Episode 167 - The results are in!

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. We are at episode 167. Welcome to the studio, Jim White, Brother Dave White, and Super Dave Weldon. Hi, everybody. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Game day, podcast day. We're ready, Jim. Thank you.

Jfw super bowl podcast here right right here huh we we practice for this day don't be decaf let's bring some energy there you go what better way to bring some energy than with the pledge pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all father god we thank for the opportunity to go out and do some trucking today.

We pray for the safety of our fleet, all their families, and all the other families and individuals we come across in a row today. We pray for patients in making good, safe decisions. We pray to be accident-free, and then we all make it back to the comfort of our homes this evening. We pray for healing and 100% recovery for all of our family members that are ill. We pray for you to heal Carlos Meza's lungs and body and that he He's released from the hospital soon.

We pray over Erica's surgery tomorrow and a smooth recovery. No matter what, we trust you, God, and it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Jan. That was a good one. You're welcome. As a reminder, anything you hear on today's podcast is not the opinion of JFW's. It's just the expressed opinion of the men in this room.

Episode 166 had 271 downloads. We are at 87.9 thousand total downloads And we gained 10 followers last week We're at 678 followers Woohoo, awesome Right, I thought so Do you guys know why the coffee filed the police report? Something to do with its grounds or something. It was black and white? Nope. Got mugged. Oh, man. That's what I have. That's a dad joke, right? Right. I think, because I would call that a pun, because I looked up puns. Oh, okay. And I have, so here you go. I'll go.

I'm afraid for the calendar. Its days are numbered. Ooh. Singing in the shower is fun until you get soap in your mouth. Then it's a soap opera. That's good. What do you call a pony with a sore throat? Horse. A little horse. Why are piggy banks so wise? They're filled with common sense. I don't trust stairs. They're always up to something. I've heard that one before. And my last one, when two vegans get in an argument, is it still called a beef?

Who thinks those things up, you know? That's genius. Well, Jim, did you hear engineers have successfully made a car that could run on parsley? Now they're trying to make a train that can run on time.

Wow. Oh man, that's awesome. Is it? I thought it was. Well, a man is driving down the highway and he hits a rabbit and kills it. He gets out of the car and walks over to the rabbit. He picks it up and starts crying. He thinks he's a horrible person. Someone else is driving down the highway and stops and walks over to him and asks, what happened? The man replies, I hit this rabbit with my car and now it's dead. The other person gets a thoughtful look on their face, goes back to their car.

They rummage around in the trunk and eventually walk back over to the man holding a spray bottle. They spray the rabbit with the bottle and it comes back to life. It starts hopping away, turning back every few hops to wave at the two people. The man astounded turns to the person asks, what was in the bottle? The other person replies, it was hairspray. Oh man, now that's awesome. Well, oh boy, there was two old ladies standing together smoking and it begins to rain.

So one old lady pulls out a condom and snips off the tip and puts it over her cigarette so she can smoke without her cigarette getting all wet. The other old lady thinks this is pretty nifty and asked what she put over her cigarette. and the lady replies it was a condom and you can buy them at the pharmacy. The second old lady thanks her and makes a note to pick one up when she goes down to get her prescription later that week.

So sure enough a few days later she enters the pharmacy and goes up to the young man working the counter and says young man I want to buy a condom please and the young man taken back says wow you're pretty old wow good for you. No one has ever asked me for help with that before So the young man asks, what size do you need?

And the old woman thinks for a moment and then replies, I need one that fits a camel. Wow. So there you have it. There it is. I did. That was. That joke's gone wild. Yeah. I didn't see that one going that way. New employees. We've got Adrian Jones and William Meltenberger. Welcome to the fleet, man. Welcome, guys. Celebrations, anniversaries. Kathy Rutherford and Damian Rubal celebrate one

year today. Great. Congratulations. Yeah. Armando Del Valle, two years tomorrow. And Jack Domenico will hit four years this Saturday. Wow. Congratulations, everybody. Birthdays this past Monday, the 27th. Rico had a birthday. Rico Christensen. Tuesday, the 28th, Manuel Dellatore had a birthday. And Kenneth Helgun had a birthday today. Carlos Rascón has a birthday tomorrow. And then Damian Rubal has a birthday Saturday the 1st. Wow. Happy birthday, everybody.

Happy birthday, everybody. I like when birthdays and anniversaries are close. Like Jose Barraza's birthday and anniversaries. Yeah, same day. Yeah, same day. Yep. Family birthday celebrations. Jeff Soto's son, Emilio Soto, had a birthday this past Sunday. Mrs. Chili Dog had a birthday yesterday. And then Fabio's son, Lohan, has a birthday today. Ah, happy birthday. Yeah, happy birthday, family. I think he just turned one, I think. I think he's two. Two. Yeah, I remember when he was born.

And then James Coger, who's a regular listener of the podcast, and Rick Gray's friend had a birthday yesterday. Happy birthday, James. Yeah, happy birthday, James. Rick was sure to text me that this morning, so wants to make sure everybody gets some love. Absolutely. I want to give a shout out to Georgi Lalashvili. He has taken his citizen's test on February 7th. So wishing you the best of luck, Georgi. Yeah, congratulations, Georgi.

I got to jump in there. I don't want to interfere with the shout outs. But I was like, okay, citizenship test. So 100 random questions. Okay. You have to answer 10 of them. They'll ask you 10 out of the 100. You got to get six right. Okay? So you are all United States citizens here in the room. They probably can't answer that. I can almost guarantee you we can't answer that. Here we go, Dave. Damn, and I didn't study. Is this multiple choice?

And are you going to give me a 1% bonus for answering? So these are the top 10 toughest out of the 100. Woo! So, and I knew this one. I was pretty proud of myself. Name the two longest rivers in the United States. Arkansas? I'm going to say the Mississippi and the Missouri. Got it. Yep. It's two longest in the United States. Then from there, it was bad. I didn't know shit. Who was the president during the Great Depression and World War II?

FDR. Yep. You got it, Dave. FDR. Good job. This is one. And what is the rule of law? The rule of law. If you kill me, I forgive you. I thought it was if I have the biggest gun, I win. Isn't it the rule voted upon by the people? So it's pretty close, Dave, but it is a foundation of democracy and good governance. There you go. That's where I was going with that. And who was the president during World War I? Oh, I want to say Woodrow Wilson. Right on, Dave. Good job. Nice, man. Good job.

So here's today's facts. Who is the Chief Justice of the United States right now? Is SC something? John Roberts. That's what I meant. Same thing. I couldn't have got that. I did. And I thought this one, I got this one wrong, but I thought I was right. And I wasn't. But anyway, how many justices are there on the Supreme Court? 12. Nine. I thought there was seven. Nine, right? Yeah, there is nine. Nine. That's what I said, nine. And this one, I was way off because immediately I said, uh, date,

but anyway, when was the constitution written? Ooh. Oh, I should know this. It was ratified in like 1783 or something like that. And it wasn't 17, I'll say 1778. So, you know, right off the top of your head, you know, 1776, right? You just want to spit that out. And I knew that wasn't the exact date, but I didn't know it was 1787. I didn't know it was that far. Wow. It was. Yeah. We were 11 years later. Yeah, that Revolutionary War was going well into the 80s, the 1780s.

Yeah, and then the House of Representatives has how many members? And I didn't have a clue, but I was shocked at the number. 400 and something. Yep, 435. Maybe not today. Yesterday. And then- It'll be less if we can get California to leave. Right, right. How many amendments does the Constitution have? 13. Wow, amendments. 27, and it was last ratified or changed in 1992.

It was the last one that we added. And then this is the toughest one on all of the tests, and there's two portions to this test, and nobody gets it really. Name one writer of the Federalist's paper. you, Yeah, about that. Alexander Hamilton, John Quincy Adams. I only wrote down James Madison. Good answer. I think you might be right, Dave. James Madison, I just wrote one of the people down. But most of them, because the Federalist Papers stopped in like 1870 or was

dissolved, that group. Wow. Yeah. Well, Geraghi, there's some answers for you. Right, top 10. And I just, I was, I seen that and I, it's not, it's not easy, you know. They must have something to study though. They don't just pull a history book off the shelf. The little bit I read, Dave, they give you the a hundred questions. You can do that. They suggest you, you, if you can afford it again, there's a cost, you know, contact an immigration lawyer, but out of the,

out of these hundred, they can ask you 10. You got to pass six. Yeah. Should ask Fabio. Cause he just did it a year ago. Yeah. I was going to tell you, you know, Fabio came up to me one day and asked me a question. And I was like, I don't know, Fabio. He's like, but you're a citizen. I'm like, that's what he reminded me. Definitely taking it for granted. I did poorly on those 10. Yeah. You know, I mean, not my thing. So yeah, I just wanted to.

I love that. Thanks for digging in. Yeah. A shout out for you becoming a citizen. That's amazing. I think that's, I'm so proud of, of anybody that becomes a citizen. Yeah. Kind of a little bit of a funny story is Sergio, the mechanic Sergio, all this week he's been talking about paying his taxes because he's got his W-2 and he's super excited to pay his taxes. I'm like, why are you so excited to pay your taxes?

And Ricky was there and they went back and forth in Spanish real quick and Ricky's like, just so everybody knows he's legit that's awesome absolutely absolutely so sorry jam didn't want to no jump in there on a shout out definitely no apologies necessary i love that whole thing awesome you know sergio is appreciating the freedoms and benefits that being in the united states affords him yeah so he's more than happy to pay his taxes absolutely you know we yeah i'm not happy because

my tax status changed in november so i paid one way all year and then different at the end of the year and that's not working out very well for me oh that's a bummer all right that thought says i was coming back from fair play and a little shout out to you guys that do the podcast a fuel driver from denver i wish i got his name or company called out to me on the cb and said he was really enjoying the JFW podcast and that it has come a long way from the beginning episodes.

He said he listened to the recent one on topics about 285, and then he has been going back to listen more and really appreciates what you guys are doing for the family of truck drivers slash brotherhood. Said keep it up. He runs Denver to Gunnison, so the 285 episode was very helpful. Zach later added that he was looking out for us too when a four-wheeler is making a dangerous passing maneuver. Call that to them guys on the radio. I bet.

Yeah, wish we knew who you were. Feel free to email jam at jfwtrucking.com or let us know, make a comment on the podcast. We'd love to know who you are and give you an actual shout-out. Yeah, thank you for shouting out about the four-wheeler. It is a brotherhood. We have to work together and be better together. Absolutely. That's exactly what we're after, is to reach as many people as possible. 100%. I want to give a shout out to all the first try 100%ers on a knowledge challenge.

