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.
Key topics in today’s conversation include:
- Oakley Update (2:34)
- The freight surcharge (5:30)
- High demand (6:37)
- Particularly abundant areas (10:10)
- Top of mind responsibilities (14:04)
- Biggest daily issues (21:10)
- Hauling close to 80,000 pounds (27:27)
- Opportunities to work (34:02)
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
Bradley Simpson 0:00
From the time we walk in to the time I go to sleep and even when I’m asleep, I’ll wake up and see people just begging for trucks anywhere and everywhere.
Jeremy Kellett 0:19
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, there is Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting here at Oakley Trucking and I’m your host for this podcast. And this is episode 111. And so on today’s podcast, I’m joined with some guys from operations and dispatch. And we’re going to talk a lot of different things to give you some insight on what takes place up in this building. I call it the brains of Oakley trucking up in here and we’re going to talk to three of the head brains of inherent and see give you a good idea of like the freight outlook, maybe you can touch on the freight surcharge is going on right now. What customers are, are wanting and what they’re seeing and talk about customer service and driver and responsibilities or responsibilities that are expected out to you guys, too. So we got a little bit of everything coming up. But first before we get right to that let’s hear from Arrow Truck Sales, our sponsor.
Keith Wilson at Arrow Truck Sales in Springfield, Missouri is currently offering $1,000 off your first month’s payment when you finance with transport funding, or $1,000 off the truck price if you bring your own financing. They’re also discounting the cost of an extended warranty by $500. Arrow Truck Sales has been a longtime partner with Oakley Trucking and that’s because they specialize in first-time truck buyers, they don’t do any leases, they have the best-used trucks money can buy (because used trucks is all they do, they don’t sell any new trucks), and the biggest reason that Arrow and Oakley are partners is service after the sale. It is very important to us at Oakley that when we refer you to a company, that they are a good company with good people, they do what they say, and they understand our requirements. So give Keith a call at 573-216-6047 for a good used truck and tell him you heard about it on the Oakley podcast.
Okay, one note before we crank off with you guys, today’s May the 20th. This is Friday. So this episode is actually going to come out next Wednesday and so it’s all fresh stuff just so y’all know out there. But one thing that we did, we’ve had some phone calls on, Corey sent out a email about EFS and getting a notification when the driver fuels. So we’ve had I mean, this is the central part of it. We were trying we had fraud, we had an episode a few episodes back about EFS fraud. So we’ve gotten with EFS and gotten with our IT department. And so when you use that card, you’re gonna get a text notification, saying that you just use that car. And if you get a notification and you didn’t use the card, you need to be making a phone call up here to your dispatcher or to Corey because that means somebody just gotten fuel using your information. So you get the fuel, you should get a notification. If you get a notification you did not feel pick up the phone, pick up the phone and let’s shut the card off so simple as that. We think that’ll help us a whole lot take care of some of the EFS fraud.
So I’ve got Bradley Simpson, Jason Webb, and Russell Vallance in here with me today in a portable way from the desk and we’re going to talk a little bit about operations and what’s going on here. How’re you guys doing today? Good and good everybody just thrilled to be up here and doing a podcast with me and my little break from action they’re actually all you guys have already been in here once at least once. I know Bradley, we did one. I don’t know. Who’d we do one with? A dispatch?
Bradley Simpson 4:19
Me and Hunter and then me and I think Scotty and Jason.
Jeremy Kellett 4:23
Oh, you went two times. Russell’s one or two times?
Russell Vallance 4:26
Two or three times.
Jeremy Kellett 4:27
Man. And Webb, I can even count how many—
Jason Webb 4:30
Yeah, three or four, I think.
