All Episodes

172: Pros and Cons of New and Used Trucks

September 27, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett welcomes Todd Venable and Adam Kampbell from MHC Kenworth to the show. During the episode, the group discusses all the ins and outs of purchasing a new or used truck. From prices of trucks to warranties and insurance, and everything in between. Todd and Adam break down the pros and cons of new vs. used and give good information to owner-operators about how to navigate the buying process. Don’t miss this episode!

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171: Finding the Truck that Fits Your Needs

September 20, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Wayne Crotwell, one of our Owner-Operators at Oakley Trucking. During the episode, Wayne shares his personal journey in trucking. He talks about making the move from farming to being an owner-operator, how he and his wife work driving together on the road and handling their business, experience and tips for buying a new truck, balancing road and home time, and more.

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170: From Farming to End Dumps and Everything In Between

September 13, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Leonard Freels, an End Dump Owner-Operator at Oakley. During the episode, Leonard discusses his background in trucking, including growing up on a farm and starting his own authority trucking company. He also talks about the transition from being a single truck owner-operator to owning multiple trucks. During the conversation, Jeremy and Leonard discuss the importance of money management in the trucking industry, the benefits of working with Oakley Trucking, advice for those looking to make the move, and more.

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169: Driving Toward Success: How Diesel Driving Academy is Shaping the Future of Trucking

September 6, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Bruce Busada, President of Diesel Driving Academy. During the conversation, Jeremy and Bruce discuss CDL schools and how individuals can enter the trucking industry. They also talk about the partnership between trucking companies and driving schools, the process of enrolling in trucking school, earning potential for graduates, the shortage of drivers in the industry, the future of trucking schools, and more.

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168: The Top 5 Things That Set Oakley Apart

August 30, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Scotty Crisco, Operations Manager at Oakley Trucking. During the episode, Scotty and Jeremy discuss the five things that set Oakley apart in the industry. The two highlight Oakley’s pay structure, which ensures owner-operators are paid for all their miles, loaded or empty. They then discuss the family-oriented nature of the company, emphasizing the strong relationships and support between Oakley and its drivers. Jeremy and Scotty also talk about Oakley’s commitment to driver success, offering great benefits and competitive mileage pay. They touch on other factors that set Oakley apart, such as providing home time, free trailer usage, annual bonuses, and more.

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167: Cody Curren’s Journey Leaving Oakley Trucking and Finding His Way Back

August 23, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Cody Curren, one of our Pneumatic Owner-Operators at Oakley. During the episode, Cody shares his personal story of leaving Oakley a few years ago and making the decision to come back. Jeremy and Cody discuss the challenges Cody faced and the reasons behind his departure, what prompted him to come back, some advice to those who are feeling burnout, handling difficult situations in work-life balance, and more.

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From the Archives: 5 Important Steps to Consider When Becoming an Owner-Operator

August 16, 2023

This week, we have a bonus episode of the Oakley Podcast as we go into the archives back to re-air episode 43. Host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Oakley recruiter Dustin Eagle to discuss the process of becoming an owner-operator with Oakley. Together they identify mistakes that people have made in the past and point out the best steps to take to succeed as an Oakley owner-operator.

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166: Safety Tips That Keep Money in Your Pocket

August 9, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Dustin Barnett and Carl Morrow of the safety department at Oakley. During the conversation, the group thanks owner-operators for their significant decrease in unsafe violations. They also discuss the importance of safety and customer service at Oakley Trucking, the impact of the CSA program on the company and drivers, services and requirements, hazmat best practices, speed and force cameras in construction zones, upcoming changes to the submission process for maintenance reports, and more.

Key topics in today’s conversation include:

Dustin and Carl’s work in safety at Oakley Trucking (1:16)
Categories of safety violations (10:03)
Vehicle maintenance violations (11:49)
Brake violations (13:59)
Hazmat violations (21:08)
Speed cameras in construction zones (24:28)
Personal conveyance misuse (27:09)
New policies for submitting maintenance reports (29:55)
Reminders for CDL renewal and physicals (31:41)
Reporting issues with ELDs (34:20)
The importance of safety at Oakley (38:17)

Oakley Trucking is a family-owned and operated trucking company headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. For more information, check out our show website: podcast.bruceoakley.com.

Transcription

Dustin Barnett 00:00

I first wanted to start just congratulating and thanking them for the drastic decrease we’ve seen in our unsafe violations that have come in over the last few years. Back in December of 21, just to kind of put it in perspective, we had a 75% in our unsafe basic CSA, which threshold is 60 So that started getting a lot of unwanted attention. So we sent out some memos just informing everyone of the score that we had to we did have and you know, excited to say over the last few years, it’s dropped to a 27% and are unsafe and, you know, that’s a tribute to the owner operators.

Jeremy Kellett 00:49

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Jeremy Kellett 04:26

Before we get started into it, though, I always like to introduce myself. Dustin Barnett, Carl Morell. Thank you guys for joining me this afternoon. Yeah, appreciate you. Getting it done and taken away from that day is down there and answering all those questions. And I appreciate it’s our pleasure. Thanks for having us. Yeah, yeah, you bet. Let’s start with Barnett. You’ve been on here before? Yeah. Give us a little rundown of the introduction. You know, your history and your hobbies and family. Yeah,

Dustin Barnett 04:56

I was thinking about Jeremy this morning. I think this might be the fourth or fifth podcast that I’ve done. Awesome. Your record. Yeah. Last time we were up there, there was a table here and we were sitting across the table from one another. So yeah, I liked the new layout. We’ve changed

Jeremy Kellett 05:09

the Chinese it up a little bit. And I really like it. We kind of got this idea from the truck show. We changed it when we went to the truck show in Louisville. And we did this man, it works. So much better. So we decided to do it here at the office.

Dustin Barnett 05:22

Now it’s good, but my name is Dustin Barnett. For those of you that haven’t met me. I work in the safety department here at Oakley. This August will be six years now. You know my wife shanlee. I have a four year old son Maddox. And we just celebrated his fourth birthday party over the weekend. About 20 kids running around. But it was fun. Yeah. As far as hobbies, though, you know, enjoy going to the lake, having a four year old and it takes up a lot of my time. He’s always wanting to get into something so I just cherish those memories with him. And that’s a full time job. There. It is. Yeah, but I enjoy it. I’m cherishing those moments.

Jeremy Kellett 06:01

Carl, how about you?

Carl Morrow 06:03

Well, I got a fiance, Amanda, and three kids. You know, it’s a blended family. That’s cage, Frankie and Madison. So 1413 and 12. Busy house. Yeah, very busy. It’s never quiet at all. There’s constantly somebody doing something. Somebody’s doing something.

Jeremy Kellett 06:21

But when do you start Oakley? Probably about

Carl Morrow 06:25

five months ago? I don’t know the date. Exactly. But yeah. Yeah.

06:30

It’s going back with Carl. It goes by.

Carl Morrow 06:33

Yeah. Now what do you do? I work in a safety compliance department that kind of does it and does citations and inspections that the guys send in stuff like that and hazmat training. I’m starting to get into that mode.

Jeremy Kellett 06:48

Take that over for JP, you do a little orientation to Yeah, yeah. Which is a big hill on helping Randolph. Do some of that. So let’s be again, important. Give these listeners a little bit of your history. Because I know that I know what happened. You know, when you got here five months ago. We were actually talking to you about becoming an owner operator. Correct? Yeah, here because you’re driving a truck. Yeah.

Carl Morrow 07:15

Yeah. Actually, this was three or four years ago, y’all first talked to me. And I was working for us at the time. And trying to get me over here. So I finally took that step. And wanted to come over as owner operator, but y’all had different things for me then. So it was great. It worked out well. I worked for Brown Brothers for a long time. It was a third party for slumber J started out as a driver. They’re

Jeremy Kellett 07:42

long you drive a truck?

Carl Morrow 07:45

13 plus years. Oh, man. So yeah, I worked for them for a while. Drove came as a lead driver and then worked my way up into safety and compliance.

Jeremy Kellett 07:56

Yeah. So you had prior Office experience? Correct? That’s right. I remember that.

Carl Morrow 08:02

Our first office was in Conway. So. And then before it was said and done, we had offices and West Virginia, San Antonio, Oklahoma.

Jeremy Kellett 08:13

All think that’s what it was when you came down here to talk to me in person about becoming an owner operator, and he’s looking at your application history. And I saw that you had. Yeah, Office experience and safety and compliance. And we were at that time looking for somebody in safety. So like, hey, here, he just walked

Carl Morrow 08:31

out door. Yeah. Worked out. Yeah.

Jeremy Kellett 08:34

That works out that way. Yeah. So what do you guys, I know, we got a list of stuff we wanted to talk about here, concerning the safety department and our owner operators and some other things. Where would you guys like to start? I don’t know if we can get through all of it. But I know one of the top things here you’re talking about: congratulate new owner operators for decreasing unsafe basics. So we won’t start with CSA.

Dustin Barnett 08:58

Yeah, we can start there. I first wanted to start just congratulating and thanking them for the drastic decrease we’ve seen in our unsafe violations that have come in over the last few years. Back in December of 21, just to kind of put it in perspective, we had a 75% in our unsafe basic CSA, which threshold is 60 So that started getting a lot of unwanted attention. So we sent out some memes just informing everyone of the score that we had, and, you know, excited to say over the last few years, it’s dropped to 27% and is unsafe. And, you know, that’s a tribute to the owner operators.

Jeremy Kellett 09:37

Well, I was gonna ask, what causes that big drop?

Dustin Barnett 09:41

Well, there’s a lot of factors. You know, I think our operators when they hear that there is a problem, they’re more apt to try to get it corrected. So I think that’s one of the leads, we instituted a new dash camera Netra Dawn, which actually helped focus on some of those top offenders. Getting speeding, which puts them kind of more at risk to be stopped.

Jeremy Kellett 10:03

So the unsafe, you know, just to back up, you know, there’s five or six categories in the CSA and one of them is an unsafe category. That’s a and you’re unsafe violations are typically beating is amazing bill is that that kind of cell phone use your cell phone use? Okay, cool. So that was high, which basically was speeding. Yeah, and then because probably because of the cameras we installed, the forward facing cameras have cut down on that quite a bit. It has.

Dustin Barnett 10:38

And, you know, we know, whenever we look at the data, we’re just focused on those top offenders that, you know, are putting themselves more at risk. And after direct focus of that, and I know probably fuel had something to do with it as well, with the fuel prices increasing, you tend to see that fleetwide drivers kind of lowering, you know, their speed, trying to get some more miles per gallon. So that was a factor. But, you know, overall, we’re just pleased to see it drop, because it was, you know, we did have so much attention getting drawn and phone calls around it. Because you have to think of what CSA is and how it impacts the company and the driver. So first you have, of course, the D O T. So that’s how they let the program determine who they’re going to come in and audit. If you’re elevated within that certain tier group, then you know, in their eyes, you’re more at risk. So the D O T started getting traction. And then, of course, on any customer audit, we’re hauling their freight. So we want to make sure you know, we’re getting it there timely and safely. So customers look at that data. And then the owner operators themselves, you know, we’re gonna talk about it here in a little bit, but our vehicle maintenance category, and our Jeremy mentioned five, but one of them is discussing it. That’s nearing the threshold to 74% and the threshold to 75. So that affects all of our owner operators. So next time you go to the scale, if we’re over threshold, and we’re in that intervention stage, then that’s when the D O T officer is going to start pulling around and doing more thorough inspections of the equipment. So

Jeremy Kellett 12:10

and was our vehicle maintenance category going up?

Dustin Barnett 12:13

Well, the top three categories that we’re seeing is number one is brakes. So we have 153 violations within the brake category. And then second is tires. We have about 61 violations and tire

Jeremy Kellett 12:31

related to y’all break that down between truck and trailer.

Dustin Barnett 12:34

We do. We actually did that car probably a few weeks ago, just curious to see. And it’s almost even within a few percent of each other, but it was like maybe 47 and 50 or 47. And you know, the remaining three, but it was interesting to see that breakdown. It was pretty Eve a couple of

Carl Morrow 12:54

months ago, I think our CSA score, we accumulated 216 points. And 149 of those were vehicle related. So over half of them were vehicles, you know, that was one month, and that was one month. And it’s increasing each month just by a little bit. So you know that

Jeremy Kellett 13:18

and your vehicle maintenance as brakes, tires. What else do you say?

Dustin Barnett 13:24

Just anything vehicle related are top lights. This is the third one with a lot of lights that are out. But for brakes, you know, and that was kind of a lean in as well. But that’s why we wanted to sit down with you today to discuss the issue we’re seeing in breaks, do you think 153 violations and just brakes alone? And the second 161. So we have almost double the violations in one category. And that breaks. A lot of those violations that

Jeremy Kellett 13:52

From that break, did they have a test or a week they did break checks? Or is a my dream and you’re

Dustin Barnett 14:00

you’re probably thinking ahead because here in August of 20 or that the 20th of August, there’s a brake safety test week.

Jeremy Kellett 14:08

Okay, that’s probably a lot of reading. probably read it in our notes. I guess I was thinking that Okay, so, oh, crap, that ain’t good if we started looking forward. Now. We’ve had a bunch here recently. I mean, just for the lack of us checking our brakes, I guess so the, um, they’re saying the brakes or you know, any type thing in or what is more out of the just out of adjustment. That’s what it gets down to. Right. And

Dustin Barnett 14:37

There are several categories, they can ride them in the brakes, but yeah, Carl’s right, what we’re seeing is breaks out of adjustment. And, you know, for us going through orientation, we certify every owner operator to adjust their own brakes. So there, there’s a station out there in the shop where they get their hands on and, you know, go through any questions, they have an adjusting brake. So, you know, we’re doing all that we can to train you accordingly. So it’s kind of on the owner operator at that point.

Jeremy Kellett 15:04

Yeah. And that’s coming up August the 20th through the 26th brake Safety Week. And it’s all brake related, I guess violations that they’re looking for. Yes, sir. Well, we need to get a hold on ahead of that game. Anything else on the CSA that we were talking about? Let’s say we had higher CSA points applied? Citations versus inspections? Correct? Yeah. Be sure to send your inspections or citations within 24 hours or the process you want to elaborate on?

Carl Morrow 15:41

Yeah, we would like to send them within 24 hours so we can get them in the process. And because we only have 15 days to process the citations, you know, our inspections, I’m sorry, not citations. But yeah, there is a difference between a citation and an inspection that they get maybe a level one, level two or level three, you know, those level ones level twos and level threes do go against their CSA score, they might not receive a fine for it, but it will go against their CSA score. But a citation they may get or warning is just a ticket they have to pay. So it doesn’t go against their CSA score. So there is some kind of confusion on that. But when they do get an inspection, it does hurt them, for sure. And their CSA score.

Jeremy Kellett 16:27

I thought the citation went on the CSA, not

Carl Morrow 16:31

necessarily. I mean, if you can just write you a ticket.

Jeremy Kellett 16:35

And then not even not be associated with aggression, correct? Yeah, I got you

Dustin Barnett 16:40

know, a lot of those that we see Jeremy are kind of like these city ordinance citations and you’re in a small town and a city officer pulls you over invites you for speeding in the town, they don’t actually do an inspection of like a doT inspection like you’re thinking of it’s just kind of a city ordinance. And there’s never a show. But if the

Jeremy Kellett 16:59

The DLT man wrote you a ticket, and he did an inspection, it’s probably there.

Carl Morrow 17:04

Yeah. And you can get the if they write it on the inspection form, they can cite you for it as well. Yeah, that’s kind of like a double whammy for him.

Jeremy Kellett 17:14

What were your thoughts? Girl man coming in here? No, five months. And you learned about this CSA pay? You know, your pay is associated with CSA violations? Yeah. I mean, you know, you got a fresh look at it. As a former truck driver, I mean, what’s your thoughts on that?

Carl Morrow 17:32

It’s good for the company, it’s good for the driver. And you know, it makes them keep up with their equipment. Because they get bonus pay for it. You know, you know, at the end of the day, that’s a lot of money for them. So, oh,

Jeremy Kellett 17:45

They are the guys. Are they realizing it? Yeah, you

Carl Morrow 17:48

kind of gotta break it down for him sometimes, to let them know, hey, look, this is what you lost out on because of this inspection. And then they like to turn around, so Oh, well, you know, I’d rather him bring me a citation for it and inspect my truck. So it does happen.

Jeremy Kellett 18:04

Well, it’s, uh, you know, safety is a top priority. And I think when you associate a man’s money with it, you get their attention real quick on it, and how important it is to us as a company too but I mean, the majority of the owner operators here, do it right around you. Yeah. I mean, we’re talking about a small percentage of the company that, you know, some of them are operators that don’t do it right all the time.

Dustin Barnett 18:34

Yeah, 67% of the fleet have a zero CSA score. Oh, yeah. So you look at the other 33% and 17 of that is within the one to 15 point category. So not much, not much. So used to think anything 16 points in greater than usual stops means that we’re seeing a lot of these points, it’s not just one defect that’s found. It’s multiple. And that’s kind of what’s hurting that vehicle maintenance at the moment.

Jeremy Kellett 19:03

You find something and always look for more.

Carl Morrow 19:07

I’ve seen him Hi, 66 points.

Jeremy Kellett 19:10

I won’t stop Yeah. Well, you know, it’s not going away. You know, they’re gonna look for everybody. And it’s just like, if you get that red flag over the threshold in a cat one category, then it’s just going to throw a red flag up to stop in all of Oakley owner operators, all their drivers and pre pass goes red coming in, you know, instead of green and here they go looking but if we stay under that threshold, and we got we’re looking good All in all categories, and it’s a lot smoother. Yeah. So it is. Oakley Trucking is a 100% Owner Operator company. We specialize in Hopper, bottom and dump and pneumatic drivers. We provide the trailer free of charge and you provide the truck. We have a large customer base that reaches the whole United States as well as parts of Canada. Our owner operators live anywhere from Texas to North Carolina to Pennsylvania to Wisconsin and everywhere in between and we get them home weekends. We take it seriously when you join Oakley trucking because we need you to be successful. Oakley offers great benefits and competitive mileage pay. So you know that when your wheels are turning, you’re generating money. No matter if you’re loaded or empty. We understand that you want to make a good living and that you make our living. We only take on independent contractors and to be honest with you, we’re very particular on who we lease on. You must have a good driving record, good work history and clean, dependable truck. So if you’re interested in Oakley trucking or just want some more information, you can go to Oakley trucking.com. Listen to our weekly podcast, the Oakley podcast and subscribe to our YouTube channel. What else? Let’s see, Hazmat Best Practices share the top violations we’re seeing in this category. I know that hazmat has been. We’ve talked a little bit about that. Here lately. That’s kind of been a topic. What’s going on with hazmat?

Carl Morrow 21:08

There is placarding. We’re having issues with placards falling off the truck coming out of the holders and then not noticing it. So the DLT officer sees one placard, and then he goes around the side and doesn’t see the other one, he’s probably going to pull him over and do an inspection on it. And we’re seeing cases with that. Damaged placard not being in the right spot behind handrails or something. So we’ve seen those. So we’ve

Jeremy Kellett 21:35

got the holders on the trailers, right? Everything we need. Yeah, we do. And don’t they give you the I don’t think give you the placard that you need when you load at the facility. Correct? Or do our guys have some in their truck?

Carl Morrow 21:50

So they’re supposed to do this? What are we picking up at? They’re supposed to give them the placards. That’s the practice. And the driver matches that placard number up with the shipping paper. Make sure it’s correct. And then he puts them on his truck. And we’re seeing sometimes, you know, they’re not hauling hazardous material all the time. So they might not haul it within six months. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, they’ve got a hazardous load, they have to haul. So they may forget to stop at a railroad track where they’re supposed to, you know,

22:24

we had that happen. We have Yes, recently.

Jeremy Kellett 22:27

Yeah, that’s my, we always don’t do very much of it. So really, I can see where they creep up on a guy and he’s not used to doing it. And then six months later, he does a load and all of a sudden, he forgets what he got back there. You know, when you got to do things differently? Yeah. What else you got to do differently if you’re pulling a hazmat load just off and it’s true.

Carl Morrow 22:49

You can’t go through tunnels, you know, you have to wrap yourself around tunnels, you know, you can’t go through major cities, unless you’re not delivering if you’re delivering there you can. But you have to go around major cities for sure. And we’ve had a few of those to have. Yeah. They gotta make sure they have their emergency response book within reach while they’re in their seat belt with their shipping papers. So,

Jeremy Kellett 23:13

man, so we’ve been written up on some of that stuff.

Carl Morrow 23:17

That’s yeah, that’s our second one. The placard number one of not having their emergency response book is number two. Okay,

Jeremy Kellett 23:24

so everybody listening, make sure you get the placards like stay on the trailer, and you got the book handy.

Dustin Barnett 23:31

Correct. And a good practice if you’re able to ask the customer for maybe one or two extra, if they’re willing to give them to you. Because let’s say you you pick up a load of, you know, ammonium nitrate, and you’re Hunter miles down the road, and you do stop and notice that one, you know, blew out the likeliness that you find in that particular placard needed is not, you know, not likely, they don’t really keep those placards on hand and a lot of those stops. So if you had one or two on hand, just keep a stack of them, you know, as you do these loads, and I think it’ll be helpful moving forward. If you are in a position where one is missing. You have kind of an extra stash, you can put one in there. Good.

Jeremy Kellett 24:10

Let’s talk real quick before we get into personal conveyance law. No, that’s probably gonna be a good topic there. But is this just in the state of Arkansas that they’re going to do this speed enforced cameras and construction zones? Yes, sir.

Dustin Barnett 24:28

We received that notice last week. But before our and our operators, you know, have a lot of questions. I do want you to know that it’s speed and force cameras, but there still has to be an officer present to issue you a citation or a warning. So their reason behind it is they’re going to position themselves out of those construction areas down the road a little bit, maybe a few miles out of the construction, but they’re gonna be monitoring cameras within that construction zone. It’s gonna be capturing speed, or they’re gonna be looking at danger. You’re driving, and it might be five miles down the road before you’re pulled over for an event that happened prior. But they’re not going to adapt mailing citations, like you see in some of these smaller cities when we get there sometimes, you know, Carl pays him pretty frequently, but no mailed citations, they have to actually physically stop you. But that is going and as this winds up going, in effect, you know, August 1 here in

Jeremy Kellett 25:25

August Forest Hills in effect, so I want to, well wonder if you’ll be able to see the cameras or to be, you know, one of those things that you come up on, you’re doing this speed, if it I don’t know if it’s a camera or not, but who knows where they’ll be?

Dustin Barnett 25:42

The article I read said that there’ll be signage, you know, camera enforcement areas, so you’ll be made aware of the cameras, but I’m not really sure, but they will.

Jeremy Kellett 25:53

I’m assuming the deal is to protect construction workers. I mean, we’ve had some I know here in Arkansas, get killed by vehicles in construction zones. So I’m not sure that’s a big reason why that’s happening, which is a good reason. I mean, it needs to be construction, junk zones are dangerous people working right beside the road. I mean, you know, I’ve got, you know, my son has some friends that are in that kind of business. And, you know, they’re at the house last night. And, you know, you think about it, I think about that now, I was 23 year old kids out there trying to 20 forward trying to do their job and, you know, colleges zipping by so definitely needs to happen. So, it does. Don’t be surprised if you get caught five miles down the road. And then wonder why if you’re misbehaving in a construction zone, yeah. Because they probably shouldn’t say they’ll probably pick the truck out before they pick out the four wheeler. Okay, how about this personal conveyance? You know, I know there’s a lot of y’all getting a lot of calls on it.

Dustin Barnett 27:09

Well, that’s causing more misuse.

Carl Morrow 27:12

We get the calls after the fact.

Jeremy Kellett 27:13

Or y’all do the calling. Yeah. going, Hey, this ain’t gonna work. So you want to give us some examples, personal conveyance do’s and don’t?

Dustin Barnett 27:24

We can, I think that might be a podcast off.

Jeremy Kellett 27:29

So you want to talk about just some of the ball? Or if Yeah,

Dustin Barnett 27:31

well we can do is the most we’re seeing as far as PC misuse is if you run out of time, and you’re 10 miles away from the constantly your ship or just where you’re trying to get to, you’re not able to just put it in personal conveyance and extend your day to get to that facility. Because the argument is you drove for hours leading up to you not having any available drive time. You didn’t look for parking, you know, along the way, he kind of granular 11 out and then you just put it into PC to extend your day. So that’s one thing I wanted to mention. And everybody would be very clear that, if you’re out of hours, you can’t just put it in PC to extend, there’s only one alternative to that is if you’re actually physically at the shipper constantly. Any run out of hours while you’re there, loading or unloading. There isn’t a law now where you can PC to the nearest safe haven and start your 10 hour break whenever you arrive there. That’s going to be one of the only times but that’s kind of what I wanted to mention. Do you have anything else Carl without getting in the weeds, too?

Carl Morrow 28:33

I don’t want to get too deep into it. But yeah, it’s but it’s so much.

Jeremy Kellett 28:37

I mean, it’s you’re going to I mean, we just mentioned personal conveyance, we’re gonna there’s gonna be some weeds come out. Yeah, people are gonna be commenting. But that’s good. That’s what we need. We need to be open to communication here and understand. Yeah, we don’t have to get too deep in it. But that might be right. It might be a podcast,

Carl Morrow 28:53

as well. It’s called Personal conveyance for a reason, you know, for personal use. It’s not, I mean, if you have to use it for company use, then you’re not supposed to use it. You know, if you want to go to the gym, on your off time, you can use it if you want to go get something to eat, go to the movies, that’s all personal reason. So you’re able to do that. You just can’t PC to go home, and things like that,

Jeremy Kellett 29:15

like scenes? Well, I’m sure you all spend a lot of time explaining that. But once again, do we have much of the percentage of owner operators Mr. Eaton? I don’t know, for me, I would think I will

Carl Morrow 29:31

not overall now. Most everybody, have you had a conversation with them? And they’re like, Oh, I didn’t know. And he never talked to him about it again. Yeah. You know, they understand.

Jeremy Kellett 29:43

So I didn’t understand this. When you put it on here. We’re coming up with a new system to submit mm RS within the trans Flow app electronically. You want to find that?

Dustin Barnett 29:55

Yeah. And that’s kind of in the works. I just wanted to give our owner operators a little A heads up that is upcoming, we’re trying to move away from the hard copies of filling out your monthly maintenance report. And taking a picture of a hardcopy, you know, it has been working with transplanter to embed a monthly maintenance report link within their app, hallelujah, you’re going to be able to fill it out electronically, it’s going to give you a tab for electronic signature. And then it’ll give you a prompt after you fill out your report if you want to take pictures of your receipts from there, but kind of moving away from that hardcopy more to electronic, but that’s upcoming no release date yet.

Jeremy Kellett 30:37

That’s been being worked on for years, trying to get that done.

Dustin Barnett 30:42

Well, I can give Eric people downstairs a little shout out. But he’s done a great job in developing it and it’s completed on our side, we’re just working on embedding it within the trans Flow app. So it’s a little bit easier to have even more accessible than interoperating.

Jeremy Kellett 30:58

Yeah, everybody had awesome IT departments. So it’ll be just like on the app like they do everything else, I can go through there and fill out their monthly maintenance report, take pictures of the receipts, send them in. Yeah, we

Dustin Barnett 31:14

should be on that main screen of your dashboard, where your settlements in your field network is listed

Jeremy Kellett 31:19

out there. That would be nice. And I know some of the people in the psych department would really love to hear that. That is going through electronically. And I’ll have to, I have to get it done. And I’m sure dispatch would love that to be a lot more convenient. A lot more convenient. That’s good. You said the girls had something to warn to remind her buddy. Uh,

Dustin Barnett 31:41

yeah, just a few things before I came up here. I just asked him if they wanted me to mention anything. And they wanted to remind you all to make sure to complete your physicals. And if you have any expired CDL coming up, make sure to do it at least two weeks prior to the expiration, because there’s a nationwide shortage of DMV workers. So there’s a lot of delay and getting physicals added to your CDL. So they just wonder, yeah, to get it certified. So they just wanted to give everyone a heads up to not wait until the last minute, get it done. And as soon as you get the paperwork, don’t hold on to it for two weeks until you send it to us because there’s a lot of processing that has to be done on our end. So just try to be sensitive and timely on that. Once you get your physical, just go ahead and send it in to miss Ashley, and she’ll get everything completed on Aria.