For the podcast. We'll get into that a little bit more. We've been talking about the podcast and Knowledge Challenge quite a bit this morning. I do want to recognize those people and perhaps we'll read their names off later. Oz wants to give a shout out to Randy Alvarez for letting Tony Martinez take his truck to Redmond. It's very generous of you to give up your truck so somebody else could go out of town.

Oz also wants to give all the new drivers who headed out to redmond recently so it doesn't even mean that you're a new driver here but new to the redmond run as well super helpful that's something that we need as many people to do as we can yeah we had a lot of people step up every the dispatch went through and called the people and a lot of people you know hey you've already asked me and i i just can't do it and it was just

finding out who couldn't and you know if there was some reasons that we could fix to help you out be able to go Sure. And, you know, cause it's, it's, it's good money. It's good money for the drivers, good money for the, for the company. And, you know, I've told everybody, a lot of people mentioned that we were slow and we're really not. Cause in the first time of me working here at JFW, you know, 42 years, we've never had more loads than what we're capable of going and getting.

And we have loads sitting that we can go get drivers can go get and we don't we don't have the drivers we don't have the we don't have the equipment and you know that was the reason for the the second phone call of trying to find out hey can you go can you help us out can you do this you know because it's it's important to everybody that's what's going to make the winter go you know and i know super dave sitting here just before we started the podcast was you know

when have we ever done this kind of work in january you know it's good Absolutely. Yeah, it's a different feel when we have to go out of town, especially if you're hired on. We're not an over-the-road company. Yeah, we're a local company, and you probably want to be home with your families every night. And listen, there's two different ways to look at this. Number one, if you're struggling financially and you could get out of town.

I talked to one of the out-of-town drivers yesterday, and he was telling me how much money he's making. I mean, he's making summertime money right now running a Redmond. Right. You know, so it is possible, you know, if you, you know, maybe you don't go three, three times in a week, maybe you go one time and it helps you out a little bit. If you don't need the money and you want to help JFW out, there's another reason to go.

If you don't need the money and, you know, I'm not saying you're not helping us out, but you just don't want to go. I mean, it's not a forced dispatch. Not yet. No. Right. No. And that's what, that was the other reason for the phone calls. We didn't want to force it. I mean, I couldn't believe out of 110 drivers, we couldn't get 50. Right. To do it. Right. You know, and that takes care of the loads. And there was easily more than, you know, 50, I think, that we came up with.

And just like you said, I understand if you have a dog and you're a single person or, you know, you help your wife out every night with kids because she goes to work. There's a lot of stuff. That's the reason you got this job. But is there a lot of people that can do it? And that's what we wanted to find out. I'd like to encourage everybody to consider it. If you can make it work, there is a benefit to it. Yeah. And, and one load a week, you know, that, that changes it for everybody.

If, you know, one driver or each driver can do one load a week, that, that helps out a lot. And I, and I know Dave, you, you said you were just talking to the. That driver and what he's making. And we have several drivers that have already changed their safety scores that the groups are working with. I'm pretty sure he's above 95 on both his scores. And like I said, we have several drivers that have already changed that. But what is that a week, Dave? You said you just did the math.

Just the safety bonus. Just a safety bonus per week extra. Do we want to talk about what he made for the week? Sure. Yeah. He mentioned that he made $2,100 for the week. Gross, right guys? $2,100 for the week and the safety bonus, if you take the 9% on that, cause he is over the, the 95 on both scores and he's taking the podcast test, that's $179 bonus per week. Right. Just the 9% on top of that. That doesn't count a Friday or Saturday bump. Right. No. So I mean. So basically 180 bucks.

Yeah. And a bonus in a week. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's almost knocking down 2,500 bucks a week. Right. Yeah. So. Yeah, when that bonus hits the 15th of next month, that's going to be nice. Right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Which, again, we talk about all the time. That money right now is adding to your PTO days, your holidays. I mean, it just. The snowball effect is big. Yeah. Yeah. Great, great words, Jim. The snowball effect.

I mean, it's like paying something off when you're looking at your finances. You get to pay something off. If you take that payment and apply it to your next thing you have to pay off, And pretty soon you snowball your payments and you're without a payment.

You know, that's the same thing is snowballing your percentages, you know, and we're, we're really fighting to get everybody to be a team and, and go do this and, and look at the big picture. You know, what's your, what's your goals? Yep. All right. Let's see. I lost my spot. Ah, Ron Buffron. I'd like to give a shout out to Mike Bortz for being such a good trainer. We've heard that before. Also, I'd like to give a shout out to the driver that helped me out at Berco.

I think his name is Damien. And it was Damien Rubal, Roy Ball. He showed me exactly what the JFW family is about. Thank you. So that makes us happy when we hear somebody new needed help. And, you know, we always say Super Dave sells a bill of goods at the interview, but it's up to our drivers to make good on that bill of goods. Absolutely, Jim. So, you know, when you got guys like Damien out there doing the right thing and helping people out, you know. And Dameron,

I mean, has he been – did he just have his one year? Has he been here a year? I can't remember. You know, he's a fairly new guy, and he's already, you know, adding value to the JFW culture and family. So nice job, Damon. And then I want to give a shout out to these three drivers. Make note of this. It could be a podcast challenge question. These three drivers, Bear, Ted, and Cece for helping pull Tarbs back off the soul pile yesterday, Yard 23.

There was two other people there doing it. That would be Scooby and myself. We are not drivers. So if you see our names, we are not the right answer. There you go. Damien just had his year anniversary. He did just have it. Yeah. Yeah. Like the 24th. Okay. Yeah. And what, and speaking of the salt bin, you guys are pulling the tarp backs. What did we decide, Dave? Was that 8,000 or 7,000 the way they stacked it total in it? Cause it was, it was full.

Over 7,000 tons of salt in that bin. Yeah. And, and we've, we've hauled it, we're, we got like a thousand tons left. So we've knocked that out, you know, with, with Kyle at salt works. And so thanks guys for all the help and the loading out and scaling. And, you know, that's just another aspect of our job that we do during the winter. Yep. Yeah. You don't realize how deep that pin is until it's empty. Yes. Right. Yeah. Kyle. Right.

It goes back then. Like you're hauling, hello, hello. Right. Yep. You guys got any shout-outs? Super Dave, I know you have one. Yep. So Fabio reached out to me this morning, wanted to give a shout-out to the snow crew. He's been working the last couple of storms, and he just said, hey, thanks to Chili, Valentino, Dave Higuera, Damien. And he just says, you guys are amazing. Thanks for all the help. Nice. Those guys stepped up. I mean, that first storm, it was a classic mid-winter

storm. I think it was probably five below zero in the morning when they started. You know, if anybody knows anything about, you know, heavy equipment, they don't like to start in the morning at all, way worse than your trucks. And then the snow doesn't, I mean, you're pushing snow and it's 40 degrees. It's easy. It stacks up, it melts out and it just disappears, but not when it's zero. Yeah. Not that January. Whole different gig, isn't it? Right. Yeah.

I know you meant I'm going to take the mic back here real quick you mentioned Valentino I want to give a shout out to Valentino I ran into him at the gym the other day he had a day off you know he wasn't working you know I go on my gym on my lunch break typically not so much this month most people start working out a lot in January I've been struggling to get to the gym in January it's the opposite for me but I ran into Valentino it's just good to see you know people that take care of

themselves another one Emilio, Emilio Silva Silva. He goes to the gym regularly. We were talking to Ron Dufran. He goes before work, so he's up early going. Wow. It is possible. You can get fit and work at JFW at the same time. Absolutely. Outstanding. Yep. Yep. Yeah, my shout-outs, I did want to mention the Snow Crew Super Dave. I'm glad you had more of a list. I know Chili, shout-out to Chili. He did a good job arranging it.

You know, this last storm here, he started on Thursday and went through the names.

And we had people out of town and you know all that kind of different stuff and i think we got more snow you know saturday night than kind of was expected and and we knocked it out and so again that's you know jfw standards working together over at rola and intermodal and being a team and clean cleaning the areas that we need to get cleaned and you know loading it out and you know it's that those can be fun we can work as a team and get things accomplished when

it you know still it's cold out and it's snow but and you know you're there working but you know it's just us it's just the jfw teammates and there's no public out there it's just the railroad area and you know it's it's good to see everybody knock it out and get it done and again it's you know helps you with your your paycheck and helps us too so thanks to the snow crew and then i did send a message to these guys on connect i heard back from jimmy and.

Potter and stuff on it. That was some of the group of guys, but I kind of watched everybody coming back from Redmond Saturday there. I spent the night Friday night and I'm pretty sure the snow started in Vail and they changed Vail. I think they chained in Eisenhower. They had to come down Dumont. And then when they, you know, everybody knows how the weather was here Saturday, they weren't chained up.

But every time I looked at anybody's cameras, you know, it was just two paths of barely asphalt on the street and they went down to parker and delivered so jimmy tony cc. Bob coleman john jordan and potter thanks you guys for doing a great job last saturday and you know we got guys out there doing doing a great job every day but these were just the group that fought the snow and not knocked it out of the park you know it

was awesome so nice guys that is awesome i wanted to throw another shout out there to chile we had uh we have actually picked up another contract and he had to come in yesterday. He was scheduled off on PTO, which if you noticed on the page earlier on celebrations, it was his wife's birthday. Right. He still came in. I don't know how. Dog house and PTO. Right, right. Yeah. Happy birthday, babe. I got to go into work for a little while. I forget, do you guys, what's his wife's name? Melissa.

I can't remember. I know it was. Well, Chili's wife, we're sorry. Happy birthday. Right. She does listen to the podcast. I know she does. Chili helped us out. I should, I should know, know your first name, but thank you for being a good teammate. Absolutely. Mrs. Martinez. Yes. So he came in and busted out and did a little more on top of that. So, cause he had to go over and do some more work at Pecos and yeah, so he, he took care of it. Good job, Chili. Yeah. Thank you.

Any other shout outs okay all right let's get into the hot topic of the discussion and i want to call that the knowledge knowledge challenge results like i said we talked about that in quite a bit and i'd like to have some of that dialogue on the podcast as well one thing i thought of is maybe we put it out i can make a survey on connect to see what everybody thinks about it. But interesting results. 97 out of 154 people completed the test.