Jeremy Kellett 4:32
So good. You guys know what you’re doing. You know what’s going on. Well, I appreciate y’all doing and I want to take this opportunity because it get all y’all together and let’s give our drivers no idea what’s going on. At Oakley trucking and what customers are talking about? Well, we need drivers to hear things that are important right now. And this is pretty fresh. So we’re doing this on Friday and it comes out next Wednesday. So bring some good information. One of our sign out of slack Getting his freight surcharge. I get asked a lot about it. It’s a month-to-month deal that we’re doing 20 cents a mile on all miles. And we started that back. I forgot when we actually started. Not not, what few months, six months ago, maybe six months ago, quelling anyway, it’s a fright being so good, but we know it’s not gonna last. So hopefully it will, we’ll never have to take it back. But what I was input on the frights surcharge, Webb?
Jason Webb 5:29
Well, I mean, first of all, and we’ve said this before: it starts and ends with the owner operator here. So the reason for the freight surcharge is the great job the guys are doing out on the road every day and doing a job where we can go get that extra money that we can pass along to the guys. And so how long is this going to go? I hope it goes for about another 25, 30 years but, in all reality, things kind of ebb and flow and it’s going to come back a little bit. So we don’t have the answer. One thing I would say to the guy is make hay right now while the sun’s shining. And everybody’s got stuff to do on the weekend, and we understand that but, if you’ve got a weekend where you can work and haul an extra load or work a Saturday and make that extra money, well now’s the time because it’s definitely there.
Jeremy Kellett 6:28
Well, a lot of it’s just from the abundance of freight and customer demand. Are we still seeing high demand?
Jason Webb 6:36
Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Jeremy Kellett 6:37
So Bradley’s pneumatic division, Russell’s Hopper division, Jason is end dump division. So what’s the demand like, Bradley, in the pneumatics?
Bradley Simpson 6:47
Hard to explain, really. You sit there and get to see it every day. But it’s there’s no stopping it. It’s unreal. It’s fun time we walk into the time I go to sleep. And even when I’m asleep, I wake up and see stuff just people just begging for, for drugs anywhere and everywhere. And that stuff from people I’ve never talked to, and people I talk to every single day since I’ve worked here, so. So a lot of new customers. Yeah, there are all kinds of new requests that come in all the time even. You know that these guys talk to asking me and Randy and the guys and pneumatics if we can help out and it’s been overwhelming, it’s a lot, there’s so much that we can do. And that kind of goes back to that freight surcharge. I mean, helping pay these drivers in and get them more money so we can get more drivers and help some of these people out.
Jeremy Kellett 7:38
Pick up some of these loads. Same thing in hopper, Russell?
Russell Vallance 7:43
Same thing. We see a lot of our regular customers. Also, one more than they normally would get probably, and a lot of cases double what they normally get on a daily or weekly basis. And it puts a lot of pressure on us and the drivers and we and we just need more of them and more guys working weekends, because there’s a lot of weekend work right now to do and it’s just a good, good time to take advantage of it, like Jason said, Make hay while the sun shine and because one day it’ll slow down at some point, but hopefully not anytime soon.
Jeremy Kellett 8:18
Yeah. Yeah. Hope that’s a long ways ahead of us because it’s nice being able to do this, and it’s frustrating a little bit too. but having the freight is a big part of the equation.
Jason Webb 8:32
I know on the end dump side we spin, we turned down a lot more work than we take rent from people that we want to be working for and people that we have worked for in the past, and we’re in a situation or on our, you don’t want to promise something that you can deliver on. And we talk about recruiting cards, and we offer that recruiting program, and, and this is why because we could run I know, in the end ups, I could say the same thing for the pneumatics and hoppers and I’m not involved in that every day. In the end off, we could run 100 more trucks right now today, no kidding, and probably still be turning stuff away. I mean, that whole boss guy, those pneumatics and hoppers.
Russell Vallance 9:21
Same, I think. 100 easily, just in our division. I’m sure Bradley would say 100+.
Bradley Simpson 9:27
Yeah, it’s same way for us. It’s just unreal. It’s so many people offering dedicated stuff for and that’s what owner-operators want to dedicated staff, but we just can’t, can’t handle it just because we have the everyday stuff that we do.