Carl Morrow 32:33

She also wants them to if they can take it into the state themselves. That way, if they’re there, and their state and they’re getting a physical, don’t just go ahead and go by the DMV, you know, and get it put

Jeremy Kellett 32:46

on your eyes. Yep, that way, that’s the quickest. If you’re at home, if you go do your physical at home, then just run it by the time you get out of there, run it by the DMV and get it certified. Yeah. Correct. Because and actually, that still takes a little while I guess, to get certified depending on the state. Yeah, it goes, we do it. With all the new guys that come to orientation, take a physical, then Miss Ashley, send it off to their state and get it certified. So we kind of have to watch and make sure somebody’s physical, not about to expire. And there’s a you know, it expires before it gets certified with the state and there’s a gap there. It’s a problem. So we got a kind of watch for that, too. Now, we’ve talked about that in the past, you know, on on, you know, prior to getting a physical, you may do it ahead of time, don’t wait until the last day to get it done. Because then it’s not like alright, I’ll come out of there. And I passed everything’s good. Now go. Now we have to certify with the state, you know, send it to the DMV and wait on that to get done and like you save for the shortage of workers. That I know.

Carl Morrow 33:58

I gotta get mine done next month,

Jeremy Kellett 33:59

though. Yeah. Don’t wait to let go and get it done next month. And that’s a day away. Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Anything else you guys won’t cover? Do you look at the list? I didn’t

34:13

hear you. kind of glance over but I think that’s all.

Jeremy Kellett 34:18

I’m gonna let it read that last one. Oh, yeah.

Dustin Barnett 34:21

Alison, want me to mention about ELD problems. So be sure to if you’re experiencing ELD problems, if it’s not tracking your drive time accordingly. Just call in and report it to us as it’s happening. Don’t wait several days if you’ve noticed some malfunction of the unit. There’s a lot of time sensitive steps that have to occur in an event where a unit is not working properly. So she’s trying to go through an unidentified driving report daily and keeping up with you know, assigning draft time that needs to be assigned to the driver’s log. So if you could just kind of you know, as you notice something not working properly, just give us a call.

Jeremy Kellett 34:57

Yeah, I guess they happen. It’s pretty regular or from time to time, I guess. Yeah. working properly. Are there any big steps, any big things coming down the road in the safety department? What do we need to know about? None that I can think of? I mean, it’s forwards. Not much changes other than what we talked about, with what what was? With the monthly maintenance reports, hopefully down the road? The Naiad.

Carl Morrow 35:30

I don’t have anything else.

Jeremy Kellett 35:33

I think we covered quite a bit. Well, you know, I mean, it’s great to be working in a safety department in a recruiting department. For a company like this. It’s got good owner operators like this. Because could you imagine working in those departments for a bad company? Oh, yeah, I would be miserable. And I have a lot more gray hair? Probably. It would be miserable. You know, I was toe to toe with recruiters in a recruiting department. We talked pretty regularly about how you can imagine trying to recruit for a bad company, you know, that does things wrong, and doesn’t care about safety and doesn’t care about taking care of the owner operator. And that’s something here that, you know, that I think a lot of because we’re blessed to have some good owner operators here that take care of the business. And for us to be talking about some of these things that I wouldn’t call. I wouldn’t call it nitpicky things, but I would call you know, at least we’re not talking about million dollar lawsuits, fatality accidents, rear end, you know, we’re not talking about all that stuff. That plagues that company, at least, you know, we’re talking about this stuff that can be corrected. And we know we have a bunch of good owner operators that do key and correct things and are gonna take care of business and are proud to be Oakley or operators. Definitely. They want to keep their safety record just as clean as anybody else. Yeah. I mean, that’s some of the things that I hear a lot. When you’re talking to a guy recruiting him on the phone. Is he proud of that safety record? I mean, he is proud. He doesn’t have any violations, doesn’t have anything on his MVR, he’s proud of that. So we got a lot of guys that are locked in here. It really makes it nice.

Carl Morrow 37:27

I know JP is making calls you know, we

Jeremy Kellett 37:29

got a lot of guys that hit their million miles. So he’s been making calls last week and also getting a ring size and stuff. I wonder how many we got. list, we present that at our company party that’s coming up October, the million dollars and recognize the bet we got a bunch of

Dustin Barnett 37:47

I think we might even have some 2 million miles. Yeah,

Jeremy Kellett 37:49

I bet we do. Yeah. Robert has been right along with the company. So

Carl Morrow 37:57

It’s a good company to work for sure. We’re fortunate. We are fortunate still in the first deal. T number two. Oh, yeah. So that’s good.

Jeremy Kellett 38:05

30 to 59 00. Somebody said, No, you gotta have more numbers. And we’re like, no.

Dustin Barnett 38:14

Are the numbers out there just waiting for you? That’s a

Jeremy Kellett 38:20

put a couple zeros in front of it to fill in your screen. That’s yeah. Well, I appreciate you guys doing this with me. You know, it’s good information for you know, not only me, but everybody listening out there to to know, where our safety department stand some of the things that need to be corrected. And some of the things are done. Great dance, right. You know, and it just, it makes a big difference to know that the owner operator has to buy into safety to work here. And hats by and customer service, which I both go together. When you mentioned earlier about customer service customers look at our safety ready to know whether to do business with us or not. That’s a whole nother episode. But it just makes a big difference when the owner operators are buying into that safety and customer service. Everything seems to seems to go smooth when you do that when that’s your priority. So, yes, that’s all good. Thanks, guys. I appreciate y’all sitting down with me talking safety. You know, it’s good information for our listeners out there and our owner operators, and to give her you know, get people that are not at Oakley, little inside the safety department with Carl and Dustin and what they do every day and it’s not an easy job for sure. And they do it and committed to try to make this company better and keep our safety rating under threshold. So All right, thanks guys, again for joining me. I appreciate everybody out there listening to the podcast. You know, it just means a whole lot that you keep listening to this and that you share it with your friends and you tell everybody about it because We’d love for to have more truck drivers listen to the podcast and get our name out there. And what we do here at Oakley, and you know our standard tiered Oakley and we’re looking for the best owner operators out there. So, we appreciate it if you if you share the Word and spread it once again. So thanks for listening and we’ll talk to you next week. Thanks for listening to this episode with Oakley podcast, trucking, business and family. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate or review the show in the podcast platform of your choice and share it with a friend. We love hearing from our audience. So if you’ve got a question, comment or just want to say hello, head over to our website, the Oakley podcast.com and click the leave a comment but we’ll get you a response soon and may even share some of the best ones here on the show. We’ll be back with a fresh episode very soon. Thanks for listening!

165: The Taylor Family’s Recipe for Success at Oakley Trucking

August 2, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Bobby Taylor, an Owner-Operator at Oakley along with his wife Nessa. During the episode, Bobby shares his journey coming to Oakley after having years of driving experience and also experience as a pilot and a law enforcement officer. Bobby also talks about the importance of having a strong family support system at home, shares a story about his truck catching fire last year, gives advice on how to be a successful pneumatic driver, and much more.

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164: The Grain and Fertilizer Operations at Oakley

July 26, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Jordan Moore & Kell Shenep. Jordan is the VP of Oakley Grain and Kell is a purchasing manager for Bruce Oakley. During the episode, Jordan and Kell share their journeys in coming to Oakley, how the grain operation works for Bruce Oakley, the importance of the owner-operator in the entirety of the organization’s operations, what the future looks like for grain and fertilizer, and more.

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163: Freight Update with Operations

July 19, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Shane Smith & Nick Crisco, Operations Managers at Oakley Trucking. During the episode, the group gives an update as to the freight operations throughout 2023. Shane and Nick also discuss various topics such as the importance of communication, customer service, maximizing load weight for profitability, and more.

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162: A Century’s Worth of Family Business: Debbie Fick

July 12, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Debbie Fick, the St. Louis Terminal Manager for Bruce Oakley Inc. During the episode, Debbie Fick shares the story of her family’s business, Lange-Stegmann, and how it went from packaging fertilizer to warehousing and selling wholesale fertilizer. Jeremy and Debbie also discuss the acquisition of Lange-Stegmann, the capabilities of the St. Louis terminal, how it enhances the operations of Bruce Oakley Inc. and more.

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161: Fighting for the Independent Trucker – Lewie and Bryce of OOIDA

July 5, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Lewie Pugh and Bruce Mongeon of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA). During the episode, the group discusses the founding of OOIDA, how the organization advocates on behalf of truckers, updates on the AB5 bill, discussion around speed limiters, how truckers can get involved, and more.

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160: Beyond the Headquarters: Oakley’s Terminal Managers

June 28, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Brandin Pattengill and Alex Witkowski, Terminal Managers at Bruce Oakley Inc.. During the episode, Brandin and Alex discuss their work at each of the terminals, what sorts of products are shipped through and ordered, the length of a product’s journey from ordering to shipment, future expansion opportunities at each terminal, and more.

Key topics in today’s conversation include:

Oakley Update: More weight, more money while staying safe (1:54)
Meeting Brandon and Alex and finding out about their backgrounds (3:43)
Information from the terminal branches of Oakley (6:59)
The range of products and deliveries at these terminals (12:05)
Current projects at the terminals in Caruthersville, Ottawa and Seneca (16:23)
Where do commodities originate from? (18:03)
How long does it take products to come in once ordered (20:05)
What does the future look like at each terminal? (22:26)

Oakley Trucking is a family-owned and operated trucking company headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. For more information, check out our show website: podcast.bruceoakley.com.

Transcription

Alex Witkowski 00:12

We’re just trying to expand the business trying to get into more throughput, you know more towns through the terminal. We got a great crew, we got a lot of great help and we’re just gonna get bigger and better.

Jeremy Kellett 00:22

Welcome to the Oakley podcast, trucking, business and family. This show is brought to you by Oakley trucking headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. The purpose of this podcast is to communicate with Oakley owner operators and their families by giving them up to date information concerning Oakley trucking and the trucking industry. From business advice to safety updates to success stories. Also to give an insight to outside truck drivers that might be interested in joining the Oakley family. I’m Jeremy kellett director recruiting here at Oakley trucking and I’m your host for this podcast. This is the Oakley podcast about trucking business and family. And on today’s episode, we actually have two terminal managers from our terminals in Ottawa, Illinois and cynic Illinois. That’s one terminal manager who manages those. And on the other one is Carlos real Missouri. So we have these guys, Brandon, Pattengill and Alex Witkowski, sitting in with me. We actually got the managers coming into the office this week, and we’re doing some getting to know each other a little bit. So I’m taking advantage of the opportunity to get them here and getting them on the podcast with me to learn a little bit more about Bruce Oakley you guys, you listeners are awesome. And y’all y’all tell me hey, I want to hear more about Bruce Oakley and what they do and this is part of that this is give you an insight on these terminals that are up one up on the Illinois River and one at crows wheel, Missouri that’s on the Mississippi and sit down and visit with these guys about their capabilities what they do every day. What the future looks like, what commodities they deal in every day, so I think it’s gonna be a good episode. Be sure and stay with me and listen to this thing. But first, let’s do the Oakley update sponsored by Arrow Truck Sales. Arrow Truck Sales has been in business for over 60 years and a longtime partner of Oakley trucking and the Oakley podcast, Dre visor and Keith Wilson do a great job at putting you in the right truck to fit your needs and our needs here at Oakley. They carry all makes and models to choose from with on site financing through transport funding. So whether you’re a seasoned owner operator or a first time buyer, be sure to contact Keith Wilson at Arrow Truck Sales at 573-216-6047. And tell him you heard it on the Oakley podcast. So on update today, here’s what we’re talking white, we’re talking about hauling the weight. I’m specifically talking to our owner operators, because this is if you hadn’t heard, you’ve probably already heard this from your dispatcher. But this is something we’ve been battling for years. And I’m just helping get the point across here that we’ve got to haul close to 80,000 pounds and do it reasonably with the customer and what they want. But we have got to make that effort. There’s a little bit of a misnomer out there that I think a lot of people say, Well, if you have 46 hours, and you’re okay, that is totally false. That is not the case, you know, the weight is to get as close to 80 as you can and be legal. Because not only I mean, we get paid by the time. So that means a whole lot right there, the more weight we hold, the more we get paid more we pay you well, the customer also expects us to get the weight on there, that’s where it’s at. I mean, we want to deliver good service to them and give them the best product that they can get on one load. It makes a big difference, especially against our competitors. You know, a lot of the competition has company trucks and lot trucks and haul a lot more weight than we do. And we just got to be you know, we just 77 78,000 you need to be communicating with your dispatcher on what’s going on and see if we can get more weight and harlot so close to 80,000 is is what we got to do notes can be challenging in some places, but that’s why I just want you to communicate with your dispatcher on what’s going on in each situation, and it’s all you know, a lot different sometimes. So anyway, communicate with us and try to wait. Okay, so let’s get started with Alex wood Gaskey and Brandon Paton Gill and how are you guys doing today? You

Alex Witkowski 04:39

might not be good? Yes, sir.

Jeremy Kellett 04:41

Appreciate y’all being here. You know, we have an office managers meeting now called us here to North LiveRamp. So, finally good to meet you guys and some other new people here.

Alex Witkowski 04:50

I mean, it’s your first time at the office. Now this is probably my third or fourth so far and we were talking earlier. I saw the original office. Then what a difference this new one is. It’s mad. It’s a work of art. It truly is. Yeah, it’s

Jeremy Kellett 05:05

Nice. I mean, it’s, it’s leaps and bounds from the old office.

Brandin Pattengill 05:09

Yeah, same here. I’ve been here three times. Oh, are you okay? It’s a nice place.

Jeremy Kellett 05:13

So you guys just avoided me the whole time. I didn’t know you were here. So good. Glad you met. tell our listeners a little bit about yourself. Before we get started. They always like to hear who they’re talking to. So let’s start with you Alex.

Alex Witkowski 05:27

All right, some Alex Witkowski I manage the odd one Seneca terminals, originally from our sales, right between Ottawa and Sonica. So right between the two right on the river. So I’ve been in the river area my whole life. We moved a little village down a grand ridge and went as a family. Got a family. Yeah. Married 10 years to my wife, Kylie. We have Nathan and Benjamin. They’re five and three. And there are a handful or what do you do on a weekend? Weekend T ball. This Walk in the Woods hiking, you know, prepping for deer season and kind of getting them into the wildlife a little bit and they’re dead. Ha yeah, that’s fine. And yeah, I’m excited to get them more in sports and stuff like that. There’s interest in football and soccer and whatnot. So yeah,

Jeremy Kellett 06:21

It’ll go back a week. You gotta do it. Good. Glenn. Thank you for joining me. What about you, Brandon’s

Brandin Pattengill 06:30

manage the Crothersville facility. They do fertilizer and diesel currently. I’ve been with Bruce ugly since February. I’ve been in that same port since 2011. Know the area down in Buda, Missouri on the Mississippi postal four states within two hours and got a couple interstates just right. Visible from the facility. So family family, yes. Been married to my wife Tasha for almost 20 years. I Have two daughters, 19 and 16. Ellie and Lola got a college softball player that is 10 years old and my youngest plays basketball year round. So we’re always running into some basketball court or softball field somewhere.

Jeremy Kellett 07:15

Oh, yeah. Yeah, to do that, but because they didn’t belong. They’re gonna be gone. 13 and 16 happened pretty quick.

Brandin Pattengill 07:21

Yeah, my family comes from a family farm and they had a local steel farm today. That allowed me to be part of that in the fall. And love deer like we’ve talked about here. Do some big deer up here, don’t you? We try to, if I keep the gun hunters from killing the small one, nothing will be.

Jeremy Kellett 07:40

That’s normally me probably.

Brandin Pattengill 07:43

A lot of my family. Is it?

Jeremy Kellett 07:45

Yeah, that’s good hunting up in that area. So

Brandin Pattengill 07:47

Yes, sir. Sure.

Jeremy Kellett 07:49

I always like to. I mean, our listeners on this show always asked me about different divisions of Bruce Oakley because, you know, I get caught up in Oakley trucking, what it’s all about, and telling everybody about it and talking about it. But there’s so much more to Bruce Oakley Incorporated, you know, being a big company that has a lot of different divisions. And you guys are one of those divisions by having a port in Crothersville, Missouri, that you manage. And then Alex says one cynic Illinois in Ottawa, Illinois. He manages and it’s just I think it’s good information to let our listeners know what you guys do there and what you’re capable of doing there. So let’s start with you, Alex up there in Illinois. How far apart are those terminals?

Alex Witkowski 08:34

I’ll drive a 15 minute drive. That’s not too far away. Barnett wrote up a sir. If you can imagine.

Jeremy Kellett 08:43

What’s it, what’s those terminal capabilities?

Alex Witkowski 08:46

Well, I’ll start with Sonica so Sonica there’s seven tanks with 40,000 Tons of storage. And six the tanks are UAM 32%, which it’s the 32% of the nitrogen content of the fertilizer. The other product we have is ammonium thiosulfate which is more of a software product. So we have some blending nice fertilizers to correct Yeah, and we can blend it we make 28% you know watered down a little bit. We can add the thigh assault to the 32% and so we can give them the softer with their nitrogen and so we have good capabilities. They’re all barges. For the 32% we have rail capability truck capability. So we can we’re pretty universal there. As far as what’s more of a traditional river port that Oakley is used to we have a 20,000 tonne warehouse of potash urea map DAP AMS Yeah, same thing. RBT machines can unload rail cars to trucks or rail cars. We’re trying to be more universal getting into van trailers flatbeds we can handle Hopper bottoms and dumps and road salt for the wintertime

Jeremy Kellett 10:03

and we’ve had it for a long time since Oakley heard those places, Alex, you know?

Alex Witkowski 10:08

Yeah, so about 2018 The first 2018 Yeah,

Jeremy Kellett 10:12

got them both but at the same time. Yes, sir. Okay. All right. Now what river is it? That’s the Illinois River. Okay. Illinois River. So is that about as far north? I mean as you can go forward, is the Illinois River going?

Alex Witkowski 10:26

I mean, it goes up to Lamont because it’s toward Chicago rather than acting. Yeah, we’re proud 60 miles southwest of Chicago. Okay,

Jeremy Kellett 10:36

so Illinois starts up there.

Alex Witkowski 10:39

Yeah, I would say it was a K rode down, that area starts off and so we’re about 240 miles. That’d be the mile marker for Ottawa and about 253 for Seneca. So they’re about 10 river miles away from each other.

Jeremy Kellett 10:53

Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay, well, that grows we’ll rent it.

Brandin Pattengill 10:57

Similar to fertilizer. We have a six Bay 20,000 ton brand new fertilizer warehouse. In December of 21. They had a tornado come through that area and took the roof off the fertilizer. Yeah. So since I started in February, they’ve been rebuilding and here this past week, we’re actually putting product in that building. So we’re in first place for the first time. Yes, a brand new building. Very nice to see dust moving in it. Starting to lag a little money.

Jeremy Kellett 11:28

isn’t like this one out here. Yes. That we built not long ago. This new one

Brandin Pattengill 11:32

just similar to it. Yes, sir. Let’s say we have six bases and six different products. We still do ammonium nitrate, triple potash urea, those products and along with the fertilizer, we discharge diesel barges in and discharge to a couple of tanks, five and a half million. Each of those were Marquez energy assets that we acquired in 2014 Crothersville birsa. Flink started there and 98 from the Roche. So that’s two two main objectives, offload fertilizer and diesel currently,

Jeremy Kellett 12:07

That’s your biggest? Yes. What’s the biggest deal that you do there? Well, you know, the railroads open up so many opportunities for us. With so many ports, you can do a lot in a minute. You get river access, you make a lot of things happen. I’m there. So the fuel and fertilizer, I’m assuming that you sell mainly to wholesale to people close by there around that area,

Brandin Pattengill 12:33

like I spoke about earlier, the interstates closed, you know, interstate diesel fuel and you know, harvest scenarios, you know, a lot of diesel gets used this time of year through phone. And it’s it can we’re in between, you know, Scott said he’s got a pipeline. It’s got the City, Missouri and Memphis pipeline. So we’re kind of in between. So we do have certain characteristics that we can do in the middle of those two hubs.

Jeremy Kellett 12:56

What about the range? I mean, where do you guys mindless products come from? I guess all the product has got to come either overseas and up the Mississippi? Yes, that’s correct. So you guys, and then how much ever you purchase? You store it and sell it? Right? I mean, that’s the basics of it. So how, and then how far around your area? Do you sell this stuff? I mean, is it like, just 150 miles? Or is it 500 miles?

Alex Witkowski 13:28

You know, I would say 100 miles on average? I mean, what the road salt we can get into Wisconsin, you know, get more up north, but yeah, 100 150 miles,

Brandin Pattengill 13:38

I’d say yeah, say the diesels probably 100 150 miles, the fertilizers a little farther than that, maybe closer to 200 250 miles, that some of the, you know, wholesalers, your, your fertilizer houses inland, away from the river that will supply

Jeremy Kellett 13:53

What do you think your niche is? Maybe that’s your competition?

Alex Witkowski 14:01

Well, we’ll look at anything. I mean, we’ll handle anything if we can make some money and do it safely. And, you know, make the state of Illinois EPA happy. You know, we’ll look at it for sure. We don’t like to say no to an opportunity.

Jeremy Kellett 14:16

You have anything specific that you think you have an advantage over a lot of the people

Alex Witkowski 14:21

out we just were willing to put the work and the time man will make it happen to service. Yes, sir.

Jeremy Kellett 14:27

Well, but yeah,

Brandin Pattengill 14:28

very similar. We handle ammonium nitrate which a lot of facilities have got away from due to basically the standards you have to abide by to handle that product. I think diesel has more logistics. I guess the biggest thing that I see here going forward is we got relationships, lame seller, fertilizer, Debbie, none of it’s been there 25 years. He knows the ropes inside and out. They built a lot of round eggs and are still a big asset for me to help me learn as we get started here. Yeah,

Jeremy Kellett 15:04

but I guess you guys by having your own hand at these terminals, which you also don’t have help from here? Yes.

Alex Witkowski 15:16

For sure. I mean, shout out to Brian Marple, our regional sales manager. He’s I talked to more of my wife some days it’s but we got a lot of help here at the home office, it don’t matter if it’s it if it’s sales if it’s inventory, that we have a great communication flow here

Jeremy Kellett 15:37

of you. Have you started seeing any trucking pickup?

Alex Witkowski 15:41

You know what we have? I gotta say Oakleys probably got the cleanest trucks we’ve ever seen. Like, hands down good. Yes, sir. Yes. But yeah, we’ve been handling a lot of pelletized lime, so it works out good. They can drop something off and then get a load of potash or AMS or something so they can leave right there and get down the road.

Jeremy Kellett 16:01

Yeah. Okay, good. Good. I mean, you know, I’ll get off on owner operators. They’re guys, they’re fantastic. They take care of equipment and I’m very proud of them. Oakley Trucking is a 100% Owner Operator company. We specialize in Hopper, bottom and dump and pneumatic drivers. We provide the trailer free of charge and you provide the truck. We have a large customer base that reaches the whole United States as well as parts of Canada. Our owner operators live anywhere from Texas to North Carolina to Pennsylvania to Wisconsin and everywhere in between and we get them home weekends. We take it seriously when you join Oakley trucking because we need you to be successful. Oakley offers great benefits and competitive mileage pay. So you know that when your wheels are turning, you’re generating money. No matter if you’re loaded or empty. We understand that you want to make a good living and that you make our living. We only take on independent contractors and to be honest with you, we are very particular on who we lease on. You must have a good driving record, good work history and clean, dependable truck. So if you’re interested in Oakley trucking or just want some more information, you can go to Oakley trucking.com. Listen to our weekly podcast, the Oakley podcast and subscribe to our YouTube channel. What kind of projects are you doing right now? Ron,

Brandin Pattengill 17:17

Currently, we’re looking to take one of our storage tanks five and a half million storage tanks into gasoline? Or we can know, we don’t do it for you. I think it opened up a lot of revenue. And just the amount of talking to drivers, a lot of them do split loads, they’ll come in and get a half load of diesel and half load of gasoline. And it’s just another product to handle that you can, you know, take advantage of the market and give you time to do so. Yeah.

Jeremy Kellett 17:48

So the demands are? Yes, why not try it? Let’s talk about a project you’re working on now. Yeah, we

Alex Witkowski 17:54

I just finished two at Seneca. So seven tanks every 10 years, you have to go inside of and get them inspected, which means you have to clean them now. It’s nasty. And I got a good crew, they put up with the nastiness and so we cleaned to get ready for fall Phil, one of them having a rubber liner. It’s like an EPDM material. Well, when you have a little cut that big, it’s hard to find, but we were able to get it and we’re ready to go. So you have to empty it completely and then actually get in there and add the thing with that material. They call it salting and it turns into concrete. So you have to add water, agitate it, stir it around and turn it from a solid to a liquid form and get rid of it.

Jeremy Kellett 18:44

So it does sound like a job. It is unique. Take those guys out to lunch. So where do most of your commodities originate from? And we talked a little bit about how it comes up the river but I mean, where did most of it originate from?

Alex Witkowski 19:05

Morocco, Jordan, Nicaragua, like really all over? I mean, we’re, we got a great staff here that deals with international sales and, you know, we’ll buy ships and material put it on barges and, you know, if they buy a ship, they’ll get a handful I’ll get a couple and they get all over the place

Jeremy Kellett 19:26

ships over here and then gets put on barges and up your way.

Brandin Pattengill 19:31

I mean, very similar. Yes, very similar diesels usually, you know, out of Memphis or south to refineries, Valero musket, those facilities. Where were they located? Blair on a big one in Memphis. Okay. So then we deal with Exxon. We have recently actually got Exxon barges coming in here tomorrow. And so yeah, not very far away.

Jeremy Kellett 19:56

Yeah, that’s the stuff you’re talking about. Alec says the liquid nitrogen product. Well,

Alex Witkowski 20:02

that’s coming more out of Louisiana. It’s down to 32% of our liquid UI on 32%. Out of this product, so that’d be more for those countries. You know, talking about,

Jeremy Kellett 20:15

you know, I had an interesting conversation or podcast episode with Ivan, the International guy that does it. And that was a very if y’all haven’t watched that, you need to go back and watch it. It was really good. He did a good job explaining some of this stuff and how he his history in fertilize very knowledgeable, very good, very long, you know, and what he knows what he can do, and help and he was telling me about bringing chips over and chips I think I think he actually had him and Baba yet. So yes, it was a really good episode. So you got a lot of good help here to be shared in the office? It sure seems like it. So we’ve covered the word count from the commodities it takes, how long? I mean, when I guess you got to place it in a big order. And when does that mean, does it take months to get if you ordered a product to fertilize or something I guess they ordered? It takes a while to get to you? What’s that mean?

Alex Witkowski 21:19

For us? It’s probably four months or four weeks from golf to get out? Or Oh, isn’t it in some of that hold up? Could you know, St. Louis, they may sit there for a little while. And then, you know, we got a bunch of locks. So they gotta walk through and this and that. And three to four weeks, probably, but okay.

Brandin Pattengill 21:40

Yeah, a little less than that for us. I mean, we’re mom Walker 849. I mean, well, not many stops on a tow, we’ll get up there in a week to 10 days, you know, 100 miles a day is what we kind of range by, Oh, gotcha, gotcha. Like a diesel tow will be faster than that, because they’re just, they got one one mission coming to you and get discharged. So

Jeremy Kellett 22:02

I guess a lot of the minute I guess a lot of the Corps of Engineers has a lot to do with a lot of this.

Brandin Pattengill 22:08

They sure do. Yeah, would have been like a spell my word

Jeremy Kellett 22:11

or Marcy, and a lot of those

Brandin Pattengill 22:14

in that range of rivers on the credit. Crothersville is just, you know, 2011 went 47. Seven feet. 400 year flood, and this morning, it was a 3.9. And it was in the negative range last fall with the drought of last fall. Yeah, so 50 foot range and the river, you have to work with it and deal with it.