And when I say completed, that means they got 100%. 86 out of 119 drivers completed it with 100%. 35 people, 14 of who were drivers, never even tried to take the quiz. A lot of people took the test multiple times. And when I say multiple, I'm just letting you know, some people took the test over 100 times and still didn't get all the answers right. There was 753 entries, meaning the test was taken 753 times. Thank you.

Shout out to Joanne Leonard. She's the only one outside of drivers, safety, like that group, including admin, dispatch, the mechanics, and the wash bay. Joanne is the only one who completed the test. So shout out to Joanne. Good job, Joanne. She actually completed it the first time. Got 100%. Better than I did. Better than you did. You helped me. And you were here. I was here.

Speaking of help, not a single person asked me or anybody on the leadership team for any help, which is something we'd like to change. So if you listen to the podcast and you're struggling, whether there's a language barrier or you're not a good test taker or you just need a little bit help, we would rather you come to us and say, hey, listen, I listen to the podcast, but I'm struggling right now. Can you help me?

I would be more than willing to help you to understand the questions better or help you with the process of elimination. Some people just aren't good test takers. Yeah. But the thing is, is through Connect, I could see how many times somebody took the test, right?

And how long it took you to take the test. So when you're taking the test two times in a minute, over and over and over and over and over again, and you're answering like one of the easy questions where if you listen to the podcast, you probably would know the answer, it gives me a reason to feel like maybe you didn't listen to the podcast and you're just trying to take the test to get you 1%. So this was week number one. We'd like to keep running with this and just see how it all shakes out.

Definitely was an eye-opener. One thing I did notice, it didn't boost our listens up at all. So I feel like the people that took the test were, maybe we got a few more listens out of that, but the listens were kind of in line with what they have been. I feel like there's a lot of people outside of JFW that listen to the podcast. I would love to give them the test. Yeah. That would be pretty cool. Right. So, yeah, interesting results.

I would like to read real quick, and then we can get everybody else's input on this. I would like to read off the names of the people who took and passed the test on the first try, because that's a big deal. Bob Marnian, Omar Reyes, Robert Lincoln, Potter, Chris Beam, John Jordan, Bree Baldridge, Joanne Leonard, Edward Cabral. Gerardo Sanchez, Todd Dull, Casey Guthrie, J.R. Sands, Manuel De La Torre. I want to point out Manuel started on the 15th. He passed the podcast first try.

Awesome. Matt Cummins, John Moore, Carlos Meza. Andrick Andrade, Armando Deval, George Potkeeter, Gabe Colemanero, Dwayne Sand, Fabian Sotelo, Troy Holmes, Jason Gammage, Eric Eichner, Jack Oquendo Mejia, Chili Dog, Valentino Belli, and Andrew Berger. 30 people that got 100% on the first try. I did ask a couple of the people, hey, wow, nice job. I see you pass a podcast in the first try. How'd you do it?

The people all answered the same. I just listened to the podcast and took the test, you know, but like I said, some people are good test takers, some are not, and there might've been some language barriers and stuff like that. So Jim, we're pretty vocal about, Hey, maybe this test is a bad idea. You know, so I want to, I want to hear more about that. Yeah. I'll jump off the bridge, Jim. Cause I started the meeting here and going, I don't think it's right.

I don't, I don't, I don't think we should be doing the test. You know, that's, that's, that's just my opinion. You know, you didn't come here to take a test. Right. And you know, that's, that's not being a truck driver. I ask you all the question. I just want to be a driver. Can't I just drive? Do I have to, you know, listen to a podcast and take tests and do all the other stuff. And then, you know, you kind of addressed them.

Is there a language barrier or some people not good test takers you know when you listen to something do you do you learn better reading it than you do listening to it there's all that stuff and and is it fair and you know my big thing is i really want people to ask for help but we want to listen to the podcast right but i'm gonna you know why you were going over that because i knew you were going to go over the very next line in our discussion here, I'm already pissed off about.

And this is the damn reason we want you to listen to the podcast and take the test and be better truck drivers. Cause I just, I just think the whole group of guys running to Redmond, guys and gals running to Redmond.

And our next thing here in our, in our, our discussion here, you guys is Redmond drivers parking in Fruita do not drive over the sidewalk the hotel is complaining right off i'm not up there i don't know if you can make the turn in and out i don't know where the hotel is at fruta i've never been there but what the hell are we doing on the sidewalk what driver puts his truck and trailer on a sidewalk. I mean, it just blows me away. We have this complaint.

You're not good enough not to drive your truck over a damn sidewalk. And I hope I'm wrong. I'm hope that the sidewalk is 15 feet out in the driveway and you have no choice of driving over it. I hope there's a great excuse why we're driving over the sidewalk. But that's the reason for the podcast. You know what I'm worried about, Jim, is I'm pretty sure they're parking in like a big dirt lot. And they're just driving out, not through a driveway. They're just driving out onto the street.

Right, Dave? I mean, what are we doing? And I don't have any details. I'm going by this statement. But here we are having a safety meeting podcast to address this. You know, please do not drive on the sidewalk at this hotel. You know, you represent all truck drivers. You represent JFW. You know, all our names, whether it's, you know, our name on the truck or not, everybody knows JFW and you're driving over the sidewalk. That's all the better you are.

And like I said, I hope there's other circumstances, but. You know, as we take the test, should this be on the test, Jim? Sure. You know, driving over the sidewalk, should it be on the test? How do we know that you listened to the podcast and we came up with the idea to have you take a test so we know you're not one of the guys driving over the sidewalk? You've been told, right? Yeah, because the hotel isn't saying that they're driving over the curb and creating ruts or something.

They're saying a sidewalk. A sidewalk. Yeah. So, so by me coming to you guys this morning and going, I don't think the test is fair. We shouldn't take the test. Am I, am I just off my rocker? That's, we we've come up with a way to solve some of these problems. The best way we can do it. Cause even if we use connect and just send out a message, you know, I sent out a message on connect to all seven of those drivers.

I only heard back from two of them, you know, and I wasn't after a response, but did the other ones even see my thank you right you know i i don't know you guys i'm i'm i'm struggling with with being better you know and trying to come up and not not be intrusive and not piss people off and you know my morning started with just you know a large group of complaints that's one of the questions from from one of the drivers

what does your day look like i i have answers usually starts with jim and dave yelling at us right so yeah jim i don't know if i i don't know if i. I know you you asked that question you know what did i think of it or or discuss that more i'm not sure if i'm doing a good job discussing it but because i i just keep flopping back and forth what are what are we doing but you know dave dave mentioned earlier you know before we even started of the podcast, if we're doing nothing,

absolutely nothing, and I know that's that line, you know, doing nothing, that's the same thing over and over and over. That's just a definition of insanity. We're trying to do something different here. Anybody that's listening to this podcast, we're trying to be a better trucking company. And if you don't believe that, you know, we've said it over and over. I don't want to lose any drivers over it, but maybe this isn't the place. Maybe this, this, this is not your culture.

And, and, you know, we, we, we have, we have a lot of amazing drivers and everybody makes mistakes and has their, their quirks. We have that in our creed. We try to not address that in the creed. Celebrate our differences and respect those with whom we work. Yeah, respect that. And we do. I think we do a good job of that. But we have to try to be better. I can't lie to you. Sometimes it's hard to respect those with whom you work when you deal with problem after problem after problem.

And those choices that they made were so poor that it gets so frustrating that you lose your temper, you know i've been guilty of that i think we've all probably been guilty of that a little bit but yeah i i mean for myself i you know i've always had to work on my temper i've stepped back i have you know the safety team dave does a really good job of it addressing a lot of the situations that you know, I used to have to address and I don't because I, I, I get mad, you know,

and you, you take that step back, but a lot, a lot of the points I'm to now, instead of getting mad, I, I just give up. I don't care, you know, and, and hate to feel that way. Cause that's what I'm, I'm preaching is to be better.

And, you know, in the last podcast, I hope I care more today than I did my very first day when I started and it's rough to keep up, you know, I know, I know several drivers that are just have, have given up, you know, they just, it's, I just drive, you know, and that bummer because at some point, you know, you were probably hurt or frustrated, like you said, Dave. Well, I think it's important for us to remain consistent with who we are.

You know, luckily we have each other to, you know, when one of us are down or don't want to deal with something, somebody else will step up. But, you know, I believe the podcast knowledge challenge, it was put out there to benefit people for being engaged. You know, is the test too hard for some people? Maybe. I mean, we could adjust that, but we want people to listen.

If you listen, you should be able to pass, you know, we might have some kinks to work out, but I'd like to throw a survey out just to hear from, from the people, what they think, you know? Yeah. So here we are week one, there's your results. Right. And it is just week one. It is just week one. You know, that's the reason we're not making it mandatory or, you know, we didn't put all the parameters just to start.

We gave everybody till March 1st and not on the test. I'm just saying we're trying to work with everything instead of just, like I said, jumping off the bridge and when you hit bottom, you hit bottom. We'd love people to ask for help. Yeah. Ask a coworker, ask your buddy, ask who you park next to. The guy you're running with, hey, did you answer these questions?

I'm struggling with them. I got to point something out and I think I'm going to launch an investigation on this, but Chili Dog, andrick and edward all passed the test on the first try i think those guys cheated.

But isn't that i mean what for them you know right exactly yeah that's a brotherhood we want you to pass the test but our whole goal is for you to talk about it if those three talked about it right and even if they gave each other the answers you you you were engaged somehow you were and they're going to be safer yes that's the whole that's the whole we're not encouraging cheating we are encouraging to ask a question and talk about it though be be better right absolutely all right

we've already addressed the sidewalk at the hotel in fruta colorado, if you didn't hear that i'll say it one more time fruta colorado like i said i hope there's some other circumstances that I don't have. No doubt. Super Dave, you brought this one up. What kind of grace period do we have on DOT med cards if they expire?

None. There's no grace period. I was going to make a joke there and say one year, but no. Yeah, we don't want to get to the job. I don't want to make some people think the other, but no, the day that the expiration is on your card, that is your expiration. And if you get pulled over in a traffic check or maybe at a port of entry and they run your license, they will check that.

