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.
Key topics in today’s conversation include:
- Oakley Update: document renewal (3:35)
- What’s going on with freight (6:45)
- Freight surcharge (15:09)
- Customer service issues (17:58)
- How a driver can help himself every week (23:24)
- Problem-solving 101 (31:01)
- Trailer issues (32:38)
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 0:14
This company was built on honesty. It’s an open room where we work. There ain’t no secrets. If there is, and we find out, then it’s gonna be dealt with. So I think it’s so important that we do podcasts like this and just talk about it like grown men and women. We were built on honesty, and I love it.
Jeremy Kellett 0:38
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. I’m your host for this podcast. This is the Oakley podcast, trucking business and family and this is episode 131. So on today’s episode I got Jason Webb and Scotty Crisco in here with me, the operation managers over the end dumps, and we’re going to talk a little bit of everything today just to try to give you an update it’s been a while we went for a month didn’t have the podcast going on and then it before that it was awhile before we had operations in here and so I wanted to get these guys in here to talk a little bit about the freight and what’s going on what to expect between now and the end of the year might be working the holidays some of the customer service issues that we may be having may not be having any trailer issues and just to kind of get our listeners and mainly our owner operators get them caught up on what’s going on here at Oakley trucking because Wayne has been great for theft for a long time. And we all know that what goes up must come down so we’re gonna talk a little bit about that. Get her byline on that but first, let’s let’s do Oakley update sponsored by Arrow Truck Sales.
Let’s listen to one of Oakleys owner operator experience with Arrow Truck Sales.
Scotty Crisco 2:16
I called Kenworth offer for 40 called Peterbilt. Call Freightliner. None of them wanted to work with me. So Jeremy Kellett got me and got me over to Trey. Trey visor, me and him had a conversation. He had sent me to Keith Wilson and never looked back from that point. I was upside down 29,000 and change. They paid off all but $5,000 of my loans on a blown truck. That right there said a lot to me. You know they were willing to step outside of their comfort zone to get my deal done. I’ve never felt like a customer. Yeah, it was more like a family feeling. He took care of every aspect of the deal. He was completely transparent. There was no hidden, no hidden nothing.
Jeremy Kellett 3:25
So if you’re in the market for a used truck, you owe it to yourself to call Keith Wilson at Arrow Truck Sales in Springfield, Missouri. Tell him you heard it on the Oakley podcast.
So the update I have— I’ve probably done this update before, but it is so important it needs to be done again because we’re continually running into this problem of everybody completing their hazmat endorsement, their TWIC card renewal and passport all those need to be completed and renewed. Now, the pneumatics are required to have a passport, the end dumps and hoppers are not but if you have one, you need to renew it. The hazmat here’s the deal that frustrating with the hazmat. It’s a process to get in a lot of people don’t have it before they come to Oakley and we let them get the process started with the fingerprinting background check. every state’s a little different, we go ahead and lease you on providing that you complete the process which means we might go ahead and pay your money. Then you got to just finish taking the test and get the hazmat endorsement on your license. We got some people believe it or not that are not completing it. Come on now. So we got to get that completed the hazmat. The Twix card, the main thing we run into that’s pretty simple. You do it at the same location as you do the hazmat, that twig you just pay your 125 bucks and they send it to you. So easy done. I mean, so the renewal part of that, I think is what a lot of people are not getting done, which I get it. He probably hadn’t used it in there’s maybe one time you know, and we don’t use hazmat a whole lot, but it’s that time when you need it.
Jason Webb 5:12
Yeah, we do use it some.
We are using it a lot right now.
Jeremy Kellett 5:16
Are you?
Jason Webb 5:17
Yeah, we’ve had a company that I don’t know Bill I don’t know if it’s necessarily river related or not but they have reached out to us quite a bit we’re doing 10 loads this week in Louisiana, Missouri all kinds of material to Owensboro Kentucky go into various locations that normally I think would be in have been serviced some other far away but yeah, right now and I’ve seen it cost drivers loads, you know, hey, we need to send him to go get this load and we can’t.
