This week on the Oakley Podcast, hosts Jeremy Kellett and Megan Cummings welcome Brad Page, one of our owner/operators at Oakley Trucking. During the episode, Brad shares his incredible journey as a commercial airline pilot for over 30 years to the open road of being an owner-operator. The discussion covers Brad’s memorable flying experiences, including challenging landings and his work in medevac missions. The episode also touches on Brad’s family, his sons’ careers in engineering and mechanics, the evolving technology in the trucking industry, comparisons between being a pilot and an owner-operator, and so much more.
Key topics in today’s conversation include:
- Previewing the Upcoming Episode (1:14)
- Changes in the Office (6:31)
- Megan’s New Role (7:30)
- Listener Interaction Segment (9:29)
- Brad’s Background and Aviation Career (13:35)
- Medevac Job Explanation (17:12)
- Becoming a Pilot (18:57)
- Commuter Airline Job (22:17)
- Challenges of Airline Piloting (25:32)
- Air Conditioning on Planes (34:31)
- Landing in Windy Conditions (37:05)
- Transition from Aviation to Trucking (39:01)
- Consulting Work Post-Retirement (42:03)
- Joining Oakley Trucking (46:55)
- Learning the Ropes at Oakley (51:09)
- Making Pilot Announcements (58:03)
- Technology in Trucking (59:18)
- Final Thoughts and Takeaways (1:01:04)
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
Jeremy Kellett 00:12
Welcome to the Oakley podcast, trucking, business and family. This show is brought to you by Oakley trucking, headquartered at 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. Welcome to the Oakley podcast, trucking business, family. My name is Jeremy Kellett. I’m Director recruiting here at Oakley trucking, and I’m your host for this podcast, along beside me. Miss Megan Cummins, who is sitting in as co host on this episode too. And this episode we’ve already recorded last week, but this is one of my favorites. And the fact that really, it’s not a lot about trucking. You know, we didn’t just get in depth with it being in trucking. I kind of got a side reel because I really like it. This is one of our owner operators, and his name is Brad page, and he’s a retired commercial pilot. He had been flying a plane for 30 years, and now he’s an owner operator at Oakley trucking. He has a fantastic story. Yeah. I mean, it was just, it was really good. I kept diving off into the pilot stuff and the airplane stuff and the y’all are gonna love some of the stuff he even got him to talk like a, like a pilot does know on the intercom and stuff. That’s pretty cool. So we, I mean, it’s just, it’s really just another episode of showing you what kind of quality owner operators we have here at Oakley, and some of their history. I mean, there’s no telling, you know, out of the 900 owner operators we have, there’s no telling the history we’ve done just a few of them. I mean, just a few of the owner operators, and they’ve all got some really good history. So, I mean, this one’s really good. He talks about some of the some of the calls, some of the close calls he had, you know, during his flight time, he actually flew a medic back Lear jet early on in his career. So he talked a little bit about how that was really good. And I tell you this, Megan, I haven’t told you this, but we recorded this last week, and we recorded it before the crashes that happened in Washington, DC, oh, yeah, and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Well, Brad was coming through. HE’S HERE swapping out trucks, and so I got to talk to him yesterday about that, and I wished I’d had it recorded, you know, because he has done that hundreds of times. That approach flying into Washington, DC, Reagan airport. And he was talking about exactly what could have happened there, and how busy that airport was. And then I thought it was really I told him, I said, Brad, I thought of you when I heard this jet go down in Philadelphia, because it was a medic back. Oh yeah, it was Lear J and I thought of him right when I heard that, yeah. And of course, he had already been up to it. And I think he says brother in law is a retired pilot too. So they were talking about all the circumstances, and, oh, it was just good to talk to him, because he understood. I mean, he’s been there, yeah. And that’s a devastating, devastating thing that happened. Yeah, we don’t talk about news on this thing, but I was talking to him about it, and it was just terrible.
Megan Cummings 03:23
Yeah, it was very awful. I was just saying I would love to have Brad Page on my next flight with me, yeah, wouldn’t you, though, yeah, you’d be like, so this is what’s going on right now. This is normal. This is what that means, yeah.
Jeremy Kellett 03:35
And we asked him a lot of those questions. Oh, yeah, yeah, you know, I mean, we got some good questions, like, who’s controlling the air conditioner, Brad. That’s what we wanted.
Megan Cummings 03:42
That was really the main topic of that’s actually,
Jeremy Kellett 03:46
that’s what it got to do other than that, how about our sponsors? Well,
Megan Cummings 03:50
We have a new sponsor this week, actually, last week. Yep, Central Arkansas, truck and trailer. They’re right down the road. A podcast came out last week. It’s a really good watch.
Jeremy Kellett 04:00
Definitely need to give that a listen. Also,
Megan Cummings 04:03
can’t forget about arrows, yeah, ones from day one. And is that the truth? Yeah, they just been here through everything. Just great people, too. I mean, we like them because they’re a sponsor on the podcast, but they do, we do way more than just the podcast with them. Yeah,
Jeremy Kellett 04:18
I started to Keith this morning on the way to work, you know, actually called and was talking about how good the Central Arkansas truck and trailer podcast was. Yeah, yeah. Like, man, that was really good. Those seem like really good people. So Bruce Keith, listen to it.