It's attached to your license. It comes up on their computer and you will be red tagged put out of service you will not be able to say you i'll go to the doctor today you know nope they they put you out of service yep yeah you you need an uber or or what's the what's the group of sam's friends say dave for your for your shoes oh lamberfittis yeah you'll need some lamberfittis or an uber because you ain't driving that truck you could

be driving some lamberfittis wherever you go now who's responsible for making sure that med card is up to date the driver is we do a great job of reminding people. My med card just renewed the beginning of January. And I think I got a reminder from Linda, a reminder from Tracy. I mean, I mean, and if you're going to Dr. Deb up the street, you get one week, she moved it to one week. You get a reminder from her. Oh yes. You're right. I got a reminder from Dr. Deb too.

But she, she quit cause she was doing it like a month ahead or, or, or more right. Dave originally. And she quit doing that because it She thought the reminder was too early and you blow it off, so she sends it out a week. So, you know, and usually she can squeeze you in someplace in the week. I don't get a reminder from her ever. It's weird. Do you renew before the week?

Probably. That's probably why. That was my next thing I was going to bring up is don't wait for the day before your DOT card expires. You know, when we call you up and be like, hey, you know, you can't go out of town tomorrow.

Know and you know because you don't have a dot card it's not a good day to have to go deal with that so no because we really can't dispatch in case you didn't get weren't approved you didn't get it so exactly yeah i mean just to dive a little deeper on that i mean everyone knows now they've tied that so tight to your license they just run your license and your license is pulled yeah your license gets suspended exactly yeah yeah so i mean then you're dealing with

your med card and you got to get your license renewed and put back online i mean it's a pain in the ass to not take care of your business. So take care of your business. And I was going to joke when you said who's responsible, you know, one of the wash techs in the wash bay will go ahead and remind you for your med car. Right. I was just joking, you know, but that's not who reminds you. It is definitely up to you. We've talked about this before, but let's bring it up again.

Your load gauges, please, please, please use them. Hogwash. We're actually going to post the load gauge video JR made today on Connect. So look out for that. It's very simple to calibrate them. I was impressed with a lot of the guys that were loading at Yard 23 yesterday. They were getting on the scale, stopping with their steers on, stopping with their drives on, and then stopping with the whole truck on to get their weights.

Good for them. That led me to believe they were making sure their gauges were calibrated. So good job, guys and girls. And was that fast? There was no trucks waiting to get on the scale. Let's just say that. Sure. Yeah, it was fast. It was pause, pause, and one more pause. Right. It took no time out of their day. Also, very important that you communicate with the pits and the plants and have good communication, right? We want you to go in there.

If you've never been somewhere before, let them know you knew. Let them know, hey, listen, I've never been here before. You know, can you direct me to the sand pile or can you let me know where to dump?

If you're having trouble communicating with that loader operator or the pit or the plant, you know, and you're able to get out, you don't want to get out at like, Morrison or someplace you're not allowed out of the truck, but feel free to get out and go have a conversation with the managers, the plant operators, you know, talk to your co-drivers, stuff like that. But communication is key everywhere we go. Absolutely. Helping your fellow drivers out. So, Soup, you want to take this one?

Because I know we were talking about it yesterday. Do you remember? I mean, that's about being a team. I know we touched on it, but when, and again, I'm going back to being an everyday leader. If you recognize somebody that needs a hand, help them, you know, get out of your truck and ask them at least. Maybe they might say, no, I'm good. You know, but they might also say, yeah, would that, that would be great. Thank you so much for your help. And again, it's, it's helping the team get rolling.

It's, it's good karma. It's, you know, the shoe will always be on the other foot at some point. Maybe you will be the guy you will need a hand. You will need some chaining help or to get out of a mud hole or, you know, shovel in your trailer. If something's frozen up inside and.

I mean, it's just doing the right thing, guys. Yeah, the example I've heard you use in the interview, Soup, is you know you got time to go drop your load off and you'll have time to get up to the pit one more time to run that late load. And you're on a mission and you want to make that money. And you leave, we'll say Young's Ranch now, you leave Idaho Springs and on your way down, you see a JFW truck broke down, right? Do you pull over and help them or do you go deliver that load so you can get

back up and get that one more load? What answer is right? I've heard you say in the interview, well, either one is ultimately okay, you know, because we have other people to support that driver. But, yeah, stop and help that other driver out. That's what I would do, you know, because like you said, you may need help the next time, you know, or, you know, maybe it'll take 30 seconds for you to help that driver and you can both go get one more load.

Exactly. You know, there, and there, there's, you know, I've asked the questions several times, you know, and I always believe what we do is, is just not black and white. There's just not a set of procedures. And when you see somebody, you know, along, sitting alongside the road and you both guys both just said that, you know, couldn't he just, you know, Mikey's on his way or Ricky's on his way and, you know, the truck's not running

and it's, you know, 20 degrees out. Could he use, could he use a coat? Right. You know, or, or, hey, I got an extra sandwich. Can I leave you my sandwich? Right. Or, you know, hey, you pull over and I just talked to the shop and they're asking me to cage a break, cage a break. I don't know how. Can you help me? Help me? Absolutely. Well, caging a break might be, you know, 10 minutes or it might be an hour because the bolts froze in the brake pod. You got to hit it out.

You know, you can't get it. It's an older, I'm just going to make this up. It's an older brake pod. You're having trouble getting it in the notch to lock down. And you spend an hour with that driver helping him out.

But our shop didn't have to drive two hours. you know nobody had to go to the rescue the whole bit charge us for an hour put some time down put some time down you know you helped a guy out you helped saved us all a lot of money in the big picture you know but that's just uh that's just a courtesy you know and again i i don't think that's black and right white you know you never know the situation just like super dave said all right on the radio hey

i'm good okay you know but just don't run by him at 50 miles an hour right And, and not do anything about it. Yeah. You know, I, I think that could be, you know, any driver alongside the road. I think, you know, Coleman or, you know, the, the guy pulling fuel, you know, there's a lot of situations. Should you, should you, should you possibly spend your day trying to help everybody alongside the road? You know, maybe not. That's a little difficult, but that's back to your black

and white. You know, it's not black and white. Look at the, be proactive, reactive. And they're not, you know, sometimes you got to be reactive in a situation like that, but proactives.

You don't have a sign on the door that says courtesy patrol huh right dave triple a you know.

So i i mean i i helped a lady out one time i think i've told the story in new mexico coming back with the family and you know she was trying to change a tire alongside the road and i was like okay i'll i'll just stop and help that's just not right i know the town you know is 100 miles away yet and I stopped and you know she didn't have the right deals to connect together the bars to get her spare tire down and so I tore my pickup apart you know all the jack stuff and

I was there almost two hours changing this lady's tire when it should have been like 15 minutes you guys like I can run a jack and put a tire on I'm like okay it's all okay you know and then she went to leave and she'd left the key on and the truck was dead so i had to spin around on the highway and give her a jump but i you know i get back with the with you know the girls all three girls and holly's in the truck and all that kind of stuff and i'm like okay everybody remind me never to stop

and help anybody so that's funny here's a funny story for you and this is back in 2018 i've already met with you guys about coming back to work here. I was going wheeling for the first time with my brother in law, rest in peace up in Idaho Springs. So I was driving up to Evergreen to meet him. And then we were going to go to Idaho Springs.

And I see this little car pulled over with a flat tire, you know, the mom and two toddlers out, you know, by the car, I pull over, I walked back down to boom, change a flat tire. She's barely keeping an eye on the kids. They're like over by the fog line. I'm like, will you bring your kids over here? Anyway, get her going, drive up, meet my brother-in-law, go to the trailhead, and we run into these people, and I have my JFW hat on, and the girl says to me, oh, you work for JFW?

I'm like, yeah. She's like, yeah, my ex-boyfriend used to work there. I'm like, oh, that's cool. And then I was just talking to my brother-in-law about changing that lady's flat tire. And they were like, yeah, we saw you doing that. You drive that white Cadillac? I'm like, yeah. So this is really funny. The JFW connection. And they saw me changing the tire. And we're on the same trailhead I've never even been willing before. Isn't it bizarre, Jam, those circumstances?

I mean, a similar story obviously makes me think of it. This is about five, six years ago. And Sam and I were running around. It was the day after Thanksgiving and we were all off and we pull up to Lowell and 144th. And I look over and as we were coming up to the stop, Sam actually notices one of the tires on the car, super flat. You know what I mean? Or very, very low. It wasn't flat yet. And they were on our passenger side. And I said, Sam, I'll honk, roll down your window and tell him.

And he gets their attention and is able to tell him, you know, they got a flat.

And they definitely older couple right man and woman and you could tell they they pulled off and i'm like that they're gonna need help sam so i you know i was in the go straight lane and nobody was there so i turned right and i followed them and sure enough they turned into a parking lot in an apartment complex there and we get out and i i just told sam i said let's just help them you know and they're on their way they they just spent thanksgiving with their daughter,

they're on their way to kansas because that's where they came from and he's just super thankful for the help. And he hands me a business card. He's got an insurance company in, in, uh, Kansas and his last name is Goodenkopf. And I'm like, oh, so funny. I hadn't seen this name in years. I went to school with a Goodenkopf and he's like a girl. And I'm like, yeah, Sheila. And he's like, that's my daughter. And Sam goes, oh my God, I go to school with a Goodenkopf and it's Sheila's daughter.

It was the weirdest thing. They gave us two loaves of banana bread and it was just, it was just great karma you know what i mean and how often do you make a three generation.

Right tire fix right i'm like oh my god this is weird that's awesome yeah so strange i know from casey when you want to check your oil before you start your truck up on your pre-trip really that's typically the first thing i would do pop the hood check your oil once you know that's good then start your truck up you don't want to start your truck up before you check your oil it doesn't make any sense yeah just it just made me

think i don't have any notes on it bump your tires too grab that hammer don't kick the tires bump your tires use that hammer check it out you should have checked it out the night before run around them in the morning if you checked them that night should be good in the morning but you still have to check them so.

Cmex is up and running again for you cmex drivers and if you're not a cmex driver now you certainly can become one that's another nice piece of daily work that we got But because it's a new year and we started, we stopped, we took a break before the end of last year, you do need to renew your site-specific for CMEX. Yep, absolutely. And it's because that's doing the little video that me and you've done today, right?

Yes. So you got to go inside the office, watch the video. I think it's 15 minutes, you know, and gives you a card for the year and stuff. They're usually pretty friendly. you ring the bell or at least when we were there ring bell and tell them what you need to do and they get you taken care of. I'm going to skip this next topic because we've already talked about what we got going on right now.