Happens every week.
Jeremy Kellett 5:51
yeah, it’s frustrating because as my mind if you want to be able to make the most money you want to be available to do everything I mean, it’s just got to have the credentials.
Scotty Crisco 6:03
Have all the tools in your tool belt.
Jeremy Kellett 6:06
It’s just another tool to add.
Jason Webb 6:07
We got a list or this week an email you know we get million emails a day but now I was just kind of scrolling through that list and you know, there’s some names on there guys are fairly new. There are also some names some guys have been here for a while you know, so it’s a mixed bag. You know who you are. We need get that done.
Jeremy Kellett 6:30
We do need to get it done, and that’s a commitment that you made for you came here it’s just part of gotta get it done as my a tweet and passport.
With this episode guys, I gave you a couple notes there of course we can talk about whatever but I think the biggest thing that we need to cover right now in the freight you know, what’s been happening, what’s gone especially with this year behind us, you know, and what kind of year we’ve had and compared to other years but it’s been it’s just fantastic of course, but put yourself in a owner-operators, shoes and seeing what he’s taking and Heap to me it helps him know coming from us what to expect he’s able to adjust make decisions based on that so I’d like to touch a little bit by a little bit on the freight outlook. This year is going through the end of the year it might be even first and next year if y’all have any you know getting stuff going with that but I think that helps give our listeners and our owner-operators an idea of what to expect so what’s it looking like? I mean, how good has this year been?
Jason Webb 7:42
Well, it’s been a wild year and say the least. It’s been great. We’ve you know, done better than we’ve ever done. We’ve added trucks we had you know company parties last weekend we had how many people here can’t believe it you know and it just showed what a great company we’ve got you know and so it’s been just a fantastic year and you know you’re getting in the time of year with the holidays and you know and there’s some stuff going on everybody watches the news and you know if you watch the news any amount of time the sky is falling ill you know interest is up stock markets down rivers running dry country boy yeah, yeah he was on to something now let me tell you but you know you hear all that and that affects that trickles down into what we’re doing you know day to day and you know we’re seeing a little bit of people were starting to cut back for them the year and you see a little bit of that every year I think you know around the holidays you know interest rates and stuff you know you can make arguments all day about what’s effective what but you know, most of our guys are out there listening now will tell you that you know they’re having to wait on a load here and there you know we don’t want it to be every single day we don’t want it to be an all day ordeal but there you know in the past throughout this year guys got unloaded and they had a load for every guy named.
Probably gave dispatched with an hour or two before but they even got an empty Yeah. Which is super nice and guys can plan where they’re going to sleep and where they’re going to stop and get fuel and where they’re going to take a shower and I mean gosh that’s just so nice when you can do it like that and we wish it was always like that but you know those of us who’ve been in Brent and been in the game long enough like Jason said, you know there’s gonna there’s ups and downs this roller coasters we’ve been on the uptake for a while and I’m not saying it’s a mountain ride down but—
Jeremy Kellett 9:42
You know what, we’ve seen a tick slower Yeah, yeah, last month was bad weeks.
Scotty Crisco 9:47
The good thing is we are so versatile as a company. So yes, the river I’m sure as Oakley barging but it’s Going to help Oakley trucking. And, you know, we’ve I don’t think we’ve seen the full repercussions of the river yet, we’re getting some rain here and there, but I mean, it is dry. Now I know they’re pushing barges, they’re not pushing as many barges in the box or whatever you want to call it, and they’re not loading them as heavy. In our turn, as far as Oakley trucking goes, that would be like a customer asking us to load 15 tons, you know, so I mean, obviously, it’s gonna have a ripple effect, right, and everybody in this office has gotten phone calls and requests and quotes and, you know, they’re testing the waters here and there. And I mean, we have done some stuff over the past two or three weeks, it’s been directly a result of the river. Bet everybody’s gonna hunker down and pinch every penny they can. And you know, as far as customers go, they’re gonna figure out their options. At maintenance only a good thing for us, you know, but like I said, we are, we seem to be a balanced company. So we can kind of shit roll and shift with the tide. We know is the steel markets down, and we, you know, we can haul feed and aggregates and, you know, I mean, cows still gotta be fed, you know, obviously, that’s not what we want all the time. But, you know, we’re gonna be able to keep you moving, we just need a little patience.