Megan Cummings 04:33
Oh, I don’t know, probably apple. Which brings me to my next point. Good podcasts available at three o’clock in the morning are when they get uploaded. I think I always see them whenever I wake up in the morning. I know there’s a new one on Wednesday’s Apple podcast, Spotify. IHeartRadio, yeah, I Heart Radio. And then there’s another website, Stitcher, and then Google, and then, obviously, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook. Talk to you, book whatever. Anyways, all of those places, um, share it, share it, like it, comment when you like the smallest amount of interaction with a post just makes it go crazy. TikTok, too. I love TikTok and our Facebook reel. So we have our stuff on Facebook reels. Oh, they’re so funny. Oh, they’re so funny. Yeah, Annabelle does a great job
Jeremy Kellett 05:25
with all that stuff. She just said, Be great to check us out. The point is, you know, tell everybody about this podcast. We want to get it out there to other truck drivers. It’s a great recruiting tool. It’s a great retention tool. Yep, it’s a great communication tool to our owner operators. That’s how it started in the very beginning, yep, when we were doing it. So it’s been a great tool. So this is
Megan Cummings 05:47
a good episode too. Before we get off the topic of that, if you have somebody that’s not, you know, is not a truck driver. Isn’t married to a driver who doesn’t work in the field. Yeah, we barely talk about trucks I mean, I know that sounds awful, because we’re Oakley trucking podcast, but you know, it’s not just your run of the mill. Run of the mill podcast about trucking, you know. So we got a lot of really cool people that work here, you know, and we do, and
Jeremy Kellett 06:14
finding out about them is, yeah, is the fun part about it, you know. Like this episode, yeah, with Brad. So why not, before we get to that, we need to talk about the changes that have happened in the office, particularly the recruiting department and the permit department. Can we have one of those involving things? Megan, they
Megan Cummings 06:34
go across the screen. Yeah. Breaking news, yeah. Well, Jeremy, you want to tell them? Or should I?
Jeremy Kellett 06:39
So, you know, we have Vicky Chastain who has been with us for 18 years. Well, she is moving on, and we’re all going to dearly miss her. And the position she had there in the recruiting department, yep, did a great job has pulled me out of a lot of places, binds in the past, you know, when it comes to paperwork and a lot of stuff with DQ files, and she just did a great job, and you’re going to thoroughly miss her. But with that, her moving opened up a couple things, a lot Wendy thing. So Wendy has moved to her position and taken Vicky’s position. But
Megan Cummings 07:15
Wait, Jeremy, what does that mean? Who does Wendy’s job? Now, right? So
Jeremy Kellett 07:19
that becomes who does Wendy’s job now,
Megan Cummings 07:22
and we still don’t know.
Jeremy Kellett 07:25
So we know who’s attempting to do Wendy’s job. So Megan has graciously accepted Wendy’s position. And so what does that mean for everybody listening out there, especially our owner operators? Well, when you have a question for Wendy now it’s a question for Megan, unless
Megan Cummings 07:42
it’s really hard, then we’ll just give it to Wendy. She’s still training me, giving me a little bit of a grace period.
Jeremy Kellett 07:47
So you know, it’s worked out great for your company, though, I appreciate you doing it too, Megan, because you can get over there and we still got Wendy right across the desk from you. And I told Wendy, I said, it’s gonna be hard for you to get away from Wendy.
Megan Cummings 08:01
Yeah, she’s been here as long as Vicki has, right?
Jeremy Kellett 08:04
Yeah, probably 18 years, 20 years. And so she knows the ins and outs over there, and all ya’ll have spoiled me rotten where I don’t, you know, I don’t know the ins and outs like I used to. So we’re gonna start Jeremy in it next week, and then when you have Valerie started today, yes, yeah. So who’s gonna do it? Tell us what she’s gonna do. She’s
Megan Cummings 08:22
gonna take over my Canada get well, she’s gonna be a I like to call her Megan Jr. I haven’t called her that to her face yet. She might not like that, but she was like a great gal. She’ll do all the stuff that I did in Canada, mainly helping Wendy out, helping me out, so weird, helping me out when I’m on vacation, you know, so little bit of permit stuff. So basically what I did when I first started, so you’ll have a couple new contacts.
Jeremy Kellett 08:49
Be easy on her over there in this training. You and Wendy gotta kind of, I know we’re all spoiled in here and expect people to know what they’re doing. And this is whole different stuff. Yeah, doesn’t work
Megan Cummings 09:01
like that. I was listening to myself earlier, and I was confusing myself, actually, so I hope she’s still there whenever we go back downstairs. Yeah,
Jeremy Kellett 09:07
me too. I did. I went by a while ago, and to make sure you don’t run her off, she doesn’t leave after lunch and then comes back. But I don’t think so. Valerie seems like a great lady, and is going to help us a lot in that department. I think she’s going to be a plus for us absolutely. So you want to finish up, you know, we had done we got to get to this episode, but you and Annabelle put out something on Facebook.
Megan Cummings 09:29
Yeah, you know how I feel about the questions and the comment section. Do you like it? Yeah, yes, absolutely, all the really important information really doesn’t matter. It’s just about the comments for me.
Jeremy Kellett 09:42
So give us the
Megan Cummings 09:44
here. I’ll read the question you read. Okay, sounds good. So
Jeremy Kellett 09:47
The question they put out is, how do you feel about flying when you travel, and which airline is your favorite to fly with? Drop your answer below. All right. Results you get from that.