Jeremy Kellett 9:43
Yeah, it’s a great problem to have he to have that much business, ya know, and just I guess so drivers understand our frustration, as Jason said, you get that opportunity where man you’d like to, you’ve been wanting to haul for these customers. You’d like to take No more of that business but you can’t face it. You just can’t do it because you don’t have the trucks to do it. Which am I? It’s a little frustrating but it’s part of it. It’s what we do. So freight’s looking good. Any particular areas where freight is more abundant than other? Start with you, Bradley, in pneumatics.
Bradley Simpson 10:19
Louisiana, it’s a huge win for us. Houston area up here in Arkansas is pretty big Georgia. That’s a good one.
Jeremy Kellett 10:30
Is that where a lot of the freights coming out of those places, going to all over?
Bradley Simpson 10:34
Yeah yeah. Coming out going anywhere and everywhere. There are short local runs and their stuff that goes cross country or halfway across. There’s the yeah, those are hotspots for freight coming out. Around here, we have all kinds of opportunities for, for local runs, working for our fertilizer division, doing salt and fertilizer, and really, all kinds of stuff.
Jeremy Kellett 10:58
What about hoppers, Russell?
Russell Vallance 11:00
It’s kind of week to week with the demands, to be honest with you. But asking me today, out of North Carolina, it’s pretty much wide open right now, going to Georgia, Florida, few places in Georgia actually slowed down just a little bit. And it turned back on turn back on, hey, starting back on and we got stuff coming out here going to Georgia coming out of Georgia, come back over to Arkansas and Texas.
Jeremy Kellett 11:26
So anywhere from Oklahoma and North Carolina.
Russell Vallance 11:28
Yeah, from Dallas to Oklahoma City and everything back east as well.
Jeremy Kellett 11:36
We’ve gained some trucks out of North Carolina over the last year. Is that looking still looking promising you think out there?
Russell Vallance 11:43
Looks to be, yeah.
Jeremy Kellett 11:45
That’s a dump area, too.
Jason Webb 11:46
Oh, yeah. Yeah, we’re leaving around a lot of dumps out of North Carolina, South Carolina all the way up these coasts. I was sitting there thinking while these guys were talking where the specific needs were for in dumps, and I’ve run out rain right here. Because I’ve got Louisiana, St. Louis, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Alabama, Oklahoma.
Jeremy Kellett 12:13
That’s just all over.
Russell Vallance 12:14
Yeah, I know I heard Jason one day that they had 31 loads, the next day that they were trying to cover out of Alabama alone to handle that’s probably Googling for them.
Jason Webb 12:26
Yeah, so it’s all over the place. And there’s a lot of opportunity there. You can put stuff together and nicely have like a dedicated thing, but kind of have a circle, we can kind of come up with where a guy could load something out for one customer load something back for another customer, which have the trucks, that’s kind of what it all circles back to is we’ve got to have the trucks all the loads mean, rather than Russell can’t go haul any loads unfortunately.
Jeremy Kellett 12:57
Well, and you guys do a great job over the years to recognize the semi-dedicated or dedicated stuff that’s come up. And, I mean, you’ve gotten guys to be able to do that. And that’s, that, to be honest with you, that helped save us through a lot of this pandemic, as you guys but getting creative and getting people on wireless saying stuff and creating some of those dedicated runs. I mean, it’s just where it is these days, unfortunately, there’s bored of it those days of two weeks out, and I don’t know where you’re gonna be tomorrow, and I ain’t got a load yet. I mean, those are gone. So Right. They used to be like that a long time ago, but he’s not a moron. So we’re having to adjust to and you’re doing a good job of doing that. And that’s helped a whole lot. But so what, all these points that we’ve named of where we need drugs and good places for them to live or comes with that, I mean, is we got these drivers, these owner-operators who gave responsibilities to that we expect and that I mean, this is a drabble business and we got to take care of our customers. What are some of the responsibilities you guys would think off top of your head that somebody listening want to come over or our current owner-operators need to know about on meeting their responsibilities?