Jason Webb 11:19
Yeah, well, and the good thing is we’ve built such a, throughout the years, you know, a huge customer base, you know, we’ve got a lot to go at, and a lot of opportunities there. And then we’ve got, you know, a large group of, you know, core customers that we’ve dealt with for years. And, you know, and we’re still getting Lotro. You know, let’s, you know, I don’t want to disappear. gloom and doom do because it’s not at all, you know, we’re having a great year. And, you know, we’ve got guys, you know, looking loads every day today and tomorrow. And, you know, we were out on the road last week, me and Shane, and we went to, you know, a bunch of different customers, different industries and stuff like that. And while they tell you, we heard a lot optimism, you know, we went to some places, one place in Tennessee, they were like, doubling the size of their plant. You know, they’re like, recession, young, go tell somebody else that we’re moving on gas and own it, you know, so there’s a lot optimism out there for next year. You know, and that was really encouraging to hear.
Jeremy Kellett 12:24
So, well, it’s realistic, because our owner-operators know exactly what’s going on. They, you know, they’re the heartbeat know, they know if they’re having to wait a little bit for a load or if they’re hauling a little different product that they normally don’t haul or, you know, third dispatchers working a little bit harder, you know, and don’t have a choice of loads that do to put him on icons to my night, they get it. So it’s only ride, they were honest about it, too.
Scotty Crisco 12:56
That’s what I wanted to say. I don’t mean to interrupt you. This company was built on honesty. It’s an open room where we work. There ain’t no secrets. If there is, and we find out, then it’s gonna be dealt with. So I think it’s so important that we do podcasts like this and just talk about it like grown men and women because every day I come to work, I listen to the same radio station every single morning and there’s always car radio ads and I was listening this morning. I was thinking, they’re telling us it’s never been a better time to buy a car, but that’s the same ad for months on end. So like, when are they gonna get on here and say, “You know, right now is probably not the best time buy a car.” They’re not ever gonna tell you that, and we don’t want to be that way as a company, you know. So like, we just, we were built on honesty and I love it.
Jeremy Kellett 13:57
Well, that because that’s going to create confidence in the owner-operators having confidence in us, ultimately, and go hey, there, they, you know, they tell it like it is and we know it but I’ve been here a long time and they’ve never let me sink. Right. And I don’t think our listeners understand how much we take that to heart in here with Are you dispatch meetings, your recruiting meetings on hey, we can’t let these people when they’re not gonna fail here. It’s not they’re not gonna fail because of us. I promise you. That’s attitude we have. And we carry that out and I love that. I love that. But, you know, the, as far as the freight goes, I mean, it’s still rockin, I mean, it’s still rocking. He does get a little bit of a hitch in it there that you can tell a one area maybe I got a lot of loads in and you know, we’re those now that I had six months ago.
Scotty Crisco 14:55
You might have to go make your sandwich now. It’s just not somebody bringing it to you on a silver platter. Back, it has been the last six to 12 months.
Jason Webb 15:03
It just highlights how good we’ve had it this year.
Jeremy Kellett 15:07
And so with that being said, Put you on the spot freight surcharge, you know, we’re doing 20 cents a mile loaded and empty. And we’re reevaluating that every month. Well, Joe’s thoughts on that continuing?
Jason Webb 15:21
Man, I hope it goes on forever.
Scotty Crisco 15:22
I hope it does, too. I mean, just being honest, you know, like, we have had to look at rates and customers are asking for new rates. The reason that 25th That 20 cent surcharge, it was implemented was because of the rates we were having to give to get people trucks, you know, so are you having to come back off some rates, some I have yet to to keep some lanes, you know, went in, but like Jason said, I mean, it hasn’t been enough to pass that on to the driver yet.