Megan Cummings 09:58
We’ve got. But a lot of people actually, really don’t mind flying. Aaron McRae says, I like the ones that I can walk on too and walk off of. So anything that stays in the air is good with Aaron. And he says, Oh, and if they have beer, those are good ones too. Haven’t flown in a year, says Terry Smith, he’s too busy working. Brian Carpenter says he flies a lot. It’s much safer than driving more fatalities on the interstate every day. And you know what? Anytime you talk to somebody about being scared about flying, that’s always what they say, I’m like, okay, that doesn’t make me feel any better. Rico Lawrence says, Delta and Jet Blue, I like flying, especially when I have the window seat. Fun fact, when me and Annabelle flew to the truck show last year. I was kind of getting a little spooked. I don’t know. Have I ever told you about that anxiety? Yeah, it was sweaty palms. My mouth was dry. It was really awful. Don’t ever ask Annabelle what happened, because she’ll make it sound like I was a big sissy. But anyways, she was like, just look out the window. It’ll make you feel better. I looked out the window for maybe two seconds and put the curtain down, really, yeah, and I didn’t care if the other people were mad at me just the first time you’d ever fall. No, I flew when I was 13. I don’t know why that affected me so much differently. Anyways, Don ya Talley, you know, they’re big goers and doers. She said, flying gets us to our destination much faster, gives them more time for fun stuff. And then, I mean, I was looking through these comments last night, everybody was there’s pictures of Ralph May when he flew. Did you see that? Yeah,
11:30
Let me see. Yeah.
Megan Cummings 11:34
Everybody has really good opinions about it. So I’m beginning to think maybe I’m in the minority on this one about not being crazy about flying. And I think it’s just really all in my head. Paul Lorimer, check this out. I used to fly one to three times every week for work.
Jeremy Kellett 11:51
There’s a lot of people. Yeah,
Megan Cummings 11:54
I always fly, or I would always fly American, Alaska Air. These sound like fancy airlines. I’ve never heard of Alaska Air. And then Sandy Sanders, this is my kind of person, none. God gave me feet, not wings. I’ve never been on an airplane, and don’t plan to. You know what, Sandy, that’s fine if you can get there by car or by foot. More power to ya. Anyways,
Jeremy Kellett 12:21
good comments, good interaction with our listeners. I appreciate you doing that. That’s always a fun little segment to put in there. So everybody’s got different answers, isn’t it funny to see what they do. Hey, we appreciate all our listeners out there, for sure, and I really want you to stay tuned into this episode. I thought it was really great. And if you have questions or comments, please send them to us. Email them to us. You can do it on YouTube or wherever you are and let us know. We are glad to get back with you. But hope you enjoy this episode with Brad page, thanks.
David Dunn 12:51
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Jeremy Kellett 13:21
So first of all, Brad page, Oakley, owner operator, I appreciate you sitting down with us today. Absolutely. I remember. You might not think I remember this, but I remember when you came through orientation, which was not long ago, actually, back in November, maybe I was in November, 5 orientation, and you mentioned, hey, I want to do a podcast one of these days with you. And I was like, You know what? I remember that we’re gonna write his name down. We’re gonna see what. Got some
13:47
raw meat here. Yeah,
Jeremy Kellett 13:50
right, right. So to get our audience started, give me a little bit of who Brad page is.
Brad Page 13:56
Well, I’m the old guy. Okay, I’m 71. Everybody followed me around, and then orientation like I was about to drop dead. Worried about you? Yeah, Randolph had the paramedic saying. But anyway, I started to add my CDL when I was 18 years old, believe it or not, before they required the 21 on that. So I got my class B CDL when I was 18, started school bus driving, and I can’t believe they trusted me to write their children in 18 years some place. But I did that for a few years. I was going to college, and my brother in law had it. He was all in garbage, and got me my class A and at the ripe old age of 21 I was hauling garbage out of San Francisco down to the landfill, and that wasn’t good enough, and I had to go to the sewage plant and pick up loads of process. Oh, no.
Megan Cummings 14:58
Ew. I. So it just clicked for me,
Brad Page 15:01
oh yeah. So we take that down to the landfill, and we would drop it behind the tippers, where they dropped the garbage on top of this. They call it sludge, so they could slide easier. And sometimes they never figured out that that garbage and that sludge, when it would decompose, turns into methane gas, and when they turn that into an amphitheater. And somebody was snuffing out a cigarette, and the grass took off. Oh my gosh, no kidding, yeah. So anyway, that kind of
Jeremy Kellett 15:36
excited. Where are you from? I
Brad Page 15:38
I grew up in the suburbs of San Francisco, okay, 10 miles from where Mr. Brady Tom Brady came from. You live there now? Nope, moved. Got smart. I moved out of there as quickly as I could. I grew, took a job in the airline business, and lived in Arizona for 27 years. Oh, really. And now you currently live in Blue Ridge, Georgia, in Georgia. So got a family, Yep, got the two boys, and married my lovely bride for 40 years. Awesome. And we have two grand babies and a third one on the way. Congratulations. So anyway, I got into CDL driving primarily to pay for college, and it paid for flight school, and that’s how I worked my way through college. And flight school driving trucks never get out of your system. So so the traveling
Megan Cummings 16:29
thing is a big deal, obviously. If
Brad Page 16:32
I’m not rolling, I’m not happy. So Wow. So I’ve got to keep moving. So maybe my wife gets the joke on that one. Plus, you know, we’ve been all the time. We’ve been married, I’ve been traveling, and if I’m around all day long, it doesn’t do much, for sure,
Megan Cummings 16:51
It’s tiring real quick. Well,
Brad Page 16:52
You know, the highlight of our day is not what we each had for lunch, yeah. Well,
Jeremy Kellett 16:57
I want to go. I want to spend a little bit of time, if you don’t care on this transition from you were driving a truck out in California, and you went, decided to go to college, and then at some point, you decided to be an airline
Brad Page 17:11
pilot. Yeah, flying would be a pretty cool job, because that’s where all the money and the women were. So okay, so I jumped on, jumped into that. I graduated, finished up all my flight training out in California. Started as a flight instructor. It’s all about building hours when you’re doing that. So, I’m still flying and I’m still driving the truck, oh, at the same time, same time, yeah, yeah. So that my students thought was pretty funny, because I’d roll up in my semi every now and then park it out in the parking lot. It’s like, Alright, ready? So I did that for a few years, till I got my time built up and jumped into a medevac job flying medevac. And that’s actually where they explain that it’s anybody sick, car accident, premature babies, we would fly out, pick them up and bring them back into large medical centers. So we contracted with Stanford University and UC San Francisco, and we moved a lot of premature babies, which was pretty cool. Then we also expanded and started moving overseas, and we started repatriating patients that were injured or sick from overseas, back in holy moly, and that’s where I met my wife. She was a flight nurse with this company, and we met on a flight. The first flight was just short. One ran up, just up in Northern California, bringing a patient back down. Next one, we went to Ecuador, picked up a patient in Ecuador, brought them all the way back up to San Francisco.