And then prescriptions you guys want to talk about that man as upset as jim was over the other i'm just as upset over the prescriptions yeah that's some bullshit right here yeah yeah all i can say is we're working on it you know we've heard back from the insurance company and i i mean i guess just to let everybody let everybody know everybody needs to know for those of you that chose the, hra plan the health reimbursement plan on our cigna not the health savings account but the

health reimbursement account it says on the bottom of the booklet for prescriptions. There's tier one tier two and tier three deductibles and that was the booklet we gave out just so everybody knows that flood and peat made yes that flood and peat made and now we're being told that we don't have any assistance on that, that there are no tiers until we reach our full maximum out-of-pocket deductible.

And on that plan, everyone knows that was an $8,000 deductible for the single person, which JFW is ponying up the last $3,000. We've just offered to do that to keep it comparable to last year's plan. But we stumbled onto this via a couple people and we're like, what? So we've contacted the insurance company and they're like, oh, that was a misprint. And we, we feel like idiots or I'll speak for myself. I feel like an idiot.

There was five of us that sat through multiple, multiple meetings with our insurance agents. And we didn't even know there was a plan that was available that you couldn't get. Assistance on your prescriptions. I mean, I've never even heard of that, right? They say lots of places do that. I've never heard of that. I mean, my entire life, we've always, I go get a prescription and I'm making it up. It could be $150 prescription.

And, you know, if that's a really expensive one, you may need to pay $39 or, you know, it's a $20 prescription and you pay a $3 co-payer, whatever the deal is, right? It always kind of varies, but there's always some type of assistance. And they're like, boom, there's none. And we're like, what are you talking about? It's in our booklet. You know, is that even possible? And so they're digging into it. It's, it's not done yet.

And we'll have to definitely do an update once we get more information. Yeah. I wouldn't, I don't feel dumb. I feel deceived. You know, I was one of those five people in that room.

And the way that we go through these plans with a fine tooth comb and try to make sure we have all the bases covered that would have stuck out like a sore thumb that would have been like right like the smoke would have been coming out of our ears the horns would be going off you know there's no way we would have agreed to that because that's not good no we never we would never would have done that yeah and they know that about us yeah yeah so you know and then we're

going direct to the insurance company i'd like to hear more what flood and pete has to say because they sold us a bill of goods. Well, that's who we're working with. They're going to Cigna. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. Go ahead. Sorry, Jim. You might be touching on what I'm about to say, so you go first. I was just going to – I just want to make sure we don't skip. So if you need a prescription, you haven't filled one this year, please be proactive and check with MedRx.

We have coupons I think we can get. Talk to your pharmacy. Which pharmacy? A lot of pharmacies have coupons. I mean, there's a lot of ways to get your medicine knocked down. See if it's available in generic. Exactly, Dave. Yeah, all of that. You know, and then, you know, if it's, I don't know what medicine some people are on, you know, maybe I am not, I can't promise this, but maybe we can help in the meantime until we get this solved. You know, there's just, it is just really, it's hurtful.

You know, we've tossed out the words, you know, deceived and duped and, you know, we feel dumb about it. We do our best, you know, and that's, I think that's what's driving some of the anger is we do our best to protect you guys as much as we can to keep the cost as low as we can to help you.

And we were just, it just, it just went through the cracks. Dude. And I, yeah, I don't know if it went through the cracks because. It's in writing that we have a $15 Kobe. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So. It's a terrible writing. You know, again. But they have a get out of, sorry, Jim. No, no. They have a get out of jail free card because in the back of that pamphlet, they say they've done their best to be sure all the wording is correct, but there may be mistakes in it that they're not responsible for.

So, I mean, we'll, we'll see if they do the right thing. I know if that was a company that Jim and I had made that mistake, we would a hundred percent do the right. That's, and that's the other hard part is we always want to do right by everybody. And if we made a mistake, we're responsible for it. I've seen it time and time again, where we pony up because a mistake was made by us. You know, I had a letter from Douglas County state check call me yesterday.

Like, hey, you know, I was told to give you a call about this repair, you know, to the to the rafter. She's like, you know, did you want us to file a claim? I'm like, no, absolutely not. Don't file a claim. Just send us a bill. She's like, oh, thanks for, you know, just being so easy to work with and, you know, take care of it. I mean, that's the that's what needs to be done. Yeah.

Yeah. The I was going to mention just about the prescriptions again is just make sure you're checking, you know, before you get to prescriptions, because there again, that's the reason this podcast is important. We can't call every person, but this is the quickest way to reach everybody so they know about the prescriptions.

So you can possibly tell your friend, tell your buddy, tell whatever. You know, tell your wife, anybody, you know, before you go, be prepared to be an advocate for yourself, for your prescriptions.

You know, make sure you're asking the right questions to the pharmacist just don't go in and go hey i always get this medicine and it costs x you know it's it's going to be more than that because your prescriptions are not covered at this point so yeah i had that happen one time i got prescribed something and that wasn't a generic form yet and it was like i went in because the doc gave me like 30 day free sample like oh this this works really good then i go to

get it they're like oh yeah 647 i'm like no no no like like what supply is that is that like for 10 years right no that's just for a month i'm like wow nope i'll be sick you know and then i went to my general doctor my primary care physician and he's like oh we could just give you something similar that has a generic and it's like nine dollars sure sure yeah because I mean, it is a big difference.

Like, I don't know what, what pharmacies are in the safe ways, but, and maybe they're part of the med X. They're, they're a lot of the medication. You're like, like you said, it's 600 bucks. You go in there, it's $39. Right. And you're like, how the heck can you do that? I know you keep saying MedRx, GoodRx is another one. I think Walgoons. Yeah, MedRx or GoodRx. There's probably two of them. Yeah. There's probably all sorts of, yeah.

But I know there is another prescription I get where if I went through insurance, it's like 150 bucks and then not going through insurance and using the GoodRx, it's like $30. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Just trying to get the word out. Make sure you just don't, and please just don't go, I mean, unless you have to have the pill that day, you know, if you get there and somebody tells you it's $600, either ask questions or don't buy it and let's get this figured out.

You know, hopefully you're not, you don't have to have that medicine by three o'clock that day or something. So. Yep. Just rub some dirt in it and call it. Just kidding. I don't have anything for what's next, but we do have a pretty hefty questions from the audience section today. You got another thing, Jim? I have what's next. Let's get it. Okay. All right. February 14th, Valentine's Day. Hey, super-dairy, will you be my Valentine? I have one. Thanks, Jim.

You could have two. You could have a work Valentine and a Yeah. And then probably for the banks and the paychecks and stuff, February 17th, it's Washington's birthday. And I believe we call that president's day. So got, got two days coming up. One of them for your sweethearts and the other one for your bank account. Speaking of bank accounts, everyone should have gotten their W2s. Yep. And I kind of got a kick out of it. Sam called me yesterday.

You know, he worked at Walmart over the summer and he's like, Hey dad, I just, I'm letting you know I got my taxes. I'm like, you got your taxes. He's like, yeah, Walmart sent me my taxes. And I'm like, that's your W2, bud. And he's like, what does that mean? And I'm like, well, that's, they have to tell you what they paid you, right? And what you paid in taxes and all that. And I love taxes in Indiana, man. He's, he killed it.

He didn't have to pay hardly anything in payroll taxes and federal and all that. Yeah. It's. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Good state. So it was fun. I got to educate him a little bit. Why are there four copies? One's for your tax preparer. One's for you. One gets turned back into the state or the government, you know, the feds. So yeah, good stuff.

I don't do any of that. I'll just like quick book, turbo tax. Turbo tax. Yeah. Yeah. Turbo tax. Yep. All right. Questions from the audience. Hey there, JFW crew. My name is Mike Powell. I've listened to every podcast trucking down the road every Thursday. I would drive for you guys, but unfortunately I live in Sedgwick. My question is, would it be possible to stop in sometime and meet you all? Well, Mike, number one is absolutely, please stop in. I'd love to meet you. Number two, I apologize.

This was a Spotify comment made like two months ago. Oh, wow. Oh, no. Oh, bummer. Yeah, I don't check those comments very often, apparently. Maybe I will. I think he's the only one that's made a comment on Spotify. Well, no, no, no. JR made a comment. Your friends from Florida made a comment one time.

Oh, Chuck and Chris? yeah so yeah absolutely stop in we'll probably throw you a hat and maybe even a shirt yeah yeah absolutely thanks for listening mike and yeah i know jam said it but sorry we missed it lots of avenues right right absolutely so if if you are listening every day here's your here's your big shout out there you go mike powell used to have a pal a couple pals yeah uncle freddy and leroy.

Hope they're doing well Yeah I heard from Fred maybe Six weeks ago or something Sounded like he was alright. Alright Ricardo Cobover 0089 Question for the brothers Being that you two are the owners and also work here What is your responsibilities Day to day What does a normal work day consist of For you two here at JFW Man that word normal cracks me up, There's nothing normal about our days, huh, Jim? Not a thing. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Well, let's see. It starts off problem solving, and then we move to problem solving, and then we handle dealing with problems, and then we try and figure out a way to prevent some problems.

And then we probably have lunch that's not a problem that's not a problem sometimes it is i hear him talking all the time what do you want for lunch today chick-fil-a's drive-through is closed that was a problem right right yeah never a problem won't miss lunch so yeah no i mean honestly like a a fast rewind like pretty much the minute i look wake up i'm grab my phone i'm looking at coors what the can is at be sure that we're getting coors taken care of because we've you know,

had issues there and it's just a habit. Now I've created a habit to see who's moving and who's not on Samsara on the Utah run and making sure we have no problems there and then easing our way to work. And, you know, I, obviously I do check emails before I leave the house as well. You know, now we've got connect on there and then we get to work and there is a lot of problem solving here that, you know, we try and be proactive and eliminate problems or try and educate or deal with stuff that way.

But I mean, you know, like this insurance thing, I mean, we probably burned an hour on it, three of us yesterday, just trying to figure out what to do on the prescriptions. You know, and those are unforeseen problems that that isn't what we set up. That isn't what we promised our people. That isn't what we bought. You know what I mean? And it is, it is infuriating when you have to deal with those things and, and, you know, try and hold your composure and do things the right way. And, you know.

Always just eyes and ears, you know, see someone leaving the yard and their tailgates open or, you know, hoses dragging the deck plate. You know, people think we're picking on them. These things are for a reason. You know, there's, there's, and sometimes it's mind boggling. Like how can those hoses be dragging the deck plate when we talk about that being the number one thing, right? How did we leave the yard with our tailgate

open when we did a pre-trip or how did we miss it and we did a pre-trip? Things like that. And we're constantly discussing ebbs and flows and motions of how do we get better? How do we continue to train better? How do we hire better? How do we incentivize creating better pay like with the bonus structure we came out with? And, you know, we're going back and forth this morning about the listening to the podcast for the 1% and things like that.