Jason Webb 15:58
Well, and this is something that goes on every year, about this time, you know, people send you, you know, all kinds of different freight, great requests, and, you know, they want you know, and they’re just like we are, you know, they’re looking at their money to, you know, in any way they can save money, and it makes them more money, you know, so, you know, it’s just part of it. And, you know, some stuff we’ve given, you know, we’ve gotten rate requests, and we’ve gone up, you know, this week, in spite of what we’re doing now because now we won’t be able to start a discussion, we’ve got to be able to pay the owner operator to do that.
Jeremy Kellett 16:37
Well, and as far as the freight surcharge, I mean, we haven’t had a conversation internally about stopping that. So I don’t know, you know, when our we could stop it before this comes out, up top? No, I don’t know. Because sometimes, you know, that conversation and it might come up and we make a decision move on. But, you know, it’s once you kind of get used to find something, you absorb it.
Scotty Crisco 17:04
On the flip side of that, I will say I went down on a lane this week, simply because we’ve been fortunate enough to add trucks since the last time we did it. So our availability is a little more abundant. You don’t I mean, so like cutting rates aren’t is not always like, a bad thing you ride. So, um, you know, just like we’re sitting here being honest with each other and being honest with our owner-operators, what our company was built on honesty, we try to pass that honesty on to our, you know, we’re gonna be honest with our customers, too. There ain’t no sense in ripping somebody’s head off on a rate.
Jeremy Kellett 17:39
That’s a good point. You were having to do that, because you’d have to bring trucks in right? From a distance right now you got truck more trucks available in that area. So make sense.
Scotty Crisco 17:50
And customers appreciate that. And they remember that.
Jeremy Kellett 17:52
Oh, yeah. They remember that and ripping their head off. Oh, man. Have we had any customer service issues? You guys to think about? We had any major problems?
Jason Webb 18:08
Man, we had a deal. It’s just fresh. On My Mind, we had a deal today where a guy was carrying a load of roofing granules into a place and didn’t have his you know, his seal was just basically going out of the back end of his trailer, and he went to raise it up and start on low now the Cauchy will all the grain will start coming out of the site. Well, no, you know, made a huge mess. So you know, it’s real important. And guys are checking their equipment, you know, doing those pre-trips. And if you got something wrong with your trailer, bring it up. Now let’s get it fixed. Could we share that was a mess, you know, it’s out there in the world, you know, we’re gonna take care of it move on. But you know, it just, it’s just something else. What’s on everybody’s plate and you know, people don’t want problems are not paying for problems. So we try to keep that down as much as possible.
Jeremy Kellett 18:59
We’ve said this before, the customers can have the mentality of where the there they are our only customer you’re picking up my load and I don’t know that you owe anybody else. I need my load done. Right. Right. Point A to Point B the product that I’m supposed to be getting. I don’t care about anybody, any other customer. I want my stuff right, you know, and that’s the mentality that we got to carry out deliver to you. Did you see that? Did Scott talk to you today? We’re talking about it Donald girl slowed to Joe get involved in that at all.
Jason Webb 19:34
Yeah. It sounded like a pretty versus an unfortunate situation. You know, and you said the short form is, you know, there was some work back and forth between people at the plant. Don was trying to do his job and get his load tarped, and no one wanted to help you.
Scotty Crisco 19:50
He was looking out for our equipment, which I cannot express how much I appreciate because I mean, and Toby in the shop appreciates that You know, I mean, those guys that take care of their equipment and Don was just looking out for his tarp, you know, I mean, he was a material was loaded high. Even when he put his bows in, it was gonna, you know, still be above the bows. Fortunately, everything worked out and it was fine, but they look like they’re looking out for our equipment. Man, that means a lot to me.
Jeremy Kellett 20:19
Well, and they were rude to him. Yeah. Which I heard Scott addressing with jolly, maybe you’re somebody just to know, we’re not common to hate that we’re not, you know, if they’re gonna be like that, we’re going back in there. So hurting telling that so I hope Justin or somebody reaches out to this customer and expresses that.