Bradley Simpson 14:21
I would say it’s pretty standard for all of us in here, but especially on the pneumatic side, we go into a lot of gas refineries like Exxon to new naming a gas station, you see that it’s pretty clean cut deal. Got to be clean-shaven. They don’t necessarily have a dress code but you do have a lot of PP and E standards that you have to meet with the Nomex coveralls, the steel toe boots, the glasses, the hard hats and all that stuff that you would expect and just being presentable. We kind of joke around in here and say sometimes that you wear your beach gloves to the beach, but when it you know whenever you come to work for So we want you to look professional. And that’s, that’s part of the responsibility of going to 90% of these places that we go to.
Russell Vallance 15:08
Yeah, that’s a lot of the same here. And, I guess, a big responsibility our guys have on the roofing granule side with a lot of our customers and on the loading and unloading, and we have to be on time we got loads appointments, on load appointments, and being on time is really important. It’s a difference of maybe shutting the customer down, if we’re not on time if they’re running thin on a particular color of roofing granules. And then if you are going to be light, obviously, things happen, traffic wrecks, whether we just made a phone call, so we can let that customer know, hey, we’re gonna be an hour or two late here, and three or four hours late, whatever it might be.
Jeremy Kellett 15:45
I mean, they give us appointment times and expect us to keep them.
Russell Vallance 15:49
It’s kind of crazy.
Jeremy Kellett 15:51
Well, I say that because it’s a lot about a lot of the drivers can get used to that appointment times where they go to one place, and it’s not so important, right, and they go to another place, and it’s very, very important. Each customer is a little bit different, I think. And we have to just do what we’re told. I mean, whether it, whether it’s you get there, and there are four trucks ahead of you don’t matter. They told us to be there at a certain time. That’s what we got to do. We figure it out from there. That’s what we got to do.
Russell Vallance 16:24
They’re paying us to do the job and be there when they want it there. And they want it there.
Jeremy Kellett 16:26
When they want it there. That’s exactly right. That’s called customer service, wherever I’ve given them.
Jason Webb 16:32
Well, and this for all three divisions, the customer service starts, when the guy gets his dispatch, the guys have got to claim the trailers out, whether you’re in dumper, on a hopper opponent, ematic tank, I mean, nobody wants a contaminated low. I think, for most customers, they just seem not evelope has it have contaminated? That’s where it starts, and then we talked about being on time form at times, the main deal is communicating with your dispatcher, because something’s gonna happen, a flat tire traffic, and it’s okay. Everybody in the working world understands that things happen, what people want is for him to call you, because what we don’t see. No owner operator worse here in the office is, somebody on the other end is planning out their day and their schedule, and whatever they’re doing throughout the day, base a lot of times when, when we’re going to show up and so, if that changes, it helps them, it helps owner operator to communicate that. So everybody can make another point and it helps us help the guy with his next load. Because you may be, and you may not even know it. But you may have two or three loads playing on you after this load you got right now, and you may in a couple hours behind for whatever reason, may affect that. And so the sooner we know that, the second we can regroup and do something else to take care of you and take care of whatever we got on our plate to take care of that.
Jeremy Kellett 18:17
So you mean to tell me that this happens?
Jason Webb 18:20
Every day of the week.
Russell Vallance 18:22
Every hour of every day.
Jeremy Kellett 18:24
That drivers don’t communicate with us or we’re late for a load or something to that effect. Is that a daily do?
Russell Vallance 18:33
Yeah, we have a check-in time for everyone from 7 am to 9 am. That’s kind of our livelihood on for everything for planning purposes for the driver and then for also get an ETA for these customers, when they call in want to know. I have got to have this I gotta have this. When’s it gonna be here? If you’ve already had that conversation with the driver in the morning, then you can just spit her out. They know when they’re getting a load.
Jeremy Kellett 19:03
Okay, what’s y’all’s biggest—I wouldn’t say problem—biggest issue when you come in every day? What typically do you have to handle? First, let’s take a break and listen from LubeZone, our sponsor.