Jeremy Kellett 22:34

So that was the lowest you’ve ever seen it last fall. Yes. Last year. Yes. Yeah, I guess that might have been, I guess the lowest it’s ever been. I

Brandin Pattengill 22:41

don’t believe that’s,

Jeremy Kellett 22:43

I believe that’s right. I’m not sure. But my either that’s changed a lot of things that yeah, I’ll the

Brandin Pattengill 22:49

47 seven, and April of 2011 will be embedded in my mind, because I started down there the first of April and moved out on April 30. And this is pretty amazing to see all the facilities, the amount of water and

Jeremy Kellett 23:05

everything. Well, you’re at, you know, we’re at mother’s nature’s mercy, for sure. And it’s hard to plan around that I’m sure sometimes, but you got to do this what we do. Anything else you guys would like to tell about your facilities you think that we haven’t covered off top your head?

Alex Witkowski 23:25

Well, we’re just always looking for opportunities in Ottawa, we have the land.

Jeremy Kellett 23:31

We have the equator and got land to expand. We do nice things.

Alex Witkowski 23:35

We have a lot of grass. And you know, we’ve had discussions of possibilities, but we’re getting bigger and better year by year. So

Jeremy Kellett 23:44

What is the one of y’all the busiest? What towel years, your

Alex Witkowski 23:50

Spring and fall for us? Right? Same here. Same

Jeremy Kellett 23:53

The diesel is pretty steady year round.

Brandin Pattengill 23:56

This depends on the market. Really. I mean, you know, the harvest scenarios, you know, bump up volumes, but this really depends on the market. One thing I didn’t touch base on earlier was we do road salt, we store road salt on this facility site by the fertilizer warehouse, we do you know, six to 10 bars annually sell it to highway departments, different different towns, whatnot. So that’s another piece of the business. But you know, just like Alex said more, we have a big footprint area that we could build on. We do have other areas that we could put more tanks on. So I would say that’s probably going to be in the future. If demand just grows. We’ll build more,

Jeremy Kellett 24:37

which was my next question. The future of these two of these terminals, these three terminals, may be Immortelle. Thank the future looks like and you starting in February, but no one about us. For a long time, Brandon. I’m assuming you wouldn’t come over here back in February if you didn’t think he was a good teacher here at that tournament. Yeah,

Brandin Pattengill 24:57

I think it’s a very good opportunity to grow. Oh and expand in and make more money. Yeah, what we’re trying to do is the name

Jeremy Kellett 25:05

of the game. Yes, sir. But you guys, well, I

Alex Witkowski 25:07

got the five year jacket, I want the 10 year Watch, I’ll

Jeremy Kellett 25:09

be on there you gotta go for Yes sir.

Alex Witkowski 25:13

I’m not going anywhere. But now Sam is the same. I mean, it’s just, we’re just trying to expand the business trying to get into more throughput, you know, more tons through the terminal we got a great crew, we got a lot of great help and we’re just gonna get bigger and better. I mean, well, and

Jeremy Kellett 25:29

you know, the other side of that is is working with a trucking company you know, hope that’s in the plans for the future of doing more trucking out there with Oakley trucking you know that’s it’s creating you guys are help create opportunities for the trucking company to and that’s we all just need to work together work together get to know each other and see what what needs we can feel for you do sir.

Brandin Pattengill 25:56

And just be a part of that new fertilizer facility with all the characteristics of what you have that work under roof over your mill rights, your truckers lucky said there’s, there’s so many things that we do ourselves through Oakley, that a lot of people don’t have that option. It’s very good to see. Yeah, that’s probably you know, now that to think about it, Brandon, that’s probably one of the biggest advantages

Jeremy Kellett 26:21

that we have, you know, that you have sitting in your seat that I have sitting in my seat at Oakley trucking? is heaven. The whole Bruce Oakley incorporated family. And everybody. I mean, we’ve got so many options here that it’s overwhelming a little bit, right, you know, at times on what we could do with each other. I mean, the opportunities that come up with this company is he fired up

Brandin Pattengill 26:51

my first trip down here there were products that are handled here that I’ve never heard of before. You know, I’m like, I’m sure have been around this business a while I’d love to hear from these things. It’s

Jeremy Kellett 27:01

pretty well yeah, I mean, I never knew we dealt and beet juice added beet juice. I use it with my cousin. They all meet but I mean it, you know having the people I think is just an advantage to us and helps us all work together. So thank you guys for hanging out with me man.

Alex Witkowski 27:19

Appreciate it. Thank you for appreciating having us here and yeah, the nerves kind of wore off.

Jeremy Kellett 27:24

It really will. It’s afternoon and tonight we got Dr. Game yes sir Italy Italy’s after too good. And you’ll be wanting to come to another one in the morning. Maybe I don’t appreciate you guys joining me and giving us a little bit of insight on the new terminals that you run in and it’s very nice to meet you guys. Appreciate our listeners, man. Appreciate you guys hanging with us here. The Oakley podcast. We try to give you some good info as often as we possibly can every week. Be sure and you know I say this every week. But because miles makes me subscribe to our YouTube channel. Comment on it. You know, like it. Share it with somebody and tell other people about the LP podcast. I mean, our mentality here is course trucking wise. There’s three and a half million truck drivers in this country and they should all be listening to the Oakley podcast right now. Man swamp. So help us spread the word a little bit. And as always, I appreciate you guys. Listen, we’ll talk to you next week. Thanks for listening to this episode with Oakley podcast, trucking, business and family. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate or review the show and the podcast platform of your choice and share it with a friend. We love hearing from our audience. So if you’ve got a question, comment or just want to say hello, head over to our website, the Oakley podcast.com and click the leave a comment button. We’ll get you a response soon and may even share some of the best ones here on the show. We’ll be back with a fresh episode very soon. Thanks for listening.

159: Fresh Out of Orientation

June 21, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with John Gray and Josh Cochran, Owner Operators at Oakley Trucking. During the episode, Josh and John talk about their experiences fresh out of orientation at Oakley. Topics in the conversation include the importance of doing research before making a move, the recruiting process at Oakley, how orientation sets you up for success, and more.

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158: The Trucking Industry’s Greatest Weapon Against Human Trafficking

June 14, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Chris Moreno, Industry Training Program Specialist at Truckers Against Trafficking (TAT). During the episode, Chris and Jeremy discuss the organization’s mission to educate, equip, empower, and mobilize members of the trucking, busing, and energy industries to recognize and report human trafficking, the importance of training truck drivers to recognize and report it, education and resources for drivers and companies, and more.

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157: Serving the Owner-Operator with Jared Flinn of BulkLoads.com

June 7, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Jared Flinn, Co-Founder of BulkLoads.com. During the episode, Jeremy and Jared discuss all parts of the bulk industry. Topics include the importance of trust in the business/customer relationship, how to best care for your customer and employees, focus on helping with the pain points of owner-operators, services BulkLoads provides, and more.

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156: Reaching Better Health with Mother Trucker Yoga

May 31, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Hope Zvara, Co-Founder of Mother Trucker Yoga. During the episode, Hope shares her personal story of overcoming struggle and addiction through yoga. Topics in this conversation include the founding of Mother Trucker Yoga, the importance of motion and movement in everyday life, tips and exercises for drivers, and more.

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155: The St. Christopher Truckers Relief Fund

May 24, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Shannon Currier and Lindsey Bryan of the St. Christopher Truckers Relief Fund, a nonprofit organization that provides financial assistance to over-the-road and regional truck drivers who have experienced short-term illness or injury. During this conversation, the group talks about the history and mission of the organization, the qualifications for receiving assistance, the importance of preventive health programs, and more.

Key topics in today’s conversation include:

History and Mission of the St. Christopher Fund (2:23)
Qualifications for receiving assistance (5:16)
Common health issues among truck drivers (10:46)
Funding for the St. Christopher’s Fund (12:38)
Preventive health programs (18:01)
The importance of preventive maintenance in our health (22:21)
Final thoughts and closing remarks (25:58)

Oakley Trucking is a family-owned and operated trucking company headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. For more information, check out our show website: podcast.bruceoakley.com.

Transcription

Shannon Currier 00:05

I realized that a lot of these drivers were losing everything they had because of a short term injury or illness. They were losing their homes, they were losing their trucks and I had nothing to go back to. And I decided, You know what we need to put together a nonprofit that can be a safety net for these drivers. And we have the St. Christopher Fund that our name comes from the patron saint of travel, St. Christopher. That’s where the name came from. John says the trucking industry is on the road a lot. The patron saint of travel is known in the you know, industry and has been for a long time and so let’s go with the St. Christopher truckers really fun.

Jeremy Kellett 00:47

Shannon Currier 02:12

we’re actually celebrating 15 years this year. So it’s pretty exciting. That

Jeremy Kellett 02:16

is exciting. Now what’s it got to? We were talking about Dave Nemo, so he’s got so he part of it

Shannon Currier 02:23

just a tiny part. He’s a tiny part of our organization, Dave Nemo, and of course his business partner, Michael Burns at Radio Nemo, along with Dr. John. Who is everybody? If you listen to XM radio and you listen to Nemo, you’re going to hear Dr. John on there a lot. The three of them are the founders of our organization. So they played a little part in what we’re doing.

Jeremy Kellett 02:45

That is a part right there. They probably helped get it off and running. They did.

Shannon Currier 02:50

So you know Dave has been on the radio for 50 years. He’s been talking to drivers a long time. And John’s been working with drivers. He works with trucking companies. He’s their medical director. So he has talked to drivers. And he gets on the radio and answers questions that people may have about, you know, health issues and where they should go, what they should do, that kind of thing. And they realized that a lot of these drivers were losing everything they had, because of a short term injury or illness. They were losing their homes, they were losing their trucks, and I had nothing to go back to. And they decided, You know what we need to put together a nonprofit that can be a safety net for these drivers. And so they got together and talked about, you know, how do we make it happen? What do we call it? And we have the St. Christopher fun as our name. We get asked a lot if we are a religious organization. We are not religiously affiliated. You don’t have to have a bank. Well, they are Catholic. Okay, so the n has always been known for years and years. The patron saint of travel is St. Christopher. So that’s where the name came from. John says that the trucking industry, they are on the road a lot. The patron saint of travel is known in the you know, industry and has been for a long time. And so let’s go with the St. Christopher truckers. It’s really fun. And so that’s how we got started. And that’s good night. Yeah, it’s a great name. It’s perfect. Yeah.

Jeremy Kellett 04:14

So you guys, I mean, we have helped a lot of people over the last 15 years, I’m sure a lot of truck drivers. And I’m assuming this it’ll just limited to truck drivers

Shannon Currier 04:24

that yeah, yes, it is. So you have to be for our organization. We’re very focused. And from day one, they had their mission very focused. So we help class CDL holders over the road or regional truck drivers, not local drivers and the reason they did that is because the over the road drivers were the ones that were not able to get home on a regular basis. There was no health care on the road, and they would put off taking care of themselves because they couldn’t get home. And so that’s been the mission from day one over the road and regional drivers because they face different obstacles. holes than the local drivers do. Sure. And so that’s what our focus is, it does have to be an illness or an injury that took that driver off the road, we have drivers call and say, Well, I’m not getting any miles or my trucks broken down in all dark, terrible situations, we wish we could help in every situation. But we can say there has to be an injury or an illness within the last year that took that driver off the road causing financial difficulty. And a lot of the drivers have insurance. And even if you have insurance to cover the medical issue, if you don’t have income, you can’t pay your household expenses. So we don’t pay medical bills. A lot of people think we do because it’s injury or illness related, but we don’t pay medical bills. Honestly, we’d be out of business, if we did that a long time ago, because medical bills are so high. So what we’re really trying to do is make sure people have a home, we’re going to make sure that you have a vehicle or truck to go back to work. And we want to make sure you’re not sitting there with no utilities in your home, but want to make sure insurance stays in force. So those are the four areas that we give assistance in. And we don’t give any money directly to the driver. We pay those Bill holders directly. Again, we did that for two reasons. Yeah, of course, one the obvious. Yes. One the obvious. We want it to go for what we say it’s going forward. But two, by the time drivers come to us, they’re sometimes in crisis situations. And when you have people coming at you all different Bill holders, you’re like, What do I pay? What do I not pay? They’re already under enough stress. Send us the bills. Here’s what we can pay. Tell us how much he won’t pay. You know, you’ve been approved for X amount of dollars. Do you want it to pay your mortgage? Do you want it paid for by your utilities? Do you want us to split it up? We’ll take care of it. You worry about getting better? Who’s screaming the loudest? Well, and a lot of times, that’s medical people. That’s why some of these drivers were losing their homes and trucks, because the medical bills were screaming the loudest. But we have to tell people, please don’t lose your home over a medical bill. I promise you, you can pay them $10 a month. Yes, they’re gonna hound you. But they’re not going to come take your home, please don’t lose your home over a medical bill.

Jeremy Kellett 07:12

Yeah, and you would think I mean, most people would make that right decision, but I guess sometimes not. And you have to help them. Is it hard to qualify for those funds?

Shannon Currier 07:22

Well, we have an online application. Now we can mail it or fax it if need be also is pretty intensive, we get audited every year to make sure we are following the rules that have been set. So we have to show we have to have a copy of your CDL, we have to show that you’re an over the road or regional driver, we have to show your income and outgo to make sure there is documented financial need. And then we request medical records because we also have to document it as a medical issue. And Dr. John is actually our volunteer medical director, he looks at all of the files and signs off and says this is what this driver is looking at, they’re probably going to be off six weeks, or maybe a driver has had a stroke, they might have to be out a year. Now our system is short term, it’s just for a month or two. But we also have hundreds of other resources. So if we know that drivers have to be off for a year, we’re going to say here’s how we can help. And here’s where you need to get them. Next are some additional assistance.

Jeremy Kellett 08:21

Oh, really? Yeah, you’re taking care of the short term, but you’re giving them direction, do something a lot longer, because there’s a lot of them nowadays, Shannon, that are all for a long time, long periods of time. We’re seeing that more and more, of course, as we grow as a trucking company with 850 owner operators. Now, you’re I mean, it’s a constant, there’s a percentage of people that are off because of health reasons, right? And down and you know, and they don’t have any income coming in. And it’s, you know, thank goodness, a lot of them can handle it, but a lot of cane it takes a toll on and I don’t know that they you know that they know a whole lot about the St. Christopher font, that’s an option for them to be able to fill out the application and at least see what they qualify for.

Shannon Currier 09:04

Yeah, you know, as long as you make those general first qualifications, you go to step two is get asked those initial questions when you go in to do the application. And as long as those answers are, yes, I’m a CDL. Holder. Yes, I’m going over their driver. Yes, it’s because of a medical issue. Take Shawn to the application, will talk to you, talk about your situation, figure out what’s going on and see if we can help and hopefully, if for some reason we can’t help. Hopefully we have another resource that we can send you to. So we’re always trying to add additional resources to our information. Also, we don’t want to just say, Sorry, we can’t help you and we don’t know what to tell you. We want to say here’s where you can go next. And that’s why things like this are so important because drivers can’t reach out to us for help if they don’t know we’re here, right.

Jeremy Kellett 09:56

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Shannon Currier 10:45

Absolutely. You know, when you start seeing hundreds of applications come in a year, we say we get about 40 a month that come in, you start seeing correlations, there’s smoking, and that might not be them. The things that we’re seeing might not be why the driver is calling us for assistance. But there’s these underlying things that have led to why they’re calling us. Smoking is one of those, obesity is one of those, diabetes is one of those, we also see a lot of cancer. Oh, really? A lot. Yeah.

Jeremy Kellett 11:20

That’s right. You know, that’s really not preventable in a lot of ways. Some of it, you know, some of it, I guess, is good preventive measure. But it’s, of course, what man, the smoking, obesity and diabetes is stuff that he’s controlled somewhat. I mean, to help you so you can help yourself,

Shannon Currier 11:39

you can help yourself. That’s where our health and wellness programs came from, honestly, is seeing these applications and what these drivers were facing. And we’re like, what can we do to help drivers make healthier decisions? You know, we don’t live in the truck, we’re not in the truck. We don’t know what it’s like, we don’t know how difficult it is. But there are things that you can do differently while you’re on the road. And so that’s where these programs came from. And they don’t always get their preventative care like those of us at home do. We go to our you know, six months checkup or once a year checkup? They don’t do that. And so another thing that we just launched actually, this month, we’re doing prostate cancer screenings because we say a lot of prostate cancer and robbers. Oh, really? Yeah.

Jeremy Kellett 12:31

That is good. That’s a good benefit. And we’ll get into that with Lindsay here in a minute. Yeah, she’s got all the details and details on that. First, before we get to her What about I mean, how is St. Christopher’s fund funded? I mean, is it all the volunteers or

Shannon Currier 12:46

We are 100% donation based, so individual donations, corporate donations, and that’s my job directory, philanthropy as I get to ask people for money all day, every day, but even our health and wellness programs, those are funded by corporate sponsors that want to see healthier drivers. So that’s how we are able to offer those programs free of charge to drivers. So we have great supporters, we have been, I mean, hugely supported by drivers from day one. We have great corporate sponsors, we’ve helped now with what we’ve given out over $4.4 million, and I owe directly to those Bill holders for over 3700 drivers and 15 years. And you know, I always say we’re the facilitator of the funds. Everybody says, Oh, you do such great things. But we couldn’t do what we do if it weren’t for people being generous with their donations. And so we get to facilitate those donations, people trust us with that money, because we’re transparent about where it goes and what it’s used for. They trust us with those funds, and they know that it’s going back to the drivers that need it.

Jeremy Kellett 13:51

Well, that’s you’re very humbled, because, you know, that’s what you do more than facilitate. I mean, you make a difference in a lot of people’s lives. I know you take the money that’s given to you and put it in the right places, but there’s no telling how many good stories you have. could share with everyone. I know that that is something that, you know, I think people need to see and realize what is the end result, you know, for St. Christopher’s fun. If I’m, if I’ve benefited from it, what was my story? Do you have any of those stories on your website or anything?

Shannon Currier 14:25

Yeah, we do. So we have those on our website that is at Chuckers fund.org. And we share their ads on social media. So we’d love for people to connect with us. You know, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, we’re at all the places. We’re trying to get better on TikTok we’re not quite there yet. But we do and not every driver wants to share their story.

Jeremy Kellett 14:46

Most embarrassed. I mean, there are a lot of it is it’s

Shannon Currier 14:49

just hard to be in the situation to call and ask for somebody for help. It’s difficult. It’s always easy to give.

Jeremy Kellett 14:57

Do you just have to make them take it sometimes?

Shannon Currier 15:00

We have people that will say, Oh, I told my friend to call you. And have they called yet? Well, I can’t really answer that question because it’s confidential when people apply for us, but they’ll say, I don’t think he’s called, will you call him? And I’ve reached out to people and said, Hey, I’ve, you know, told me what was going on, you should fill out an application. So, you know, I’m not above that. We want to help the drivers that need help. But sometimes it’s hard to ask for help. And, you know, we understand that, but that’s what we’re here for. So, let us do what we’re here for. Let us make things hopefully a little easier for you in times of crisis.

Jeremy Kellett 15:37

Yes, yes. Well, thank you for making a difference in a lot of people’s lives. A lot of truck drivers appreciate it too. Thank you. Let’s touch base with Lindsey.

Shannon Currier 15:45

All right, that sounds great.

LubeZone Commercial 15:48

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Jeremy Kellett 16:34

Okay, so we swapped seats. Here was St. Christopher fun, and we’re gonna visit with Miss Lindsay. Brian. Yes. Good. And with St. Christopher’s fun. And she’s in charge of the health and wellness, health and wellness. I’m sorry. That’s why we got everything. Health and wellness. Yes, part of Santa Cruz for fun. So tell us what you do there.

Lindsey Bryan 16:55

Yes. So this is my second week jumping in?

Jeremy Kellett 16:58

Second. Well, yes. And here we are. Oh, you’re thrown into the fire at the Mid America Truck Show.

Lindsey Bryan 17:04

But it has been great. Oh, boy, let

Jeremy Kellett 17:06

I ask you to answer that question: where is this your first Truck Show?

Lindsey Bryan 17:09

It is?

Jeremy Kellett 17:10

What do you think?

Lindsey Bryan 17:11

I love it. I love it. I have had experience with health and wellness expos in the past, and, you know, you just kind of get all different people. But I have met some incredible people here all just working towards the same mission of helping truckers. So do

Jeremy Kellett 17:28

you do this is kinda setting you up for this answer. But I mean, it goes I do it. Do you get here and you see everybody walking around and go, Oh, my gosh, these people, we got a lot of people here that need some help. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. But it’s known that a lot of truck drivers are not healthy. Yeah. And then you see it all in one place. And you’re like, Man, there is a need,

Lindsey Bryan 17:51

Yes, the demands of the job, unfortunately, set them up to not have the healthiest lifestyles. And that’s hopefully where I’m gonna come in and help to make

Jeremy Kellett 18:00

a difference. Oh, tell us about that.

Lindsey Bryan 18:01

What do you exactly do? Sure. So we have a number of different programs that we offer to cover all bases, really, one of the main ones is a diabetes prevention program, where I have a group that meets on Tuesday nights, and we’re hoping to expand that. But we talk about all the different things that go into helping to prevent diabetes, activity, nutrition, lifestyle, sleep, we talk about that a lot here the last couple of weeks, all the pieces that they would need to know to help set them up for success. And that’s tailored specifically to people who are living on the road.

Jeremy Kellett 18:34

So it gives them a way to do it while they’re on the road. Do you say every Tuesday night, every Tuesday night? How do they be part of that? Yeah,

Lindsey Bryan 18:42

so they can register on the website. There’s multiple courses. So we’ve got a year-long course that is actually set up by the CDC. And that is probably our most popular program. But we’ve also got some shorter versions. There’s one that’s called driven to be healthy. That’s a 12 week program where they can tune in whenever it’s convenient for them, and provide some of the same education of nutrition activity and lifestyle changes to live a healthier life.

Jeremy Kellett 19:07

Yeah, because you see it I guess, St. Christopher, fun season need for somebody like you now to not only help them financially, but if you can give them some some, you know,

Lindsey Bryan 19:18

preventative, that leads them from getting to that point. Yes, that’s the goal. Yeah, so those are a couple of programs that we offer, but we’ve got some others. One is a smoking cessation support system. So I basically am your buddy during that coating process. And we’ve had some really great sponsors that provide resources such as nicotine replacement therapies, like the patch and the lozenge. Grinds does like the coffee pouches so we’ve got a number of different things to help in that process. And then I’m there to check in person if how’s it going? What kind of barriers or challenges are we running into this week and I help to talk them through what are we going to do on a different road and not Kate? Thanks. Yes. There is the traffic. Yes. And other bad drivers on the road are some big triggers. So we work through that. One of our newest programs, it’s really cool. It’s still in the works. So there’s more things coming. But we’re doing preventative cancer screenings. So one that’s already up and running is actually prostate cancer screenings. And then we’ll have a few more coming in the future that will include cervical cancer screenings, and colon cancer screening. Where

Jeremy Kellett 20:26

Where do these take place? Yeah, so we

Lindsey Bryan 20:29

would hook them up with colon doc, and send them to wherever it’s convenient for them. And then, you know, we are not funding entirely so all of these programs are completely free to our truck drivers nation, really? Any of our over the road truck drivers?

Jeremy Kellett 20:45

When do they need to start that block? At what age? Or are there certain requirements to start these testing?

Lindsey Bryan 20:52

That’s a great question. We do not have any specific requirements. So what’s amazing is we know that these tests were needed. We have seen many stories that people who even said I didn’t really have any symptoms, there was no reason to test, it was just, hey, you’re about that age, you know, and we usually like that in middle age, but we’ve seen some younger cases that make us safe, okay, it’s time to go get checked. There’s no harm in just double checking. And the hope is that, of course, it’s clear, and you can breathe easily. But the next best scenario is we catch it early. When it’s treatable. before it becomes a really major issue.

Jeremy Kellett 21:34

We were somehow in Sunday school class, we got to talking about this testing and sick colonoscopy or somebody was sick or something. And I was like, and, you know, having issues and my family or nothing and my friend behind me, she said, Oh, you’re getting it done. You’re getting a colonoscopy done. I said, Oh, okay. You know, I’m 52 years old. Say, I got it done a couple of weeks ago. So man, that was easy. It wasn’t near what, you know, people make it out to be so

Lindsey Bryan 22:02

fun, certainly not terrible. And it’s certainly worth the peace of mind.

Jeremy Kellett 22:08

So worth it to get that done. And no one knows what’s going on? Don’t have to come back for five years. So, you know, that’s good. So yeah, everybody needs to have those things done and check out any preventive maintenance, I just got through talking about preventive maintenance on trucks. Well,

Lindsey Bryan 22:25

yes, yeah. Preventive maintenance on our bodies. Yes.

Jeremy Kellett 22:27

Because they’re all these guys. They are all about preventative maintenance on these trucks. Well, if they would do that to their bodies, life would be so much better. Exactly. Good either. But

Lindsey Bryan 22:39

I live a long life but also a good quality of life. And that takes a little

Jeremy Kellett 22:44

work. So what’s your background? You say? You’ve been with St. Christopher’s for two weeks, two weeks. So what’s your background?

Lindsey Bryan 22:51

So my degree is actually in psychology. And I started out in drug and alcohol counseling and social work. And then I transitioned at some point into nutrition counseling, just based on my own health experiences, I’ve got a couple of autoimmune disorders. And I saw just what a difference it made. Focusing on healthy eating, getting good quality sleep, getting in a reasonable amount of activity, and just what a difference that can make in managing autoimmune disorders. And so for the last eight years, I’ve been doing nutrition counseling. And I really love it. It’s amazing just how much it can play into taking care of the body, the preventative side of things, but also healing in some cases, too. So when we have surgery, our body just has specific nutritional needs to recover from that faster. And it’s amazing what food can do

Jeremy Kellett 23:41

for us. Yeah. And now you’ve transitioned into the trucker world into the trucker world. Well, it’s a great community. I’m here to tell you, you’re gonna learn a lot from these truck drivers. They’re fantastic people, you wouldn’t believe how smart they are. They are I mean, they’re just some, they’re just some geniuses, I mean, in all things alive, and they see so many things in their life, and you’ve educated me a lot over the years I’ve been in it. And I really admire them. I respect them.

Lindsey Bryan 24:11

Absolutely. They’ve got such big hearts, and they make such huge sacrifices for us. And when I was making the change, looking for the next step in my career, I knew I wanted to be with the nonprofit. And I knew I wanted a worthy cause I think it just, you know, it makes you feel good at the end of the day, but that takes everything else finding that joy in life and my joy is helping people and so I thought, what better cars these are people that support our day to day lives, getting food where it needs to go and goods and services and so yeah,

Jeremy Kellett 24:46

Welcome to the trucking world. We’re glad to have you thank you so much lease on with Oakley trucking America’s drop off call. Our owner operators are the top paid in the country and we will prove it to you. We offer steady year round freight as well as a yearly annual bonus and income He says each year you are leased to us. Oakley has multiple divisions and dumps Hopper bottoms and pneumatic. So we are sure to have something that works for your schedule and hometown. Check us out on YouTube as well as our weekly podcast or give us a call today and see why Oakley trucking was everything you have been looking for. Anything else you’d like to add? St. Christopher fun was

Lindsey Bryan 25:23

any of our programs, you can check them out on the website. And you can register for any of them there. But also there’s really thorough information. So if there’s anything that we’ve covered today that anybody has questions about or wants to learn about a little further, you can always check it out on the website. You can also email me and that’s good for truckers. fund.org.

Jeremy Kellett 25:43

Okay, we’ll be sure to put that up on the screen when we put this out so everybody can have it Wonderful. Thank you all for joining me. I appreciate it. Oh, yeah, it’s good, good stuff, good information, to help our owner operators and hopefully make them healthier. Absolutely. Thank you.

Lindsey Bryan 25:57

Thank you.