Jason Webb 20:43
And most of the time, you know, we’ve been down this road a few times before, we’re not a lot, but a couple of things. You know, number one, typically, when you bring it to the customer’s attention, you know, like the guy who’s in charge, you know, they don’t want that either. They don’t want to be known for that. You know, so we don’t expect guys to put up with that, you know, that ever happens to please call us we’ll you know, we want to get involved in it. The deal is you can be doing everything right. But if you get down in the ditch for that customer you’re never gonna win. That is never going to work out for anybody.
Jeremy Kellett 21:25
You’re right. I tell my wife all the the time: stay out of the ditch. Yeah, you know if you’re about to get into something with somebody just yeah, the deer Tony is not worth it. You know what she did me that day.
Jason Webb 21:37
Because we’re gonna take the guys will have his back. Yep. You know? wastepaper cron the same way they’re gonna have their guys’ back.
Jeremy Kellett 21:46
When he did good by taking pictures. Yeah, you know, given us some details that we had a little something to go off.
Jason Webb 21:52
So if that happens, just try to get away from the situation. I know, it’s hard.
Jeremy Kellett 21:57
Is that the best thing to do? To maybe get you some pictures and stuff right when it happens?
Scotty Crisco 22:02
Pictures and call dispatch. Yeah, I mean, two of the most important things you do, you can do. And you know, you’re dealing with these customers, they’re human beings, too. We all have bad days. And so you know, we’ve been in there I look today at this particular customer, 62 times this year. It’s only an instance I know of, but we are not going to deal with being disrespected. So you know, and we’re, we’re putting our equipment in jeopardy.
Jeremy Kellett 22:31
And that’s one way to look at it too. You know, you do a bunch of business to use it a constant problem, or is it isolated?
Jason Webb 22:40
Why not, you know, day on is never had a problem, right? Anywhere? You never had a problem? And typically, if it’s a problem, on our end, usually it shows up again, right? You know, and that’s kind of something you know, it’s, you know, guy has a problem one day somewhere, we’re going to defend, so we sat in, and what would you think?
Jeremy Kellett 23:02
What are some of the best things a driver can do to help in his not just customer service problems, but to help you got to do your job better? What some of the things that helps a driver can help themselves. So I’m trying to say, how can he help himself every day or every week?
Scotty Crisco 23:22
Well, I will tell you this, when I was dispatching, he always just seemed to have those guys that were in the right spot at the right time, all the time. And normally, it was just your drivers that a call in in the morning and gave you some good information. Whether it be good news or bad news, I’ve run into a wreck or I’ve had a flat tire or whatever, here’s my new eta, just the more information that we can get, helps us make better decisions for planning. So when I’m saying those guys that always seem to fall in the right spot at the right time. Those are normally guys that were calling in the morning giving us good eta A’s taking care of their equipment. And, you know, I’m not saying as soon as the buzzer hits on your 10-hour break. But typically, we’re geared in dispatch to figure out and plan on what a guy can do. By that 10-hour break, you know, and him working the full 14 hours now, obviously, sometimes it falls on our shoulders that we didn’t have a good enough plan put together for him or he didn’t get to work as full 14 That day, you know, so I mean, but, you know, he’s going to have to shut down at six. That means he can go back to work at four. That means he should be able to be here but well, and we also understand that you guys are in the drivers aren’t robots, but we just try to plan based on the hours of service and man, the more you can utilize those and communicate any problems that you run into immediately. It just seems that things tend to work out better for yah.
Jeremy Kellett 25:00
Just more efficient.
Scotty Crisco 25:01
Yeah.
Jason Webb 25:03
It just rolls downhill. We were going over our talking points, communicating, helps us get our inventory, which helps us plan which helps the guy have a better day, you know, if it helps with customer service issues, because we can tell the customer is your problem. So that slackly a convert confrontation at a customer, you know, if they know what’s going on, you know, it helps us you know, get the freight keep the freight surcharge, you know, it just rolls down here we do some, United’s a simple deal. And we’ve talked about it all the time. And it seems like a broken record, but it works. You know, if a guy would just communicate a lot of it or just fall right in line on most days.