But our whole goal is to find work, create a great place to work, a safe haven for everyone to work at, have fun along the way, and just make it a great environment. And some days that works really well, and some days it's tough, you know. But yeah, I mean, yesterday I probably spent two hours working on the Bronco to plow the snow and ice on the north side of the building over there working on the batteries.

So just, it could vary, you know, I've been out and help everybody get the yellow iron going at Rola and just things like that. I think every day, every day is a challenge. If you show up here and you're on the leadership team and you're looking for something to do, you're not looking very far because there's always something to be done. There's always someone to help. There's always someone to teach. There's always someone to educate and hopefully learn something along the way.

You know, I mean, we learn something every day and sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's not so good. But by gosh, we're learning something along the way, you know, communicating with our customers, dealing with our customers. You know, educating them.

You know, right now we're in the middle of Mike's pulling, he's got 0096 in here and we're putting a two-line wet kit on it because we're picking up a contract that starts Monday for some grain pickups at, I think, seven additional independent breweries. For Wilbur Ellis. Yeah. So we're working hand in hand with Linda, getting pricing together.

You know, JR went out and ran a couple of loads with the other client that, that has the hall and just, I mean, you name it, our, our fingertips are in everything. Yeah. Yeah. Ricardo, I just thought it was a great question. You know, love to, love to talk about things like that because it's, it's what we do and it's become our passion. We don't have really too many hobbies outside of, of work here.

And I tried to just write down some quick things, you know, just type in an email to kind of go over it. And, you know, I think what I found by starting to write the email here is one of the things is it takes a village to do what we do. And a lot of what me and Dave do is we're checking on the villagers to either make sure they're all right or they're doing their jobs or something hasn't been missed.

And Dave touched on it, you know, at, at, I get up at 340 every day, I got to be out the door at 430 to be either be here or, or pick up Dave. And by 420 to 430, I have my company radio on and I've tried to review the, the connect emails and texts to see what's going on from the night before, you know, so that that's the start of my day.

You know, and lots of times we have people call on the radio and I've answered somebody at 430 before dispatch gets here, you know, and then, and then, you know, just in that piece, I pick up Dave and we review again, you know, what's, what's happened that night or what's needs to be done during the day. And then by the time you're here, we're just not, my word is flooded or inundated, just with all the daily things that need to be done.

And you're checking on, you know, each person and I have to, you know, throw kudos out. Our team is great, but... You know, they're immersed in their job. So what have, what have they missed? What snuck by? Those are the things we were looking for. You know, for example, yesterday I, I stopped to get fuel in my pickup. Pump three wasn't working. Well, we can't have that for the afternoon.

Luckily we have Scooby that that's part of the maintenance. I can text Scooby or call Scooby and, you know, he comes over, but he's loading trucks, right. And tarpon. And so he didn't get to it the afternoon, but that's, that's something that is it missed? You know, luckily I found it, you know, part of my morning yesterday is I spent two hours renewing the fleet license plates. So that was 110 trucks that I had to go through that, you know.

Fortunately I have Holly that set up a lot of the VINs. She, she renews that makes sure license plates make sure trucks are in and out of our list, but that's 110 trucks checking off that every one of them got renewed. And I'm not renewing one that's sold. Well, you know, whether I'm fast or slow at it, took me two hours yesterday morning to go over that. And then you hit the finalization button. And what did I tell you? That's 448,000 due in February for the fleet.

You know, so then I'm, I got this little pit in my stomach. Go smoke a cigarette. I'm like, okay, how many trucks can we get to Redmond? How many, how many loads of C-Mix can we haul? How fast can we get the blue salt out of the deal? You know, it's plant 12, you know, what can we do to replace the 438,000? And then you're, you know, you're, you're digging deep, Ricardo. Then I'm, you know, I'm immediately going to the bank accounts.

I'm checking cashflow. I'm checking how, you know, is there any customers behind? What does that look like for the next 30 days?

You know, does that, does that mean we have to pull out of the line of credit? there's there's this multiple layers of of the onion that that i go through each day you know i i go down and i report it to dave so dave's has that knowledge that mikey comes to him and go and i'm making this up we just blew an engine i want to spend 18 000 what do you think dave's go no you can't do it this month we're paying for license plates you know there's there's.

So many things that, that in the communication and, and we, we take it, me and Dave take it for granted. I'm speaking for Dave because we've done it for so long. We just fall in the groove. It's just the next stone that needs overturned and you do it. I mean, I spent two hours on a legislative committee, a zoom meeting yesterday because all the legislators are in session that have all lost their fricking minds and they're, they're going after more climate to change shit hard.

They're going to go hard here in Colorado with Trump in and trying to lighten and remove restrictions. Colorado is going to double down. Polis has 24 months left in office and he is, he is going to make a name for himself and it sucks. And some of the stuff he's going after, it is ridiculousness. It is absolute ridiculousness. And we're, we're trying to run our business and, and, and we're having to do this stuff over here because it's important.

And I'm sure I probably interrupted Dave, but one of the things that popped up during the CMCA meeting yesterday is the, the mayor of Vail. He's trying to get on the ballot or get pushed through. If you get caught in Vail with not a set of chains on, it's a $20,000 fine. That's a thousand, 20,000. That's, that's not going to solve anything you guys. So, so Dave's, you know, whether he speaks on that or pushes with the other members or whatever.

So there there's just a lot and I'm not, I'm not trying to make it like we do any more than anybody else, but it was a great question. You know, and when you, when you try to break down your day there, there's just a lot in it. And then, and then, you know, on top of all that, we're trying to make sure that, you know, you guys are all happy. You want to go do your job. You want to spend, you know, 10 hours, 11 hours, 12 hours in your truck.

You know, you're, you're, you're, you're okay with chaining for, you know, six hours of your trip back from Redmond and, and all that stuff. And then on top of all that, you have done your pre-trip and made sure your tailgate shut. Right. The little things. We're all a chain, like we talked about. It's. It's the village. At the annual party. We are a chain and we're connected together. And if we're not doing our part and you're not doing yours, we're a broken mess.

Yep. And to add, you know, the, like you said at the, at the party, Dave, to add some, some, you know, some challenges, we have to throw a couple of sharks in the tank. Yeah.

To, to keep everything going. Right. You know, and that's, that's, that's the reason for the test. That's the reason for the extra bump in your, in the safety bonus. We're, we're trying to challenge. The good news is we got off early yesterday. We got to leave at 530. We did. We did. And then got home at eight after we set it, the 270 hearing committee. Yep. You know that it's a 50 year old highway. Five of the bridges that you drive over are, are, they're not critical.

Cause if they're critical, they'd have to be shut down, but they need to be fixed. And there's a special fund that Colorado gets from the federal government that when their bridges are in those state of, of. Decay or whatever. Yeah. Demise. They get money to keep putting patches on them, but now that helps them push through to get a project done on a bridge that, you know, is over 50 years old and should be replaced anyway.

But they can't widen that bridge. They have to put in exactly what they tear out. Yeah. And that means they're not widening it until they get their EIS back. Their EIS is their environmental impact study, which I'm not going to mention which president pushed that through four years ago, but it has basically slowed construction on any, in any state to basically a crawl. I mean, they started the environmental impact study on this on 270 in 2022, and they don't expect it to be done until 2026.

They might start repairs in 2027 on 270, all because of the environmental impact study. And I always, I want to throw this out, Dave. I always, it's a 50-year-old highway that's been there. It's made its impact. It's had its impact. You should be able to visualize your impact. We're not, in environmental impact study, we're not deciding to go through a new field in the middle of Parker. We're trying to fix a highway that's been here for 50 years. The impact is done.

Right. I mean, you look at it and it's like, okay, 270 in York. As you're moving east, you have a wastewater treatment facility on the right. You have a mined out gravel pit that's a lake now on the left.

Move a little further down you cross the platte river move a little further down you have the burlington bridge or you know bridge over burlington canal then you have all of sun core on your right and you have a trash transfer station on your left and we're worried about an environmental impact you know what i mean what but that's the society we live in today And what really sucks is I drilled the C dot guy. That's basically in charge. And he said, uh,

We can't change what well we're drinking from midstream. We're already drinking from this well. We have to continue. And what he means by that is even though Trump is releasing or easing the regulations on a lot of that stuff or doing away with so many things that have just slowed any type of construction, they can't just change and go with Trump's theory because they're already in the one that they had. So we're stuck.

I mean, who knows? Trump's four years might be over by the time we even start construction on 270. All because of the environmental impacts. And you're, and you, Ricardo, you ask a simple question of what do we look like as, or what do we do as the owners? And we still got back around to politics. Yeah. Our jobs, Ricardo, are becoming more political and more political and more political to save the blue collar workers and businesses like ours here in Colorado.

We are, we are a, a dwindling foundation. I mean, the Blue Collar Small Business Foundation is crumbling here in Colorado because of the political atmosphere. I mean, we're going tonight between 4 and 6 to an event put on by the CMCA to meet our representatives and our senators that are in the dome downtown making all the rules for us. And we just want to ask them because every one of them, all you hear them say is, we want to work on the homeless population and provide lower income housing.

Well, how are you providing low income housing when everything you're doing raises the cost of living? It makes no sense. And they'll throw out another 500 new bills. Last year, they pushed 725 bills and they passed like 504 of them. So last year we got 504 new laws and bills passed. How do we even keep up with that? I mean, how is that not costing us more money?

So, yeah. I've teased everyone that you may read about me in the paper tomorrow because I might just lose my shit on some senator or representative tonight because they've lost their minds. They have lost their minds. I've started a GoFundMe for your bail money. Thank you. I appreciate that. We got you covered.

You better get on to the next question, Jim. I'm moving around. Armando Duval, 0088. When is the JFW Rodeo? I don't think that's a question for us. That's right. That's for the Rodeo Committee. That's right. But we can try and get an answer for you for next week because we didn't have time to get that. Robert Lincoln, 0083. Can the Jake brakes be adjusted in regards to more braking horsepower?

Omar Reyes followed that up this morning separately because he drives a Western Star, and he's really trying hard to get his efficiency scores up. And with the wear-free braking and the weaker jake brakes, he's finding it to be more difficult. Interesting on that because I didn't think that was – I thought it was recording the use of it. If your truck's not slowing down fast enough with the jake brakes, you go to the foot brake. Gotcha.

