Came back with a bank window down yelling now money at a day hey oh Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when I'm getting to the back hey Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when the lane moving fast hey Let them all cross if they hate then let them made them make a.
Bigger balls hey what is up, ladies and gentlemen? We are back. We are live. It's the Freight Coach Podcast, the top podcast in transportation coming to you guys every single weekday, 8:30am Pacific, 10:30 Central, to break down some industry headlines. But most importantly, you guys provide some actual insight into what you can do with all of this information. If this is your first time tuning in, welcome. This is the real side of freight, ladies and gentlemen. And I say that before every single show.
And what I mean by that is I only speak with transportation professionals, but because at the end of the day, you guys, I want to talk to the right individuals who have done what you're looking to do or who are currently doing what you're trying to achieve, so you can take that information, apply it, utilize it, and see a meaningful difference in your business and your life. Happy Monday, everybody. Post Super Bowl Monday. I'm not even going to get into it. I'm not a Chiefs fan at all, but there's just something about Philly fans that I just do not jive with at the end of the day. But nonetheless, congratulations to all of those out there who are probably still celebrating and now will for the next 364 consecutive days.
But with that being said, you guys, I got a very special guest for you guys here today. I've been following him for a long time. He's probably up there in one of my favorite follows on social media because of the content that he puts out there. Some of those live videos, it very, it's. It's harrowing at times to see what the driver community goes through and experiences and everything else. So with that being said, we're going to talk about some risk and compliance today with Mr. Rob Carpenter. Rob, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today.
Yeah. How you doing, dude?
I'm, I'm doing well, man. And, and I'm not lying when I say this. Like, every time I see you pop up on my feed, I'm like, it's going to be another good one, right? Like, some of the stuff that you put out there, like the one you put out this morning with that hot shot that, you know, and it flew into that lot next to on the Road I'm just like, holy, man. Like, this. This is insane. And that was like, one of them. I, unfortunately, one of the more tame ones that you've posted out there.
Yeah, it's really good or really bad, right? Yeah, but, yeah, that was. That was fire, man. It came out over the weekend and I was like, that's going to be a really good video for. For Monday. And, you know, the funny thing about it is it. I think one of the things with tech is you now have such a huge broad visibility of what's happening on the highways, whether it's photo or video. And some days it's like you. You get so much content, you can never put it all out there. Yeah, I'd say I only put out maybe 5% of what I actually collect.
Dude, it's wild, you know, to. To see some of that because, you know, I have some buddies on the trucking, you know, the asset side of things, and, you know, they've sent me some of their dash cam stuff and, dude, it's nuts. Right? And. And that's why I always tell. Because, like, my. All of my experience in the industry is as a broker.
Right.
Like, my dad drove, I've driven, I've rode in trucks the overwhelming majority of my life. And I. That I always tell brokers, I'm like, you guys need to get out there and see what these guys go through every single day is it's not as, you know, pick here and deliver there. You know, there's a lot of stuff that comes through. Bad driving is just one component of it. Right. Like, that's a small percentage of what a lot of these guys are going through behind the wheel every single day.
Yep. And I think it kind of goes both ways with that. Like, it's bad on the road. It can be. I mean, it's good and it's bad. You know, some days I'm in the office and it's like, man, I just wish I could get back to driving a truck today. And then other days I drive truck, and it's like, man, I just wish I could get out of this truck and be back in the office today.
And that's one of the good things about how I work is some days I'm in the office, if I want to go drive a truck, whether it's a new truck from the factory or I've got a client that wants me to drive a truck just to kind of get some perspective of what's happening at the front line, I can kind of jump back and forth between the two. But one thing that I don't have modern day perspective on is the, is back into the broker seat. So I think it goes both ways. I think carriers sometimes have to consider the broker side too.
No, I think that's what we're at a pretty unique point in time, man, where I think that there's that ability to have that right. Like I try my best to get out there in front of the driver community as much as I possibly can to get them to come on the show and speak so they can kind of hear it from that perspective. I just had my good friend Honest on last week. I mean he's got a hundred truck fleet out of Colorado and you know, he says the same thing. He's like, man, I want to ask you questions as well. Because he's like, I want to work better with brokers. I want to have a better understanding about what brokers go through, you know, day to see how they can perform better as well.