Jeremy Kellett 25:58

Thanks for listening to this episode with Oakley podcast, trucking, business and family. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate or review the show in the podcast platform of your choice and share it with a friend. We love hearing from our audience. So if you’ve got a question, comment or just want to say hello, head over to our website, the Oakley podcast.com and click the leave a comment button. We’ll get you a response soon and may even share some of the best ones here on the show. We’ll be back with a fresh episode very soon. Thanks for listening.

154: 51 Years of Trucking with Olof McTaggart

May 17, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Olof McTaggart, one of our Owner Operators at Oakley. During the episode, Olof shares his journey in the trucking industry for over 50 years. Jeremy and Olof chat about working end dumps, setting yourself up to be successful financially, a crazy load story from the road, and more.

(more…)

153: Spiritual Search and Rescue – PGTM

May 10, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Marshall Wright, a chaplain with Power of God Trucking Ministry (PGTM). During the episode, Marshall shares his love for trucks and truck drivers and how he encountered Jesus while serving in the Coast Guard. Jeremy and Marshall talk about the PGTM ministry, his passion for ministering to truck drivers, and more.

(more…)

152: Road Dog Radio: KC Phillip’s Journey in the Trucking World

May 3, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with KC Phillips, the Host of Road Dog Trucking Radio on Sirius XM. During the episode, KC shares his story of how he got into the radio industry and becoming the host of the Road Dog radio show. Jeremy and KC talk about some of the origins of satellite radio, the importance of the people in trucking, and more.

(more…)

151: NAIT: Supporting America’s Independent Truckers

April 26, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett sits down with Mona Brimeyer of the National Association of Independent Truckers (NAIT) during the Mid-America Truck Show. During this conversation, Jeremy and Mona discuss how NAIT supports drivers including healthcare services and plans, discounts and perks for drivers with NAIT, how to join NAIT, supporting Wreaths Across America, and more.

(more…)

150: The History of Pittsburgh Power

April 19, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kelletts chats with Bruce Mallinson, Founder and President of Pittsburgh Power. During the episode, Bruce and Jeremy discuss many aspects of the trucking industry including a chemical fuel additive that improves fuel mileage and reduces emissions, the importance of community and innovation in the trucking industry, the passion for optimizing truck performance, and more.

(more…)

149: Celebrating Women in Trucking with Ellen Voie

April 12, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Ellen Voie, the Founder of Women in Trucking Association. During the episode, Ellen and Jeremy discuss the founding of Women in Trucking, obstacles women face in the trucking industry, the opportunities for women in transportation, and more.

Key topics in today’s conversation include:

Ellen’s journey in starting the Women in Trucking Association (4:12)
Salute to women behind the wheel (7:31)
The “why” behind the Women in Trucking Association (9:34)
Obstacles women face in the trucking industry (13:30)
Getting the word out about the Women in Trucking Association (18:14)
Final thoughts (24:52)

Oakley Trucking is a family-owned and operated trucking company headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. For more information, check out our show website: podcast.bruceoakley.com.

Transcription

Ellen Voie 00:00

I started it with just an idea. Then here we are 16 years later with 1000 members in 10 countries. So we’ve really grown so that means that the industry has embraced the idea of gender diversity. I mean, we represent everyone in the industry. So we have engineers, we have safety professionals. We have women who own truck schools and truck dealerships, so it’s not just drivers who are members. I just got to mention the mission encourages the employment of women in the industry, to address obstacles and then to celebrate success.

Jeremy Kellett 00:42

Welcome to the Oakley podcast, trucking, business and family. This show is brought to you by Oakley trucking headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. The purpose of this podcast is to communicate with Oakley owner operators and their families by giving them up to date information concerning Oakley trucking and the trucking industry. From business advice to safety updates to success stories. Also to give an insight to outside truck drivers that might be interested in joining the Oakley family. There’s Jeremy kellett, Director of recruiting here at Oakley trucking and I’m your host for this podcast. It is the Oakley podcast, trucking business and family. And this podcast is for our owner operators and their families to keep them informed of what’s going on at Oakley trucking here in Northern Rock, Arkansas. Also we use it, it has turned into a recruiting and retention tool. But it’s a great tool that we have discovered to communicate with truck drivers. So we appreciate everybody listening to you. And if you’re not at Oakley Trucking, we thank you so much for listening to the podcast, be sure to like, subscribe, and comment and share with a friend. That is the way we get out there as you guys are doing it for. So please try to do that. So here’s what we’ve done. We’ve got to record quite a few episodes at the Mid America Truck Show. So that’s what’s going to be playing next. You know, I don’t have maybe five or six weeks, we got some really good ones. And I want to get it out to you guys, when we record them there at the show while it is going on. So it’s a pretty neat environment, a little different setting with a different background, instead of watching this, this normal one here in the booth at the Oakley terminal. So a little something different to look at. But so we’ve got just to give you an idea. I mean, I sat down with Casey Phillips of Sirius XM, you know, we got to hear his story, and how he got into radio and where he is today, we got to sit down with the founder of Pittsburgh power. Bruce Mallinson. And that was a great, that was a great episode, you know, to listen to you, he’s a great individual, you know, truckers against trafficking, we talk to the person with that in a IT organization. I mean, we just did several ones that we’re gonna bring to you that are pretty interesting, pretty good things to, to know and to learn about what’s going on at the Mid America Truck Show. And this one actually, that’s coming up right now that it is Women in Trucking with Ellen Voya. What a great story that is and what a great person she is, and doing what she’s doing. And I think you’ll be interested in that. And that’s what we’re coming up with now. So what we’ll do is just kind of introduce that. We’ll start with her in the next few weeks. We’ll be some different ones you know from the truck show. Hope you enjoy them all. And be sure and check us out on YouTube. Also don’t forget that here we are episode 149 with women and trucking Elon Voya Tao So this episode is sponsored by Arrow Truck Sales. Arrow Truck Sales has been in business for over 60 years and a longtime partner of Oakley trucking and the Oakley podcast. Dre visor and Keith Wilson do a great job at putting you in the right truck to fit your needs and our needs here at Oakley. They carry all makes and models to choose from with onsite financing through transport funding. So whether you’re a seasoned owner operator or a first time buyer, be sure to contact Keith Wilson at Arrow Truck Sales at 573-216-6047. And tell him you heard it on the Oakley podcast.

Ellen Voie 04:15

It’s like a movie theater.

Jeremy Kellett 04:16

I guess. You know, I’ve had several people have to do that for some reason.

Ellen Voie 04:22

For comfy chairs,

Jeremy Kellett 04:24

yes, a little bit more relaxing. Last year, we did it. And we had a table and he kind of had to, you know, when you’re sitting on the same side of the table, you’re gonna turn and talk to people like that. So, you know, it’s a little bit different, a little bit easier. Like this. I think we’re more comfortable, you know, getting it out. So

Ellen Voie 04:43

feels good to me. Yeah. Nice. Relax. So okay. Oh, and it’s a boy. Yeah.

Jeremy Kellett 04:49

I was gonna ask Voya Yeah, cuz I’m sure everybody goes boy. Ellen Voya.

Ellen Voie 04:55

It’s actually Norwegian. I was wondering if it is in Norway? It’s spelled W O ie No kidding. Yeah, I got changed when it came over here because those Norwegians don’t say W they say v. So now, every time you hear that Voya is financial, you’re gonna think about me. I tell people that all the time.

Jeremy Kellett 05:15

That’s a great lie. It’s a great night, when I haven’t heard from shirt for sure. pretty uncommon. Okay, we are here at the Mid America Truck Show. And we’re sitting down with Miss Ellen avoya. I want to make sure I get that last night, right boy up. And I guess, Ellen, we’ll get into some of this. You know, first of all, this is a great venue, Mid America truck show, especially for women in trucking, along with all of us, but it’s just a great format that brings all of us together. You know, even if it’s competition, we all get to come together and kind of celebrate or, you know, let trucking know what’s going on in the world and let everybody else know about trucking I think is getting started. I would like for you to introduce yourself kind of, you know, give our listeners an idea of who you are and what you do and where you’re from. Sure.

Ellen Voie 06:12

So, as you said, Ellen Goya, and the founder of the Women in Trucking Association, started it in March of 2007. So 16 years old, I started it with just an idea. And put together a board of directors got the legal paperwork done. And here we are 1616 years later with 1000 members in 10 countries. Well, about 15% of our members are men they join because they support our mission. Our conference last year had close to 1800 registered attendees, which is pretty amazing. So we’ve really grown. So that means that the industry has embraced the idea of gender diversity, and not just the fact that we need it. I mean, we represent everyone in the industry. So we have engineers, we have safety professionals, we have women who own truck schools and truck dealerships. So it’s not just drivers who are members. But a lot of our focus is on drivers because there’s a physical component. And so a lot of our work does, you know, include safety and security and things like that for drivers. I just got to mention the mission encouraged the employment of women in the industry, to address obstacles and then to celebrate success. Where are you from? I’m from Wisconsin with Orual Yeah, a driver that has a Midwest accent.

Jeremy Kellett 07:25

Know, just wondered if you have family.

Ellen Voie 07:28

I actually do have a son and a daughter and they both live pretty close. Within half an hour.

Jeremy Kellett 07:33

Good. What about you seems like a very busy woman, but what do you do when you have time? What’s your what’s your downtime?

Ellen Voie 07:40

Well, I’d like to go for long walks and I like to read and I have an airplane. I have a Cessna Skyhawk, so I like to go fly, yes,

Jeremy Kellett 07:48

nice hobbies. It’s a great hobby. That’s cool. So you get to fly that or you get to fly it very often.

Ellen Voie 07:53

I’ve been traveling a lot lately, but summer is more. I have more opportunities. In the summer in Wisconsin, we have something called the Flying hamburger social. So on Wednesdays in central Wisconsin, all the little airports host a little fly in and everyone just flies to them and they get food and you do what we call hangar flying, which is talking, you know, and it’s just so much fun. You know, it starts at five o’clock on Wednesdays. And so anytime after four, I am not in my office on Wednesdays, if the weather’s good, and I’m finding these little airports and just having fun.

Jeremy Kellett 08:21

That is really good. I have a friend that has a plane. And they realized how important the weather is when you start to get up. Wind and everything. You have to really know what’s going

Ellen Voie 08:33

on. So there’s still limits. Yep, I don’t go if it’s over 14 nuts.

Jeremy Kellett 08:37

That’s awesome. Great. Well, good. What are y’all doing? I guess first let’s get started. What are y’all doing here at the truck show?

Ellen Voie 08:44

So we have a booth in the atrium. But we also have our Whitney which is our driver Ambassador tractor trailer. It’s parked right outside the front of the Atrium. And that tractor trailer has a learning environment in there. It’s got a hands-on learning environment. It’s got videos, touchscreens, and there’s a simulator in the front. So I encourage everyone to go through the tractor trailer, and it’s a driver ambassador. Our driver is from Schneider. And so she works for Schneider two weeks out of the month and works for us one week out of the month and goes to trade shows like this. So that’s the booth in the atrium, but the big event is tomorrow night. So tomorrow at about 330 in the south wing and upper level. We will have our Salute to Women behind the wheel where we honor female commercial drivers. We give them all a red t-shirt. We have chocolate phones, and you’re welcome to come Oh yeah, but we have a cake that’s in the shape of a truck. We have some speakers and we have some awards that we give out. We are recognizing the driver of the year. We’ll announce the driver of the year. And then at the end. I am giving away a truck. Come on No Arrow Truck Sales donated a Volvo in 2018 Volvo VNL and a lot of people have donated items that will go with that truck and I get to you know, I keep saying I’m going to hand the keys of the truck to someone but it’s a keyless entry. So yeah, it’ll be on your phone and like in a hotel room, you know, donated the keyless entry. And, you know, it’s, I get to give that truck away to someone else does that for you? Oh, we did it once before, about six years ago. And it’s just the neatest thing to make someone change someone’s life.

Jeremy Kellett 10:18

Yeah. You know, that’s, that’s what we’re here to do. That’s what Women in Trucking does, I think can help change people’s love for sure. Hope so. Yeah, we do it, we have a lot of business with Arrow Truck Sales. You know, we’re very familiar with them. And we actually have Keith here in our booth, you know, helping us I know, I told him, he needs to go look at the truck donating. Yeah, that’s awesome. It’s fantastic to be able to do that. So what? You know, I know, you said you got to get started a long time ago, small operation, you did it. What really got you fired up about that in the beginning.

Ellen Voie 10:51

So I was working for a large company? Well, I’ll say it, I was working for Schneider. And I was the manager of recruiting and retention programs. So that was corporate level initiatives. And they said, figure out how to attract and retain non-traditional groups. And that was returning military, Hispanics, seniors and women. So at the time, I was getting my pilot’s license, and I belong to a women’s aviation organization. And I thought, Well, why isn’t there something in the trucking industry to support women in the industry? And so I started, I did my research, and I got a whole bunch of influential women that I talked to, and they all agreed to be on the board, and got paperwork done by our attorney. And, you know, it’s just, it’s really cool, because, you know, there’s very little pushback, there’s a few drivers out there who think women shouldn’t be driving trucks, but you know, they’re boomers, they’re going to age out, you know, they’re gonna retire pretty soon, because younger guys think that women can do anything. So it’s just been overwhelming. To see the industry support for what we do. We do things like, we work with the truck stops, on safety, security, and amenities. We work with the truck manufacturers on truck cab design, ergonomics, we’ve sent women down to their fat factories, to sit and have them measure female drivers. And so we, you know, we work with, we have white papers, we have a lot of white papers, we have one on how to attract and retain female drivers, we have one on parking, we have one on same gender training. We want to be a resource.

Jeremy Kellett 12:18

So women were I guess, women, if they want to get in it, contacting you first, can show them the avenues, the best avenues way to go.

Ellen Voie 12:27

Well, and I’m glad you said that, because we recently launched our driver portal, and it’s for men and women. I mean, it’s you know, and we have men drivers who join, because things that we’re doing, like at the truck stops, ta Petro put in hair dryers and big fluffy towels. You know, the men are like, we’ve like big fluffy towels. No, right. So, you know, but we have a driver portal on our website now. And you can ask questions, you know, like, what questions should I ask when I go to a carrier? What questions should I ask when I go to school? You know, how do I, you know, I always stay safe on the road, how do I stay healthy? How do I maintain relationships with my family? It’s even when people start asking questions, then we put the answers up there. And one of them recently is can I have a felony? And drive? And we’re like, yes, but you have to choose the companies that allow, you know, you can’t hold government and unit munitions with a felony, but you can certainly haul trash, you know. So, you know, we want to be the resource I serve on the Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee at the D O T. And I’m proud of that, because apparently I have something to contribute. So again, it is a resource.

Jeremy Kellett 13:36

You know, that’s good. I mean, having that offering more, you know, opens up a lot of other people, not just women to join Women in Trucking, you give so many different services that I mean, encompasses all truck drivers,

Ellen Voie 13:51

right? Exactly. It does. And we have a lot of member benefits so they can get discounts like, for example Arrow Truck Sales. I mean, they’ll get an extended maintenance and things like that, by being a member of Women in Trucking is

Jeremy Kellett 14:03

how many do you have an idea how many women truck drivers there are in the United States, or what percentage they are

Ellen Voie 14:10

the percentage is 13.7. And that’s over the road drivers. Now if you look at the Department of Labor, they call them truck drivers slash sales delivery drivers, which is someone taking a straight truck to a grocery store with chips. So we do an annual Women in Trucking survey and for over the road drivers. It’s 13.7% Right now, is that going up since you started? Well, it’s 3% when I started, so you know what? I’d like to take credit for that one. Okay, well,

Jeremy Kellett 14:35

what a good story that you’re seeing progress then,

Ellen Voie 14:38

I think the biggest obstacle for women in the industry, whether they’re working as a dispatcher, safety director, CEO, women in the past didn’t picture themselves in the industry. They didn’t just look at a truck and go, oh, I want to work in that industry. But we tell stories. We have a member of the month, a Driver of the Year, influential women in trucking, so we tell their stories. So we might have someone who has trash, we might have someone who hauls cars we might have, you know, and then we tell their stories and other women go, oh, I hadn’t thought about that.

Jeremy Kellett 15:10

Well, that’s, yeah, I could see where, you know, they might think, well, I can’t do that. Right. You know, that’s always been a man’s job. I can’t drive a truck, you make it. Reality form of, I guess, first you gotta get them to believe that they can drive a truck. And then you have avenues to form. We had

Ellen Voie 15:29

a driver on the Megyn Kelly show, when she still had her show. And there, our driver talked about how she got to see sunsets and her husband saw the sunrises, you know, their team, and our phones just lit up. And so many women said, if she can do it, I can do it.

Jeremy Kellett 15:44

Yep. Yeah. What are some of the obstacles, the biggest obstacles they face? I know, we just talked about that one getting over the fear of it. But what some of the big obstacles, face

Ellen Voie 15:54

it is safe, they don’t feel safe. On a survey, female commercial drivers on a scale of one to 10, the average response was 4.4. So if I were to say to you, Jeremy, when you go to work, and you feel safe, less than half the time, would you want to work there? No, no. So safety, there’s three aspects of safety. One is how well maintained is the truck? How new is the truck? You know, we all know that broken down trucks or non maintained trucks are not safe. Secondly, where are you sending the driver? You know, are they unloading in an unsafe part of town that’s not well lit? Or maybe there’s no security?

Jeremy Kellett 16:31

Well, that’s a safety I’m thinking of. Their safety versus personal safety was what I was thinking of you.

Ellen Voie 16:36

Right? Well, then the third part of safety is, are they the captain of the ship? So if they say, Well, there’s a tornado coming, and there’s a snowstorm, I don’t want to go there. What is the response from the company? Is this trucking, get out there? Or is it? Do we respect your decision? So those three aspects and I will tell you that women look for companies with better safety ratings, newer trucks? And most? How many trucks does Oakley have?

Jeremy Kellett 17:04

850? Well, we don’t actually have any drugs. But they’re all They’re

Ellen Voie 17:07

all owner operators. So you’re a little more women who go to companies with about 50 trucks. Oh, really? Yeah. So company isn’t personal? Totally. It’s family. Yeah. But he is good. It’s the ones that are over 10,000 or 1000. You know, the big ones? Very few female drivers, they might start there, you know, but then they leave because they like that family atmosphere. Yeah. And,

Jeremy Kellett 17:33

you know, I guess I kind of figured it might be the opposite. I thought maybe, you know, the bigger companies would welcome women drivers, a lot more than maybe a smaller company that didn’t know, you know, taking a chance on it. But you can’t be right, I don’t know, you know, that’s a different way of looking at it. But that’s probably where they have to start a lot of times is the bigger company just to get in the foot in the door to get in the experience. And

Ellen Voie 17:56

so you are actually in a good position because 83% of female drivers come into the industry at the urging of a family member or friend. So if you have men driving for you, I would say go to your wife, go to your mom, your sister, your aunt, your daughter, and talk to them about teaming with you. And get them in the industry. And then once they come into the industry, they already know what it’s like. So the fact that 83% of women come into the industry because of a family member friend, that means that they already know what the industry is like.

Jeremy Kellett 18:27

Yeah, yeah, if you’ve got it, I guess a lot of them don’t come in cold. They do kind of know a little bit of what’s going on. So that’s good. I know you’ve got avenues of introduction. I mean getting in front of these women out there that’s probably got to be a full time job. Just like coming on Oakley podcast spreading the word. It looks like you’re really good at spreading the word about women and trucking and getting through all the media outlets that you possibly can.

Ellen Voie 18:53

You have a great relationship with the media. I love it. I’ve been on Fox News. In fact, I gotta return a phone call to Fox News Today. You know, it’s just being a resource. The board wants us to be a resource. And along with the white papers and the information the surveys that we do, we are resource but the other thing is we have an image team. In our image team. We have one of the United States and one in Canada they do Rydel On stage, we give legislators and regulators a ride along we gave Robin Hutchinson recently she’s the FMCSA administrator, a ride, we want our drivers to talk to them about what life is like on the road, because of their rules, you know, especially FMCSA. But we also gave the media, we gave Diane Sawyer a ride, you know, she spent six hours with one of our drivers. So we want them to help us tell our story. A couple other things that we’ve done, we created a Girl Scout transportation patch, we found out the boy scouts had one girl scout. So we created that, and along with an activity book, that it’s called scouting for cookies. So it talks about how the grain from the field goes to the bakery in a truck bakery to packaging, packaging, all in a truck. We want kids to look at your trucks and say, Mommy, that could be my milk, it could be my gas, it could be the cookies, you know it whatever we want them to have a relationship with the truck, or the end the driver, the industry put it that way. And the other thing we have girls, we have a truck driver doll. So to introduce kids to truck driving as well, it’s a plus but a 13 inch tall doll.

Jeremy Kellett 20:22

So men are not gonna come up with that idea. Only women are gonna come up that ideal is over drug, you know,

Ellen Voie 20:44

Exactly. And I really wanted to do a truck driver doll than a technician doll, then maybe safety director doll, but you have to order I had to order 3000 to get a maid, it’s like, you know, that

Jeremy Kellett 21:27

That reminds me sometimes Ellen, my wife will say, you know, again, she was something will happen? Or will we come across something that was really neat. You know what you say? I guarantee you a woman came up with that? Probably right. You know, I’ll get her into doing, you know, talking about some of my fishing and stuff I do. She said, Well, I know a woman couldn’t come up with that. But she, I can probably fix some of that for you, you know, just the end of looking at different perspectives of things. Yeah, that makes us make this whole world go round. And it’s really neat to be able to do it together. Another question we touched on a little bit earlier. And I know we’re focused mainly on truck drivers, which is what we do. But what other avenues you know, you introduce women into transportation into the trucking world. I mean, what else does that include self driving a truck?

Ellen Voie 22:18

Well, there’s so many careers and that’s in our driver, Ambassador tractor trailer, we actually talk about what other jobs are available? You know, how many women have said, well, I want to be a dispatcher. You know what I’m really surprised about. I’ve been in this industry a long time. And I’m seeing and I was a dispatcher at one time. I’m seeing that about 44% of dispatchers are women, which is awesome. That is awesome. Because why not? And safety directors we’re seeing more women become safety directors. Because, hey, safety is a huge issue. We’re seeing more women take over from their dads. So for an example, it is very trucking. Jack Barea started it and his daughter, Karen Smartcheck, is now the CEO, even though she has a brother who works for the company, you know, so there’s that it’s not automatically assumed that the sun is taking over. Yeah, so we’re seeing more and more that we’re seeing more women? Look, Shelly Simpson’s a president at JB Hunt. You know, I mean, we’re seeing more women in the C suite.

Jeremy Kellett 23:16

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s long overdue, I guess. I mean, it’s just that now I think women are morning, wanting to be more involved in that. And you’re given that avenue, exactly for them to learn about the transportation industry, which a long time ago led to think it was an OP, one option for them. And through Women in Trucking, you open up all these doors to all these jobs and professions that women can see now of hey, why, you know, that’s all because the transportation industry, Elon is fantastic.

Ellen Voie 23:50

It is there’s so many jobs and so many jobs when I stand up in front of a group of women executives, and I’ll say how many of you in high school or college said I want to work in trucking. Rarely does a woman raise her hand? Rarely. But we’re seeing more and more women now actually going to college for supply chain. But my generation, I ended up in trucking. I wanted to be in radio broadcasting hoes that actually went to radio broadcasting school. But I ended up working at a trucking company in the drafting department. And one day they came in, they said we want to move you to traffic and we’ll send you to school. So I earned my diploma in traffic and transportation management. 1979 And here I am.

Jeremy Kellett 24:26

That’s awesome. It was funny. You say that because this week’s episode that came out on the Oakley podcast, I talked to a professor at University of Central Arkansas in Conway, Arkansas that runs the supply chain logistics division. And we talked about young people getting in it going through it getting out having opportunities, you know, because it’s companies like us that reach out to him for people coming right out of college or interns or people coming out and getting jobs into the transportation industry is really good, you know, real The good they used to that didn’t be I wasn’t offered

Ellen Voie 25:03

no schools. No, I know we’re seeing more supply chains. And we actually have a sister organization which is our foundation, which gives out scholarships to women seeking careers in trucking. So that would be as a driver CDL or safety or diesel tech we need diesel techs. And the third one we call leadership so somebody who’s working in the trucking industry and they want to advance their career we have scholarships available

Jeremy Kellett 25:28

lease on with Oakley trucking Americans drop off call our owner operators are the top paid in the country and we will prove it to you. We offer steady year round freight as well as a yearly annual bonus and increase each year your lease to us. Oakley has multiple divisions in dumps Hopper, bottoms and pneumatics. So we are sure to have something that works for your schedule and hometown. Check us out on YouTube as well as our weekly podcast or give us a call today and see what Oakley trucking was everything you have been looking for. How does somebody get in touch with women in trucking?

Ellen Voie 26:02

Womenintrucking.org. It’s pretty simple.

Jeremy Kellett 26:07

They just basically go to the website to reach out to you through that. Absolutely.

Ellen Voie 26:11

There’s a button that says join. And men can be members. We encourage men to join because they support our mission. Sure. I mean, look Oakleys a member.

Jeremy Kellett 26:21

Yeah. And you have I mean, even husbands trying to get one of their wives to become co drivers. Absolutely. You know, and that’s a way to do it. We get asked that a lot of times we have that happen a lot of times, you know, so let’s see,

Ellen Voie 26:34

it’s the men bringing women in. I told you more women come in because of someone in their life.

Jeremy Kellett 26:39

So check out women in trucking.org. Okay, and if you have any questions, you guys can send them to me. I’ll be glad for them to Miss Ellen. I appreciate you coming on and doing this.

Ellen Voie 26:50

Well. Thank you for having me on. This is fun. This is great.

Jeremy Kellett 26:52

Thank you once again, we appreciate it. Thanks. Hey, thanks for listening to the Oakley podcast. We appreciate all you guys. Listen today, week in and week out. We got some real good feedback from everybody too. And it’s just, it’s good to know that it’s getting out there. And you guys appreciate it. Keep giving me feedback. Talk to us about what you want to hear and what you want to see. And as always spread the word and we’ll talk to you next week. Thanks. Thanks for listening to this episode with Oakley podcast, trucking, business and family. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to write or review the show in the podcast platform of your choice and share it with a friend. We love hearing from our audience. So if you’ve got a question, comment or just want to say hello, head over to our website, the Oakley podcast.com and click the leave a comment but we’ll get you a response soon and may even share some of the best ones here on the show. We’ll be back with a fresh episode very soon. Thanks for listening!

148: Owner Operator Highlight: William Burdine

April 5, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with William Burdine, one of our Owner Operators at Oakley. During the episode, William shares his success story and how he grossed $308,000 last year. Jeremy and William talk about the trucking industry, having a good family-life balance, the value of community and friendships at Oakley, and more.

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147: The Next Generation of Supply Chain Management

March 29, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Doug Voss, Professor of Logistics and Supply Chain Management at University of Central Arkansas. Professor Voss talks about the program at UCA and how it prepares students for careers in the trucking industry. The conversation also includes discussion on the various positions available in the logistics and supply chain management industry, the importance of safety regulations, the role of technology, and more.

(more…)

146: A Streak of Bad Luck: Scotty Smith’s Incredible Story

March 22, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Scotty Smith, one of our owner operators at Oakley Trucking. During the episode, Scotty shares his story of being involved in a serious accident, and the challenges he faced during the repair process. Despite the difficulties, Scotty remained grateful for the support he received from Oakley and his fellow drivers. Don’t miss this incredible story on this week’s episode.

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145: Reminders from the Ladies of Safety at Oakley Trucking

March 15, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett sits down with some of the ladies of the safety department. Vivian Boudreaux, Amanda Hadfield, Ashley Rabun, and Allison Sledge join the show to talk all things safety. The discussion includes DOT compliance, driver physicals, trailer inspections, Hazmat and TWIC reminders, maintenance reports, and more.

Key topics in today’s conversation include:

Oakley Update: Discount updates for truck stops and good customer feedback (1:34)
Background on Vivian, Amanda, Ashley, and Allison (4:02)
Ensuring we are DOT compliant (8:36)
Why safety comes calling? (15:23)
Locked and unlocked status (19:59)
Hazmat and TWIC reminders (22:30)
Auditing logs of drivers (29:56)
CDL requirements and reminders (38:34)
Incidents and inspections (42:32)

Oakley Trucking is a family-owned and operated trucking company headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. For more information, check out our show website: podcast.bruceoakley.com.