For the anticipation factor. For the wear-free braking. Yeah.

So if you're aware that your jakes aren't as good, don't you just –. Drive differently yeah and he's working on that you know but bear also bear drives either can't work to repeat he's also asking about are the jakes able to be adjusted yeah i mean both me and dave talked about bear's comment and i hope there's nothing wrong with his jakes because from our years of experience those are the most badass jakes we've ever had they're top of the industry and unless they're a

little weak and your truck needs an overhead which mike stays up on the overheads. I'm afraid they're not working right. I agree. Because I mean, that's just. Because they have the addition of the mechanical portion of the engine brake in the top of the head, but they also use the turbo in conjunction with that. So I'm worried something's not working on his truck, but I would certainly think all the years of experience that Bear has, he could tell you, wow, Jake isn't working on this truck.

The other truck I was driving three months ago kicks its ass. And we would know there's a problem there. As far as adjusting them, if they're adjusted, they're adjusted that you get what you've got. You know what I mean? Right. Can they come out of adjustment? They can, but it's usually not that noticeable. You know what I mean? It's a minute, minute difference. Yeah. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference in the braking horsepower. Right.

But we could have something wrong. You know what I mean? Now the five Western stars, yes, their engine brake horsepower is less than all the rest of the trucks. But that's the reason we put them all with rock traders. They're all local. They're all on flat land. And I mean, they're, they're more than adequate.

Yeah. And by less, they're less than the Ken, the pack car model, but there are more in that little engine than anything through history, you know, up to this point, you know, because of how poor the, the other Jakes were. So anybody that's driven an older truck or has their dream of buying their own truck, which is going to be in an older model, they won't have the breaking horsepower of the Western stars. Oh wow. So that, that's, I think everybody, you know.

Is just expecting what they have now, not from the past. And there's a big difference. So yeah, I think we need to check on both those, check on Bear's and make sure because, you know. Bear, yeah, just so you guys know, Bear is in one of the new trucks. I believe he moved into it maybe in August or something. So I don't think it's anywhere near 100,000 miles on that truck, But I'm just laughing in my head, Jim. I would love to put one of these guys in one of the C12s. Oh my God.

And then send them over the hill. Oh yeah. I mean, what we used to have, I guess that's what I'm, what I'm saying. And I know we're going, oh, when I used to drive, you know, but I, I mean the, the, the, and I bring it up all the time. One of the last trucks I drove all day was one of the Freightliners and I was irritated at how damn good the Jake was. I mean, I had to figure out how to drive because the Jake was so good and it

was, it was grabbing gears. It was, you know, over our, what I call over speeding the engine and all, all sorts of stuff. They were, they were so amazing. So yeah, I guess, I guess for Bear is the truck, is his Jake not as good as the truck he got out of? That would be like my first question. And is it really functioning well? Do we have something on all the new trucks that we don't know about? Right. And everybody's just driving it. Absolutely. It's got 44,000 miles on it.

Yeah. So, I mean, I feel like there's a problem. I really do. Totally agree. Yeah. Worried about it now. We'll have to follow up on that. Yeah. Dustin Romero Jr., 0062. He actually, this question was asked. Recently, Dustin Currier was quick to point that out on Connect, but Dustin Romero Jr. Wants to know, would y'all invest in a wrecker to tow our trucks if needed? And I know we just talked about that recently as a group, so take it away.

Yeah, I mean, for my part, Dustin, is, you know, yeah, I think we need one. It seems like we have shit towed all the time. And, you know, I've stated over and over, we have more stuff towed, like, yearly than we have, well, go back five years, and then the previous 10 years, compared to 10 years ago, 15 years ago, we have more stuff towed yearly than all 10 years. Wow. Is what I'm trying to spit out of that. And a newer fleet. And a newer fleet, if that makes sense.

But if you do it from an owner's standpoint or somebody that's got to invest in the tow ricker, like Ricardo asked what our daily duties are, we have to look at that tow ricker. So what kind of money are we spending on it? A million dollars. Exactly. What style do we get? What's it capable of? Rotator. A rotator.

You said it, Jim, a million bucks. then you're like okay you got insurance you got all the other stuff that goes with it then then when we do need to run it who's qualified to run it that's the remarriage right and and we're paying him just to sit at home until there is a wreck and then we can't get a hold of him because he went to lunch so there's a lot to do with it but you know i know there is a lot of companies that have their own own tow wreckers

you know or something that's capable and then you know again and you look at the wrecker, is it capable of pulling our trucks loaded? Right. You know, there's the other big thing. It can't be where we separate from the trailer and, you know, just are pulling a bobtail. Right. It has to be more than that. So, yeah, it's not in the stars. Could we use one? Yeah. What do you think, Dave? I mean, what do you think? We just, no matter what, need more bodies. Yeah. Everything's possible with

more people, but we need more people with more skills and more things are possible. Yeah. Right? We don't really have an equipment problem. We don't really have any other like hard problems like that. We have people problems. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Because I mean, if anybody noticed the amount of tow wrecker companies that are in business. Oh boy. And flourishing, you know, this is the.

More than ever. More than ever or ever, you know, I, I know we've been told by the tow wrecker guys that the, the emissions and cause I don't want to say computerized, but the emissions that went into effect is the best thing for their business. Huh. Yep. I wonder if their trucks have emissions. How are they always up and running? I, I know some of them don't have to have, they, they can do some deletes.

There is some different rules, but I don't know what you're doing with it, you know, because if anybody's ever noticed, and I know we brought it up in other podcasts, fire trucks are non-emission. The newer ones are, Jim. Are they? Finally, Dave? Yes. Okay. Because they can't take the chance of breaking down, going to a fire. And somebody recognized that that's going to be a problem. Right. We need to keep it simple, stupid. Ah, crazy. Yep.

This is from Potter. this is more of a request rather than a question for the podcast. Moving forward, can we please be more transparent slash notified of any and all changes on the Samsara metrics that can impact our score? It may only be a click of a mouse for you guys to make the changes, but it's a minimum of 30 days for our scores to rebound. When if we were notified of those changes prior to the changes, we could have made adjustments on our end as a driver. Thank you.

So I did talk to Potter this morning about this and, you know, mine and Dave's whole goal is just before the bonuses come out to change all the metrics and make sure nobody get their bonuses. That's going to save us a lot of money. Oh man. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry, Potter. No, actually I had a good discussion with Potter and he had a lot of good points. And then, and then we made some points or I made some points. So everybody has to remember that in this period here, before we go live.

We will zero all your scores out. And we're not sure how we'll zero it out.

We'll either give you a hundred and see if your score gets below, you know the 95 or the 90 or we'll start you at zero and let's see how quickly you build up so everybody will put be put on the same playing field one of my concerns to potter's comments here is if we notify you about the changes we were going to make we don't get the true metrics of what's happening we want to catch you guys by surprise who's driving really well who's driving poorly and something we brought out in the,

in the, when we rolled this out is we needed to find out how many drivers were above 90%, how many drivers were above 95%. Well, if we told you that we were going to change the metrics, there's a lot of drivers that would change the way they're driving. And we can't, we wouldn't have a base on what's really possible.

I mean, we were excited at the, at the rollout there in the, in the end of the year party that we had a large group of drivers that are already attaining that right with no insight with no warning they were already getting that we were we were amazed we were so happy that we had drivers you know driving at these numbers and that that's fantastic i told potter though if we were going to make a large change we will talk about

it on the podcast this is where the information will get out we'll discuss hey we're going to change the metrics of this or you know we will recognize if we change the metrics and don't say anything and everybody's scores get trashed. We'll have to fix that. You know, we're, we're monitoring. We have, we have four people monitoring 110 driver scores. Yeah. And I can just say, Jim, not to interrupt you. We're not going to change it without telling someone that's just not fair or right.

Yeah. And we've just sat here talking about how we want to be fair and right. Yeah. And we haven't changed a thing since the rollout. Yeah. We haven't touched a button. We haven't clicked the mouse. We haven't done a thing since the 17th. Yep. Yep. And so we've got what we've got. Let's get the first month's worth of metrics in here and see how it's going and go from there. If we need to address something, we will. So far, it looks like everybody's scores are coming up, which is great. Yeah.

Yeah, I've enjoyed it. My group has been pretty grassroots, just the way it's all unfolding. People are calling, people are asking, people are posting up their scores in the group chat, You know, looking at the last seven days versus the last 30 days, quite a big improvement. So as those days from 30 days ago start falling off, I mean, the scars are coming up. So it's been pretty cool to witness.

Yeah. It's, as you say, grassroots, Jim, I think about, you know, the old saying that we had, and I think it came from Mick is nobody gets up during the, in the morning and goes, I'm going to suck today. Right. You know, nobody does that. So when you do initiate a challenge or you do throw this out there, everybody's going to try to be better. Like you said, grassroots, everybody naturally is trying to be better.

You know, when I dump my, my first load and go, you know, Hey, I, I drug a, you know, both the mud flaps out. I'm going to quit doing that. My next load is better, you know, or, or I got stuck in the, you know, my first load. I'm going to make sure I don't get stuck. I want to be better. Right. So you naturally do that. So that is great. Newt. Yeah. You know, love the, love the grassroots. Yep. I don't know, grassroots, what's the next word? It's falling into place. There's a movement.

Yeah. A tidal wave. Yeah. I haven't had to start just singling people out and calling them. It's just been kind of like, oh, I have contact with this driver. Hey, by the way, let's look at your score. Or, hey, I get a message. Can I meet with you later? What can I be doing better? Stuff like that. Yep. Hey, and then just to throw out there, I was going to mention it and I'll check with Erica, I don't know how many people know, but she broke her collarbone a few, well, barely six weeks ago.

Anyway, she fell again, everybody rebroke the repair. She's having surgery tomorrow morning to get that repair. I know she's been trying to be in touch with her group. If you do know you're in her group, can't get ahold of her. Like I said, she has surgery tomorrow. She's trying to, you know, try to be back Tuesday, Wednesday of next week.

I know she's reached out to a lot of people in her group. If you're in her group and you haven't been able to get a hold of her, reach out to Jam, reach out to JR, Casey, you know, any one of us. We're here to help. And it's just because she's, you know, been down and out. Not that we're, you know, trying to avoid any of the people or not have you get your score because we want everybody to get their bonus. Yeah, we want to give everybody the money.