And I think like now we're at that ability to really bring that forward and really have a better understanding. Because you know, at the end of the day, like I don't want to talk about any of the minority of the industry that is like just a bag bad providers, right? Because the overwhelming majority of people that I've come across, and again, I jokingly say I've only moved three truckloads in my career, are good salts of the earth. People that just want to work hard and provide for their families. They just don't want to be rang through the mud just like nobody wants to in any situation that they're in.
That's it.
So dude, we kind of skipped a little bit here, man. What's crazy is this is the first time we've ever talked. But how'd you get your start in freight, Rob? Like what brought you into the industry?
So growing up, I grew up on a farm and obviously on a farm there's not a lot of freight per se, but we obviously we would have, we had a farm in Gloucester, Virginia where we would kind of raise cattle, raise hogs, and then we would kind of relocate it to our other farm in York County, Virginia, which is where we had a meat plant. And then we kind of grew crop and stuff like that. So you're constantly around diesel machines moving something from one place to the other, combines, etc. So there's freight, just not for commerce, I guess. So that kind of started it for me. And then when I Got older, you know, I went back to trucking, started driving trucks, got my CDL 20ish plus years ago and drove trucks.
But it wasn't under the premise of hey, I want to be a truck driver forever. The goal was ultimately to own a fleet. And I got there. It was just, I wanted to have all of my bases covered for freight because there's so much that goes on in the freight realm, whether you're a carrier or a broker, that you really, to me, I think to be really good at it, you have to understand the perspective of all of it. So started as a driver, became a broker, to understand the broker side and to learn kind of the business side of it. Went into running companies, owned, bought one of those, sold it, and then went into PE management as an enterprise executive. So that's kind of how it happened.
And how I got into compliance was I historically had been outlaw truck guy and tearing out loosely pages in my binder and giving out five log books to my drivers. And then I got hit by a truck. And then pretty much, I don't know, 20% of me is metal at this point. So yeah, you realize at that point maybe compliance is important and really that had to happen for me because otherwise it was, you know, bell drops. Trying to stay awake for 46 hours to run the Hunts Point by 2am or whatever the case was.
So is that, so going through a lot of that. Is that why you started posting a lot of those videos out there, man? Is this to show like, you know, maybe it is to kind of show the driver community like, hey guys, it's not worth it, you know, because again, man, my dad drove 70s, 80s and the 90s, right? Like there was not a logbook, you know, air quotes. My dad since passed away, so I'll keep it real, nobody's coming after him, but like, there's no log books back then, man, he used to literally pick up, leave our house on Sunday, you know, and I lived in, we grew up in northern Wisconsin and it was. He would drive nonstop to the Bronx every single week for 35 straight years.
And he would deliver in the Bronx first thing Monday morning, get reloaded, come back and he would do that. And it was not a lot of sleep associated with that. And but now with, you know, all of the, you know, E logs and everything else that's out there that's designed to make the roads safer, you know, I guess kind of tying it all in was that one of the main reasons why you started posting some of those videos, like, hey guys, there is a repercussion for some of these decisions that you make.
Part of it was my experience and you know, there's things I can't do now that I could do before. You know, I used to be a fullback when I played football and I can't run anymore. I don't have any more space between this. I can't take impact. So there's so many different things. I can't do that in ways that this has affected me by being unsafe and historically, I mean, growing up on a farm, we didn't have machine guards and things like that. If anything we would take the machine guard off to make it more efficient, less safe, but more efficient. But you know, there was that aspect of it, but then there was the other aspect of it.
Like we now have visibility of everything that's happening on the roads that like the people we share the road with, whether that's truck driver or four wheeler, we're all sharing the road and seeing some of the catastrophic cons, you know, basically consequences of what's happened, whether it's from the risk control perspective or owning a fleet and seeing some crashes, accident reconstruction. But you know, seeing some of the expert cases I've done, almost all of them have been fatality. So you see some of this and it's like, you know, if you highlight it and at the end of the day somebody on their way home says, hey, you know what? I remember that post from Rob Carpenter that said I should look left, right, left before I go into this intersection. You might have seen, you might have changed something for somebody.
So that's really kind of what drove it.