Jeremy Kellett 18:47
Is this a big commercial plane? Was a Lear jet, corporate jet,
Brad Page 18:51
so, but it was a flying intensive care unit.
Jeremy Kellett 18:53
It’s pretty cool. I bet it was. How did you get into that? They were based
Brad Page 18:58
across the field from where I was teaching, and just got to know the folks. And they said, Well, we like you, so when you get a certain amount of hours, come on over and we’ll get you set up and trained, and off you go.
Jeremy Kellett 19:11
Can you explain that a little bit? Just because I’m interested in the pilot stuff, I mean, you have to have a bunch of hours that’s basically to become certified. Yeah,
Brad Page 19:23
yeah. The first goal is to get to 1500 hours total time. So that’s what you do as a flight instructor. You’re teaching other students, and all that time I’m over in the sea with them thrashing away. I’m logging that as pilot and command time. Okay,
Megan Cummings 19:40
so you have to, so you were a flight instructor before you were finished with your really?
Brad Page 19:45
Yeah, yes, it’s, it’s almost, it’s inverse. The Air Force does the same thing too. They’ll take a new guy out of pilot training in the Air Force. They’ll toss them into what they call primary flight. Wow. I mean, you’re going to teach primary flight if you. Just came out of it, you know how to teach primary flight. Oh,
Megan Cummings 20:02
I didn’t think of it like that. Yeah. So you
Jeremy Kellett 20:05
would just, you didn’t have a plane. No, I just had to rent one. Yeah,
Brad Page 20:10
I’d run, I’d rented one. Gotcha? I mean, the plane that right now runs for $150 an hour. I was renting it for 13 hours back in the day. Really
Jeremy Kellett 20:21
different, different gigs, but driving a truck helped pay for that. Oh yeah, yeah,
Brad Page 20:27
absolutely, absolutely, I mean it. You know, I didn’t grow up in the Bay Area, out there in California, you got to belong to a union, so I was a proud card carrying team, sir. Okay, and we, we, in fact, I rode through one Teamster strike out there, which was educational. So we, our company, signed what they call me too, which kept us moving. We could keep driving. We had to put a big yellow sticker in our windshield so the teamsters wouldn’t break our windshields. Wow. What
Jeremy Kellett 21:01
What year was that? Right? That was
Brad Page 21:02
19. That would have been 1975 so, and I learned that when the teamsters go on strike, first thing we do is go to the liquor store, and then they go to the Brickyard, because you need bricks and you need liquor, so you gotta, they’re fixing to bust some but, oh yeah, man, they were gonna, every day, would bust up windshields. And I made it. It was interesting. I mean, I was just a young kid. It was, it was pretty, you know, you eye opening. I bet it was kind of sitting off, this is interesting.
Jeremy Kellett 21:34
Do I want to be part of this or not? Oh yeah, man.
Brad Page 21:38
Watch this stuff going. They take this seriously, don’t they? So, I kept building up my time. Got to know these folks in them on the medevac medevac business, jumped over there, did that for a few years, built built up enough, what we call turbine time, which you need jets and turbo props, and slid into a job with Henson airlines, which was owned by Piedmont, the old Piedmont, I don’t know if anybody remembers Piedmont North Carolina, became US Air, which became part of American later on, but went to work with them that brought me out to the East Coast, into Florence, South Carolina. And what was that job? Just flying 34 passenger airlines. Call them commuters. Okay, so we would feed the main hubs. You know, we go into the smaller cities, pick up passengers there, bring them into the main hubs, drop them off. And, man, you want to log a bunch of time because you were just bam, bam, bam, all day long. So did that build up enough time there, and I got my first real airline job. So I jumped off as a company called America West Airlines that brought me back into Phoenix, and we parked it.