LubeZone has been a sponsor the Oakley podcast for a long time. They have good people over there. Jeff and Megan do a great job and they provide good discounts for Oakley owner-operators, but it’s also just a great place to go. They’ve got 11 locations in Texas, California, Oklahoma, and Georgia. They’re primarily along major highway exits, which allows easy access. They can do a lot of stuff there. They got full-service oil changes like tractor and trailer grease, air filters, all analysis tire checks, DOT inspections, these guys can do it all and we love doing business with them.
One of our owner-operators went to LubeZone, he said, “Hey, I’m going in here and I going to find out how their service is, if they’re fast and if I get a discount.” I said, “Alright, you let me know when you get out of there.” So he called me back and he said, “I just want you to know that’s a great place to go. It’s clean. It’s nice. The service was great.” He got the full-fledged filters, oil change, the whole nine yards service and he also got his $40 discount. You got to tell them you heard it on the Oakley podcast, that you are with Oakley Trucking, and they will give you a discount.
Just great service from those guys. We appreciate them being a sponsor of the Oakley podcast. If you’re in one of those areas, you go to LubeZone.com and you see where their locations are, and if you’re close by there, go try them out and let me know how your service was because we’ll give the feedback back to LubeZone. And check out the rewards program. That’s really good, too. Just be sure to check them out and let them know you heard it on the Oakley podcast.
So y’all come in in the morning, what’s something that you got to take care of every day? That’s kind of putting it all together. I really don’t know how to ask that question, but what’s one of your main responsibilities when you roll in? And some of the issues you see every day that you wished could be fixed easily?
Jason Webb 21:17
On the end dump side, and I’m sure with these guys as well, especially on Monday mornings, we’ve seen this a lot lately. We spend a lot of time Monday morning, sorting out what’s gone on between Friday afternoon and Monday morning. And some of it we know about, and that’s take some work to take care of, but the other deal is, sometimes stuff that goes on over the weekend, and the guys delayed, and we don’t get a phone call. And that just sets off a chain of events that lasts anywhere from an hour to the rest of the day, on taking care of some load swapping and missing this one load affects three or four loads two or three states over and it affects other owner-operators. So now I’ve got to change my plan, and go cover this limb. And there’s always going to be some of that. But the communication session and stuff doesn’t go like we have planned and we leave out here Friday afternoon, we got a pretty good plan, what’s going on? When something goes sideways, for whatever reason, to change that plan. We’ve got to do better as a fleet owner operators and as a company, communicating that well as it happens, and not finding out later in the day on Monday.
Russell Vallance 22:51
Yeah, I agree. That’s every day, but it’s even more, more so Monday, because you got more days involved. But the thing we do on hoppers is we got a lot of morning time load times, especially here in Little Rock from starting at seven o’clock to 10 o’clock. And we’ve already got all those planned out and you roll into work and guys start checking in and you realize, hey, he’s got an 8 am appointment. Here it is seven o’clock, and he’s five hours away. So without any phone call, we didn’t have an opportunity to make that right. So we shortens our window to get a guy there on time. And then to domino effect, once you change one guy and then you just keep changing and it’s just change after change. And we end up either missing or showing up late.
Jeremy Kellett 23:44
What about you, Bradley? What about things when you come in on a daily basis that you got to piece together?
Bradley Simpson 23:50
Yeah, definitely the same. Some of the non-communication that happens at night or over the weekends. It’s always a lot easier if you speak to that customer on a Saturday and Sunday and be like, ‘Look, we got a problem.’ They understand that a lot more than them showing up to work Monday and then them calling you and they’re pretty upset. And it makes me and I know everybody else in here feel pretty bad to not be the first one to tell them. So yeah, communication is a big, big deal on that for sure.
Jeremy Kellett 24:24
How long we’ve been preaching communication?
Jason Webb 24:26
For at least 17 minutes.
Jeremy Kellett 24:28
Don’t know how I started on that topic.