So I, you know, I, I look at a lot of the situations because obviously my old man taught me how to drive and dude. And I even catch myself doing this to, you know, today, like when I'm coming up through a green light, I'm still checking intersections every single time because I know more than likely, you know, people aren't paying attention. And if I have an extra second to react and slam on my brakes, I'd rather have somebody rear end me than me hit and kill somebody, whether it be my fault or not. And you know, and do you think that there needs to be more of an emphasis on that in like the training? Do you think like CDL training has become almost too expedited to where it's like, hey, you know, in. I don't know how long the course is?
I'm just hypothetically four weeks. All of a sudden you're a truck driver.
Well, yeah, and I think part of the issue is, you know, with, you know, everybody says, well, now we have entry level driver training. Yeah, that was great. It was a great move forward. And it's kind of like truck parking club. It like promotes awareness but doesn't necessarily solve all the issue. Right, but it does drive awareness. And ELDT was a good first step. But I think one of the problems that you'll find with ELDT is you ask for a breakdown of the requirement of how long they must spend in training, and there isn't one. Yeah, it tells you what you have to be trained in, but doesn't tell you have to have 120 hours. It just says it has to meet the state requirement. And that varies drastically across the spectrum.
So in Virginia, where I'm licensed to teach commercial and teen driving, to get your license, you have to have like 120 hours. So there is a, there is a, a set time there, but there's not a federal time. So if you go to a state where you've got an eight hour minimum, like, people are literally going to school for eight hours, jamming out like a 20 module curriculum, and then next thing you know, they're behind the wheel. So that's part of it.
Yeah, I, I'm like, I look at it as, you know, and I tried explaining this back when they were like, should we lower the age of CDL drivers to 18? And how, you know, then I wanted to, you know, I was talking about on the show, and I was like, you know, you guys, in most states you can get a CDL at 18. You just can't cross state lines. That's really the basis of it. But I looked at it as, like, how do we model this as more of like an apprenticeship? Right? Like, and a lot of the other trades that are out there, you know, I had, you know, some work done in my house. The guy who, the kid who came in, I say kid because he was like 20 and I'm 40 now, so I guess I've graduated to that.
But, you know, he, you know, this kid came in, he's like, oh man, he's like, I'm just an apprentice. I come in, I set the job up for the plumber to come in and do it, and then I tear it down and I sit there and I work next to him throughout the time. And it's just on the Job training and that, you know, that it was like probably three years ago that happened. And that's when the whole, you know, should we lower the age of CDLS to 18? And I was like, man, how cool would that be to where they get to do that? And maybe it's, you know, once a month they get to go, you know, and do a thousand mile turn or something like that where we can graduate them up.
And then it's, they get multiple hours behind the wheel and you know, get that experience because like no matter what and I, I look at it as whether you're a freight broker or you're loading trucks on the docks or whatever. Classroom training is great in a controlled environment. But that does not pale in comparison to real on the job experience. And I think more, the more controlled environment that we can get. I think like, you know who, I don't know if this is the answer to safety or anything like that. You might have some data behind that. But I know that my dad driving for as long as he did and I know a lot of the other drivers who've been driving for as long as they have, they've forgotten more about trucking than most people are even taught now.
And it's like that seems like a controllable aspect of things that we could utilize and implement to improve it.
Well, I think there's like I would say 20% of what I learned in school, like 80% of what I learned. It was hard knocks, it was on the road experience. And there's things you're not going to learn until you get there. Like, you know what, there was a time where I was when I started pulling doubles, right? You go, you go into a truck stop, you're pulling doubles, you're trying to park for the night, you got this one, one spot, right? Hard to back up there. You don't want to risk that. So you want to pull through and you're pulling through. But if you don't go far enough up, you're now like 10ft longer than you would have been if you were pulling a 53 footer.
So you have to con, you know, subconsciously think about all different types of things that you just normally wouldn't think about. And a lot of times you won't think about them until you experience the wrath of not thinking about it. But I think a lot of it goes down to even going beyond the CDL element, right? Going to the teen element when you actually learn the fundamentals of driving and people, I think miss this part because they're so focused on, well, they're now 23 or 24, and they're coming to school out of the military or whatever to be a truck driver. But at the end of the day, you're still functioning on the fundamentals for how you were trained to operate on the road, whether it was four wheels or 18 wheels.