Jeremy Kellett 22:46
Wow. So, that’s the company you stayed with. Well,
Brad Page 22:51
I sat with them for five years, and then went into bankruptcy. And when you have new babies, bankruptcy and the wife, don’t really mix well together. So all my neighbors flew for Southwest Airlines, and they flew on the 737. I was flying on a 737 already to America West, and they said, Man, we’ll walk through your application for you, buddy. So I was still in the day when your hand wrote the application. So I wrote out the application, gave it to them. They took it right into Dallas for me, and the rest is history. Spent 2026, years at Southwest Airlines after that. Holy
Megan Cummings 23:28
moly. So does that ever, does it ever get boring? Because, you know you have to. I mean, I don’t guess you get off the plane after you land. No, we
Brad Page 23:39
depends on where you are in the southwest. Initially it was, I mean, we were a little cow town airline when we started. There’s 600. I was number 621 on the seniority list. I was the last pilot on the seniority list in June, July, January of 93 so at 621 pilots, and today they have almost 12,000 pilots in this indoor industry. So it exploded. I mean, they just Herb Kelleher ran the airline, great guy, real people. Person, really interesting guy, and he had a business plan and expanded that airline. And couldn’t believe we went from flying from Lubbock and Amarillo and all those real hot spots before I retired, we’re actually going to Honolulu and Jamaica and down into the Caribbean, having a great time just living the dream. You know, yeah,
Jeremy Kellett 24:31
yeah. So what places did you go to? I mean, just yeah,
Brad Page 24:35
all of all, it was a Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you bid your schedule every month they publish what they call lines of flying okay? So I would look for Max pay and max time off, and jump into those and let the cards kind of fall. A lot of guys thought it went on. I just like warm places, so they’d bid forth again, you know. But I see I’m a greedy, capitalistic pig. So you will. But
Jeremy Kellett 25:01
Do you want the maximum? I’m going
Brad Page 25:02
for money, yeah. So, you know, put me into Calgary Canada, so it’d be in the middle winner. So, wow, it happens. So, so
Jeremy Kellett 25:12
let me, let me pick at this commercial airline stuff a little bit more than I mean, that’s a huge responsibility. It is, yeah, it’s a huge task to get there to that point. Yeah, a lot of flying and stuff. What is, what was probably the toughest thing, being an airline pilot, what’s, what’s the biggest challenge?
Brad Page 25:32
Weather, yeah, just like in the trucking business, it’s weather. So, you know, you’re always going around it, or you’re always in it, something around it, you know, we, we got what at Southwest, they got these pretty cool landing systems called Heads Up displays. And to help, we can land in very, very low visibility. And it took, normally, what we call the class one instrument approach. We’d have to have the runway at 200 feet with a half mile visibility. This heads up display took us down to 50 feet and eighth of a mile visibility. Did that not just scare you to death, yeah, you know you just, you volunteer for the mission. And it actually it’s, you get to do what you’re trained to do. And that’s it actually kind of was. It’s gonna be kind of fun. We’re going down there to
Megan Cummings 26:25
be a little bit of an adrenaline junk, oh, yeah, especially with the med flight. That’s where you started, yeah, you know. So that’s got to be a, I mean, that has to be something that you chased to want to do that in the first place. Yeah,
Brad Page 26:38
yeah. You gotta, you got to enjoy the challenge of operating a pretty complex piece of machinery in a very dynamic environment.
Jeremy Kellett 26:47
I’ve been on those flights where you can’t see out the window, and I’m thinking, There’s no way this guy can see the runway. Yeah? I mean, what’s he doing up there? We’re just going into this hoping for the best. We’re going through
Brad Page 26:59
our portfolio. Yeah, dude, if you got this for one, I’m
Jeremy Kellett 27:07
back there stressing out. Well, it’s interesting
Brad Page 27:09
too, because at 50 feet, what people don’t realize is an airplane actually, when you land in a commercial jet, your nose up four degrees and the landing gear is pretty far behind you. So where I’m getting the 50 foot reading the landing gear is actually 37 feet. So you’re about ready to touch that runway. You have some close calls. Oh, yeah, everybody does so, but yeah,
Megan Cummings 27:37
well, tell me one up. You’re not doing it anymore.
Brad Page 27:42
Yeah, I can’t give away too many state secrets, yeah, but now we’ve shut down engines. In the previous I mean, we were going to Los Angeles one time, and this was an older 737, and there’s a particular light at the time, called the start valve open light. And the older model airplane at that light came on, you had to shut down the motor, because if you didn’t start the starter, the starter motor would go over, over speed and shrapnel the inside of the engine. So, so we get the light, we kind of look at each other man, so we have a whole bunch of memory items. Like, I could sit here and do it from the rook right now, if you wanted me to, but I won’t bore you with that part. But anyway, we we went ahead and caged the motor, ran the whole checklist and landed with a whole bunch of equipment waiting for us at Los Angeles International passengers, eyes are about this big when you roll, you know they they come out to the end of the runway, and if you declare an emergency, they’re going to follow you on to the runway. So,
Jeremy Kellett 28:44
so we have to declare an emergency. Oh yeah, we declare an emergency. Yeah.
Brad Page 28:47
You shut you shut a motor down. You better declare an emergency. Otherwise there’ll be a lot of people working a couple of trips to the chief pilot’s office to do a rug. Did
Jeremy Kellett 28:56
you get on the intercom and tell them what you were doing? Yeah, you
28:59
know, you get your best captain voice,
Megan Cummings 29:01
oh, yeah, that’s what I was gonna ask about Brad. So you know, when you’re on a plane and it sounds like they’re talking through like a cotton ball,
Brad Page 29:08
yeah? What’s the deal with that? Just part of being the cool boy. Cool boy. Okay, okay, so that’s just a part of it. No, we all joke that you start out every conference, every pa starts with it. Yeah, it does. This is your captain speaking. You look out the right side, you may see some smoke. Don’t be alarmed, yeah, don’t be alarmed. We have equipment standing by.
