to yep avoid any surprises yep no questions from the audience this week safety topic of the week don't let your trailer roll back and tear your mud flaps off okay sometimes we get a little confused in the cab of

that truck once you're empty you want to push your tractor away from your trailer if you have your tractor brake set and you release your your trailer in a down position and your trailer wheels aren't set you're going to send that trailer moving backwards and you're going to rip some mud flaps off you can end up bending bending the hangers or just losing that mud flap in a pile tile and then we got to go fish it out and hopefully you notice, right?

Because we don't want that to go through the plant, concrete plant, so on and so forth. So, or before we hit the high road haul and Jim or Dave, you got anything else? I think the mud flaps, I, unless we're the newer ones, when you put them on or long, I think is you, you could let the trailer down if you're away from the pile and maybe not pinch the flap. Sure. So I think we're pinching the flap.

Against the pile. And I, what I was just going to touch on is I think that makes it worse because then it's in the pile when, and the plant can, you know, hopefully it's on the outside and the load operator goes oh there's a mud flap it's obvious but i think it makes it even easier to get loaded into the material you know and and and you know put in the plant so that makes yeah not not against the pile you guys you can't you just can't pinch that mud flap against the pile also this came

up yesterday talking to one of the new drivers you don't have to back all the way up to the pile to dump you know leave six to eight feet that material is going to come out and butt up against that pile anyway you can still keep your top pile high and tight but you don't need to put your your load right up next to the other load because that also puts more pressure on the mud flaps and everything back there so all right soup what do you think you

want to hit us with that high road hauling sure so i think about this all the time i'm i'm a history geek you know you're social I'm a social media geek. I'm a history geek, Jim. But anyway, why don't we learn from history? Humanity, not you or me, but the many lessons we fail to learn from history as we build up so many lessons over time, it often baffles me why we don't learn more from what we've gone through as professionals, as learners, and as humans.

Humans it's easy to think with unlimited access to information not necessarily knowledge but that studying history is a waste maybe but maybe to speed up progress it's time to look backwards to learn from what we've tried and then move forward so here are some points from a book by b.h little heart liddell i should say one of those people that has four names but why don't we learn Learn from History is the title of the book, and these are some points that he made in the book.

The value of history is the countless repeated ways things can go wrong. History also teaches us the tough times are only temporary. History is only a broad guide. It never offers precise details or blueprints to dealing with the current or future events. The real lessons come from history's negative value in learning what to avoid, because it not only records the common mistakes many others made before us, but how and why mistakes were made in the first place.

Learning from personal experience should come second to learning from the experience of others, since there are thousands of years to draw from. And history teaches us that there has been a long-running battle between or with fear of the truth. People mistakenly fail to admit the truth in doing so, in so doing, to help perpetuate recorded falsehoods. And if it's not fear, then it's distortion of the truth to promote a personal or political cause.

Those who seek the truth should approach facts with skepticism. And facts is in italicized quotations. Is it true? Should be the first response of those who want to go through life with an open mind. The cause of most troubles can be traced to excess. The failure to check them to deficiency. Therein lies prevention in moderation. I didn't read that right. Hang on. The cause of most troubles can be traced to excess. The failure to check them to deficiency, their prevention lies in moderation.

So I guess stay away from the excess and moderate. While the cause of most wars is placed on some economic, political, or religious factor, the deeper factors are always rooted in human nature. And history shows us the end of every war sows the seeds of the next war, Because victories and peace settlements are rarely fair and balanced for both sides. And long and drawn-out wars have no winners, only common losers. And boy, that's a fact.

Science and technology have advanced more the past 100 years than in the prior millennium. In the improvement of life when used in war, it's used as irresponsibly and indifferently as it was in the prior millennium. And history teaches us that we put more weight on the effect actions have on history than we do on the effect of thoughts. Yet our capacity for thought and sharing of ideas is what drives all human progress. And then what can the individual learn from history as a guide to living?

Not what What to do, but what to strive for, and what to avoid in striving. The importance and intrinsic value of behaving decently. The importance of seeing clearly, not least of seeing himself clearly. These are all pretty deep thoughts, really. And then the quote this week is from somebody we all know. Martin Luther King Jr. Once said, We are not makers of history, we are made by history. So all some really cool thoughts about the things we don't learn from history and we should.

Yeah. Yeah. You listen, you know, as many quotes as you do, Dave, and the quotes we've done and you know, you, the ages and as old as those quotes are getting in there, the same quotes that are relevant today. Isn't that something you asked some dude from a thousand years ago. Right. And we and we've not learned a darn thing yeah you know i i think about when you started off here that i don't think they they've got it done i know they talked about it but.

It just reminded me of all the statutes that were tore down and things like that. And I, you know, if there were a remembrance of some, something or somebody to remind you of the, of the past, but without those, don't we forget about the past?