And one of the things I've noticed as a team driving instructor in Virginia, I don't do it often because I don't have the patience for the team thing. But when I do it, I've noticed a couple different things. They get in the car and they don't even know how to adjust the mirrors. So totally different element. You know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, were dying to get our license as men, and were like, hey, I'm ready to get a job. I want to get my license, I want to go on dates in. In this world. It's very different. It's totally switched up. I found in Virginia, anyway, girls are now. Teenage girls are now the ones that are like, I got to get out. I got to go get a job. I gotta. I gotta make a life for myself.
And it's the boys that get in the car. And it's like, my mom's making me get my license. It took me away from my game. I gotta get a job. And it's totally different. And these people are spending time with their parents. In Virginia is supposed to be 40 hours with your parents before you ever get in a car. With me, yeah. Kids get in the car and they can't even adjust the mirror. They don't know how to adjust the seat, they don't know how to put it in gear. So a lot of it's starting there. And then you're going to put them into an ELDT training program commercially, where they do have range on the road, classroom content. But it's so much more that you're going to have to learn with someone else. That's just like when you were a teen.
You're going to have to get in there with somebody that's experienced, and you're going to have to get the experience of figuring it out, or someone's going to have to tell you, don't do that because you need to go up 10 more feet before you make this left.
So with a lot of this stuff that you've kind of broken down, you know, maybe it's, you know, from a risk perspective here, you know, a lot of the videos that you posted has There been an underlying kind of thing that keeps popping up maybe more times than not. I know each individual case is unique in its own right, but is it a lack of training that comes up? Is it, you know, distracted driving? What. Has there been anything that's kind of identified itself?
I think, for me, like, this is just Rob. And there may be some data tied to it somewhere, but I think for me, it's always been, like, what happened to people's situational awareness and why haven't they developed it? If I go into a restaurant and I'm sitting my back against the wall, I'm doing that for a reason. Like, I want to know what's in front of me and what's coming in the door, right? Like, no matter where I am, I know what's going on around me. If I pass a car, I can 10ft down the road say, hey, what happened to that Black Honda with XBX10 099 license plate? It's not there anymore, is it? In my blind spot, there's so much situational awareness that. That lacks even in the grocery store.
You go into a Costco on a Saturday, and I guarantee you someone's going to run into you five different times. They have no idea you exist. And that's no different when they get on the highway. If you think it's bad in Costco, wait till they get on the road. It's like, they don't care. They don't know that you're there. They don't. They don't understand space management.
Rob, I. I know we literally just started talking a couple minutes ago. We're cut from the same cloth, bro. Like, my wife gets so upset with me because I'm like, babe, I idle at 75, and if you don't, like, just pay attention in a store, like, it's very basic to the. To the roadway, right?
Stay.
Stay on that. And if you're gonna stop pulling to one of the side aisles, don't imp. Oh, God, dude, now I'm getting. I'm getting pissed off just hearing you.
Oh, it is. Dude. I was just there this past weekend, and it's like, you're going down, you know, you're on the right. I spent a lot of time in the uk, so, like, they drive on the wrong side of the road, but you see these people, and it's like, are you from the uk because this is America, and going this direction, we should be on the right side.
But then it's.
It's the total, like, lack of awareness of everything that's going on around you where they'll stop, like, in the most inconvenient spots.
Yeah.
And then they'll meet, like, five of their friends, and then five more friends will come. And it's like nothing hits them that says, maybe we should move over here to the dead aisle that no one's on to have our congregation. But it's things like that it makes you. It makes your mind wonder, like, what happened to situational awareness? So I know it's not just me, but that's. That's my take on it.
I gotcha. So how do we fix that, though, man? Because I kind of also feel like at the end of the day, I know it's not our job to raise everybody's kids, but I also feel like there's a lot of power in leading by example and leading from the front. What, as an industry, maybe. Maybe this is just too broad of a question. How do we fix this? Right. Because, like, I'm of the mindset that if we want to get people excited about freight, that next generation, we gotta be the ones to get it done. Right. So what are you, like, how. What's step one? How do we get that? You know, is it the forward facing cameras? Maybe they're a little bit more required than we think to improve a lot of that.