Transcription

Vivian Boudreaux 00:12

All of us have gotten this response. Hi, this is Vivian from Oakley trucking safety department. What did I do now? Yeah.

Jeremy Kellett 00:21

Goes like typically does.

Amanda Hadfield 00:24

Not always true. I will say,

Ashley Rabun 00:27

There are times when I know myself and Allison we call drivers just to say thank you your stuff looks good. We want to recognize the drivers that do their stuff correctly. We like making good phone calls. I don’t like to call a driver and say hey, I noticed this was wrong. And then, you know, get that same responsibility. I like to hear from the safety department. It’s not always a bad phone call.

Jeremy Kellett 00:48

Welcome to the Oakley podcast, trucking, business, and family. This show is brought to you by Oakley Trucking, headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. The purpose of this podcast is to communicate with Oakley owner-operators and their families by giving them up-to-date information concerning Oakley Trucking and the trucking industry. From business advice to safety updates to success stories. Also to give an inside to outside truck drivers that might be interested in joining the Oakley family. Hi, this is Jeremy kellett, director of recruiting here at Oakley trucking and I’m your host for this podcast. This is the Oakley podcast, trucking, business and family and this is episode 145. And in today’s episode, we got a little surprise for you. We are going to talk to the safety department. Now before you turn me off. Because of the safety department. We’ve actually got the ladies from the safety department here. So this is gonna be really interesting. And we’re going to cover a lot of things in this. We got Ashley, Amanda and Vivian here with us and we’re going to talk about, you know what their responsibilities are in the safety department maybe some of the common mistakes they see every day, give you some feedback on things that the owner operators here could change that might help or the safety department and just how important some of this stuff is. I think it’s gonna be great covering a lot of that stuff here in just a minute but first let me give you an Oakley update sponsored by Arrow Truck Sales. Arrow Truck Sales has been in business for over 60 years and a longtime partner of Oakley trucking and the Oakley podcast. Dre visor and Keith Wilson do a great job at putting you in the right truck to fit your needs and our needs here at Oakley. They carry all makes and models to choose from with on site financing through transport funding. So whether you’re a seasoned owner operator or a first time buyer, be sure to contact Keith Wilson at Arrow Truck Sales at 573-216-6047. And tell him you heard it on the Oakley podcast. So the update today, a couple things real quick. One is that I sent everybody an email out a week or two ago . We actually got new pricing from Pilot Flying J truck stops. And they have really stepped up to give us all Oakley owner operators a good discount, and it’s a cost plus where it used to not be locked that was different in different states. So now it’s more of a blanket, they’re kind of stepping up with love and a TA Petro and given us an excellent fuel discount, so make sure you check TransFlo and you look at all the truckstops now because they’re trying to compete quite a bit. It’s actually a little bit lower. In the essay, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas have actually got a little bit better deal than the rest of the states. So keep that in mind anyway that the point of it is make sure you check it out. The discounts also had an excuse, I had an email from a customer on one of our owner operators and I just read it here Sean McBay, which is our customer out of Davis wanted to compliment Monica Boykin that she loaded there last week. She was very polite, knew her gauges and seemed like she had been trained on her gauges well, so congratulations, Monica. We appreciate you doing the right thing and representing Oakley well also the last thing this is the see when this comes out. This is the week, maybe two weeks before the Mid America truck show and I know I’ve been talking a lot about that on the podcast, but it’s gonna have a big presence at Louisville, Kentucky, the Mid America truck show and we want everybody to come show up. We’re going to have some podcast recording going on there and it’s gonna be fun and it’s just if you’ve never experienced the Louisville Mid America truck show in Louisville, Kentucky, you need to experience it. You just gotta check it out. It’s a little overwhelming. Check that out. It’s coming up now. Let’s get started with our safety talk. Appreciate you ladies, join me for this your A podcast debut.

Amanda Hadfield 05:02

Thank you for them by Yeah,

Jeremy Kellett 05:03

so I got Vivian Boudreau, Amanda Hadfield and Ashley Raven, here joining me and they all work in the safety department. And we’re going to talk a little bit about their responsibilities. But before we do, I always like to give a little introduction of your sales and how long have you been here and kind of what your what you do, you know, family hobbies, because I always like to include that because it helps get to know you in the beginning of the episode. So we’ll start with Vivian. Vivian. What? Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Vivian Boudreaux 05:35

Well, I’ve been with Oakley for almost over 40 years on and off. So I’ve been here a long time from the very beginning. Family family. I’ve got two sons, one has just graduated and is retiring from the army this year. So I’m really proud of him. And coffee.

Jeremy Kellett 05:56

I remember Yeah, we started. Yeah.

Vivian Boudreaux 05:59

That’s a long time. I know time flies. So he’s getting ready to retire. He’s got his own family and got another adult son here in Conway with special needs and hobbies. We just bought 60 acres a couple of years ago up on Billy Goat Mountain Road. And that’s our hobby, I mean, land taking care of that. Playing on our playground, baby.

Jeremy Kellett 06:23

And we were talking just a second ago. She’d been here a long time. And we were telling her she trained me to do decals. So he was the first decal lady we ever had. And it was a little machine. We had it on a separate desk there behind us. And she showed me how to make unit numbers and VIN numbers that put on the trucks and then you had it we had a few colors I could choose from to put the Like, maybe

Vivian Boudreaux 06:47

nine colors, something like that. Nothing like it is now.

Jeremy Kellett 06:51

Yeah, it was a long time ago. Yeah.

Vivian Boudreaux 06:55

And I was the only one on a different podcast, but I was the only one in the office when I started. Just think about that.

Jeremy Kellett 07:01

Well, yeah. Because I mean, you were there with, I guess being

Vivian Boudreaux 07:05

three of us. Well, Mike Fisher, David Choate, I was the only one in the office in North Little Rock. Wow. Yeah. So we get it now.

Jeremy Kellett 07:14

You’ve hung in there. Yeah. Look at what we’re doing. That’s amazing. Okay, good. Well, how about Amanda, tell us about Amanda,

Amanda Hadfield 07:22

about Amanda. I’ve been here for about a year and a half. I am still working on the incident. But that’s what I originally worked on. Before I moved over to safety. I wanted a little bit more to do and a little bit more upbeat. And I’m enjoying every minute of it. These guys definitely keep you on your toes. Family, family. I’m not married. But I’ve been with my boyfriend for about a year. I have my dad and my sister and brother in their families. And mom passed away five years ago. But dad is happily with someone now. We accept her. Yeah, whatever. She’s an awesome lady.

Jeremy Kellett 08:00

What do you do on the weekends? Mostly?

Amanda Hadfield 08:02

Well, I don’t have a washer and dryer in my apartment. So I have to take my Washington, boyfriend towels, and he gratefully let me use it every weekend so I can have some clean clothes.

Jeremy Kellett 08:14

Well, that’s it. Hey, if that’s a hobby? A hobby, it’s just gotta do it. Gotta do it. That’s good. That’s good stuff. What about you, Miss Ashley, I know you’re looking forward to doing this.

Ashley Rabun 08:30

Absolutely. So I’ve been with Oakley, this will be my fourth year here. Only Ever been in the safety department. And I love it. I’ve been married to my husband for almost six years. But we don’t have any kids. But I will say this kind of goes into the hobbies, we kind of quit all of our hobbies. Because for the last year and a half, we have been working on trying to get our home open to start the adoption process. Oh, good. And first of February, they gave us the okay that we were open. So now we can follow through and, you know, start that process and hopefully, get a kid in our home good for you. It’s a hard process to do. So hopefully, once we get all that rolling again. And you know, get a child in our home that we can give a home to and love and all that stuff, we can start picking back up on the hobbies. So

Jeremy Kellett 09:18

It’s fantastic that it takes a lot to do that.

Ashley Rabun 09:21

It really does more than I expected. Absolutely.

Jeremy Kellett 09:24

That’s what our listeners need to understand where you girls are just real people to know oh my god last got jobs, good things do. I mean, it’s

Vivian Boudreaux 09:33

and that’s a good point. It’s our job. So when they get upset with us for calling and saying you’re not doing your logs, right or something like that. We’re just doing what we’re told to do. Yeah,

Amanda Hadfield 09:44

so don’t get mad at me for trying to help you. We’d like to do whatever you want.

Jeremy Kellett 09:50

got responsibilities. Well, let’s start with that and talk about being DLT compliant. I mean, that takes a lot of team effort from you guys of course. but it’s also got to take a team effort from the truck driver to, you know, water. I don’t know, what are some of the responsibilities you’re responsible for and concerning DLT compliant, to start with a boat

Vivian Boudreaux 10:17

physicals, med surg twig cards CDL CDL is maintenance on the truck, you know everything on the driver, the truck, the trailer, all of it.

Jeremy Kellett 10:30

So what specifically do you do? Are you responsible for maybe

Vivian Boudreaux 10:36

The biggest thing I do is the drug test, the random drug test, pre employment, and bookkeeping. I’ll do the medcerts, the physical, the part. Ashley, usually, an Allison brings the physical in, you know, make sure it’s correct and everything. And we submit it to the state. Make sure I make sure that the state has updated, you know, put the physical on their driving record, run their driving records annually.

Jeremy Kellett 11:04

Okay, so talking about the physicals, do you get any physicals that are wrong? What’s wrong with him,

Ashley Rabun 11:16

so the court could be more withdrawn, which could in turn delay the drawbar getting updated with the states, therefore making them sit longer than they had originally planned. That’s why it’s kind of important to not wait till the last minute to get it done to make sure that everything is good with your core that the state has you updated correctly, that if you get pulled over by the OE T, they’re not going to find that you’ve been mis updated or anything like that.

Jeremy Kellett 11:43

So when they renew their physical extension into you, you look at it as if you have to be in and then you have to submit it to the state.

Ashley Rabun 11:52

If it’s a state that we can submit it to you, I don’t mind one bit doing that to save drivers a trip to the DMV. But with that being said, not all states update the same way or the same calm. Some states are a little farther behind some sites that will update you in 10 minutes. So the longer you wait to get your physical done to your current expiration date, the more we’re going to recommend that you actually walk into the DMV to get that bait instantly. So

Vivian Boudreaux 12:19

technically, it is the driver’s responsibility, we just do it for them. It’s easy for us, you know, we can just know how to do it. For most states, every state is different, you know, all the drivers have to remember that. But there’s

Jeremy Kellett 12:32

still one walk in state, Missouri, you have to walk in, the driver has to actually take it to the DMV and get it. And it’s got to be certified because right when you submit it to the state, then you run the NVR what day or two later to make sure you says that the certified correct date expiration, that

Vivian Boudreaux 12:57

There are non excepted interstate that are Interstate is their driving type, and that they have the new physical on the driving record. And that’s the other thing. States have 10 days 10 business days legally to update it. So that’s another, you know, you want to get that in before minimum 10 days. Most of them don’t take that long. But that’s their standard. Yeah, that’s for the DoD regulation. They have 10 days 10 business days,

Jeremy Kellett 13:27

yeah, we’ve had had some guys sit around here and wait for it to get

Vivian Boudreaux 13:31

till the day of. And the other thing the driver can do on that card is look at it themselves. It’s real simple, real basic, make sure that they put all the information in that they check that little CDL box and that they’re marked interstate, those are the big things that

Jeremy Kellett 13:47

because that’s what the doctor does. And sometimes they do it wrong.

Ashley Rabun 13:51

So yes, and then something else that kind of falls in line with that is when you go to get a DOT physical, if it’s not someone that you have used every year or every two years to get your physical, you need to make sure that they’re on the FMCSA national registry. If they are not on the registry, then they’re not recognized as

Jeremy Kellett 14:11

we haven’t had any of those.

Ashley Rabun 14:14

Yeah, we had one yesterday, we had to look it up and kind of find out that doctor was no longer on the registry. So this driver had to go back and get everything done, and all that kind of stuff. So that’s another reason.

Jeremy Kellett 14:27

Did the doctor put their registry number on there? Yes, he had expired. Yes.

Ashley Rabun 14:31

So another reason why it might be a good idea to get it in a little early. So we could catch something like that. And it’s there’s several things that can go there. Yeah, there’s always something that can go wrong. This moral

Jeremy Kellett 14:42

The story is to get it done. Don’t wait till the last week to get your physical

Vivian Boudreaux 14:47

unless you want to be sitting. Well, you know, Midnight will set you down. You’re sitting there until

Jeremy Kellett 14:53

the other details. I mean, but that’s part of it. That’s what you got to do for sure. How about Amanda What about you is, what are you responsible for?

Amanda Hadfield 15:03

What am I responsible for? I work a lot with the maintenance reports. And I’ve been also making sure those guys turn in trailer inspection sheets, because a lot of them are not doing that. So whenever they pick up or drop off a trailer, they need to fill one out and send it there. TransFlo. So we can keep up with what’s going on with the true winners.

Jeremy Kellett 15:20

Okay, so they’re every time they draw one

Amanda Hadfield 15:24

pattern, every time they pick one up, they need to fill that out and transform it in.

Jeremy Kellett 15:29

So okay, two different shapes, the one I just dropped, need to fill out, you can even write

Amanda Hadfield 15:33

there, hey, this is one I picked up and this is the one dropped off.

Jeremy Kellett 15:37

Okay. And then they train. That is not, you’re not getting all that.

Amanda Hadfield 15:43

There are some trailers that haven’t been updated in a long time, because I haven’t gone into the workflow and looked at them. And there’s nothing there for

Jeremy Kellett 15:50

is in my watch the main purpose of that the repairs, and

Amanda Hadfield 15:56

It’s not only to keep record of the repairs done on the trailer, but it also helps to avoid being charged for the trailer damage. And it’s getting charged to the correct person. Because if you don’t fill one out, and there’s damage, and you’re the one who drops and pulls out in that shop, chances are they’re going to put your name on it. Yeah.

Jeremy Kellett 16:17

So it’s a great idea to do a walk around and fill it out correctly and send it in that way you we got record no one and when you drop the trailer, it’s in good shape, or here’s what’s wrong with it. I charge you to sound rattled. Sure.

Vivian Boudreaux 16:31

Yep, you go through and do that when you pick it up. And so you’re not responsible for somebody else’s damage?

Jeremy Kellett 16:39

Yeah, we’re talking about calling the drivers or them being mad. What is that? What do you call them about?

Vivian Boudreaux 16:48

Okay, let me just say this real quick. All of us have gotten this response. Hi. This is Vivian from Oakley trucking safety department. What did I do now? Yeah. Oh, oh, no. Every time of course.

Jeremy Kellett 17:04

So because I typically do something wrong. Yeah,

Amanda Hadfield 17:08

I don’t you’re not always true. I would say,

Ashley Rabun 17:10

there. There are times when I know myself and Allison, we call drivers just to say thank you, your stuff looks good. We don’t want everyone to always think that a call from safeties, we want to, you know, recognize the drivers that do their stuff correctly. It helps us you know, right, one last phone call we had to make we liked making good phone calls. I don’t want to call a driver and say, Hey, I noticed this was wrong. And then, you know, get that same responsibility. But I’d like to hear from the safety department. It’s not always a bad phone call.

Jeremy Kellett 17:42

So what about the search? We mentioned maintenance reports. Let’s go with that for a minute. And

Amanda Hadfield 17:47

those phone calls, because I want to call them and say, What did I do wrong on my maintenance report? Like, oh, wait, no, I saw what it is. I’m gonna fix it and send it right back to you.

Jeremy Kellett 17:58

So are you looking at him? I mean, pretty quick, when they send me in wherever they kinda, are they a week or two, or?

Amanda Hadfield 18:07

No, it just depends. So we gotta make sure that they have their truck number on there, that the month is on there, we don’t put an actual day when we fill it out. Because we’re going to call until you take that off. If your mileage is on there, that you’ve checked, okay, on all those boxes. Here’s a description for the brakes, you can write a check daily adjusted as needed. And I know another one we get a lot is with disc brakes. Well, I can’t do anything with those, well, then just say visual check. And then number one, make sure you sign it because if you don’t sign it, that’s another reason why we’re calling it. The receipts are important. So if you also do any repairs on your truck, if you do them yourself, and you just go buy something from Walmart, or Napa or whatever, you still need to turn that receipt in.

Jeremy Kellett 18:55

Just scan anything you did to the truck that whole month.

Amanda Hadfield 18:58

Yeah. For that whole month. Yes, yes. For us to keep up with it.

Jeremy Kellett 19:03

What do I mean, I know DLT requires a monthly maintenance report. But I mean, what are the yoti? Requirements? I mean, just that we have one of those every month on the driver and that we have the receipts to prove it. We all know is it

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 19:22

to have maintenance to be able to provide that the main maintenance,

Amanda Hadfield 19:29

kind of like the maintenance records.

Vivian Boudreaux 19:31

There is preventive maintenance.

Jeremy Kellett 19:35

So we have to have that. I mean, because, you know, the maintenance report, the monthly maintenance report can come up in a situation when there’s an accident. Yeah. That’s probably one of the things that they look at. When’s the last time brakes had been put on this truck or tire or something like that. So it’s just another way you Have Coburn yourself as a truck driver and as a company having these forms and receipts, hey, you know, I’ve just done this. There’s no way this could have failed, you know, or something failed and hey, I’ve got proof that it did it. Okay. Absolutely. Yeah. So we got to have a receipt. Yep. Because just putting it on there didn’t count. Just putting it on there. Not gonna. Not proof enough. I guess it held but having the receipt? Yes. monthly maintenance reports. Man, we have been talking about that since the day I’ve been here. You’re missing the big thing that we used to talk about? No monthly maintenance reports. Can you believe you haven’t said this yet? When are they due?

Ashley Rabun 20:45

Every month, the first week of

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 20:48

the month? Yeah, the end of the first pay period is what it says.

Jeremy Kellett 20:52

We’ve always been, I gotta be here the first of the month. And then. And then driver, the dispatcher plays this game until the third tag team.

Amanda Hadfield 21:03

And they’re like, oh, can they just send this in on this pay number? Can you hurry up and unlock them? I’m like, Well, I’m on the phone right now I’ll get that just one second.

Jeremy Kellett 21:11

So a lock of what would tell the listeners what that means. We’ll know what locking and locking means It means they know what locking and unlocking

Ashley Rabun 21:23

it means they can then be dispatched. If you are locked up, you are not getting put on a load, it’s going to hold you up.

Vivian Boudreaux 21:29

We have a database with all the drivers and all their expiration dates for CDLs, physicals, twit cards, whatever it may be monthly maintenance reports. And if that expiration date comes, and they do not have that document turned in, we locked them up, that means they get shut down. They can’t be dispatched. Now drivers pay close attention to this. Your dispatchers know that these dates are coming up. And they can help you remember how they know it’s in TM W in that database. So they have all that information on all their drivers. So that dispatcher and, you know, they can say hey, so and so you know, your physicals coming up? In a couple of weeks, if you’ve gotten it?

Ashley Rabun 22:12

And the dirt list? And the dirt list?

Jeremy Kellett 22:14

Yeah, yeah, that’s, which is what I was getting at, actually is the dirt list, something that’s been in front of them for years and years, but you’re robbing them, you know, the driver has a tendency to think it’s the safety department’s fault. No, right.

Vivian Boudreaux 22:33

Now we have 800 900 drivers that we’re keeping up with. And technically, our job is not to say this is due, it’s to process it. When we get that document, it’s the driver’s responsibility to take care of his stuff. Nobody tells me when my CDL is due or my driver, you know, and then it’s the dispatcher’s job to help them keep up with it.

Jeremy Kellett 22:59

Drivers first responsibility, make sure all your stuff is up to date and not about to expire, then we actually have a report that helps dispatch to say, hey, here’s your guys, and it’s coming up. Just a reminder. And then it gets to it. And then we do the old lock them up.

Vivian Boudreaux 23:18

Now we get it. I mean, you know, I’ve been around a long time and drivers used to drive. That was their job. And now it’s I mean, they have so many documents and that they have to keep up with so we’re here to help you know, if we see, we call them we look at everything we try to look at everything and say hey, you got this coming up. You know, we’re talking to you about your E logs, but hey, your car’s gonna expire. So. So

Jeremy Kellett 23:46

What about hazmat and Twics? Get specific on what gives? You may have issues with that man, what’s the deal with the hazmat and the Twic?

Ashley Rabun 23:59

Actually, so the days don’t always, you know, at the same time, your twic may expire before your hazmat, vice versa. But if you go to reapply, or get your fingerprints or whatnot, for your hazmat for your Twic, make sure you send us a receipt because that’ll help prevent you from being locked up if we have a receipt showing that you have started the process of that weekend. Not necessarily with the hazmat but with the tweaks. We can kind of help you I guess not get locked up for it. I guess I’m not really explaining that right.

Jeremy Kellett 24:39

But you know, I think you’re blank. The hazmat is different from the twig right. And if it is required there’s good debt Allah aisle here on a table is required for every Oakley owner operator to have hazmat and a Twic card. That’s something I think they don’t understand. have tabs, because a lot of times they apply for the hazmat, we’re giving them the benefit of the doubt that if they pay the $86, or whatever it is $89 to do the fingerprints, then they’ll go ahead and complete it. But we’re finding out that not necessarily happens.

Ashley Rabun 25:17

Now. So like, for instance, for the twic card, I had one, I guess it was last week that he had applied for it when he was at least on the week of orientation. And here it is six, eight weeks later, and he still didn’t have it. So I got a hold of him. And I said, Look, you need to call this phone number, figure out what the holdup is, because you should have had it per their standard business, usually four to six, eight weeks, something like that. And if you don’t have it, you need to call and check on it. Come to find out his birth certificate was not legible once it got to the main office to process everything. So we rejected it. So he wants to start the process all over again. So make sure that if you don’t have your stuff within, you know, their standard business timeline, call and check on it.

Jeremy Kellett 26:08

Yeah, if you don’t have results by now and on the you know, the Tweak, I actually did this a couple of weeks ago, as I had an owner operator come in, and he was wanting to renew his tweak. And I actually did it. So I don’t really know, but let’s just do this together. And I did it online there at my desk and you know, he paid for it said it would be shipped to him and it was SIP was I will Oh really, I was thinking they had to go back to the you know, then to the location,

Ashley Rabun 26:56

No. So the way I understand it is like if he already had a current one, and he went into the office and got it the first time that way, the next time he can renew online and it you know, it’s simple, and it’s easy, saves him a trip to the twig office. But next time he goes to renew, he’ll have to go back to the twig office. But those were good, you know, tweaks. They’re usually good for five years. You know, depending on how long ago it’s been since they’ve gotten their initial fingerprint and background check done.

Jeremy Kellett 27:28

Is the hazmat and twig. I mean, is that a major issue with the safety department? We’re trying to? Are you constantly trying to get people to complete the process? Yes, constantly. Yes. What are the keys? Well, I

Ashley Rabun 27:41

I just haven’t made it home yet. Well, you gotta make Tom get home and take care of yourself. We can only do so much to help you in that, you know. And if

Vivian Boudreaux 27:51

They communicate that to their dispatchers, dispatchers can route them along the way. So they’re just not deadheading back and forth. No one can make it work for Oakley and the driver

Jeremy Kellett 28:00

colleague will use I’ll blame the dispatcher so

Vivian Boudreaux 28:03

don’t tell them though.

Jeremy Kellett 28:06

They probably don’t even listen to know I do a good job.

Vivian Boudreaux 28:09

We didn’t Yeah, we have really good ones and we have some ones that we have to stay after.

Jeremy Kellett 28:16

It’s easy with all that responsibility to portal.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 28:20

The web average can also get their explorations from the driver portal online

Jeremy Kellett 28:26

like Canada so you’re wondering if Allison’s telling us he can go into you can log into the driver portal and a lot of you guys probably do that to check your settlements but all the explorations are in there all your explorations of everything listed with Oakley is in there so keep up with that. We need to be sending oh my god a reminder or something? Do we not do that? Do we need to send them something like you know, if it’s a physicals coming up then it needs to shoot them a reminder though,

Vivian Boudreaux 29:00

that this is an IT thing where they can kind of automate that Yeah, we actually I think had something like that in the past might have gone to the dispatchers I’m not I don’t remember.

Jeremy Kellett 29:12

Anything we could do to get a callback you get a notification on stuff if you got one hate your physicals come and do more this month or whatever. Just something to help on maybe but yeah,

Vivian Boudreaux 29:23

maybe online. Can you do that? Yeah. Oh,

Jeremy Kellett 29:27

Wait, that’s a big discussion right now.

Vivian Boudreaux 29:31

Would be good. They just take their iPad.

Jeremy Kellett 29:32

You know, I talked to Patrick yesterday, matter of fact, and it wasn’t looking at potluck.

Ashley Rabun 29:38

It guys are busy each with

Jeremy Kellett 29:39

the transport people I think, oh, is where they’re running into issues. Okay, good stuff, man. This is good. Vivian Amanda. Ashley was in the psych department talking about things going on in the safety part? I think it’s good for owner operators and listeners to see how this I mean, you know, you’re not made mean, you’re not?

Ashley Rabun 30:53

No, I mean, look at us.

Vivian Boudreaux 30:57

There’s no way but we can be if we need to be

Jeremy Kellett 31:00

sometimes you. I bet. I bet they’re not.

Jeremy Kellett 31:14

What’s the what about? I know, Roger mentioned that where we used to, we’re all taking logs now that we didn’t used to do. We always do. We did it outside of you know, somebody else did it. And then now,

Vivian Boudreaux 31:30

somebody else gave us reports, you had the ability to report it all in a report. But we’ve always auto checked. Yeah, fuel stops loading and unloading times their hours of service. Yeah, pre pre trip, post trip, just everything.

Jeremy Kellett 31:49

But put a little more. Let’s put a little more work on load for you guys. When you’re doing that, getting rid of the third party is still looking over the report.

Vivian Boudreaux 31:58

Now you’re absolutely yeah, man.

Jeremy Kellett 32:05

We do all three. Y’all do that? Or is everybody does everybody does it. Explain that a little bit.

Vivian Boudreaux 32:10

I’ll just start and let y’all get into the details. Like we said, we just audit them. If we find one thing wrong, if there’s we do have a couple of reports, you know, hours of service. If we have a driver that has a 14 hour violation or something before we call him we’ll check his logs to make sure he’s attaching and detaching shipments, loading and unloading fuel times are correct. pre trip post trip, what else? Anything, any bit better putting notes, anytime you’re on duty, there should be a note as to what you’re doing on duty if they’re using PC, right? Everything. We just tried to cover everything. So when we make that one call, it’s one and done, you know, and we’re not ever, you know, all of us calling them at a different time, different little aspects of their logs, but when we do we try to check everything to keep it legal. And try

Amanda Hadfield 33:02

to cover it all in one phone. Everything. Yeah.

Jeremy Kellett 33:07

So it’s I mean, you’re doing all 850 separating them out, and it just takes you how long to get through one person. You’re looking at what

Ashley Rabun 33:21

on how their log looks. Honestly, you know, if how many things we might see that is wrong, and

Jeremy Kellett 33:30

you’re looking at a weak slog.

Ashley Rabun 33:32

But roughly I would me personally, I go back about two weeks,

Amanda Hadfield 33:36

because that just with the fuel report is I go back to the very first time they got that fuel all the way to person day. Okay, if they do have a violation there, then we’re going to look really hard at what’s going on.

Jeremy Kellett 33:48

So it takes you what, five minutes, 10 minutes?

Amanda Hadfield 33:53

I wish it was just five minutes.

Vivian Boudreaux 33:55

Yeah, it depends. Like I said, if they’re doing what they’re supposed to do, you can see that and you can just go on down. There are some things we have to check a little bit closer. But you know, the bottom line is, you need to be logged in. If you do and what are some

Jeremy Kellett 34:10

of the most common mistakes you see Joe?

Ashley Rabun 34:13

Not there upon logs. Yeah, make sure those are verified everyday, make it part of your pre trip to verify your log. Young Drivers can get started for having one day unverified. That’s something that takes you 10 seconds to do, maybe not even that long, they will just be part of your pre trip. You only have 14 days on this login system to verify if your trucks in the shop login once a week, keep them verified, just to keep it caught up. They have to be verified. That’s a DOD requirement.