I mean, it's like, you know, Stapleton over here, the Stapleton area, and obviously where the airport was at, you know, everybody wants to change the name of that because I don't think it was a governor Stapleton, but anyway, he's got a connotation about him, about the Indians and they want to change the name. But then how do you remember that? How do you remember that there was a tragedy and give honor to the Indians? I mean, that's my opinion. I'm not, I don't know if I'm right or wrong.

I think Stapleton was a mayor of Denver. Was he? I think he was mayor or governor, but he did, you know, again, something bad. I think it had something to do with the Sand Creek Massacre, Jim. Right. And clearly that was before the mayor of Denver, like way back in time. And when did the Sand Creek Massacre happen? Right. Because it has something to do too, because I thought about Mount Evans and Evans is the same kind of thing. I know it's Mount. He was a governor.

Yeah. Yeah. And he, it was another massacre, I believe that he was involved in, but I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how you remember this thing. Yeah, I think he actually was the governor during when the Sand Creek Massacre happened. Is that what it was? And he praised Chivington. He was the officer that carried it all out, and he was all about it. And it was just a flat-out massacre of women and children. Yeah, yeah. But how do we remember that? I don't think a mountain should be

named after him. I'm not saying that. It's remembering so you can learn from it. Right. Are we doomed to repeat our past? It's the history of it, right, Jim, is your point. Yeah. It just, it just, you know. I want to say it buffaloes me, but I've been told several times that it bison's me. There are no buffaloes. You know, when I was thinking about this, I didn't know that. Oh, I was, yeah, I was. You didn't know that? Yeah. Yeah, they're bison.

There are no buffaloes. Yep. What happened to the buffaloes? Tatanka. They're in Africa. Oh, like the water buffaloes? Right. Yeah. Oh, interesting. That's why you got buffalo. These are American bison. Yep. Oh, interesting. Okay. So I really started thinking about this. I must have been reading the news one day about Israel and Gaza and all of that. And, you know, we went to Europe. God, this was back in 2018. And I learned a lot about Roman history and Greek history.

Those people have been fighting over there for 3,000 years. And here they are. They're still doing it. And is it going to get them anywhere? Absolutely not. It's just going to kill people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the whole Israel-Iran conflict right now. Right, and it's blowing up right now, today. Yeah. Yeah, you just. I had never thought about it, Dave. I think I've heard it before, but when you just read that, no war has ever been started except for because

of economy, religion, or politics. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I mean, that right there, you know, but you step back and you look at kind of where we're at today. And I guess I'm going to, you know, this isn't a political rant, but it is political. Seriously, it's not. And I guess what I mean is our far right and our far left that we're seeing, you know, come out and rear their ugly heads.

Will they ever be able to come together? And I guess what I'm getting at, I'm bringing the parallels together between like Jerusalem and Israel. Palestinians? The Palestinians, Dave, thank you. Well, won't there always be a group of people that just look at the other people and go, I mean, I hate to use this word, I hate them, right? You know what I mean? At what point can that torch be snuffed and put out and free the world of these wars, right? And I don't know that it ever can.

No, because it's human nature, right? Yeah, Dave. And I guess, you know, on this tiny little scale, that's me with the homeless right now. You know, it just is, Jim. And I see him and my blood boils. I get pissed off because I see the drugs and the theft and everything that goes along with them, you know, and what they're doing to our neighborhoods. I mean, very few people know this. They just showed up and stole the whole air conditioner off of Denver Truck and Trailer's building, right?

They had to cut a cage open and tear it off. They cut the AC lines, cut the electric lines, and stole the motor out of the air conditioner, you know? And then we chased the guys down, and Commerce City PD shows up six hours later, and Denver never showed up. We have the people's pictures. We have their license plate numbers. We have their descriptions. And we just found the van three blocks over this morning.

It's unbelievable. And I guess... At what point, you know, you can stir this into whatever we want to stir and continue talking about, becoming a vigilante, you know, and that, you know, that's back to the war, right? Then you become Hamas. And yeah, I guess I can understand how these things happen. And I don't know how to end it. I don't know how to stop it. You know, I look at the, these homeless motorhomes that are around here and

trailers and RVs and stuff. And I mean, I just automatically stereotyped that these are not good people and they're thieves. I mean, Jim and I just witnessed this morning what had to be some part of a theft. Those guys purposely left the area they were at. They walked over here and stood by themselves in a parking lot. Both of them opened up their backpacks, split up whatever they had, and then walked back the same place they came from.

With their sunglasses on and their hoodies up. At five o'clock in the morning. In the dark, yeah. In the dark. And you're like. That's not suspicious. Right? No, no. That's not a poor homeless guy that can't find a job. That's effed up. Yeah, that is some type of drugged out user that just went and stole some shit. And they're living in a car down the street from us. And could care less that there's people on the block. Yes. While they're doing this. Yes, Jim. No, no F's given whatsoever.