29:35
Wow.
Brad Page 29:39
Yeah, you know it’s kind of the good news is the modern day aviation is just there’s so many redundant systems so,
Megan Cummings 29:47
So you’re saying, like, the odds of something catastrophic happening are pretty low, pretty low. Okay, that makes me feel better. At
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Megan Cummings 30:53
Here’s something that I’ve always wondered about. So my uncle always used to tell me, if there’s small planes, you can feel everything on it, and that little dip you feel in your stomach, like when you’re going down a hill really fast, or in a roller coaster or whatever. I don’t remember feeling at the first time I flew, but when I was on a smaller plane, that’s all I felt, everything
Brad Page 31:18
a smaller plane you’re flying in what we call the lower part of the atmosphere, and there’s a lot more bumps. Because you hit closer to the ground, you get the heat cool. Air rises and falls, and that makes bumps for you, and then the wind gets involved in it. Yeah. So generally, above 10,000 feet, things smooth out a little bit, till we start getting up into the higher altitude, to where we start playing with jet streams. And jet stream 100 and 130 140 mile an hour winds. And it’s something you don’t realize, but the weather is three dimensional. So you’ll go up through one layer, go smooth. Next layer, you can hit bumps. So whenever you go up into the jet stream, there’s always a bunch of bumps when you go in there, but school those when you go like when you’re eastbound, you hit the bumps, then you I’m in the jet stream, and you watch your ground speed, and all of a sudden, we are all because you get pushed 120 mile an hour push. So we would run true air speed at about 400 and let’s say 500 miles an hour to get Hunter knot tail wind. You’re doing 600 miles an hour over the ground, so eastbound was
Megan Cummings 32:25
pretty cool. That is scary, and you like that? Oh yeah, that doesn’t freak you out. No,
Jeremy Kellett 32:31
we’re just, you’re probably part meteorologist too, aren’t you?
Brad Page 32:34
I’ve been through so many meteorology courses. Are you my favorite? We actually hired a professor of meteorology from the University of Colorado to come down and teach, because we’d go through school every six months. We’re back in school for current training. And this guy’s name was Professor John Falk. The perfect name for meteorology was like the absent minded professor. I mean, it’s almost like, Dude, you better Your fly is open, because it’s just he didn’t care, man, he was in a fall, he was in the fog, and he was so much fun. I learned so much from him. I mean, that’s pretty interesting. So, you know, then as the airline grew, we had to get more into international weather patterns and stuff like that. That was
Jeremy Kellett 33:25
kind of interesting. One more question. We’ll get off this. So yeah, we go down a rabbit hole. Is pilot stuff?
Brad Page 33:30
Yeah, but I love it. Forget about Oakley.
Jeremy Kellett 33:35
Who controls the air conditioning on the plane?
Brad Page 33:40
Well as the captain, I would oversee what that worthless first officer? Because obviously, he’s worthless. He’s in the right seat, right?
Jeremy Kellett 33:50
So also the head dog, head man’s in the left seat. Yeah, Okay, gotcha, that helps.
Megan Cummings 33:55
What’s the use for the right seat, though, in case something happens to the pilot? Yeah? Well,
Brad Page 33:59
there’s lots of different stories about why he’s over there, or she’s a but now that you it’s a busy it’s a busy piece of equipment. It’s nice to have two people in there, and one flies and the other guy monitors, does the radios, takes care of all the different sundry. But we fly every other leg switch out so, but they all stay in the right seat. I stay in the left seat. But anyway, the first officer is over there. He’s he’s in command of the environmental control
Jeremy Kellett 34:30
AC, yeah, yeah, interesting. So he probably gets lots of suggestions.
Brad Page 34:35
Well, you have to remember that every molecule that you’re breathing inside that airplane goes through the engine and comes back through what we call a pneumatic air cycle machine. We call them packs, and when they separate, they compress the air. And when you compress air, it heats and then expands and it cools. Is, and when it would go through the packet, compress it real hard and expand it, that’s the cool area you’re supposed to get in the back. So that’s why it’s not very cool when you’re sitting still, when you’re sitting still on the ground, is a challenge. Very much. So, yeah, yeah. So we have an auxiliary power unit on the airplane. That’s another small jet engine, and that’s part of the environment. Yeah,
Jeremy Kellett 35:22
They need to fix that. There needs to be some cool AC blowing out that thing. I tell you,
Brad Page 35:27
the old airplanes we had, we could literally, like would be stopping Texas somewhere. It’s nice and humid. You see that fog coming down out of the ceiling while you’re sitting on the ground, that air conditioning is working well. Yeah? So people come out, we are on fire. So no, but enjoy the cool.