Absolutely. Want it because it just makes us better. You know, bottom line. Yeah.

Excellent. All right. Safety topic of the week, wearing your seatbelt properly. This isn't nothing new. We see this every once in a while. Everyone's been pretty good about wearing their seatbelts. You know, we got the seatbelt alerts on Samsara. But what some people do, they don't like the seatbelt on their chest. Like for some reason, I don't know if they feel confined or claustrophobic or they don't like it or it's not cool.

Whatever it is, they'll pull it down and, you know, hit the little button that takes the tension off. And it's just kind of hanging down. So basically, you now only have a lap belt. You don't have the shoulder harness part of the seat belt. That's not really adequate if you have an accident. You know, a lot of people, I remember, you know, years ago, people would be like, oh, I'm not going to wear my seat belt. You know, I feel safe in the truck.

Well, what if you have an accident and you're no longer in that seat because you didn't have your seat belt on? Now you don't have control of the truck.

So same thing with that shoulder part. if all you have is the lap part you're not you're not protecting yourself 100 those seat belts are designed to are designed to go across your chest you could take a little bit of tension off of there but to have it just completely draped down where now all you have is a lap belt that's kind of defeating the purpose of the seat belt so it's kind of crazy jam because i have that 74 pickup that jim's been helping me work

on and when we go for a drive in it it's a two-piece slap belt, right? Like it's got, it's like an airplane. You have one short little side sticking out and then you have to pull the other side. It's inconvenient. It's a pain in the ass. There's no reminder. There's no seatbelt light. There's no seatbelt ding. And I just make a point. I'm in a habit. I put that thing on and I think, wow, it would sure be nice to have a shoulder harness.

You know what I mean? To hold yourself if something were to happen.

Right. And you're like, wow, that really tells you how far we've come, how inadequate that was in the seventies versus today i'm sure you still have an ashtray with a cigarette lighter absolutely we're talking about removing that but it's how how original do you want to leave the pickup and dave jokes with me the other day we've done so much to the pickup it's way past leaving like the ashtray yeah who cares well you could just start smoking and use it

that sounds healthy dave who says we're not. Hey, okay for my mom. Hey, I want to go back to something on bears. Jake breaks. I just got to thinking about something. You know, we could have a bad, we call it a shift stock where you put the truck in gear and then pull it, you know, one, two, three on the, on the jakes bear.

Be sure that, you know, all three lights are lighting up when you pull the Jake on in position one, that you have one light position two, you have two lights position three, you have three lights. And then these trucks are so quiet with the DPF and the mufflers. You can't really hear one head, two head, three head like years ago, you know, so you kind of have to be going down a fair hill and move that shift stock between one, two, three, three, two, one.

And then you do have the max brake where you pull it. There's a detent. Once you get to three, you can actually pull it into a detent and that engages the transmission, you know, so that's like max engine brake. But I mean, that's the same as on the other trucks. I mean, he's had that all along. I'm just kind of going over maybe some helpful hints to really realize, wow, there's no difference between the engine brake on one and three. Right. Right.

Maybe he's, you know, just to joke with him, maybe he's looking for the Jake to be so good to miss that turkey. Right. You know, it's not going to help. On the, on the seatbelt jam, I just want to mention, because again, from experience and I, you know, I think it's an age thing.

I really try to look at the what if, but also, you know, our liability that we have here at JFW, we're always looking at the liability of the three point stance, you know, all that kind of stuff, checking your oil, doing your pre-trip and all that kind of stuff. But you know, the girl that rear-ended one of our trucks several years ago, she had no seat belt on you guys. And, and I know that's different than what you're talking about because at least you have the lap belt.

I don't think the lap belt in that style would have saved her life. You know, and, and, you know, obviously her speed, but every paramedic there, not every paramedic, the situation that was there was if she was wearing her seatbelt, she would have lived you guys. She would have had broken legs, broken pelvis, that kind of stuff, but no life-threatening injuries.

So I want to bring that up that that's for the safe, the safety belt, but the, the shoulder harness across you, because that's going to stop your body from hitting the steering wheel. Well, that's where I'm going with the story with the girl. She hit the steering wheel, hit the windshield, all that kind of stuff. You've eliminated that with the shoulder harness. And something I want to bring up where I'm ending this with is we've seen the photos.

We've followed it. We've done all this stuff. We just showed everybody the photo of the trailer in the wind that almost hit the Coleman truck. That was a head-on, right? You need that protection if you get in a head-on. You know, you've all seen the traffic, cars passing each other. Please, you guys, you need the protection unless you have a head-on. And I'm talking something that's not even your fault.

Just you minding your own business, driving the speed limit, enjoying your sandwich, making some money, and a head-on happens, and you don't have that shoulder across you. So please, please, like Jim said, wear that. That's my little story. Yeah, also, the seatbelt is to work in conjunction with your airbag. You don't want to go flying face first into that ad bag too hard because that's going to jack you up too. Yeah, and you hear about... So we don't have airbags in your car though. Yeah.

Personally, you know, and they're, they are, I know the Dave's going to shoot, Dave's going to ask me to have you remove this, but in Europe, most of their class eight trucks all have airbags. They've, they've all went to air curtains and airbags. So some that hopefully will be headed this way, but I do know, I mean, my, my, my middle daughter, Allie, she was in an accident and the airbags deployed, you know, seatbelt on and the whole thing.

But I was shocked at the burns on her one forearm that the airbag gave her. You know, no other injuries. Who cares if it's a burn? Right. But I'm like, well, Jesus, that doesn't look good. Yeah, the airbags are aggressive. Yeah. They kick it. Well, they do it. Yeah. Same thing with my daughter, Sarah, when she got into a wreck, her airbag just burned the crap out of her, both arms. Yeah. Allie just mainly had it on one, I think, Dave. Is it a friction burn

or from gas in there or what? I don't know. Whether it is a friction burn. I mean, because it looks like a rug burn, doesn't it? It does, yeah. It's probably the airbag just whipping your skin. Yeah. Yeah, I'd say a friction, kind of. Okay. Yeah. Gotcha. Well, want to hear us with that High Road Haulin soup? I can do that. I have a High Road Haulin, and I hope everybody listens.

97 people. Right? We know that. So this week's High Road Haulin is a little different. It's actually just a poem. It's called The Positive Promise to Yourself. What's it called? I don't know. No, I'm just asking. I missed it. The positive promise to yourself. I thought you were testing me. No. The positive promise to yourself. And it was actually written by a gentleman by the name of Christian D. Larson. And I encourage you to Google that guy.

That's my, it's not, Larson is my brother-in-law's last name, Dave. Oh, is it really? I didn't know that, Jim. Chris Larson. Yeah.

So promise to yourself to be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind, to talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet, to make all your friends feel that there is something in them, to look at the sunny side of everything, to make your optimism come true, to think only the best, to work for only the best, and expect only the best, To be just as enthusiastic about success of others as you are about your own To forget the mistakes

of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble. To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud words, but great deeds.

To live in faith that the whole world is on your side, and so long as you are true to the best that is in you. By Christian D. Larson. Wow. So good, good thoughts in there. And if anybody wants a copy of that, I would be more than happy to print it up for you. So you might want to hang it on the wall of your bedroom or your garage and look at it from time to time to give you a little boost when you might need one. Positive promise. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good, good stuff. Super Dave. Thank you.

I'm right along with that stuff, Dave, the positive promise. Me and potter were talking and he sent me a little something here and he said i could i could break it up i could uh you know read the whole thing or anything like it and it's and it's just really a different take on things but we've all heard it a thousand times or even said it ourselves i'm going to try this or i'm going to try that i'm going to try and eat better i'm going to try to get in shape I'm going to try and lose weight.

I'm going to try to stop smoking or try to stop drinking, et cetera, et cetera. Trying is just an excuse for the non-doers. Take an Olympic athlete. Do you think they try to beat the world record of their opponents? No, they tell themselves they are going to do it. We all may fail at doing something, but is it really failure if you learn something or does it become learning experience from doing it? I read that wrong. Or does it become a learning experience from doing it?

Visualize this. Put something on the ground in front of you. Now try and only try to pick it up. Don't pick it up because that is doing it. Just keep trying. You will never pick it up until you do it. So what that means is if you keep trying, you will never do it. Right? You're just, I'm going to try. I'm going to try. No, I'm going to do it. If you want to lose weight or get in shape or be a better version of yourself, just do it.

You know, there's a whole commercial, you know, like Nike says, just do it. They didn't tell you, why don't you try it? Try doing it. just try doing it. No, they said do it. So what we talked about here is if you want to get your 9% bonus, don't try it. Just do it. Right. So thank you, Potter. Appreciate it. And you know, it's a, it's a different spin. I say that a lot. I'm, I'm going to try to lose some weight.

No, I just need to do it. I just literally had this conversation with my buddy Timmy on Monday, because he's been trying to quit smoking, you know? And, you know, the other day he was like, I failed. And then he's like, oh, I'm going to try to do this. I was like, yeah, you know, until you're done trying, you're not going to quit. You got to do it. Right. Well, I love that piece in there. I've seen that Nike commercial, just try it. Yeah. You know what I mean?

I've used that example with some drivers before, like, Jim, try to pick up that pen. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. You picked it up. Just try to pick it up. Right. Just try. I don't have to do anything. I tried. Right. I either tried in here or tried with my hand. Right. I get it, Jan. That was, yeah, the discussion me and Potter had. Yeah, that's awesome. You know, it's just a, it's that different looking at it, you know, like you're high road hauling, Dave. It's a promise, you know.

Nice. Final thoughts, everyone? That was kind of mine. Jumped in. That was mine too. I can't cap on that. I'm good. All right. Super Dave, any other thoughts? No, I think I'm good. Okay. Well, 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. That sounds perfect.

Together, we face and overcome all that stands before us. Together, we are absent and free. Together, we joyfully agree, honest value for those we serve. Together, we celebrate our differences and respect those with whom we work. Together, we are accountable for our orders and our actions. Together, we are the JFW family. All right, everybody. Thanks for listening. Good luck on today's podcast knowledge challenge. If you need help, please ask.

Absolutely. If you need help, please ask. I want to make sure you said that, Jim. You are not alone. We are a team. This is a team. And drive safe, dump safe, be safe. It's worth it. I like it. Absolutely. Wear your seatbelts all the way. Be safe. Later. Thanks, guys. Music. A copy on that channel.