Because if there's a set of eyes on you and, you know, and it is kind of maybe taking that tough love approach. Right. Maybe these kids have never been told that you shouldn't be doing that. And, you know, maybe that's where we start.
Well, I pitch a lot of the. The dual face and dash cams, and I get some grief for it. Like, you used to be a truck driver. Why are you. Why are you pushing this on us? And we don't want it, but at the end of the day, like, even me. So I could bring up motive right now, and you can watch my motive and my behavior while driving my vehicle. And there's things that I might get in a rush that I don't. I don't pay attention to what exactly my spatial. My spatial awareness is at that point. And a lot of times that motive kicking that off for me, it's like I'd like to think I'm better than 80% of the drivers out there. And that's what most people in America. That's a statistic.
Most people in America think they're better than 80 of the other drivers on the road. But yet we still have these astronomical crash figures. And what I found is I can watch these videos and say, hey, you know what? I could have been safer right there. I could have done something different. I could have actually looked far enough ahead instead of been thinking about what I'm going to get for dinner tonight and actually said, you know what, maybe I should move over now rather than until I'm right on their bumper. So a lot of it is that visibility you get from something watching you all the time and it says, hey, this is how you could have done better. So, and maybe it's not motive. You know, a lot of people ask me about that.
It's like you talk about motive all the time, but when I go into a business and I consult with a business on these things, there's never a cookie cutter answer. Maybe it's not motive. Maybe it ends up being Netrodyne or Garmin or Nexar. It just depends on your business and what your needs are. But I think at the root element, you need something to be able to monitor your behavior, give you some visibility of your fleet so that you can coach people, even people like me who've driven for, you know, 30 years, so, and teach people how to drive. So it's, I think it's one of those things that's needed because you can't change anything if you don't have awareness of what's happening. So that's a huge part of it.
I think that, you know, in maybe, maybe my mindset's a little bit different on this stuff now be, you know, now that I'm a little bit older. I, I, because like, I want to know where I can get better. You know, like, that's kind of my whole thing, you know, and this is, you know, as a business owner, I'm constantly like, how do we improve? How do we get better? How do we shorten the sales cycle out here? How do I say something? Maybe it's a little bit different to trick trip somebody's interest in what we're doing. And you know, again, how do I become more efficient with my time? Because time is the only valuable asset that we actually have.
And you know, again, and I know, like, the ego is probably the biggest hurdle to overcome with a lot of individuals who've been doing it for 10 years. I'm sure, hell, I probably have that exact same thing. I'm sure if somebody came in and talked to me, they'd be like, oh, his ego's too big. He doesn't want to hear anything. But at the end of the day, we need to be looking at where can we get better? You know, from a training perspective, I think that's one thing. And this isn't even just a transportation thing. I think this is like in most professional careers there's that continual training just goes away. Right. I feel like it's like a, hey, here's your two week classroom. And then that's it.
And I know this isn't everywhere and it's a very broad statement to make, but I feel like training kind of stops at a certain point. And you know, I, I look at it like how maybe it's like a quarterly thing or a biannual, whatever that looks like. Maybe there's some simulator training that some of these drivers can get in and you know, and do some situational stuff to just to kind of help improve the motor skills. I mean, I look at it a lot and I know there's a lot of differences between flying airplanes and driving trucks. But those pilots are out there constantly certified. There's checklists that they need to follow, and there's a reason why it's the safest mode of transportation that goes on out there. And you know, I look at it like that they go into simulator training.
Maybe that's something that we can do as an industry where, you know, some of these larger fleets where it's like, hey, one week, you know, a quarter, you come in, you do simulator training.
Well, it's, you know, you bring up pilot. I'm looking to get my pilot's license. And you've got ground school and then you've got 40 hours for a basic pilot license. It's not a lot of time, but I think one of the big pieces is practice. So you've got lawyers that practice law, right? We are drivers who practice delivering freight and driving vehicles. And I think the more that you practice what's right, the better you're going to get right. But that starts with actually practicing it the right way. So if you were taught it the wrong way or you learned something the wrong way and you're now in that habitual behavior of doing it the wrong way, you're continuously practicing. You're just practicing it the wrong way, you're getting better at doing it the wrong way.