Jeremy Kellett 35:43
I got on a small, small plane years ago, coming back from Baton Rouge, I went down to our reserve terminal. And I don’t know how I booked this flight, but I mean, it was like, it was only like, eight or 10 of us on there, and it wasn’t off, it wasn’t a jet. And I mean, I get, it was so hot in that plane, I thought I was about to have to come apart. I mean, it was so hot in there when you got on it, just baking out there on the runway, yeah? And then you go, get in it, and then you’re like, it’s even worse. Come on. We need to get some air moving. Let’s get in this plane and go. But, yeah, that was one miserable, rough day. Yeah, planes like
Brad Page 36:20
that. You don’t get any till you start the motors. You’re not going to get any air conditioning going unless they bring a big old yellow hose out, yeah, shoving that door plane. Did you
Jeremy Kellett 36:30
I know, all right, I’m getting off of the pilot here just second. Did you know Dennis Oakley is a pilot? I did not, yep, interesting. He owns the company, and he, I mean, he flies. I’ve been in contact with him. Yeah, we have a company plane, and we’ve, we’ve been in few, I don’t we’ve gone a few funerals and business trips and stuff like that. But, yeah, he can fly. That’s interesting. I did not know that I was in with him. One time we went, it was just North Texas. We went down there. I can’t remember Tex, or can or something. And we’re, I see he’s up there, but he’s got his, what do you call a guy? It’s got his right hand man, yeah, First Officer, yeah, which is actually the pilot, I think, yeah. But Dennis is, we’re, we’re coming in, and the wind is just howling. I mean, it was windy that day, and we were starting to land down there in North Texas, or Texarkana somewhere, and we were literally sideways. It’s called this, yeah, coming to the runway, and when you get real close, you’re like, This is not going to go well. And, and, I mean, as soon as he got right down to the runway, he just turned right at the last second and took the wing in and shook me up a little bit, but he did a good job. Yeah. Like, it was nothing, yeah,
Brad Page 37:39
I landed in Islip, New York, one night. Man, snowing and blowing. I mean, it was ugly. And we got to get what you call it. They call it a new reading. They send, we joke. They send a guy out there on golf shoes and a golf cart and run speed across the runway to give you. So we get the new reading. It’s good, but, man, I didn’t pick up the runway till about 100 feet, and I had 4040, mile an hour winds off the left side. I’m doing that coming in sideways. And you, when you don’t realize it, is, yeah, we’re turning this way for me to see the runway. I’m looking out the right window. Oh my gosh. Then you come over, kind of looking at it, and you kick it out and land. It was a pretty good adrenaline rush. I remember I landed. Told the first officer, I can take a walk.
Megan Cummings 38:32
That did me in Yeah, just, you
Brad Page 38:35
I know, like my brother in law is a Navy pilot, said, Yeah, you get that rush when you land on an aircraft carrier, you know? Oh, yeah. I mean, so your brother’s pilot, too. My brother in law, brother in law, yeah, he’s retired, retired Delta guy. He went through the Navy and came up through Delta. So, so, yeah, we had that family, right? That’s
Jeremy Kellett 38:52
something common. There is little rivalry. Yeah, that’s good. So let’s get back to the truck. All right, how in the world did you get back to trucking? You, you was a commercial pilot for how many years I had 30
Brad Page 39:05
Yeah, 3333 years as an airline pilot. And all is, it never gets out of your blood. So I kind of scratched that itch a little bit. I bought this big old RV that was a Columbia freight liner. I mean, it was a Class A truck. And out in Arizona, you go out to the sand dunes every winter, you take side by side out there. And so you don’t want to show up out there unless you got yourself a big old truck. Oh, so we’d show up with all our big old trucks. And we’re thinking, we’re somebody. And then the answer brothers would show up that, you know, the racing hunters, oh yeah, I’ve heard that night, yeah. Well, they also have, they do a lot of class 10 trophy trucks, which are $3 million race trucks. So they’d pull up with a bunch of semis, beautiful trucks, start pulling their trophy trucks out, and we’re kind of going to go. Yeah. So that kind of that, not just kind of kept the blood going, and as
Jeremy Kellett 40:06
I got so you had kept your CDL, well,
Brad Page 40:09
I actually, we moved around so much, I actually let the CDL expire, because back then you had to take a test every time you moved, and had to come back to the state. So if I said, I give up, so you can run an RV without a CDL. So I did that. And so I was getting closer towards retirement. I’m thinking, you know, I don’t want to sit around very much. And so I bought some FedEx Ground routes, and I became boss man, and I had a bunch of local livery vans, and I had lion Hall, and so that put me right back into it. So I went back, took Quickie for two weeks. CDL, course, it was funny, because I walked in with all these newbies. So we got in the truck. The instructor climbs in the seat with me. It’s a 10 speed. Okay, we can go. So, all right, I start running the gears. He looks at me, goes, you’ve done this before. That’s it. Yeah, I have. So anyway, that got me back into it. And how old were you pre retirement? About 6263
Megan Cummings 41:26
somewhere in there. Isn’t that so funny. Most people, when they reach that age, they’re like, put in my years. I’m ready to go fishing at a bait shop. Brad’s like, I’m getting my CDL started working. Yeah, do something. Some people relax like that, though, yeah, I’ve got a lot
Brad Page 41:42
of friends that do that, you know. I mean, I suck at golf, so
Megan Cummings 41:47
get it, it’s
Jeremy Kellett 41:50
important to do something
Brad Page 41:51
you’re good at it, yeah? You know, first off, there’s no challenge, right? It’s just a stationary ball laying
Jeremy Kellett 41:57
on the ground. Yeah? Kinds of height.
Brad Page 42:03
I could never get that thing further, but not off the ground. So anyway, so you know now I also, prior to that, I owned a consulting company that actually did some pretty interesting work with Boeing consulting. Oh, really, yeah, with the heavy, outsized cargo market, it’s really interesting, really interesting segment that
Jeremy Kellett 42:23
was your, that was your post retirement plan to do a little consulting.