Amanda Hadfield 34:42

Then they want 15 minutes for the pre trip and around two minutes for post trip asset inspection.

Vivian Boudreaux 34:50

fuel stops you the whole time you’re on the fuel Island. You pull up you drive you stop, you go on duty, you may have to wait a few minutes to get to the pump and then you may pull forward and run into the truck stop to get your receipt and it takes you four or five minutes that four or five minutes still has to be on duty you don’t go off duty or into the sleeper and you can be in the sleeper berth and in the truck stop getting your receipt at the same time so when it says sleeper berth you’re in physically the sleeper berth. You’re not, you know, eating, you’re gonna be asleep. Yeah, you don’t have to be asleep but you got to be in that your body has to be in that sleeper berth if you log it that way. And I know minutes matter sometimes but possibly if you’re if you’re shaving minutes off to get it that close, maybe you’re you shouldn’t be in a rush. You know, maybe you’re just but I don’t know anything about dispatching but yeah, the whole time you’re fueling needs to be on duty. If you go into the store after an eat or what, shower whatever and You, that’s fine. That’s off duty. But that’s a big thing.

Jeremy Kellett 36:04

How does it feel? To look at some that are? Perfect? Nice. Fantastic. Do we have a lot of that?

Ashley Rabun 36:13

We Yeah, we have a lot that, that everything looks good I, there’s some drivers that I look, they’re logged out, man, I wish more

Amanda Hadfield 36:21

that they all could look

Ashley Rabun 36:24

for their paperwork, it’s all nice and neat. And we can read it and everything like that. But it’s a great feeling, knowing that they took the time to make their stuff correct. And it looks good, it looks wrong

Amanda Hadfield 36:35

and makes it easier on us

Vivian Boudreaux 36:38

that they take pride in what they do.

Jeremy Kellett 36:41

You can tell that by looking at logs paperwork.

Ashley Rabun 36:46

Absolutely, thank you for that.

Jeremy Kellett 36:48

Well, you know, the majority of our operators, I think do it right. They take care of their business and do things right. And they want to, it’s important. And that’s why he can’t let you know, just a group of people that don’t do it right. You know, you don’t want one bad apple making the whole bunch bad, because that’s not the truth. You took the word for it out of my mouth. It’s a, you know, the majority of the people here we have some fantastic owner operators, and I’m telling you on the recruiting end of it, it is hard to find these people, these good owner operators with a challenge. So we’ve been very blessed to have good owner operators at this company and continue to do so. But I like you know it, like we say before we were going to do this episode, we didn’t want to didn’t feel like we were beating up on anybody to do things. Right. I think that it’s an eye opener for owner operators to see what goes on in the safety department. What happens, you know, what people are responsible for? And how good a job you got to do and how good a job they do. I mean, it’s just what most of them do. I mean, most of it is just taking care of your business. And even

Vivian Boudreaux 37:57

When we call them, most of them are receptive. They’re Oh, I’m sorry, you know, I’ll start doing that. You know, there’s very rarely we, I think, generally get really hateful responses.

Jeremy Kellett 38:11

Like so yeah. But

Ashley Rabun 38:14

It also has a small safety department. And we have a lot of drivers between, you know, the eight of us out there. You know, a lot that’s,

Jeremy Kellett 38:24

that’s why I was saying I don’t know how to do it, all of them. You know, but I guess it helps when they’re all right.

Vivian Boudreaux 38:29

Yeah, because we don’t sit down driver by driver, we try to just start with a violation, and then drill down. And yeah, so it’s a lot of spot checking. We do have a few reports that we know, we catch a lot of it, and some of it, we don’t, but we will eventually, you know, eventually it will come out. And

Jeremy Kellett 38:51

so mom can be crafty, they

Ashley Rabun 38:53

definitely. And there are some that don’t even realize that they’re doing anything, you know, wrong. Like maybe a violation of a 14 hour violation, they may not realize that if they are using that sleeper berth rule that they may have forgotten to go into the sleeper berth. And they went off duty. And you know, they didn’t realize it, you know, that they call us that violation. You know,

Amanda Hadfield 39:17

That’s more of an easier fix.

Vivian Boudreaux 39:18

Yeah, some of them just say, Okay, you caught me, I’ll start doing it wrong.

Amanda Hadfield 39:24

Or they might accidentally hit you instead of the PC or vice versa.

Jeremy Kellett 39:29

Oh, yeah. I’ll tell you why. If I keep driving five, around this parking lot out here. I don’t like you gotta say, but I’m not in their shoes. I guess they got to creep around for five minutes or something. He can do that or so they don’t start to talk. I’m just kidding, guys. I’ll get to you like healing yourself like to cover. I believe we’ve done a great job, you have done a great job.

Ashley Rabun 39:58

I would actually go back to you. I meant to bring this up by going over the CDOs and stuff like that. If you get a duplicate CDO, or a new CDO, get it sent to us because it’s going to show up on your NVR whenever Vivian runs it. So if you get one, go ahead and send it. If it’s a cord, send it to your dispatcher. If it’s temporary, send it to us through the train.

Vivian Boudreaux 40:20

And it wouldn’t hurt to just give us a call at safety and say hey, I’m texting this to my dispatcher because they get it the dispatchers have a lot going on too and they forget to send it to us and then we don’t realize we don’t have and we have to call them back so that doesn’t hurt to just give us a call and say hey, I’m sending in my dispatcher. Can you make sure you get it?

Jeremy Kellett 40:38

Yeah, because we’re gonna have a current lady ill on file receives

Ashley Rabun 40:43

the hazmat with you know, temporary CTO. Send all that to us. Yeah, cuz we need to

Jeremy Kellett 40:50

temporary steel. This takes us to do a temporary CD.

Ashley Rabun 40:54

Yeah, Texas. They do like three I think and they usually all end up on a cord but they’re still Other states that do the paper temporaries that are okay to send to us their trains flow. But if it’s an actual cord, your twic card, your CDL, or the plastic card, please don’t send that to us their train’s flow, we’re not going to ever read it, text it to your dispatcher written back with a clear copy. Anytime you get a new one might say that we have the most current copy of it.

Vivian Boudreaux 41:18

And don’t forget to send in your D O T inspections, any citations, even if it’s in your personal vehicle, we need a copy of it. So just send it I guess, trance flow and not your personal vehicle. But if it’s in your CMB, it needs to be logged on duty

Jeremy Kellett 41:36

is an illicit Chase and another rabbit but you say send it in, which is really easy. But do they need to send it in under certain

Vivian Boudreaux 41:44

safety miscellaneous wouldn’t be high enough where

Jeremy Kellett 41:47

you think you can just go ahead and pay number,

Ashley Rabun 41:49

your last completed pay number. If it’s one year currently on, it could air out. We could never get it. But yes, don’t use all zeros. Don’t use your chart number don’t use one through five, six,

Amanda Hadfield 42:02

but don’t have that with them. They can call and ask us and we can get it to him. Yes.

Jeremy Kellett 42:08

Okay. Is it one of the biggest signs you’ll probably get if a Senate majority can get it? Right. And you think that’s because of the fight number? Yeah, majority of the time.

Ashley Rabun 42:20

And they’ll tell us that, you know, we’ll ask them what paint number they use, why didn’t they use one, let me give you your last completed pay number and resend it. So we did a little tidbit there. It’s also not instant, it takes about 10 to 15 minutes to get to as well. So if you’re on the phone with me and say I just resent it, I’m not going to have it right, then it’s gonna take a few minutes to get to us.

Jeremy Kellett 42:41

So a good little tidbit of info out there

Amanda Hadfield 42:44

and make sure not to dark in any of those documents, because then we’re gonna have to have you resend them, because we can’t read

Jeremy Kellett 42:50

them. Oh, they don’t look good on their phones. To see you back in there doing better probably,

Amanda Hadfield 42:56

there’s only certain documents that need to be darkened. And that’s going to be the ones that tend to colored like the yellow ones and the pink ones, like the carbon copies, yeah, dark, and then we can see the print there better. But if you darken a regular piece of paper, by the time we get some black, we can’t read it. And I’ve actually called a couple there. So make sure that they don’t darken their paperwork, the only time you need to darken anything. So if it’s like a carbon copy, and it’s on a colored sheet, it’s the only time that you’re gonna need to darken that document. Because I’ve got some that I can’t read and I’m waiting for them to send their maintenance reports back where they’re not so dark because I can’t even make out a trick number.

Jeremy Kellett 43:43

Good stuff. Okay. I think we covered a lot in that episode. I mean, I feel like he covered everything on our list. Joe,

Amanda Hadfield 43:51

Do I need anything on incidents? Are we good? Okay. I don’t care either.

Jeremy Kellett 43:58

Incidents will not work over. Yeah.

Amanda Hadfield 44:01

Yeah, that was really fun. Well, the lady that gets to take your money, let’s have some more fun. I think the trailer inspection sheet. People don’t feel that apathy. No, they shouldn’t. And I’m gonna tell you time and time again, if you don’t send those in, and it comes up, that trailer was damaged. I mean, those payments can even be split, I can still charge one driver and charge another one.

Jeremy Kellett 44:27

What’s that mean? Which we touched on critical on to what you mean with insidious trailer damage, because

Amanda Hadfield 44:34

I will go and look and see the last time when we’ve had a trailer inspection sheet turned in on those and the majority of them they’re not, not dated.

Jeremy Kellett 44:43

Yeah, we need more than I don’t think people feel that outlet. These two in the shop, I know they get in there and fix up or something’s wrong and they send the bill to the dispatcher, or you know.

Amanda Hadfield 44:55

They’ll send the pictures to shoot pics, and make sure there’s the incident that’s created. There’s already one created, then attach those short pictures to it. Make sure it has the right driver on their dispatcher and the trailer number. And then I wait for the work order from the shop. If the dispatcher doesn’t let me know who to build, probably within the first week I haven’t got to talk to the dispatcher. Because they need to get out and they need to get out quickly. But we do not email voices to the drivers. Or say how much it’s actually going to cost him so if they ever have any questions. They need a contact dispatcher they can call me and now can even email one to them. Since it needs a copy?

Jeremy Kellett 45:38

Good. Now please do that. Listen to what a man is telling you. Yeah, my good lord, she’s gotta go well with her boyfriends and do her laundry. She doesn’t need to worry about these treasures.

Amanda Hadfield 45:51

Laundry every week. Better hobbies.

Jeremy Kellett 45:56

I’m just kidding. Thank you all for joining me on this episode. I really appreciate the info link, it’s a little bit of change in the pace of what we normally do here. So that gets good information. And once again, it’s always targeted to our owner operators and to make it better, make them better, more successful us better as a company, so. Oh, good. Thank you for doing that. Thanks for everybody listening to the Oakley podcast. You guys are awesome every week and really enjoy it. Be sure to subscribe, comment, let us know what you want to hear on this million miles and can put it together. It’s always good to know that we’ve got a bunch of listeners. And you guys have responded every week and we really do appreciate it. Share it with other people. That helps a whole lot. And let us know what you think. We appreciate you listening to the podcast. We’ll talk to you next week. Thanks. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Oakley podcast: trucking, business, and family. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate or review the show on the podcast platform of your choice and share it with a friend. We love hearing from our audience, so if you’ve got a question, comment, or just want to say hello, head over to our website, theoakleypodcast.com, and click the “leave a comment” button. We’ll get you a response soon and may even share some of the best ones here on the show. We’ll be back with a fresh episode very soon. Thanks for listening.

144: The New Era of Electric Vehicles

March 8, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellettchats with Michael Freeze, the Features Editor at Transport Topics. During the episode, Michael and Jeremy discuss electric trucks and fleets and how the EV wave is changing the industry. The conversation also includes challenges companies face in electric fleets, infrastructure needs for the industry, possible legislative mandates, and more.

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143: Keeping Your Rig Rolling: Tire Talk for Owner-Operators

March 1, 2023

This week on the Oakley podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chatted with David Covington, Fleet Solutions Sales Manager at Goodyear. During the episode, Jeremy and David discuss all things tires. From the availability of certain sizes, different materials tires are made of, tips for getting the most life out of your tires, and more.

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142: How Should Owner-Operators Prepare for Retirement?

February 22, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Matt Ruttenburg, CMO & Shareholder of Life, Inc. Retirement Services. During the episode, Matt and Jeremy talk about retirement planning for owner-operators. From helpful advice on investments and insurance to practical steps to get started, the conversation covers all aspects of what owner-operators need to do as they look ahead to retirement. All that and more on this week’s episode.

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141: All About APUs

February 15, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, Jeremy Kellett chats with Ricky Duncan, Sales Rep at Thermo King. During the episode, Ricky and Jeremy talk about all things APUs. The pair talk about why APUs exist, the differences between different makes and models, why it’s important for owner-operators to consider an APU, and more.

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140: Recruiting Update with Kent Childers and Dustin Eagle

February 8, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Kent Childers and Dustin Eagle, recruiters here at Oakley. During the episode, the group discusses what’s going on in the recruiting department including the availability of trailers, why owner-operators leave Oakley, swapping trailers, and what you need to know if you would like to switch divisions here at Oakley. All that and more on this week’s episode!

(more…)

139: Altech Recycling: From Scrap to Smelter

February 1, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, Jeremy Kellett and Jason Webb chat with Chad Chapman, the Facility Manager at Altech Recycling. During this episode, Chad talks about what Altech Recycling does, why the recycling business is important, the processes which allows Altech to handle over 2 million pounds a week, a new documentary, and more.

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138: Freight Update for 2023

January 25, 2023

This week on The Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Scotty Crisco, Nick Crisco, Bradley Simpson, Operations Managers at Oakley Trucking. During the episode, the group looks ahead at freight for 2023 and discusses some of the opportunities and outlook for the coming year. We also discuss the innovative ways Oakley keeps drivers on the road, building relationships with customers, ways Oakley is growing despite the competition, and more.

Highlights from this week’s conversation include:

Oakley Update: Spouse Gift Card Delivery and Shoutout to an Owner-Operator (0:55)
Beginning of the year update from the pneumatic division (4:03)
Beginning of the year update from the end-dump division (6:30)
Dispatchers’ role in handling the busy season (8:57)
Opportunities for growth for Oakley in 2023 (12:55)
Building a relationship with customers (18:10)
Recession in 2023? (23:17)
Final thoughts and takeaways (32:32)

Oakley Trucking is a family-owned and operated trucking company headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. For more information, check out our show website: podcast.bruceoakley.com.

Transcription

Scotty Crisco 00:12

People are like, wondering what is freight gonna look like in 23 Compared to 22? Well, it’s gonna look different. But that’s I mean 22 looks different than 21 and they were both Vanner years for both the driver, and Oakley.

Jeremy Kellett 00:26

Welcome to the Oakley podcast, trucking, business and family. This show is brought to you by Oakley trucking headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. The purpose of this podcast is to communicate with Oakley owner operators and their families by giving them up to date information concerning Oakley trucking and the trucking industry. From business advice to safety updates to success stories, also to give an insight to outside truck drivers who might be interested in joining the Oakley family. Hi, there’s Jeremy kellett director of recruiting at Oakley trucking. I’m your host for this podcast. This is the Oakley podcast, trucking, business and family. This is episode 138. And on today’s episode, I got a few the operation managers in here that we’re going to talk to Scotty Crisco, Nick Crisco and Bradley Simpson, and with the interrupts in the pneumatic division, and we’re gonna talk a little bit about what the what’s happening right now, what’s it maybe what we think’s gonna happen this year, give us a little perspective on the freight dealing with customers. Maybe, you know, maybe get off into a couple other things, you know, how we booked freight and what we look for. And just our goes as Operation managers and what they do every day to make sure that this company is doing good. And our owner operators are doing good. So that’s the plan here in just a minute, we’re fixing to get started on that. But first, let’s give you an Oakley update. So two things real quick on Oakley update. One is, so if you don’t know we, we give the spouse a gift card Ale on the owner operators anniversary. So every month we send out a batch of gift cards. Well, we are changing that. Still gonna get money. But it’s going to be either the money transfer cash at Venmo, or PayPal. So instead of sending the actual gift card to your house for the spouse, we’re going to send them a card explaining that how you got to access this money, you’re going to have to download the app, Cash App Venmo, or PayPal, one of the three. And then you email it to Vicki chastising here at Oakley, and she will transfer the money to you. So I’ll try to make it a little simpler might be a little difficult in the beginning, but we feel like it’s a whole lot more protected. To do it that way, then send in gift cards and then you don’t have to call about balances or anything like that. It’s gonna we hope it’s going to streamline things but may be a little challenging at first so but it is gonna make you download one of those apps if you want to get your money. So that’s the way that’s gonna work. Also, I want to recognize an owner operator with us. That’s been with us, Rob and Tracy Johnson from Parkfield, Missouri. And just, you know, I can’t say enough good about these people that they’ve just done a good job with this. The whole time they’ve been here they praise Oakley so much. And they, I mean, and it shows of what they’re driving. They’re driving a 2022 Western Star that that Rob and Tracy specked out for the job. They’re pulling in and dump with us and just to have been an asset to Oakley trucking and I just want to say they’re having their eight year anniversary this month in January. Just want to say thank you to them. We appreciate having you. Alright guys got rarely Sampson, Nick Crisco, Scotty Crisco, all returning guests, right. Yeah. So we don’t have to worry about, you know, getting, getting the nervousness out of the way. We’ll just get right into some of this stuff. Because I think the reason I asked you guys to come in here, you know, is because you’re in the, you’re in the trenches of what’s going on out there dealing with customers, and drivers, and dispatchers and all of it. And I mean, it is the engine that makes this thing. Go. Y’all are making it happen every day. And I mean, we came off of 2022 which was just an unbelievable year for trucking. I think everybody knows that. It was unbelievable for us as a company, but also the owner operators mean we see their numbers and how they’ve done I mean, it’s just been fantastic a year 2022 Now we’re getting, you know, getting into 2023 and everybody’s like, Oh, what’s gonna happen in 2023? You know, it could go any it could go anywhere because we don’t know but I’d like to talk a little bit about that. You know, coming out of the holiday, what things are looking like there what your customers are seeing freight wise, maybe and we’ll go from there. It was dark. Of course. This is what we got Bradley with an pneumatics so he can keep us in touch with that. And then Scotty and Nick Crisco, which are brothers, they are going to keep us in touch with the dump. So let’s start with the pneumatic first. Riley, what do you think’s going on? I mean, reflecting on through the holidays, and now that he’s crying back up, what’s going on? What are you seeing?

Bradley Simpson 05:18

I feel like it’s going pretty good. It’s held them strong from how we finished 2022 I think it’s carrying right along, you know, you always have like you said, Guess we call it a little bit of holiday hangover. You know, but lots of people, customers, and owner operators are off work. So there’s always a little bit of slowness from that coming out of the gate, but seems to be every week that we’ve been back from New Year’s, it’s continued to get busier kind of back to where we were before the holiday. So except plastics, yeah. Plastics a little bit down, swallows deals, it’s kind of if it’s hot, it’s really hot. And if it’s not, but there’s been some good signs in it, too. We’ve been doing a lot more plastic, keeping those guys busy on it. Austin, our dispatcher, he’s actually down in Houston this week with Colby Foster. They’re going to see customers every day all day, trying to drum up some more business and visit some old customers that we used to work for just to kind of see what their feel is about it. So I’m sure we’ll get a good report on it probably this Friday afternoon and Monday.

Jeremy Kellett 06:33

And just our listeners know, we have dedicated trailers for plastics. And then we also have other trailers that haul everything else. So you know, plastics when that’s not happening. Sometimes you got to grab another trailer, keep them busy. I guess if that’s the case.

Bradley Simpson 06:51

Yeah. Yeah, they can definitely. I mean, we use them to hook to our regular pneumatics all the time. And there’s a lot of the stuff that we do on the striker pneumatics that they can do with their vacuums. I know that cada it may discourage some people sometimes they’re kind of scared of it, you know, because they don’t have the vibrators on the trailer. And it’s just a little bit different moving it through there without that, but it’s something we’ve always done. And it’s good to have to fall back on because we’ve been needing help. So it helps us on the regular side. But it’s helped us pull through some of the slower times on plastic about Endo. Get Scotty Nick, what do y’all see in on on that boat for a man you

Scotty Crisco 07:30

know, lock was we’ve experienced some holiday hangover

Bradley Simpson 07:34

doesn’t seem like it’s getting longer every year. I mean, to get customers back to work.

Scotty Crisco 07:39

Yeah. And it’s, you know, even the ones in the middle of the year tend to drag on like your Easter’s, and your Thanksgivings. And your fourth of July’s customers closed down more. But

07:50

you know,

Scotty Crisco 07:52

as far as I mean, we’re still keeping guys busy, you might not have a load on your geo tab waiting for you.

08:01

When before you don’t,

Scotty Crisco 08:03

sometimes it’s taken us a minute to you know, sort things out and figure out where you need to go. But I mean, guys are still making money or saying, you know, I started getting some fertilizer orders, actually, this afternoon. I know we’re getting into spring so especially in dumps, or we have a lot of seasonal stuff. So you bounce from fertilizer season and then then the landscape and season and then you know, so but yeah,

Bradley Simpson 08:27

there’s nothing to worry about.

Nick Crisco 08:31

Yeah, like you said, I mean, the holidays used to seem like people would take customer who take a day off for a couple of days. And now they take off December 18 to the first of the year, you know, are you saying you were if it seems like you see more and more that you know, and then the first week of the year was a four day week, we’re really just kind of getting our bearings on getting back to a normal routine. Like you said, 2022 was incredible. 2021 was incredible, you know, so it’s really been, it’s been extremely busy busier than at any point that I’ve ever been here. And we’re still busy. But like you said it is transition some you can see a little bit of settling in the market as far as competition and maybe that post pandemic rush when everything came out of the pandemic and it was just insane. Like every, you know, all trucking markets probably experienced that to a degree. And it seems like that settling some we’re still, like I say we’re still busy. It just may. There may be times here and there. We might not have a load right that second. But you know, he might be waiting an hour or two, or we’re kind of piecing things together. That’s not happening a lot, but it is happening some there’s still plenty of work.

Bradley Simpson 09:51

So dispatch notifies you guys when they got a problem. Somewhere somebody needs a loan.

Scotty Crisco 09:56

We try to start the day every day late, you know lately when it gets like This, I mean, the only thing you can do is come in prepared. And one of the thing that we do is we make I mean, what’s kind of old school but we get out a long old piece of paper with state on it and pass the sheet around a dispatchers they write down, you know, this is we do this every afternoon for the ensuing day for the following day, they write down where their trucks are going to be empty, approximately what time so that we’re not just coming in here, getting blindsided every 30 minutes with empty trucks, I mean, we try to have some sort of game plan.

Bradley Simpson 10:36

Guys don’t have they don’t have a pre planned, pre planned load form. They’re telling y’all

Nick Crisco 10:41

and yeah, we make a list the afternoon product, we will this afternoon, when we come in tomorrow, a guy that’s not on a plan, you know, and we’re actively working together, the operation managers and all the fleet managers to keep the guys moving. You know, so it’s a juggling act. A lot of times with different guys needs and where they’re needing to get home, sometimes certain loads don’t fit where they’re needing to be you’re trying to get for the weekend. So you might we might have to, you know, just take a little bit more time to find the puzzle piece that fits for them. But, but yeah, as the guys are working on, or don’t have a plan for their guys, we’re actively working together to try to get a movement.

Bradley Simpson 11:25

Well, I think we just been so spoiled, you know, for the last two years, or more, all of us, you know, with having multiple loads for each truck, which where we’re gonna go to do it, and that we all know that even the truck driver knows that’s not reality. It is nice, and it’s nice while it lasts, but it’s not all. I mean, it’s not always going to be locked in. I mean, of course, but, you know, they, I mean, to me, I’m I, I still see what goes I look at the end result, and look at checks, and money made. I mean, people are making money. I mean, you guys or dig in harder, and you have to look other places, but you come up with it. I

Scotty Crisco 12:12

mean, you’re not gonna let a guy not work. Right, right. Right. How many fingers up that and Right, right? If I tell you what’s incredible, is just the, over the years that the vastness of the customer base that we’ve built here as a team, like you can go back and, you know, I was looking back the other day, I was scrolling orders for something in Tennessee, and I found some we had done like 180 loads out of Strawberry Plains, Tennessee, going to Clarksville, Tennessee, you know, you almost kind of forget about and stuff like that. So you know, I mean, people are like, wondering what is freight gonna look like in 23 Compared to 22? Well, it’s gonna look different. But that’s, I mean, 22 looks different than 21. And they were both banner years for both the driver, and Oakley. So I mean, and I think that’s probably a product of us being so versatile, both, you know, with our equipment that we haul and the equipment that we own, and the ports and whatnot, we own I mean, you know, you can just, you can run it a lot of different ways and stick your hands in a lot of different pots. So

Nick Crisco 13:17

which gives us a good base to stand on. Yeah, the end dumps are was what we deal with, day in, day out or just are so diverse. Like I say a lot of it’s seasonal. But even in the slower of times that diversity of different things you can haul. And the amount of experience of years of guys in the office has changed a lot. The last 15 years, you know, there’s a lot a lot of resources and we have different ways and ideas and just figuring out ways to keep busy.

Bradley Simpson 13:48

We’re not a you know, a lot of companies are I mean, they build their company on one customer. And if that one customer collapses, then the company collapses. Thank goodness, we’re not like that. I mean, me different products am a different customers. I mean, does pneumatics deal with my hundreds. Yeah, for sure. The house, there’s no telling how many. I was thinking when they were talking, you know it, it always looks different. It always changes, especially from year to year. But I’ll go on vacation for a week. And I’ll come back the next week. And I may see some computer and I’ll be like, What is this? What is this down? Where’s this load? Where did it come from? here because we’re always looking to for something new to do to add to what we could always do. So it’s here we will have options going on for that right there. Braley would give our listeners an idea of the competition that you guys deal with other trucking companies, brokers, that you have to compete against, to get low I mean, is that a head ache? Is that something I made? Or is there just is? I mean, in my mind, there’s so much to do out there. We haven’t even tapped into the, you know, the dropbox business.

Nick Crisco 15:12

There is yeah, there’s a lot. I mean, there’s more than we could probably wrap our head around the other way. But we still see it and feel it. I mean, you can go on some of the load boards and things like that, that are public, you know, and see all the different brokers and three PL it seems like there’s more than ever, you know, people getting in and a good thing over the weird. We have the Troubled Asset, you know, that’s a feather in our cap that somebody figured out a long time ago, was the right way to go about it. But yes, there. It’s very competitive. Thanks for your question, man. Yeah, it’s when it’s super busy, you don’t feel it as much because you’re, you know, you’re looking at your, the demand for the truck, as you get more loads and you do trucks, when it starts to shift, you know, there’s more people trying to get in that same. Ball does a

Bradley Simpson 16:11

Go ahead. Just gonna say

Scotty Crisco 16:12

I think it’s a mirror image of, you know, probably what you guys deal with in recruiting. I mean, I can’t drive from the office to my house without getting behind the van trailer and that van trailer, having a sticker on it saying, how successful you can be by just calling this number, and we’re paying this and home on week, I mean, so what I’m saying is, if you’re a truck driver, listen to this podcast, and you, you’re driving down the road, ask yourself how many times over the last 3060 days, either a company has directly reached out to you, trying to get you to come over. Or just take note, look around and see how many different trucking companies are trying to pull you in their direction? Well, that is exactly what goes on with our customers, other trucking companies are contacting them and going after them trying to get their business that we’ve worked so hard to get, and that we have to work so hard to keep. So we pride ourselves on customer service. And they know when they’re calling Oakley, that they’re probably not getting the cheapest rate. But then again, we’re not paying our drivers the cheapest pay. So they expect good service. And you know, it’s like a lot of things in this world. You we try to stand on the route of you get what you pay for. So but yes, short answer. Competition is out there. And it always will

Bradley Simpson 17:30

be. Yeah, because they’re always coming after that freight. I mean, they know the same thing that we’re going for to a lot of times, because we know over the years, we’ve taken lanes from other companies, and they’ve taken lanes from us, you know, they gets into a bidding war sometimes. And there are customers, I’m assuming that Well, I know that customer service don’t mean crap to

Nick Crisco 17:54

them. That’s a good point. I mean, ideally, and we have a number of good customers that, you know, they send us the orders, we take care of it. We know they’re gonna send us something next week. Those are the ones that are ideal. We’ve also got a number of customers exactly what you’re talking about that you can work for months. And we’ll cut you for $1 for $2. Just because it’s I mean, it’s a cutthroat business at times. I mean, they’re they’re doing the same thing. Everybody else in business is doing. And there’s more so concerned about the money than they are the service, you know, so it’s a juggling act,

Bradley Simpson 18:34

they are in the beginning, they think they are I’ve seen many times y’all seen that word that I can call it back don’t like it goes out, you know, because we may be too high. Company B come in here and cut the rate and then they figure out dang it dang Oakley,

Nick Crisco 18:51

but those times, yeah, and those times, you know, the service becomes even more important, because if you’re, if we’re consistently late or contamination, you know, the net, they’ll have another company not adorable. And so that’s where it was imperative that were

Bradley Simpson 19:07

once you guys conversation, like with a customer? In other words, you promised them something that the truck driver has to deliver. What’s that conversation like to a customer that maybe doesn’t know us? Or we’re trying to earn their business?