Absolutely. Whatsoever. No. And it just, man, it's, it's hard to swallow. It's hard to be around. It's hard to watch. You know, I, I, Scooby has been working his ass off, you know, staying up with the police and supposedly they have a special task force and he has the name of the guy that runs the task force. Well, he's working 5 PM to 5 AM this week. It's right on his answering machine. And I told Scooby, I was like, you call him every hour on the hour and leave

a message that says we need to meet today. day, every hour on the hour, we need to meet today, you know? So the minute this guy gets to work, he's going to have a message. He's going to be like, who are these yahoos? But yeah. To circle back around to the frustrating part, two weeks ago, we watched that same task force ticket Denver Truck and Trailer next door because they parked a couple of customers' trailers out there on the street.

One day, those trailers were out there less than 12 hours. They showed up and ticketed them for those trailers being parked out there. And yet this motorhome has been parked here for three days. It showed up Sunday. Yeah, they won't get any money from the motorhome. Exactly. Build a mile of trash on the sidewalk too, I noticed that. You can't even walk the neighborhood. No, you can't even walk down that sidewalk. Let's put another bike lane in.

Let's put another bicycle lane in. Or I'm sorry, walkway and everything else. But it's okay if you block it. Yeah. Yeah, I saw Scooby yesterday. Hey, what's up, Scoop? Nothing, just picking up hypodermic needles. Isn't that? Yeah, God bless you, Scooby. Thank you for, because once they do get these people to leave. Hope he's wearing his gloves. Yeah, I mean, he's picking it all up, putting it in buckets, You know, with one of the little pincher sticks to pick stuff up.

He filled his pickup with that last motorhome that got out of there. You know, he's having to clean our property and it just, it's so frustrating. So frustrating. So where, where does it end? How do you be thankful? How do you, how do you do a 180 and be, you know, you, you think about the kids, the wonderful kids you got to help last Friday jam and give yourself some perspective and realize life is good, right? Right. We got to keep fighting the good fight.

We got to keep electing officials that are going to help us fight the good fight and, and work our way through things, I guess. I don't know. So. Yeah. The funny story I was going to tell you this morning, Dave, the, about the police and, you know, again, not to dog the men and women of Commerce City or Denver or however they're dispatched or whatever, however their, their chain of command or whatever their processes are.

At this point, but Holly was saying it at Arapahoe roofing yesterday, they have to dial nine to get out. And one of the ladies in the office there was trying to activate a credit card. And so she dialed nine. And then, you know, when you punch the numbers in, it was like one, one. Yeah. So she dialed 911 on accident. Oh no. Yep. Operator answers. And she says, hey, she stayed on. Hey, a mistake, you know, blah, blah, blah.

And they're like, is somebody coercing you? The dispatcher was to say that, to do this. She's like, nope, I made a mistake. Nope. Nobody's coercing me.

Everything's fine and holly said about five minutes later two policemen showed up at the front door you are kidding me what city lafayette lafayette i believe well i live in lafayette and there's a lot of cops that don't have anything to do and they're all you know there's a little fender bender gym and there's like four cop cars there well she did that's lafayette they showed up in their fancy electric mustang patrol car oh wow i haven't seen that one yeah so anyway Anyway,

you know, because Holly knew about the incident down here and that nobody showed up. She said, we accidentally dialed 911. They show up in no emergency. And you guys try to get them to show up and they don't show up. And I don't want to dog the police. You know what I mean? I just don't want to. Who wants that job right now? Yeah, I don't want that to happen. But where is the breakdown of it's shift change.

We can't get you to show up. Denver never shows up. You accidentally dial 911 and the police show up. Where is the breakdown of that? Well, the breakdown is, and I hate to say it, and I mean, this is just my feelings, is Commerce City Police, they're dealing with a lot. And I know this seems super important. It was your guys' emergency in the moment. Yeah. But with all the gang activity and actual, like, crazy shit that goes on in Commerce City, yeah, somebody stealing is no longer an emergency.

Mm-hmm. But then again, we're back to a societal thing, Jim. Yeah, that's it. Would we have the, you know, the drug, the fentanyl, the homeless, all of that if we had different leaders? Some authority. Right. Yeah. Right? We've taken all the authority. We can do nothing anymore. Yeah. Right? Or the police is what I'm trying to get at. Right? They have, they can't do anything. I feel so sorry for them. Yeah. You know, COVID was the worst thing that could

have happened to them. Right? The defund of the police. Oh my gosh. You know? You talk about statues being taken down and torn down and mountains being renamed for bad people, Jim. George Floyd has a statue now? What? He was a great person? Come on. Yeah. Say it isn't so, it's so. Wow. And I, yeah. I mean, these are the world's statues. That we're living with. So, yeah. Yeah. Tough times. All I could say, and I told you guys this morning, it's every man for himself.