Jason Webb 24:30
But here’s the deal, here’s a little confessional here. Sometimes stuff goes sideways because we made a bad plan in Office Depot. So what I guess the main message that we want to get out is nobody’s gonna get in trouble for calling me and telling us about a problem or call in on the weekend, you know, for whatever reason, whatever has happened has happened. You know, we just need to know, you know, and we’re going to be thankful. You know, because now we can do something about You know, if we had no the day before, two days before, we’ve got some options, right there, we can change some stuff up. But now if we know, we don’t find out too after the fact, we’ll, you know, there’s not a whole lot we can do.
Jeremy Kellett 25:13
So give me an example, Bradley. How’s the planning? He said part of it could be our planning. So do you know when you leave that that could be a risky plan? You have any of those?
Bradley Simpson 25:26
Oh, yeah, you usually always know when, when you’re putting that guy on that level, you think, oh, man, this is gonna be a tight one. If anything happens, it’s not going to be good. And I think that’s where we need to take, take the step to maybe go ahead and do our part and communicate and communicate to that customer and say, Look, we’re, we’re doing the best we can, but this is what we got, this is what we got coming at you and it kind of prevents any huge blow-up. So on the other end, because they can maybe be prepared for it and run differently.
Jeremy Kellett 26:01
And I think communicating to that driver that, hey, this is gonna be tight. If I’m them, I’m waking up and it’s just another load I got to do. You got to do my daily routine, I gotta do another load, I gotta get it there, of course. But also, if maybe they know a little bit more of, hey, this customers running low on material or they got a tight window, or a little more emphasis on that load might register? I’m just saying, a lot of that I’m sure we don’t do that. In certain cases, it’s just that we’re all at fault. Because I’ve said this before on over the years that when that customer, when we get a failure at a customer, they don’t think Bradley Simpson failed him. recive Lance failed him. They don’t think the driver failed them. They think Oakley failed them as a whole. Oakley screwed this load up. They know, they don’t call it by name. They just it’s Oakley. And that’s all of us. So that can be a little, little frustrating. We’re all we all play a part in Oh, yeah. And we just got to figure out how that us and the owner operator or be in sync and communicating well.
What about hauling the weight? When you’re a dry bolt company like we are and we encourage people to get close to 80,000 pounds as they can get and still be legal, that’s a challenge. What about on the hoppers, Russell?
Russell Vallance 27:38
Yeah, it is. And no, we pay on the upper side, we actually pay a little different based on the weight the told so as to the owner operators advantage to get every pound he can own as well because he can make more per mile. But being up there close to that 80,000-pound mark makes a lot of difference. That everything, sometimes it’s hard to do because you go to a customer and there are 15 trucks in line and they might make you go to the back of the line. And you got to hit it right on the first time. But the guys that are showing up with 77,000 pounds gross weight 78 window better than that, most cases and back to the communication side, we want to we want that communication beforehand, versus after the loads already been hauled, we can’t do anything about it. But if you call us while you’re sitting at the loading facility, then there’s a chance we might can haven’t put an extra 10 or two on there if we need to. And we all make more money.
Jeremy Kellett 28:44
Does it affect the pneumatics much?
Bradley Simpson 28:47
I would say not so much as the other divisions but it definitely it can there’s, you know, I wouldn’t say a majority of our stuff is you know, it’s special blends and they send it to lab so it’s usually only a certain amount of weight and there’s really nothing that you can do about it. And that kind of makes it hard on the loads that we do want to gross out and get more weight on. Because owner operators get so used to certain amounts that certainly don’t like which ones right hit it pull. Yeah, so it’s up to us to let you know, hey, this is one you need to get a little bit more on.
Jeremy Kellett 29:31
I can just imagine our customer getting a bid from us and getting a bid from competition. And the competition has small sleeper company trucks and they haul 50, 48, 50,000 pounds on new mid pneumatic and then our guys, we’re not going to haul that much, right?