Jeremy Kellett 25:42
Yeah, you still need that even though we have the electronic logs, we can see where they’re at, you know, only through the Geotab stuff, you still gotta have that communication.
Scotty Crisco 25:53
Something about hearing a man’s voice and talking to him and feeling you know, good morning, how’s your day going? You know, just rather than get in there and look it on the screen and see, and you don’t know what he’s going through what he’s had to deal with, or what kind of traffic is in or if he’s sick, he’s hungry or needs, you know, or needs a shower or whatever. So I mean, yes, there’s no replacement for talking to each other on the phone.
Jeremy Kellett 26:18
Y’all got the dispatchers trained pretty good on all this stuff?
Scotty Crisco 26:22
They seem to be doing pretty good.
Jason Webb 26:23
Yeah, I was gonna actually make same bring up just have little patience. And what I mean by that is, we’ve got some guys that are dispatching, they’re doing a fantastic job. A lot of them came into a situation where there were 100 loads to pick from every day. So getting out and picking up the phone and finding the guy load is kind of a new, you know, we’re having to get trained up on that a little bit. And even you guys have been here for every it takes a little bit. Switching that for getting on that phone and getting little firing you to pick up phone and call somebody.
Scotty Crisco 27:00
Yeah, Jason hits the nail on the head there. I mean, I was sitting there yesterday, and I’m dispatchers walk over send you emails or messages, hey, I’ve got this character, I finally had to kind of roll up my sleeves and be like, ah, you know, because I have, we haven’t had to do that. And so long, normally, it’s just email after email, can you do this phone call after phone call, and I broke out some old business cards and dug into my old notebook. And I’ll tell you that stuff works. So I mean, you just, I mean, with a few phone calls and a few emails and just getting some folks on the phone, you know, all of a sudden, you get quotes from people you haven’t talked to in two, three years. You know, it’s just, it’s like Jason said earlier, the customer base is just so expand. I mean, it’s just huge, you know, and we stuff that you can scroll orders and go look at old orders on stuff we did five, six years ago, and they would just blow your mind. You’re like, Man, I forgot all about that. You know what I mean?
Jeremy Kellett 27:55
So and we even tapped, yeah, the majority of it. Right. Right. And there’s so much stuff out there. It’s unbelievable. The load. We’re not hauling that competition is.
Jason Webb 28:08
Yeah, we got a little bit of that last week really grow too, though. Yeah. Did you find it out? So and so it’s all in this and you know, it’s ad loads a week in may not want that, but why not do it? Yeah. Yeah. So the ads, so there’s a lot of opportunity. That’s the thing going into next year. Man, we got so much opportunity. You know, we’ve got a lot going on. Good now. And you know, we just keep growing this saying, I want to have a better year next year we had this year.
Jeremy Kellett 28:40
Yeah. I think we can do real Yeah, I mean, we’ll get to we’ve got all the tools in the tool, but as Scotty said, we got some good tools out there to get some good, good dispatchers good owner-operators, good operations, recruiting, safety, accounting, it’s all really good.
Scotty Crisco 29:04
It’s one big ol engine can walk upstairs and put our heads together with barging and grain and fertilizer and I mean, we’re gonna keep you moving and making Miami Dallas, we run it.
Jason Webb 29:15
I looked, I was thinking around 400 I looked on the numbers. I guess over the four came we were in the last week is 386 Was it not though, so? There may be some it may be closer to 400. Because are working at may be working. So we may be over? 400? Somewhere at around 400 outside? Yeah, yeah.
Jeremy Kellett 29:37
Yeah. So I mean, a lot to do good. Which adults are twice as big as any other division here. Just so everybody knows. I mean, that’s, that’s where the majority of the trucks are. Like that like 400 200 200. Yeah, we’ve got like 815 owner-operators at this point right now. So okay, man, good stuff. So let’s take a break and listen to our sponsor Lubezone.