That's what it feels like, you know what I mean? Somebody comes to my house, and I'm not, this isn't a threat, but if somebody comes to my house, like, I feel it's up to me to defend my family. Yeah. I can't rely. Nobody's coming to help. Right. Nobody's coming to save you, Dave. Yeah. You are your own first response, so act accordingly. Yeah, when I had Denverpedia, because we chased this guy, So long, he finally stopped and dropped the trailer, separated the van and the trailer.

And I truly think that was because there were three of them. And that was so you didn't know which vehicle had the air conditioner in it. Was it the van or was it the trailer? So Marshall stayed with the trailer. I followed the van. I followed that guy long enough until he finally like tried to ram me in reverse and then jumped out of the van and play a bad ass and go, why are you following me? Cause you stole our air conditioner.

I'm just waiting for the police to get here. I didn't know it was all that. Oh yeah, Jim. So after that, I was like, well, there's nothing more I could do. The police aren't going to find me following him. Right. And I finally just gave up chasing him and had his plate number, van description, which obviously clearly is just two blocks over. We can drive over there and probably talk to him right now. Go slash his tires, send him on fire.

Yeah. So the, so I start, I go back to the trailer. Those two guys come out of the trailer. They try telling me something and I'm like, listen, I'm just waiting for Denver PD to show up. I said, you guys left Commerce City. Now we're on the phone with Denver PD. So the one guy with the Mohawk, he starts walking and I'm just driving next to him. Like I'm literally, he can't know I'm not there. I'm 20 feet behind him on the road.

And I'm talking to Denver PD and Denver PD is like, sir, are you following him now? And I'm like, yes. And they're like, sir, sir, stop that. Does he have a weapon? I'm like, well, he hasn't pulled it yet. If he has one, I don't know. And they're like, we strongly urge you to stop. Do not follow him. And I'm like, I'll stop following him when the police show up and stop him. He stole our air conditioner. We have it on video. Wow. It's freaking on video. You can't miss this guy's mohawk.

You know what I mean? It's the guy and still nothing, you guys. Denver never showed. We waited at that trailer for 45 minutes. Denver never showed. We finally left. Two hours later, I got a text from him that says, would you like a unit? No. Too late now. Right? Who knows where that guy is? There's no air conditioner.

You're not going to have proof. Yeah. And no matter what we said or did, but the guy finally freaked out, took off and ran I ran down an alley, a landscaped alley that I couldn't drive through and then jumped a fence. And it was actually into a railroad yard that I couldn't access from any four sides. You know, and I finally told the dispatcher, I said, you know what's worse than the police? Vigilantes. I said, if you guys don't start doing something pretty soon,

we're all going to have to start taking our own. Yeah. You know a lot of that is budget. They can't afford to have 300 more cops because they don't have the money to pay them.

Why don't they have the money? me polis cut the budget we should just raise taxes no because they're trying to freaking create affordable homes for the homeless right all right are those your final thoughts brother dave that's it that's it jim what do you got i got one that i i ran across it's uh it's obviously religious but hey it says if you make a deal with the devil he won't show up to the deal as a devil because you won't make it right you you see him and you wouldn't make the deal he'll

likely to show up as sugar liquor porn weed pills he might show up as the snooze button. Now that he might show up with a snooze button and watch you kill your dreams for the day. That was my devil this morning, Jim. Right, right. He might show up as a late night out with the friends that overlap into the morning routine. He might show up as the belief that you're not yourself in the morning until you have caffeine.

The devil never lies. The devil never lies. It's just a true masterhood of disguise. So come on, get over it and get up. That's good. I like it. Soup, you got anything else? No, I'm just going to keep watching history. It's my favorite thing to do, I think. Good for you. Apply it to what I see today. So I'm just going to leave with a quote, and it kind of piggybacks on what you said, Jim.

But if we don't quit, we don't lose. and that's by Judd Lenard guy I follow on Instagram very cool keep going alright don't forget to like and subscribe to the channel 23 podcast hit that follow button also don't forget to go back and listen to episode 72 to help find Amber's mom links to her story will be in today's show notes let's say the creed and get on out together we face and overcome all that stands before us together we are founded and free.

Together, we joyfully create honest value for those we serve. Together, we celebrate our differences and respect those with whom we work. Together, we are accountable for our words and our actions. And together, we are the JFW family. All right, everybody, thanks for listening. Enjoy the rest of your week, and we'll talk to you next week. Have a safe week, everybody. Be careful out there. Music. Breaker 2-3, anybody got a copy?