19:28

I don’t know about these guys, but

Scotty Crisco 19:30

I tried to. Well, I do know about these guys. I know they do the same thing. Everybody just does it does it in their own little way. You know, like when you’re dispatching you. One of the most important things is develop a strong relationship with your driver when you’re in operations lockwise for developing a strong relationship with your customer. So, you know, if you’re chasing business, you know, I think persistence trying to feel them out. You know some no It’s kind of like when you go buy a car, you don’t want somebody hounding, or at least me, I don’t know about y’all. But when I go by truck or something, I’d like to just walk around by myself for a little bit. You know, let me know what you got, you know, and then I’ll seek you out. So you have customers like that, you know, you might want to stay at arm’s length a little bit. And then you have customers that you just need to call every day, maybe more than once a day. And as far as existing customers and repeat business, I think that relationship is just, you know, know what they like to do in their off time. Know what kind of liquor they like to drink, you know, know of, you know, how many kids they got, what they’re, you know, what, and stuff like that? I mean,

Bradley Simpson 20:36

that goes a long ways. Yeah. Well, he, bro. Yeah, for sure. I mean, it’s good to know Him, and know what they like outside of the office, you know, that way, whether you get something good to call them about or bad, you can kinda started off with a joke or, you know, ease into with them. Because you know, what they like, you can mess with them a little bit. But there’s some that are just like, here’s what you do. Yeah, you go do it, you know, and you don’t talk much. But there’s a lot of them that I’ve talked to that say every day, almost since I’ve been here, and no one really well know what they like, and they know how operate and it just makes it work better overall, you know, whenever you have a good relationship with him, I can talk to him and tell him what’s happened, whether it’s good or bad. You know, the, to me, it’s the product we’re selling. You know, Oakley mean? I always tell recruiters, you know, how’d you like to be recruiting for a company that you know, like, worth a crap? And takes advantage of drivers? Don’t treat them? Right. How’d you like to be that recruiter? Tough? Yeah, I mean, we have, you know, it’s great to be have the product sales itself, you know, we’re just recruiting paper pushers, you know, getting it done, you guys, I feel are the same, because you got an awesome product to sale, you know, Oakley trucking reputation. And, you know, if you had a budget, if you read a company, and you had a bunch of truck drivers, it wasn’t worth a dime, she couldn’t depend on and it make it hard for you to sail that customer and go, hey, we’ll take care of you. You know, and that’s the mean, that’s the best product with us is our owner operators that we got that we know that they’re gonna get it done. And it feels good, makes it easier, you know, to me, it would be for you guys to sell the product. And, and that’s why we get to charge we charge them a little bit more because of the good customer service, so that the owner operators that we’re sending in there, the equipment that’s going in there, the way that we’re, we, we take care of them. I mean, I was telling the recruiting class last late last week of you know, how over there when I started over in a dungeon note office, I mean, you didn’t leave until every load was covered, is you did not leave, you didn’t leave the building, I wouldn’t, I was maybe five or six hours that we wouldn’t have nobody’s leaving till this load cover, and how we’re gonna get it done, you know, and it was, but it was that instilled in that customer service, you know, and me and us, you guys, and you’re doing it on down the line that really makes a difference, I think, to where, like you were saying we’ve created this product now that is with all these customers, we just got, you know, so much it’s like it. I mean, it almost moves itself, if that makes any sense. I mean, it’s just so we’ve we over the years, we’ve created so many good customers, you know, and new customers who want me in it, and good owner operators, it’s just a it’s just a great product to be able to do so. And I couldn’t imagine selling man selling a bad company, you know, to somebody i this i That wouldn’t work. I could hell and so, you know, we I think we touched a little bit on this. But the I don’t watch the news. Almost purposely. I want some local news. You know, that’s about it. But you know, people tell me that it’s all going to crap up there gonna be a recession or we’re in a recession, supposedly they say how, how are you guys gonna handle that? I mean, people say we’re in a recession, the pay attention to it, or what would you tell our owner operators that hey, if a recession hits here’s how we’re gonna handle it.

Nick Crisco 24:38

I think you’ve got to pay attention to it and have it on your radar. Just because history says that it’s going to happen again at some point. It has happened here before and Oakley has been through it more than once. The way that we operate every day is a good way didn’t make it through it. The other way we talking about keep an eye on trucks, if a guy has been sitting for so long, you know, for X amount of time, you know, then it’s all hands on deck, we’ve got to put our minds together, get this going. Same way on book and freight, you know, have conversations about stuff we’ve done in the past that maybe we’re not doing being more aggressive on booking things maybe that we haven’t been looking at what’s out there that we’re not doing, and being aggressive and try to make deals, maybe weeks to months ahead of time, to keep the guy’s busy. You know, it’s the way we’ve done it in the past. It helps it helps have some guys, you know, you guys and or melees and scouts and everybody that has been here for years with a lot of experience in the office. It kind of gives you somewhat of a safety net. I mean, we’ve been through this before we’ll get through it. We know what it looks like, when it’s great. We know what it looks like when it’s not great. And then we’ve got a lot of owner operators that have been here for the same thing. You know, so it’s not? It’s just we’ll make it through it. If it does, I don’t think it will get to that point. I do think we will get to experience some slowdown compared to last year, but I don’t think it will get to where it was like 108 and that those times shaken desk, yeah,

Scotty Crisco 26:27

kind of took the words right out of my mouth as far as being aggressive and just taking it head on. I mean, that is literally how we, even when times are good. That’s our attitude, you know, attacking problems at the moment when that you know.

26:42

So when it’s when it’s

Scotty Crisco 26:45

a little slower, or, God forbid, a recession does happen, you know, I mean, there, you can’t hang your head, you gotta I mean, it’s proven that if you just get up, put your boots on every day and go to work and come in here and continue to give good service to the customer continue to get good service to the driver. Be honest with yourself, your co workers, your customers, and your drivers. I mean, honesty goes a long ways. You know, I know if a driver calls in and we you know, we don’t have him below, we just need to tell him, hey, look, give us a minute. We’re trying to piece something together.

Bradley Simpson 27:27

You know, just I mean, honesty. There’s really no, that’s what they mean. That’s what they want to hear.

Scotty Crisco 27:36

And I want one other thing I will say truth. Yeah, the truth. And like Nick said, we were going to be booking some stuff that you probably didn’t haul in 2023. You know, if that comes to that, you know, just reverting back to what I talked about earlier. And our versatility I wrote down here on this piece of paper, I just three commodities that I can think of that we’ve hauled over the last 90 days, that would maybe blow some people’s minds in the dry bulk industry, but we’ve hauled expired beer, Turkey guts, and then this has been a while, but we did haul pumpkin pies. So

Bradley Simpson 28:16

tell me, we will keep the best. Although nobody wants to haul it,

Scotty Crisco 28:21

and pick up that low, we’re gonna dig in and find you something we can promise you.

Bradley Simpson 28:26

That’s a great example. If we go find something to do, maybe we always have failed something. And, and to me, I’d like a definition. If it ever have a slow time at Oakley and Ben, we’re hauling different products with the gravy train is not there like it normally is, you know that I go back, get you another one, they go back and get you another one type deal. That’s, you know, when it’s gravy, then you start, you know, we start digging haul in different stuff, because it’s out there as a thing about it and the stuffs after it’s just a matter of expanding our customer base, which is huge already that we can do maintenance at. And that’s why I was asking that about, you know, recession. I mean, if I was an owner operator, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else then right here. That’s because I know is what I know, the owner operator that hadn’t been here or been through a bad time. They don’t know that, you know, like, they can jump the gun real quick, you know, have a bad week, and oh my gosh, you know, panic city. And

Scotty Crisco 29:34

but, and we were fortunate enough during 2023 to be able to pass a lot of that on to the driver with the 20 cent surcharge. Yeah. And, you know, so far so good and 2023 I mean, so

Bradley Simpson 29:47

I hope we’re able to continue that until late late. So keep keep them busy. I mean, and that’s the biggest point I think guys want to get across is to to our listeners and you know, just get information from you guys. As and how you deal with customers, you know, he’s our owner operators minds, you know of any bad news or stuff that they’re taking in that are negative. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. And right here working for Oakley, because I know you guys are in the middle of it and you don’t go home till everybody’s got a load. I mean, at least a direction ahead. And yeah, that’s the way it is. Maybe we, we’ve all worked together to make it happen. What about customers? Real quick, we’ll touch on that. I know Bradley said Austin and Colby were to invest in do we, we sin guys out mean, you guys go out very often. And drum up business talk to customers. Yes, some more than others. I’ve actually already this year be in Covina, we went out and we saw a handful in one day, just kind of around Arkansas, not too far from here, but it’s good to get out and see him, you know, put the name with the face voice with the face to see who you’re talking to all the time. But we do lots of people get out, you know, of course, the COVID stuff kind of put a little bit of a slowdown on that because a lot of people were working from home, they’re not, you know, in in a ghost. So that slowed it down a little bit. But I feel like we always have pretty good plans to get out and get around and see some of the people we work for. Because it’s good to do.

Nick Crisco 31:25

Yeah, just on the site, as we were talking about earlier, getting to know them outside, work, you know, they’re no different than us, you know, be sick of eating lunch or dinner, you know, get to know talking to them outside of work, what their hobbies are kids ballgame, through what you know, it’s good to do that just to establish relationship. Because they’re just like we are anybody else on the phone or email. It’s not the same as bass, bass. L So we do that. Like you said, the COVID Dale, same bat two years was bad. I’ll put on hold. You know, I remember, we went to Chicago guess it was the end of 21. And it seemed like every other person tried to call up there. You know, so I’m sure it’s sure it’s loosened up some but yeah, it’s good. It’s invaluable to get out and, and to have face to face contact.

Bradley Simpson 32:21

Yeah, thank you get to me, we, they might not want you to come. But once you get in there in front of them, I feel so honored. Just from the few I’ve seen. And from a couple of weeks ago, it’s amazing how little they actually know about us and what we do. You know, because they pretty much see you as what you do for them. So they don’t, they may not have any idea that we have all these guys just batch and end ups or we have all the river ports and all the stuff going on here. You know, we’ve had customers come here to see us. And they’re just like, wow, look at all this stuff. Ya know, it’s crazy, that they know so little about what we actually can do. So

Nick Crisco 33:00

yeah, that’s a good point that that comes up a lot in conversations seems like when you got talking is that you will get questions interest in our barging or our ports or they had no idea that we offer you know, so it’s just like he said he they might think Oakley ya know, I

Bradley Simpson 33:20

send them my loads to do X had no idea what else? Yeah. Oakley is a company can offer. Yeah, we’ve seen that a lot over the years. In front of all they don’t realize both Oh, we know how big we are. Anything else you guys got on your list you wanted to cover? Don’t get y’all together very often and then dumps in the pneumatics and we’re discussing customers freight that kind of stuff with Bradley Sampson, Scotty Crisco, Nick Crisco. So y’all got anything else you want to add? Did we want to talk about at all this detention pay, anything like that is that something or any paperwork that we need to any common mistakes that we need to tell our owner operators, I would

Scotty Crisco 34:03

say this on the detention thing. It is number one, when when you know, if you get to a customer and you reach that two hour mark, you need to be calling your dispatcher so that we can notify the customer. Now, there are some places for instance, I wouldn’t Corning Atlanta, where it’s kind of probably understood that there’s going to be detention, the one offs you get somewhere and you’re having to wait and you hit that two hour mark, you need to be letting your dispatcher know so that we can get with the customer and not just send them a bill two weeks later without any communication. And then obviously that you know, just the ABCs of your demurred sheet. You know, your pay number, your truck number what time you arrived. Try to find some sort of detailed reason as to why you’re waiting because what you write on that sheet goes with the invoice to the customer. So we need something a little more specific as Have you waiting to load and try to find out why you’re waiting to load? Is there a railcar in the way is there you know, as the scale down is, you know, whatever get a name and a signature and if they refuse to sign it then right on there refuse to sign.

Bradley Simpson 35:12

And that’s pretty much it. That’s pretty common all pneumatics he’ll get a Yeah, same for us. It seems like recently in the past, I don’t know how long but ones that we used to get detention with they they do want to be communicated. Now, as it’s happening, you know, because I guess it’s such a big occurrence that all these places they want to knows, because they may be able to make a phone call and get something done. So always communicate it to your dispatcher, even if you know you’ve been paid at this place before. Because we want to make sure and get your money, you know, maximize the money you can get. So always communicate it even if you don’t think it’s a big deal. But same deal, just much details you can put on the sheet, you know, and put the do both DNS the loading information and unloading even if you don’t have the tension on one end that way. It’ll help the customer whoever’s looking at that invoice in the future. Understand more exactly what it is. You mean, customers just don’t pay it. When he said to him, I wish they would be all over there. They demurred. They will send you a check now. Now, they want to know a little bit more, right? Yeah, so we can help yourself there. owner operators, any need to teach it by that you run into any make sure you communicate and details because that piece of paper you’re filling out is going to the customer for them to read and pious and so we can pay you. And if they don’t? Well, I guess that’s the situation if they don’t pay us we don’t buy them is pretty much standard. So I guess that’s every situation we were at, we figure out whether we have to or not so alright guys, hey, man, good stuff. I know it. I know, it felt like a little negativity in this episode. But to me is good honesty, stuff that we’re communicating to our owner operators. You know, because we don’t know what’s going to happen. I mean, I have confidence. And I’m sure you guys do too, because we’ve been doing this a long time. And I’m confident that it’s gonna be another good year. I mean, really am weather bad does come, we’ll still make it good. I mean, it’s just a, it’s a great place to be. I want our owner operators and their families to have that confidence to like we do that. We’re with a good company, and we’re gonna make it work. And you guys are the ones that are making it work every day with the phone calls you make and the people you talk to, and the rates you’ve come up with and the low G book and I mean, it’s a it’s something that is Mike’s this whole thing, tire, and I appreciate you guys doing your job what you do, because it that’s where it’s at, that’s where the money is. You’re gonna make the money. So all right, well, hey, be sure. And check out our episode we got we had free pass. Check out that if you got questions, it was a pretty good episode pre pass. The next one coming up, we actually got a customer coming in, we’re going to talk to, I believe is Chad with Alltech recycling. So gonna get a little more information about how their process works and what they do and how they work with Oakley trucking, so it can be pretty good episode there. I think so. And we got other good episodes in the works. Coming up. So everybody, be sure and listen to the Oakley podcast, do your subscribe, and comment and hit that thumbs up button that some reason mouth tells me to do that because it helps something. So helps us get out there to everybody else. But I can’t say we’ve got a lot more subscribers than we used to. So it’s coming on up every week. And I appreciate everybody doing that. But more than I never want to forget, and I’m never going to this podcast was created to communicate with our owner operators and their families. Yes, it’s turned into a little bit more. And it’s helped in recruiting and retention. But that’s the thing that it was created for us to communicate stuff like this to our owner operator. So they’re in touch with what we’re thinking and what we’re doing in here. And and I just want to continue that every week. I know not every week it happened but sometimes I struggle with some content. But this is all good stuff. And I appreciate you doing it and appreciate everybody listening to us. Let us know if you guys suggestions on things you want to wants to talk about or anything you come up with. I mean we’ll be glad to visit with you about it. Once again. Thanks for listening. We’ll talk to you next week. Thanks for listening to this episode with Oakley podcast, trucking, business and family. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate or review the show in the podcast platform of your choice and share it with a friend. We love hearing from our audience. So if you’ve got a question, comment or just want to say hello, head over to our website, the Oakley podcast.com and click the leave a comment button. We’ll get you a response soon and may even share some of the best ones here on the show. We’ll be back with a fresh episode very soon. Thanks for listening

137: PrePass: How it Works

January 18, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Don Reeves, a representative from PrePass. During the episode, Don discusses the benefits of PrePass, how it works and the details to make it a successful tool for our owner-operators.

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136: Are Warranties Necessary?

January 11, 2023

This week on the Oakley Podcast, Jeremy chats with Mike Donnelly, an expert on warranties from Murphy-Hoffmann Company (MHC) Kenworth. During the episode, Mike discusses all things warranties including important information on what to look for in warranty information, the necessity of warranties and having an advocate on your side to interpret all the details of warranty coverage. All that and more on this week’s episode.

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Year in Review: The Best Moments of 2022

January 4, 2023

On this special bonus episode of The Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett looks back at some of the best moments from 2022 on the show.

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135: Owner-Operator Highlight: Randy Kemp

December 21, 2022

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Randy Kemp, Owner-Operator at Oakley Trucking. During the episode, Randy shares his unique success story with Oakley, how he transitioned from a company driver to being an owner-operator, buying a new truck, and more.

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134: Be Heard with Adam Vazquez

December 14, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Adam Vazquez of Heard Media. The Heard team helped to get the Oakley podcast off the ground and Jeremy and Adam talk about podcasting, the expansion of social media, and more.

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133: Owner-Operator Highlight: Jay Dearing

December 7, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Jay Dearing. Jay has been with Oakley for six months and talks about his journey to becoming an owner-operator, getting TikTok famous, and more.

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132: A Word From the Captain: Charlie Johnson

November 30, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett joins Charlie Johnson, boat captain for Oakley Trucking, in the wheelhouse to discuss shipping logistics, what it’s like being a boat captain, and how the operation supports Bruce Oakley Incorporated.

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131: Freight Update with Jason Webb and Scotty Crisco

November 16, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Jason Webb and Scotty Crisco to catch you up on what’s going on here at Oakley Trucking. From freight and what to expect between now and the end of the year to working the holidays and some trailer service issues, here’s everything you need to know.

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130: Company Party Recap with Corey Huey and Kent Childers

November 9, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Corey Huey and Kent Childers to discuss what all went down at the company party that happened on October 22. From the truck and prizes to the food and band, here’s a snapshot of what a company party at Oakley Trucking is like.

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129: Owner-Operator Highlight: Mike and Wanda Durbin

November 2, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Mika and Wanda Durbin to talk about their success story with Oakley. From Wanda’s role as a truck driver’s wife to their financial freedom as a couple, this is an episode you’re not gonna want to miss!

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128: Owner-Operator Highlight: Jimmy Evans

October 26, 2022

In this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, Jeremy Kellett hands the mic over to Miles Mason, who talks to Jimmy Evans about his experience with Oakley Trucking. Together they discuss Jimmy’s experience in the Marine Corps, the novelty of things well-worn, the necessity of trucking, and much more.

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127: A Word With The Arkansas Trucking Association

September 14, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, in honor of truck driver appreciation week, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Shannon Newton to see what Arkansas does for truck drivers and how truck drivers carry this country.

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126: Oakley International with Ivan Boasher

September 7, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Ivan Boasher and Bubba Vance to hear Ivan’s story with Oakley Trucking, from his Bulgarian origins to how he helps with international trade today.

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125: A Word From Our Oklahoma Terminal

August 31, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Justin Jolly to discuss what’s going on at the Oklahoma terminal. From who’s working in the office to the ideal truck driver, tune in to learn about all the potential at Port 33.

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124: Owner-Operator Highlight: Bruce Marks

August 24, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Bruce Marks to discuss some things that played a key role in his success in becoming a truck driver. From personal action to people who played a role in his journey, here’s the story of how he became an owner-operator.

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123: Why We Work with Arrow Truck Sales

August 17, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Keith Wilson and Trae Viser to discuss used truck price trading, some examples that they’ve done, and how Oakley has partnered with Arrow Truck Sales.

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122: Freight Outlook and Customer Service

August 10, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Shane Smith and Bradley Simpson to take a look at what the rest of 2022 holds. How much freight is there? Is it slowing down or not? Here’s an inside look at what’s going on at Oakley Trucking.

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121: Owner-Operator Highlight: Tanner Sides

August 3, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Tanner Sides to hear about the YouTube channel he runs as a means to document his adventure here at Oakley. From his success story to how YouTubing helps him with his job, this owner-operator story is a little different.

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120: Orientation Explained: Randolph Rochell and Dustin Eagle

July 27, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Randolph Rochell and Dustin Eagle to talk about some details of what’s going on with orientation. From what to expect in orientation and how to get the most benefit from orientation, here’s what you need to know to be a successful owner-operator.

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119: Owner-Operator Highlight: George Gear

July 20, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by George Gear to hear about his success at Oakley. From miraculous bankruptcy recovery to making friends, learn why George is determined never to leave Oakley Trucking.

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118: Simple Steps to Improving Your Health as an Owner-Operator

July 13, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Jon Slaughter to discuss their partnership with Healthy Trucking of America. From owner-operator success stories to physical-passing help, learn about the simple steps you can take today to improve your health.

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117: Owner-Operator Highlight: Lonnie O’diam and Paul Lorimer

July 6, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Lonnie O’diam and Paul Lorimer to hear their success stories, their experience at Oakley trucking, how they came here, and why they’re still here. The conversation covers money management and owner-operator do’s and don’ts, so be sure to give it a listen.

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116: Owner Operator Highlight: Robin Parks

June 29, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Robin Parks to hear about some of the things he thought about before coming to Oakley, him making that transition, and what he’s done since he’s been here— all part of the great success story of Robin Parks.

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115: The History of the Hopper Division

June 22, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Bryan Hill to share the history of the hopper division: when it got started, how it got started, and what’s going on now. Tune in to hear how we went from nothing to the bustling division alive and well today.

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114: The Annual Company Party

June 15, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Tommy Mitchell to discuss Oakley’s annual company party. From when and where to what we’ll be doing and eating, here is everything you need to know about this renowned event.

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113: From a Welding Machine to a Trucking Company

June 8, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Mike Conny to talk about how MAC Trailers got started, the future of MAC Trailers, their relationship with Oakley, and more.

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112: Taking God’s Word to Every Truck Driver Out There

June 1, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by John Knoll and Gary Rayburn from Channel 21 Ministries to tell the story of what Lonesome Road Ministries is, how that started, and where it’s going in the future.

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111: The State of Freight and the Need for Drivers

May 25, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by operations managers Jason Webb, Bradley Simpson, and Russell Vallance to discuss the freight surcharge, high demand, responsibilities, and the critical need to communicate.

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110: Owner Operator Highlight: Shawnta Wortham’s Story

May 18, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Shawnta Wortham to talk about how she got into trucking and the success she’s found here at Oakley. Trucking may be seen as “a man’s world,” but Shawnta feels right at home.

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109: Making Sure We All Get Home Safely

May 11, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Lt. Doug Lafferty to discuss the CBSA inspection that’s coming up on May 17 and 19th, distracted driving, cameras, ELDs, and more.

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108: Health with Truck Drivers

May 4, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Dr. Steven Bennett to discuss all things physicals, truck driver health concerns, and more.

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107: Fuel: High Prices, Surcharges, Discounts, & Fraud

April 27, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Corey Huey to discuss everything from fuel prices and discounts to fuel card fraud. If you’re paying for gas (which most of you are), this episode will help you not only save money but tell you how some are actually making more.

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106: Sustaining an Owner-Operator’s Quality of Life

April 20, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Larry Ginsberg to discuss how CAG Truck Capital is helping owner-operators with everything from securing their first truck to achieving and sustaining their long-term goals.

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105: CAT Scale: Born Out of Listening to Drivers

April 13, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Heather DeBaillie, the vice president of marketing at CAT Scale to get the low down on what they do: company origins, how they’re helping drivers, their 45th-anniversary contest, and more.

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104: Recruiting the Next Generation of Drivers

April 6, 2022

In this special episode of the Oakley Podcast, we’re streaming from the Mid-America Trucking Show where host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Lindsey Trent to discuss how her company is connecting high school students to the world of trucking, changing their lives, and impacting the community.

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What Makes a “Top-Tier” Driver?

March 30, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Garrett Duch and Jackson McNabb, an End Dump and Hopper Bottom dispatcher who have been at Oakley for under two years, to hear about their jobs, how they got into trucking, what makes a “top-tier” driver, and more.

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102: Louisiana Terminal Opportunities with Scott Cowden and Jason Webb

March 23, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Scott Cowden and Jason Webb, Operations Managers at Oakley. Scott and Jason talk about the terminal in Reserve Louisiana, what opportunities exist, and the upcoming crawfish boil!

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101: From a Small Town to the Big City: Cole Kellett’s Journey

March 16, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by his eldest son, Cole Kellett, to discuss how a boy from Bologna, Arkansas got a job in New York City, some of the challenges he’s faced moving to New York City, and how the world of trucking is playing a role in what he does at his current job.

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100: Bruce Oakley Incorporated: Present Realm, Future Plans, Global Business

March 9, 2022

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett celebrates 100 episodes by welcoming back Justin Oakley, the vice president of Bruce Oakley Inc. Together they answer listener questions, discuss the future of Bruce Oakley Incorporated, and share how global events are affecting Oakley’s business.

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99: Diving Deep Into Oakley’s IT Department

March 2, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Adam Clanton and Eric Peebles to dive deep into Oakley’s IT department. They discuss several things including IT’s role in communicating with Oakley owner-operators and Oakley’s technological advancement.

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98: Answering Your Tax Questions

February 23, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Jeff Amen and Michael Schneider to answer your tax questions, discuss the benefits of ATBS as your tax service, and more.

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97: Helpful Tips and Information on Operating End Dump Trailers

February 16, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Cris Ponds and Welden Sylve to unpack operating end dump trailers. From how to prevent mistakes to required tools, this episode provides good insight for drivers who have never pulled a dump trailer before.

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96: Catching Up with the Guys from Port 33

February 9, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Richard Naus and Jay Dozier, End Dump Owner-Operators out of Oklahoma, to discuss a little bit of everything from the origin of Port 33 in Oklahoma to new technology and more.

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95: Safety News, Violation Statistics, and Trucking Accident Verdicts

February 2, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Jeremy Paul and Dustin Barnett from Oakley’s safety department to discuss trucking safety concerns, accidents Oakley has had, and more.

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94: Dry Bulk Trucking is Booming

January 26, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Oakley recruiters Dustin Eagle and Kent Childers to discuss what’s happening in the world of recruiting from what recruiters want to how many owner-operators Oakley needs and more.

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93: Truck Driver Yearly Income and How to Calculate Net Pay

January 19, 2022

In this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett shares the year-end numbers of a few owner-operators, explains settlement summaries, and more.

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92: Trucking Tips on Retirement, Free Health Help and the Outreach Program

January 12, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, Host Jeremy Kellett is joined by John Haley who is an Owner-Operator with Oakley Trucking to discuss some tips on retirement, health help, and other topics.

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91: Year in Review and Top 10 Owner-Operator Incomes at Oakley Trucking

January 5, 2022

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, Host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Jason Webb, Operations Manager at Oakley Trucking. Jeremy and Jason put a bow on 2021 and tell us what they’re looking forward to in 2022.

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90: Owner-Operator Hits $240k in One Year “Without Even Trying” at Oakley Trucking

December 22, 2021

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, Host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Joe McCullough, an Owner-Operator at Oakley Trucking. Joe shares how he’s made $240,000 in his first year at Oakley.