Bradley Simpson 29:53
Yeah, we used to hear that all the time. It’s not as much as it used to be but that used to be a pretty big Do lead Well, these people they can, they can hold 50,000 pounds. And we’ll quickly we can’t make hit that mark. So it’s a challenge sometimes. But if we let them, the everybody knows up front, it usually pans out pretty good.
Jeremy Kellett 30:16
Yeah. Because certain loads that the tears are already getting on this, and that no drownings know that. So he’s not working his tail off to get more on.
Bradley Simpson 30:26
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And sometimes, in some cases, on the shorter percentage stuff, the more weight you get, the more money you make. So Gotcha. That always seems to make it easier to get a little bit more. But there are some challenges with it, because they have to make, go out back, hook up their hoses, pressure the tank, blow it off, and then they may blow too much off, then they’re really in trouble, they gotta go back and load more. So it’s it’s just something I guess, comes with no one had to do it, but it is a challenge.
Jeremy Kellett 30:57
I know dumps are real important.
Jason Webb 30:59
Well, yeah, yeah, part of the vast majority of the stuff we do pays by the time and one thing guys don’t see is sometimes when we’re setting up freight and setting up, the billing terms, everything with customers, we charge them so much for time, and then we’ll put a minimum a 23-ton minimum, but we’re figuring that number based off our gaggan 23 times. So it’s kind of a tough conversation when a customer calls and they say, I’m looking at all these Bill Leightons. And they’re all 78,000, 78,500 and I’m getting charged for minimum, and it looks like right here, you guys could hold a lot more weight than your halt. And yeah, and that doesn’t happen much, but it has happened. But yeah, it is important. We want to do a good job for the people in a long time ago, we should have a deal where guys call during the whites every look, we’ve kind of gotten away from that with expectation is 1,000 patents when we understand there’s gonna be times that didn’t happen we have some turnings and Zorba has type of metal, different things, we’re gonna just not only get that a lot of stuff, just a lot of stuff, and we understand that but, or hello to reframe, gray knows we’re hauling load of fertilizer, you know, some shredded metal, you know, we really need everybody to get the weight on, you know, it helps our customers it makes us, you know, look good for them. You know, and it’s, it’s just what we asked, you know, it’s how we pass along this freight surcharges, you know, getting the money in the door, and part of that is hauling weight.
Jeremy Kellett 32:44
It adds up, You figure 1,000 pounds on a truck, you get 760 owner operators, and everybody does least to me, you got them all working at same time, and you do the load. I mean, that adds up to a whole lot. Pretty big number. It’s pretty big number but it’s unlike us more about taking care of that customer than it is anything getting them if we can get more than competition does. It might get noticed. Plus, I always said this, because this was back in my dispatch days is I was wanting to get the white on because tours back then I didn’t have any loads on the weekend. But it would help me deadhead them to a load. You know, if they got on the wait all week, then I’d make a little bit more money on him because we used to come in on Friday. And we saw how much money got made on this guy. Bryce the prime member levy those days how much money you got on this guy? Well, we’d have amount of money because we knew we figured out date at the keeping busy a long ways because back then everybody wanted to work all the time. Every weekend you’re trying to figure out how much money could I spend to get him to know the loads you know, so it and I encouraged him if you get the weight on it helps me it helps me be able to do something with you. When that time rolls around. Now it sounds like we got plenty of work. That’s a good problem to have. Anything else you guys want to add? What we not cover?
Jason Webb 34:11
On the end dumps we’re still looking for some guys to work down in Louisiana. Our Oxbow for a while got that. You know where we wanted I think we’re working for customers are called rain. Corbin down in Louisiana, down right around the reserve terminal dealing and Caleb we’re looking for a few more guys to come down there and haul coke on hoppers primarily and summon dumps to Holland from Norco, Louisiana to Chalmette, Louisiana and Norco, Louisiana to Grand mercy. So yeah, anybody out there.