You’ve been hearing me talk about loop zone for a couple of years now. Well, now it’s time you hear from one of our owner-operators. Listen to Mike Durbin talk about his experience with Lubezone.
Mike Durbin 30:12
The price is great, the service is great. From time when I bought him the door, what a time I pulled out with less than an hour, the best I’ve ever had, as far as an owner operator had more chains, checks the wall that showed me at all, they get all the portion on the renter’s showed me my rear end wall on the paper and they did their job. It was very nice to go somewhere, get what you wanted done and go be I was very pleased about it. And like I said, very satisfied, I won’t go out of my way from now on to go there.
Jeremy Kellett 30:47
Check out lubezone.com for all their services and all their locations and tell them you heard it on the Oakley podcast.
So you guys got anything else you want to cover?
Jason Webb 30:58
Man, I just say we hit on both communication earlier, you know, if you got a problem, you know, give us a call, you know, if something’s not going right, you know, colloquy, you know, we talked about honesty earlier, you may not get the answer you’re looking for, you know, but we’re going to shoot you straight.
Jeremy Kellett 31:18
Why is it so hard to communicate? How long it we’ve been preaching, communicating at least 17 and a half years and then pointing the finger at ourselves? Yeah. Oh, yeah. We’re just as bad.
Jason Webb 31:29
Worse.
Scotty Crisco 31:33
At Tollgate, we can’t walk across the hall and communicate with each other sometimes.
Jeremy Kellett 31:36
We can’t communicate. I mean, it’s, you know, same way.
Jason Webb 31:40
It’s a hard thing.
Jeremy Kellett 31:41
We don’t communicate with the driver with the owner-operator, when we have a problem with him.
Scotty Crisco 31:48
There’s an aspect of this job that you got to be geared a certain way because it’s human nature to avoid conflict, your domain, and at this job, whether you’re behind that steering wheel, or you’re in front and behind that computer screen. At some point, you’re gonna have to have some difficult conversations, you know, and so it’s kind of human nature to shy away from that, you know, rather than dive, dive head in, you know, think the longer you work here, the more I don’t know if callus is the right word, but you are less apprehensive to address those situations.
Jeremy Kellett 32:30
You kind of look for opportunities to pounce on somebody.
Scotty Crisco 32:36
I do want to bring up one other thing, and I hate to talk about the elephant in the room. But we had done so well for so long. But on Monday morning, within about two and a half hours of each other, we turned over two trailers. So one of them was over in Tennessee, another one right over here across the river, I actually got my truck drove over to that one, we were not on level ground, we should have never put in the air where we were. Again, you know, if you’re the superstitious stop or the knock-on-wood topping, turn your radio off. But please, please, please check your tires. Make sure you’re on level ground. Make sure the materials down the middle of the trailer. And furthermore, if you don’t feel comfortable where you’re at, and you’re feel yourself avoiding a difficult conversation with that customer that’s sitting there asking you to hurry up and get empty. Please take the time to call your dispatcher. Tell him you don’t feel comfortable. Let us get on the phone with somebody. I mean, we would rather take it back to where you loaded it. Then put that thing on its side.
Jeremy Kellett 33:47
I’m glad you brought that up because it’s always a refresher. Because our guys, they get used to doing it. And all of a sudden it’s easy. And then you have one hiccup. And you just don’t ever let your guard down on dumping. Oh, sorry. That’s, that’s frustrating for sure. All right, my good stuff. Anything else? Y’all did? Good. Done again. All right. Well, I appreciate everybody listening to the Oakley podcast for sure. We love to bring this good up-to-date information to you. Please share it with everybody try to get all our owner-operators to listen to this because it’s a good way for us to communicate with you. This is something that we’re we want to do every week. We want to bring you good content, good information. Like Scotty said the truth. You know, we want to be honest with you, and bring it in. It’s not always gonna be pretty, but we want to bring it to you anyway. So thanks for listening. Thanks for subscribing. Be sure and comment, and we’ll talk to you next week.
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