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89: How Much Money Do I Need to be Financially Independent?

December 15, 2021

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, Host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Scott Inman who is a Financial Advisor with GenWealth on how to get ahead and save enough to retire one day.

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88: Hot Topics in Trucking

December 8, 2021

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, Host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Scotty Crisco, Operations Manager at Oakley Trucking to discuss some of the pressing issues facing Oakley drivers today.

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87: Old School vs New School

December 1, 2021

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, Host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Winston Guest (old school) and Brent Schneider (new school) to discuss how things have changed over their years at Oakley.

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86: Happy Thanksgiving!

November 24, 2021

During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, Host Jeremy Kellett discusses Thanksgiving traditions at Oakley.

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85: What’s It Take to Get the Best Drivers Out There?

November 17, 2021

On this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett discusses what it takes to get the best drivers around. He is joined by Aaron Mowery and Kyle Jernigan from Randall-Reilly, an advertising firm from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, that provides data-driven solutions for sales and marketing in construction, trucking, and more. Aaron works as the VP of Strategic Accounts and Kyle Jernigan is a Digital Marketing Strategist, and together they have more than 30 years of experience helping organizations recruit truck drivers.

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84: What’s it Like Riding with an Owner-Operator for a Week? PT. 2

November 10, 2021

This week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast is the second episode exploring life on the road with owner-operators from a dispatcher’s point of view. Host Jeremy Kellett is joined by dispatchers William Lewis and Sawyer Floyd to discuss their week in the truck. Owner-operator Bobby Taylor stopped by the show as well to tell of his experience driving Sawyer around.

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83: A Special Surprise for Two of Our Owner-Operators

November 3, 2021

In this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett and dispatchers Russell Vallance and Brent Epley bring owner-operators Dean Baylor and Randy Fulmer, from the hopper and end-dump divisions, respectively, onto the show for a special surprise—to tell them that they’ve been selected as their Owner Operators of the Year!

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82: What You Need to Know About Trucking Insurance

October 27, 2021

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett dives into the overlap of trucking and insurance with Trent Tillman, executive vice president of the transportation division at TrueNorth in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Insurance can be complicated to deal with, but Trent offers tips for how to avoid the frustrations.

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81: What Makes a Great Truck Driver?

October 20, 2021

This week on the Oakley Podcast, guest hosts Corey Huey, Dustin Eagle, and Kent Childers dive into a discussion about what makes a great owner-operator and what kinds of drivers Oakley wants to recruit.

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80: What’s it Like Riding with an Owner-Operator for a Week?

October 13, 2021

On this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett sits down with dispatchers Alex Kin and Hunter Horton. Alex and Hunter spent the week on a ride-along with an Oakley owner-operator and are back to recount their time on the road.

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79: How’s the Trucking Business? Insights from Oakley Trucking

October 6, 2021

This week on the Oakley Podcast, operations managers Jason Webb, Scotty Crisco, and Bradley Simpson join host Jeremy Kellett for an in-depth discussion into what’s going on in the dry bulk industry and the trucking industry as a whole.

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78: Why Are There So Few Female Owner-Operators in the Trucking Industry?

September 29, 2021

This week on the Oakley Podcast, guest hosts Corey Huey and Dustin Eagle talk with Alisha Leard, an owner-operator with Oakley in the pneumatic division, about the current state of the trucking industry for female owner-operators.

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77: Arrow Truck Sales: Relationships Mean A Lot

September 22, 2021

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Arrow Truck Sales branch manager Trae Viser and truck salesman Keith Wilson.

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76: Expressing Our Thanks to Owner-Operators During Truck Driver Appreciation Week

September 15, 2021

In honor of Truck Driver Appreciation Week, this episode of the Oakley Podcast expresses gratitude for our amazing owner-operators. Host Jeremy Kellett chats with Jason Webb, Scotty Crisco, Nick Delaney, Shane Smith, Bryan Hill, Roger Carson, and Dustin Barnett and asked each guest three questions:

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75: Updates on ELD’s and Other Safety Information

September 8, 2021

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett sits down with Oakley’s Roger Carson, safety director, and Dustin Barnett, safety manager, to get to the bottom of rumors about ELD changes at Oakley.

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74: What Do the Young Bucks Think About Trucking?

September 1, 2021

In this week’s episode of Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by a special guest, his son Clay Kellett to discuss his perspective on how young people today view the trucking industry. Corey Huey from recruiting also joins in on the conversation.

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73: Pilot Travel Center Benefits with Jason Holland

August 25, 2021

Today on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Jason Holland, account manager at Pilot Flying J Travels Centers. They talk about the benefits Pilot Flying J offers to Oakley drivers and what separates them from the competition.

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72: Oakley Trucking Through the Eyes of a Customer

August 18, 2021

This week’s Oakley Podcast is the first episode to feature one of Oakley’s customers as a guest on the show. Host Jeremy Kellett and Oakley Oklahoma terminal manager Justin Jolly are joined by Crystal Clements, production planner at Malarkey Roofing in Oklahoma City. Crystal offers her unique perspective from a family-owned business that’s an Oakley customer.

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71: The Nuts and Bolts of Oakley’s Shop

August 11, 2021

This week on the Oakley Podcast, Jeremy Kellett talks with Oakley shop manager Toby Bishop. With more than 900 trailers and five bays, Toby discusses juggling Oakley’s shop, handling inspections, washes, blowers, and more.

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70: What does Oakley Dispatch Have to Say?

August 4, 2021

This week on the Oakley Podcast, Jeremy Kellett talks with Oakley’s Nick Crisco, an operations manager, and Manuel Carvajal, an end-dump dispatcher. Nick and Manuel provide a behind-the-scenes look at how things work at Oakley in the end-dump division.

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69: Where Are All the Trucks?

July 28, 2021

This week on the Oakley Podcast, Jeremy Kellett and Dustin Eagle get the low-down on the industry-wide truck and parts shortage from MHC Kenworth branch manager Todd Venable and salesman Adam Campbell.

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68: What Does It Take to Get Leased on with Oakley Trucking?

July 21, 2021

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Dustin Eagle and Kent Childers, recruiters at Oakley, to discuss what it takes to get leased on with Oakley Trucking.

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67: Have you ever made a bad trucking decision?

July 14, 2021

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett and Dustin Eagle, one of Oakley’s head recruiters, talks with Oakley owner-operators Gary Sizemore (pneumatic division) and Matt Naveau (hopper-bottom division). Both Gary and Matt had left their jobs at Oakley at one point, but they’ve since returned to Oakley and they discuss what brought them back.

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66: Arkansas Trucking Association, How Are They Making Trucking Better?

July 7, 2021

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett talks with Shannon Newton, president of the Arkansas Trucking Association. Together they discuss the state of the trucking industry today.

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65: Finding Success as an Owner-Operator with Ted Jansen

June 30, 2021

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett catches up with Ted Jansen who has been pulling an end dump for years. Ted, who used to serve aboard a US Navy submarine, feels right at home behind the wheel as an owner-operator for Oakley. Jeremy and Ted discuss how to find success while driving with Oakley.

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64: Do you Believe in Miracles? A Must Listen

June 23, 2021

On this special episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett visits with Jeff and Lorita Bledsoe about Jeff’s 96-day stay in the hospital with Covid and his tough road to recovery. Jeff, a hopper-bottom owner-operator with Oakley, continues to recognize blessings in his life despite the incredible trial he went through.

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63: How Can You Afford a Brand New 2022 Peterbilt?

June 16, 2021

Focusing on trucking, business, and family, this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast features Oakley end-dump owner-operator Anthony Fowler and his wife Alicia. Host Jeremy Kellett sits down with them and discusses Anthony’s eight-year career at Oakley, married life, having a farm in Mississippi and more.

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62: Oakley Fertilizer, The Ins and Outs

June 9, 2021

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett talks with Bubba Vance, vice president of fertilizer at Oakley. This conversation highlights one of the many Oakley divisions besides trucking.

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61: Success as an Owner-Operator Husband-Wife Team

June 2, 2021

Owner-operator Brian Gann and his wife Beverly Boliek join host Jeremy Kellett on this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast. Brian is making the change from end-dump to pneumatics and has had his wife Beverly on the road with him on a regular basis. Together they share stories of their experiences as a team out on the road and discuss how that has impacted their marriage.

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60: What’s Happening at Oakley?

May 26, 2021

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Oakley operations managers Shane Smith and Scott Cowden to get updates about what’s new at Oakley, moving to the new office, discussing freight and safety, reading customer reviews and more.

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59: Partners That Take Care of Owner-Operators on the Road with Jeff Porter and Landon Urban

May 19, 2021

On this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett talks with Jeff Porter, fleet sales manager at LubeZone, and Landon Urban, general manager at AllStar Truck Service.

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58: Making the Move to Oakley Trucking with Sam Muntean, Owner-Operator

May 12, 2021

On this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett talks with Sam Muntean, an owner-operator from the hopper-bottom division. Sam made the switch from being a company driver elsewhere to being an owner-operator at Oakley. Since then, he has helped recruit several drivers to the Oakley team.

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57: If You Want the Best, You’ve Got to Pay for the Best

May 5, 2021

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett talks with listeners about the pay raise awarded to all owner-operators this May and discusses how Oakley combats the challenges of retaining drivers in an industry with high turnover.

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56: Honest Talk with Oakley Trucking Owner Operators

April 28, 2021

On this week’s edition of The Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett catches up with Greg Cink and Jerald Hogan, owner-operators from the hopper-bottom division. They provide a behind-the-scenes look at what being an owner-operator with Oakley is like.

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55: Taking the Show on the Road to Oklahoma with Kyle Haney and Colton Campbell

April 21, 2021

This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett takes the show on the road to Oakley Port 33 in Oklahoma. He meets up with Kyle Haney and Colton Campbell to get the low-down on the dump division there.

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54: Would the PRO Act Be Harmful to Owner-Operators?

April 14, 2021

On this week’s edition of The Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett sits down with Mike Matousek and Lewie Pugh, the manager of government affairs and executive vice president, respectively, of OOIDA (Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association). OOIDA provides a voice, representation, education, information, benefits and savings for truck drivers. Together they discuss the ramifications that the PRO Act has for drivers.

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53: What is the latest with the D.O.T? Plus Inside Info on LubeZone

April 7, 2021

On this week’s edition of The Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined first by Jeff Porter, Fleet Sales Manager at LubeZone, and then by Lt. Doug Laferty from the Arkansas DOT. In the show’s first segment, Jeff explains the services offered at LubeZone locations, and in the second segment, Lt. Laferty is back on the show to discuss trends and regulations.

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52: How Do You Fight a Citation or CSA Violation?

March 31, 2021

On this week’s edition of The Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett talks with Brad Klepper, president of Driver Legal Plan, a national law firm dedicated to protecting commercial truck drivers and their companies.

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51: How Much Money Can Safety Violations Cost You?

March 24, 2021

On this week’s edition of The Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett talks with Jeremy Paul and Dustin Barnett from Oakley’s safety department. Together they discuss how much safety violations can cost owner-operators in the long run.

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50: How is Oakley’s Orientation? New Driver Perspective

March 17, 2021

On this week’s edition of The Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett talks with drivers Rupert Deal, Tommy Dean, and John Dawson about undergoing the orientation process at Oakley.

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49: How Can I Stay Healthy as a Truck Driver?

March 10, 2021

On this week’s edition of The Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett speaks with Jon Slaughter, CEO of Healthy Trucking of America. Healthy Trucking of America provides free health and wellness services for drivers.

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48: Gearhead Talk with Mark Steck

March 3, 2021

On this week’s edition of The Oakley Podcast, Mark Steck, heavy duty truck account manager and truck guru, is back on the show for a gearhead conversation with host Jeremy Kellett. They discuss how there’s so much to consider when buying a truck and then maintaining that truck.

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47: How to Save Money on Your Taxes as an Owner Operator

February 24, 2021

On this week’s edition of The Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Jeff Amen and Michael Schneider, the vice president and tax manager, respectively, at ATBS, a tax and accounting firm for owner-operator truck drivers. Together they cover a lot of ground related to preparing taxes for 2020, knowing how to avoid tax surprises, and how to maximize deductions.

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46: Which Division at Oakley is Right for You?

February 17, 2021

In this week’s episode of The Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett hangs out with Scott Cowden, operations manager, to compare different divisions at Oakley: hopper bottom, end-dump, and pneumatic. They highlight details from each division to help drivers consider which division might be the best fit for them.

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45: Do you want to make an extra $5,000?

February 10, 2021

On this week’s episode of The Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett sits down with Corey Huey and Kent Childers from recruiting and Scott Cowden, operations manager, to discuss the details of Oakley’s referral program. For Oakley, finding new drivers is very important and the referral program rewards owner-operators who can help recruit new members to the team.

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44: How Has COVID-19 Changed Trucking?

February 3, 2021

On this week’s episode of The Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett talks with Oakley operations manager Colby Foster to take a look at some of the ways that COVID-19 has changed trucking, both positively and negatively.

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43: Five Important Steps to Consider When Becoming an Owner-Operator with Dustin Eagle

January 27, 2021

On this week’s episode of The Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Oakley recruiter Dustin Eagle to discuss the process of becoming an owner-operator with Oakley. Together they identify mistakes that people have made in the past and point out the best steps to take to succeed as an Oakley owner-operator.

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42: Listen to what a D.O.T. Officer Has to Say About Truck Drivers with Lieutenant Doug Lafferty of Arkansas Highway Police

January 20, 2021

On this week’s episode of The Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett sits down with Lieutenant Doug Lafferty of the Arkansas Highway Police to find out what he looks for when dealing with truck drivers as they come across the scale, avoiding CSA violations, and staying safe on the road.

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41: From Pre-Trip Inspections to Retirement with Randy Rymel

January 13, 2021

The Oakley Podcast is back for its first episode of 2021 as host Jeremy Kellett talks with Randy Rymel, safety manager at Oakley. Randy joins the show to talk about pre-trip inspections and about what’s next for him as he moves into retirement.

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Re-Air: Continuing a Family Legacy with Justin Oakley

January 6, 2021

*From time to time we’ll re-air a previous episode of the show that our newer audience may have missed.*

Our pilot episode of the show is an interview with Justin Oakley, one of the leaders of our family business. On this episode, we talk to Justin about his view on the family legacy and what he sees coming in the future for family-owned trucking companies like ours.

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40: Wishing You and Yours a Very Merry Christmas

December 23, 2020

2020 has been one heck of a year. Host Jeremy Kellett encourages our listeners to think back to good holiday memories and make some new ones this year as he wishes a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all.

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39: The Life of a Wife of an Oakley Driver

December 16, 2020

On this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Sherry Eads and Laura Floyd, wives of Oakley owner-operators to find out what life is like from their perspective as they manage their own jobs, being moms and keeping in touch with their husbands while they’re on the road.

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38: Do you know how much money you are making at Oakley?

December 9, 2020

On this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by operations manager Nick Dulaney to discuss how much owner-operators can net after calculating base pay, expenses, and bonuses.

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37: Meeting Dispatch (Part II)

December 2, 2020

On this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett sits down with Peyton Clark and Alex Kin, dispatchers from the end-dump division. With 80 drivers between them, Peyton and Alex help make sure their owner-operators are taken care of, getting miles, and getting to spend time at home.

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36: Meeting Dispatch (Part I)

November 25, 2020

On this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett sits down with Kell Shenep and Austin Allen, dispatchers from the end-dump division. Kell and Austin are responsible for nearly 100 owner-operators and they share their behind the scenes stories of dispatching.

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35: Announcing Our Oakley Owner/Operators of the Year

November 18, 2020

On today’s special edition of the podcast, Jeremy and Corey host the Oakley Owner-Operators of the Year award show where dispatchers from each division announce their honorees. Each dispatcher has in the ballpark of 50-60 owner-operators and they have to choose an honoree who has excelled in on-time pickups and deliveries, customer service, safety, having a positive attitude, good communication, and keeping up with paperwork among other positive traits. As Owner-Operator of the Year, the winners receive a plaque and decal, free truck washes for a year, and lots of bragging rights.

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34: Preventing Contaminations

November 11, 2020

Jeremy Kellett provides an important update on this additional episode of the Oakley Podcast and is joined by dispatchers Randy Caldwell and Clayton Smith and owner-operators David Carothers and Donnie Williams for the discussion. The announcement highlights the importance of preventing contamination to customer products.

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33: What’s It Like Working in the Pneumatics Division?

November 4, 2020

On today’s Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett talks with Bradley Simpson and Hunter Horton from the pneumatic division. Bradley and Hunter share inside information about the pneumatic division—freight, customer service, retention and more.

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32: What’s the Outlook on Freight for the Dry Bulk Industry?

October 28, 2020

In today’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellet is joined by Jared Flinn, co-founder of BulkLoads.com. BulkLoads.com connects shippers, carriers, and brokers together and has a network of more than 10,000 members that moved approximately $7 billion in commodities in 2019. Together they discuss the outlook on the dry bulk industry.

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31: Recruiting Roundtable

October 21, 2020

In this episode of the Oakley Podcast, Corey Huey fills in as host and leads a roundtable discussion with Kent Childers, Dustin Eagle and Jeremy Paul from the recruiting department. This team has decades of experience and has heard just about every question there is about working at Oakley.

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30: How to Avoid Distractions and Stay Safe on the Road

October 14, 2020

In this episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Oakley safety manager Randy Rymel to discuss avoiding distractions on the road. With 71 percent of truck accidents happening as a result of distracted driving, it’s important to make a plan to keep your head in the game while on the road.

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29: Conversation with Duck Dynasty’s Al Robertson

October 7, 2020

On this week’s Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by a special guest, Al Robertson, the oldest son in the Duck Dynasty family. Jeremy and Al go way back, and they catch up on old times and bring us up to speed on what the Duck Commander crew has been up to since their show ended. Their conversation focuses on new adventures, faith and family.

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28: Talking Tire Discounts with Bryan Walden

September 30, 2020

In this episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett goes over updates from Oakley departments and talks with Bryan Walden about capitalizing on tire discounts. With tires costing several hundred dollars a pop, it’s important to take advantage of the different discount programs that are available. Highlights from the episode include:

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27: Insights from Peterbilt Steve

September 23, 2020

In this episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett talks with “Peterbilt Steve” Steve Carbone from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who has one of the best 389 Peterbilt inventories in the country. Their discussion highlights how he manages his business, how he prepares a truck to sell and how he’s built up his inventory.

Need to Know with Vickie Chastain: Swapping divisions to change jobs without leaving the company (1:20)
Negotiating fuel discount for drivers and breaking down the different discounts (3:42)
Getting to know Peterbilt Steve (18:55)
Getting a truck ready for sale (26:17)
Providing quality customer service after a sale (31:52)
Peterbilt Steve’s background with racing and getting in touch with him (34:20)

Thank you Peterbilt Steve for joining us on today’s show.

Oakley Trucking is a family-owned and operated trucking company headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. For more information, check out our show website: podcast.bruceoakley.com

26: Discussing Driver Appreciation Week and the Role a Driver Plays in Everyday Life

September 16, 2020

In this episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett talks with operations manager Nick Dulaney about all the ways daily life is impacted by truck drivers in light of Driver Appreciation Week.

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25: Driver Turnover and Retention

September 9, 2020

Jason Webb and Scotty Crisco, load coordinators on the end-dump division, sit down with host Jeremy Kellett to discuss retention and driver turnover in the latest episode of the Oakley Podcast. Topics talked about include:

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24: The Oakley Roundtable (Part II)

September 2, 2020

In the second part of our roundtable discussion, Jerry Dunbar, Robert Tennie and Freddie Baker join host Jeremy Kellett, director of recruiting at Oakley Trucking, to discuss the state of truck driving in 2020.

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The Oakley Roundtable (Part I)

August 26, 2020

Jerry Dunbar, Robert Tennie and Freddie Baker join host Jeremy Kellett, director of recruiting at Oakley Trucking, to discuss the state of truck driving in 2020. The roundtable guests have more than 110 years of driving experience combined. The three owner-operators represent different segments of Oakley. Jerry comes from the hopper division, Robert from the end-dump division, and Freddie from the pneumatic division.

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22: Catching Up with the Hopper Division

August 19, 2020

Hopper dispatchers and coordinators Russell Vallance and Bryan Hill join host Jeremy Kellett, director of recruiting at Oakley Trucking, to discuss several topics regarding the hopper division.

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21: Truck Trades, Valuations, and Choosing the Best Truck for You and Your Budget

August 12, 2020

In this episode, Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting at Oakley Trucking, is joined by Mark Steck who is the Heavy Duty Account Manager at Corpus Christi Freightliner/Western Star. Jeremy and Mark discuss a number of topics, including:

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20: Important Safety Procedures to Follow if You Are in an Accident

August 5, 2020

In this episode, Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting at Oakley Trucking, is joined by Roger Carson and Dustin Barnett from the Safety Department here at Oakley.

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19: Discussing One of Oakley’s terminals, Port 33 in OK

July 29, 2020

In this episode, Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting at Oakley Trucking, is joined by Justin Jolly and Justin Oakley.

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18: Exploring the World of an Oakley Dispatcher

July 22, 2020

In this episode, Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting at Oakley Trucking, is joined by Nick Dulaney and Clayton Smith from the dispatch department here at Oakley. Nick and Clayton explain how dispatchers are trained to be the best communicators for our Owner Operators:

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17: Our Partnership with MAC Trailers

July 15, 2020

In this episode, Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting at Oakley Trucking, is joined by Mike Conny and David Edwards from MAC Trailers. The duo discusses how they began working with Oakley and all the unique features of the Oakley Trailer products:

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16: The Recruiting Process at Oakley with Dustin Eagle and Kent Childers

July 8, 2020

In this episode, Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting at Oakley Trucking, is joined by Dustin Eagle and Kent Childers of Oakley’s Recruiting department to talk about the recruiting process at Oakley. From the initial phone call with recruiting to orientation and everything in between. They discuss:

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15: Safety Tips and Explanations with Roger Carson

July 1, 2020

In this episode, Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting at Oakley Trucking, is joined by Roger Carson. Roger is the Head of Safety at Oakley Trucking and has been part of the family since 1994. They discuss:

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14: Riding with Randolph “Slow Motion” Rochell

June 24, 2020

In this episode, Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting at Oakley Trucking, is joined by Randolph “Slow Motion” Rochell. Randolph has been working with Oakley for 25 years. He shares his story with us and discusses his experience working with Oakley.

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13: Insights from Dump Dispatch with Jason Webb and Scotty Crisco (Part 2)

June 17, 2020

In this episode, Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting at Oakley Trucking, is joined by Jason Webb and Scotty Crisco for the second half of their conversation.

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12: Insights from Dump Dispatch with Jason Webb and Scotty Crisco (Part 1)

June 10, 2020

In this episode, Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting at Oakley Trucking, is joined by Jason Webb and Scotty Crisco from dispatch at Oakley trucking.

Jason and Scotty talk about how the dispatch department works, how loads are booked, dealing with customer requirements, and share their personal histories with Oakley Trucking.

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11: Answering Your Tax Questions with Jeff Amen and Michael Schneider of ATBS

June 3, 2020

In this episode, Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting at Oakley Trucking, is joined by Jeff Amen and Michael Schneider from American Truck Business Services (ATBS).

Jeff and Michael give us an update on the PPE loans, provide guidance on the best ways to file taxes, and talk about starting their own business:

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10: Truck Trades, Permits, and the Oakley Calendar with Vickie Chastain and Wendy Peeks

May 27, 2020

In this episode, Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting at Oakley Trucking, is joined by Vickie Chastian and Wendy Peeks from our Recruiting Team.

Vickie and Wendy get into the details of trading trucks, some benefits for our owner/operators and their families, and filing your 2290:

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09: Exploring our Great Partnership with Murphy-Hoffman Company with Todd Venable and Mike Donnelly

May 20, 2020

In this episode, Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting at Oakley Trucking, is joined by Todd Venable and Mike Donnely from MHC Kenworth.

MHC Kenworth has been a trusted partner of Oakley Trucking for the past 25 years. The guys talk about working with Kenworth and how they can help our Owner/Operators :

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08: Ways the Shop Serves Our Owner/Operators with Toby Bishop

May 13, 2020

In this episode, Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting at Oakley Trucking, is joined by Toby Bishop. Toby is the Shop Foreman for Oakley Trucking.

Toby is a 21 year veteran at Oakley Trucking and talks about the new services we’ve got for drivers, how to best use the Shop services, and preventative measures drivers can take for their trucks:

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07: The Impact of COVID-19 on Freight with Nick Dulaney and Colby Foster

May 6, 2020

In this episode, Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting at Oakley Trucking, is joined by Nick Dulaney and Colby Foster who work in Operations at Oakley.

Nick and Colby share some updates on the reality of the trucking market as a result of the COVID-19 slowdown, and what they see on the horizon:

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06: My Journey to Oakley with Daryl Hobbs

April 29, 2020

In this episode, Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting at Oakley Trucking, is joined by Owner-Operator Daryl Hobbs.

Daryl shares his transition from a Company Driver to being an Owner-Operator within the Oakley family. He describes his experience working with Oakley, and how his career has benefitted as a result:

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05: Important Safety Reminders for Oakley Owner/Operators with Randy Rymel

April 22, 2020

In this episode, Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting at Oakley Trucking, talks with Randy Rymel.

Randy has been in trucking since the late ‘70s, and a member of the Oakley family for the past 12 years. He joins us to discuss the CSA program and its effect on our drivers:

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04: One of Our Own Battling Coronavirus

April 15, 2020

In this episode, Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting at Oakley Trucking, talks with Todd, one of our owner/operators, about his battle with COVID-19 and his recovery.

Todd shares his experience battling from COVID-19, how he got tested on the road, and his journey to recovery:

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03: CARES Act & Tax Implications with Todd Amen

April 8, 2020

Welcome to Episode 3 of The Oakley Podcast!

In this episode, Jeremy interviews Todd Amen, Founder, President and CEO of American Truck Business Services (ATBS). ATBS is the largest owner-operator business services provider in the United States and has served nearly 200,000 owner-operators. Todd and his brothers sold their trucking and logistics company in 1998 and subsequently started ATBS. Their charter is to help owner-operators make more money and pay less taxes.

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Another Update to Owner/Operators as to the COVID-19 Pandemic

April 3, 2020

In this episode, Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting at Oakley Trucking, talks with Nick Dulaney to give additional updates on the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and how the company is dealing with changes in recent weeks.

Oakley Trucking is a family-owned and operated trucking company headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. For more information, check out our show website: podcast.bruceoakley.com

02: Exploring the Expansion of Oakley’s Facilities with Tommy Mitchell

April 1, 2020

In this episode, we sit down with Tommy Mitchell, office and accounting manager at Oakley Trucking to answer a lot of questions about our expansion and the new facilities we have.

Oakley Trucking is a family-owned and operated trucking company headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. For more information, check out our show website: podcast.bruceoakley.com

Update to Owner/Operators as to the Coronavirus Pandemic

March 25, 2020

In this episode, Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting at Oakley Trucking, gives important updates on the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and how the company is dealing with changes in recent weeks.

Oakley Trucking is a family-owned and operated trucking company headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. For more information, check out our show website: podcast.bruceoakley.com

01: Continuing a Family Legacy with Justin Oakley

March 18, 2020

Welcome to Episode 1 of The Oakley Podcast!

Oakley Trucking is a family-owned and operated trucking company headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. For more information, check out our show website: podcast.bruceoakley.com

00: Welcome to The Oakley Podcast

March 11, 2020

Welcome to The Oakley Podcast where we discuss all the latest news and updates relating to trucking, business, and family.

This show is brought to you by Oakley Trucking headquartered here in North Little Rock, Arkansas. We’re a family-owned and operated trucking company, and we’re excited to begin to share a bit more from behind the curtain here at Oakley HQ.

To keep up to date with what we’ve got going on, be sure to subscribe to our show on any major podcast platform. Or, feel free to head over to podcast.bruceoakley.com to follow along and leave some feedback for the show.

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