Jeremy Kellett 34:43
So there are a couple openings on that, and they’re also the reserve terminal. They’re dispatching a few.
Jason Webb 34:52
Yeah, we’ve started putting some guys on there, trying to branch out and get those guys custom dispatch and Treptow Over the Road, so they’ve got, you know, five or six guys right now we’re looking to add on there. So, you know, we just need all hands on deck.
Jeremy Kellett 35:08
I like it. Hoppers looking good?
Russell Vallance 35:10
We could use a lot more trucks, too, obviously. We’ve talked about that already, where you turn in a recruiting card, you get paid for that just turning the car then you get paid $5,000 once they’re actually hired on stay here, so he knows a money-making opportunity for everybody.
Jeremy Kellett 35:27
Yeah. Oh, no recruiting, here’s it pretty regular from you guys. We are in earshot of all these guys. And it’s made trucks and the drugs. And trust me, we’re not going to lower our standards. But we’re trying to get all we can to and some good guys over here.
Jason Webb 35:45
And the guys that we have, they were asking turning in recruiting boards, I know what we’re looking for. There hasn’t been around here. You guys know who we’re looking for. And, you know, what it takes to be successful and, you know, you know, a guy, you know, Shoot him, shoot him our way, we’d love to talk to him.
Jeremy Kellett 36:05
On that line real quick, in Louisiana, I appreciate those guys going down there doing it that are not used to doing it. Mike goes we through you through a lot over the road guys in there to help out for the weekend. Hoppers did too. And that’s that, that helped us get through a rough spot.
Jason Webb 36:18
Yeah, yeah, it really did. We’ve kind of got one of the jobs kind of where we want it and things are going a lot smoother now. You know, and that’s due to a lot of guys chipping in and helping out when they probably wanted to do something else. So, so we understand that and I’m not sure appreciate it. I know everybody does. So you know, that’s we could probably do a 10 show it you know, mini-series on guys taking care of this, you know, and we could do that here all night. So yeah, we do appreciate it.
Jeremy Kellett 36:51
Alright, guys, I think that’s covered everything I wanted to go over. Y’all got anything else? You good? Hoopers, pneumatics all good? All good. What are y’all doing this weekend? You’re taking of the kids.
Bradley Simpson 37:04
I’m actually kid-free Saturday night. I’m going to Georgia tomorrow to a concert.
Jeremy Kellett 37:10
Golle. Bradley’s got four kids and a set of twins.
Russell Vallance 37:18
I think we’ll be watching some basketball inside a gym somewhere.
Jeremy Kellett 37:21
Yeah, your boy’s playing ball.
Jason Webb 37:23
I’m going to overwrite a man well corbel one of our end up dispatchers is taking the plunge getting married tomorrow. gratulations. And I think there are a few of his guys he works with gonna be there too. So that so So yeah, we’re, I’m taking the whole family. I told him well, he’s buying dinner. I’m taking the whole family. And then you got what? I got three kids. Yeah. And they’re probably gonna be listening this so I’ve been working in land. Love, yah.
Jeremy Kellett 37:52
Shout out. That’s great. Well, I appreciate the input you guys give us and the insight to our truck drivers goes, Hey, that’s what this podcast was created for was to make a connection. Communication, like we talked about earlier, between the company and our drivers or owner operators, because the better communication we have, I think the more information we can give them and they were on the same page. It does here. Yeah. How’s it going to hurt? You know, it’s gonna help so that’s what we’re trying to do with this podcast and I appreciate y’all doing it every so often, we always get a operation update from you. So anytime y’all got anything to you can just come on up. We’ll record it gets up. All right. appreciate everybody listening to the Oakley podcast. Once again, it comes out every Wednesday we send a new one to you. If you know some people that think need to hear it, man, send it to them. Encourage them to get on YouTube and watch us though you definitely want to watch this episode. With these guys in here. Well check it out. And thanks to miles for helping us in the production of it and setting it all up. So once again, check out the Oakley podcast and we appreciate everybody and all the input you give us every week. 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.