So the only way that's going to change is for somebody else to actually see you doing that behavior. We've got visibility through the camera and then someone says, hey, this is where you're failing. You don't have an issue with distracted driving, you don't have an issue with speeding you have an issue with close following. And how we know that is because you're hard braking all the time. And when we look at your hard brakes, we realize that you don't really have a hard braking issue. You have a hard braking issue because you have a close following issue. You have an issue with spatial awareness and your habit is to rubberneck everybody. So now let's change that behavior to where you're practicing doing this the right way. And we're going to coach you until you, we realize that you're not coachable.
And really that's the only way you're going to change behavior.
You know, I look at it now, Rob as well is every trucking company has a giant target on their back right now because if they're involved in any accident at all, whether they're at fault or not. And I mean, I. Dude, I keep bringing up. This is probably the 15th time that I've mentioned this on this show. The Warner case in Texas. Yeah, that is the epitome of you are essentially guilty until proven innocent. And then even if you are innocent, you're still at fault. And that would just Google Warner Enterprises and text the state of Texas and that will show up you guys. And it is disgusting what happened. I hate that people got injured in that instance.
But if I was driving and going eastbound and a car that was traveling westbound crossed the median and hit me head on and how is my fucking fault?
Yeah. And then sued you for what they did. But it really boils down in those cases to the litigious society that we're in. And it goes to another reason why you need to have cameras. It's not just about training drivers and changing habitual behaviors. It's about indemnifying your fleet and indemnifying your driver. And in this case, I don't know that it would have helped either way. And I know Werner has cameras, but the issue in that case was having somebody who understands policy and well written policy. It's not just enough to have a good example of certificate of insurance. I wrote an article the other day on don't judge a carrier by their coi. Because what happens is you've got this document that says we have this amount of coverage. Right. So you think we're good.
Well, that truck is hauling your freight gets in a crash and then the language becomes very important in the actual insurance policy. Because if the limits are not enough or if there's exemptions under the policy, yes, you might be covered to this amount. But see, there's this limitation in the language. So language is important, whether it's policy or COI or anything. So just kind of getting that blanket piece of yes, we're covered or yes, we're compliant. Being compliant doesn't mean that you're defensible.
Yeah, I talk about that a lot. I have my good friend Campichi on the show. He's, he's with, he does truck insurance as well. We talk about exclusion lists all the time. We talk about the verbiage on COIs and everything. Because not all hundred thousand dollars in cargo is created equally at the end of the day, you guys. And you need to know that. Right. And that's why, you know, again, sometimes just a little quick phone call to, you know, some of these insurance companies verifying a lot of this information on. They're getting it in writing, doing whatever you have to do, because, like, at the end of the day, no matter what, whether you're a trucking company or a broker, if it's your name on the side of the building, you are liable at the end of the day.
And just like I hate to break it to you, insurance companies and lawyers hope you had a bad day and didn't do your job in that moment because they're looking to not pay you or pay for you in those moments.
Yep. And it matters what insurance company you pick. So, yeah.
Oh, man, Rob, I, I appreciate your time. And this flew by. And you guys follow Rob Carpenter. All right? I follow him. He's one of my top followers on LinkedIn. And how can he be reached out to you to find out more, though, man, because you're one of those guys that I just know that actually gives a shit about the industry after just this brief conversation that we've had today.
Well, most of the people, most of the followers I have are on LinkedIn. I mean, if you message me on LinkedIn, I'm going to respond and it's going to be me. There's no, I don't have anybody managing it for me. So it, what you see is what you get. And so if you want to reach out there, you can reach out there or Truck Safe or Epic Insurance, and you can find me pretty much everywhere.
Perfect. And if for some odd reason you guys can't find Rob Carpenter on LinkedIn, hit me up. I'll gladly put you guys in contact with him. He puts out a ton of valuable content. And brokers, you need to follow this as well, because a lot of the stuff that he posts that could be your customers freight on the trucks that he posts out there, you guys. And again, we got to get better as an industry. And he's one of those ones that you guys should be in contact with. But that's going to be it for today, you guys. We'll be back tomorrow. We got more guests coming on this week. As always, if you guys got value in what you heard, subscribe to the show.
You guys share it out there to your network, because if you see value, your network's going to see value as well. I appreciate you guys. I love you guys. And we'll be talking to you soon. Robert Peterson says that you got to say.