Brad Page 42:27
I was still right in the heat of the airline, because then I was in my 50s, and we were doing that. Actually, we’re trying to look at the Russians, at the break up the Soviet Union, the Putin literally gave 12 airplanes to a buddy of his, and they were and 120 fours, which is our the equivalent in our Air Force is the c5 and it’s large enough to take 640 foot trailers inside the airplane. And so they started. They established a market with free airplanes and lots of fuel, because these things just suck fuel like you wouldn’t believe. And they established a whole business calling heavy, outsized cargo. And 12 airplanes were creating a billion dollars in annual revenue, where in the regular airline business. You need about 35 airplanes to do that. And these guys, they were just rocking it in what they were doing? They were moving cargo for a while. They were hauling rockets.
Megan Cummings 43:33
Top secret GE for yeah, there’s a lot of
Brad Page 43:37
stuff. You know, they’d have to kill you if they told you what the load was but, you know, they actually started. They were hauling loads for the United States Air Force, because the Air Force does not have enough lift when they mobilize. Someone does. A storm started. There’s a whole bunch of stuff. I had to get out of the sandbox. Well, they were flying Russian airplanes into Fort Bliss, Texas and El Paso, loading Patriot missile systems on board, and they pushed these missiles in there. All right, boys, we’re loaded. You can go. There’s 34 Russians on this airplane. They’d close the doors. They had for 14 hours. They had our Patriot missile system all to themselves. Oh, my God, possibly go wrong. I guarantee there were four engineers back there, yeah, figuring this thing out. So, so, so we were trying to get a US equivalent to that started, and the Russians were just, they could, we couldn’t compete price wise. But, yeah, they got the airplanes for free. So, but karma, when Putin invaded Ukraine, all those airplanes got parked, that whole business is done, really, yeah, so it’s interesting, yeah, Mr. Only you were,
Jeremy Kellett 44:55
you were consulting on some of that. They were consulting
Brad Page 44:57
that because, you know, I mean, I, I. I know all about, yeah, heavy loads. How to, you know, put it on the truck and so, so I got sucked in, because of my logistics background, into this thing. And they kind of like the idea that I knew what a removable goose neck was, a flat boy, split deck, all that kind of stuff. So, we actually got to go pitch this thing on Wall Street, which is pretty cool. So we’d go to investment banks, and we’d stay at the Harvard Club, because one of our business partners was a Harvard graduate, so holy, I’m only Brad, so we’re, we’re all sitting around wearing $1,000 suits and trying to impress each other.
Jeremy Kellett 45:38
Thought you somebody? I
Brad Page 45:39
thought I was somebody, you know. And I’m, I’m just kind of going, Man, I’m just along for the ride, you know, this is pretty cool, yeah, so, but we pitched on Wall Street with that. We actually did the $60 million raise, and then just couldn’t, couldn’t get it, just, it was just Boeing couldn’t figure out how they wanted to do it, and so we just turned through the towel and but that market is still there right now, it’s ripe to be picked up. Jeremy,
Megan Cummings 46:06
Isn’t it weird that we have people with these kinds of stories that pull an Oakley trailer? It’s
Jeremy Kellett 46:10
It’s amazing. It never stops to amaze me. What kind of owner operators we have out there, Oakley owner operators, if you just, it just makes you want to dive into the next guy that walks in.
Megan Cummings 46:21
Like, I know you’re, I know you’re keeping something.
Jeremy Kellett 46:26
What is your history? So
Brad Page 46:29
The bottom line is, when I was in fourth grade, my fourth grade teacher told me I would never earn a living staring out the window like, watch this. This is my urge. Yeah, didn’t you? And you
Megan Cummings 46:38
Remember her name? That’s my favorite. If you’re watching Mrs. Myers,
Jeremy Kellett 46:45
That’s great. That’s great. So
Brad Page 46:47
son back staring at the windshield again. Yeah, I know I’ll see Mrs. Myers eventually, when the Lord pulls us in.
Jeremy Kellett 46:55
Well, let’s talk about that transition to Oakley. Okay, you know, how in the world did you end up here?
Brad Page 46:59
Well, I saw lots of Oakley trailers over the years talking to the guys out here, and nobody had a bad thing to say about this company. So I had to get my two years of road experience. And so I went to work for an Amazon freight partner, Holland, Amazon, which was interesting. You talk about you never talk to anybody. It’s all technology. Yeah, it’s pretty wild. You drive, you just drive up to the sort center, and there’s a screen that tells you where it dropped, where you pick the boom, opens up and you go, I mean, it’s every now and then you get a voice from a third world country somewhere, hello. My name is Floyd. One time I actually heard chickens in the background, working from home today. So anyway, I knew I wanted to haul for somebody, and I just started, I finally focused on Oakley, just because I knew it was a good haul. And started plotting, okay, you need two years to do this. Started watching the podcast. That’s when you walked in and said, oh, a podcast. So anyway, Jim, you road life, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I started talking to him. He made 5200 bucks off me. Good for him. So, he turned me over to Kent. Started talking to Ken. I still had six months to go, and Ken, that boy did not let go of me, you know, I wouldn’t talk to him. He’d call me up. Hey, how are you doing? Still? Still building that time out there. Yes, I am. I’ll let you know. I mean, right at the two year hack, he’s on the phone.
Jeremy Kellett 48:50
He knows he’s got a good one. Yeah, yeah, that’s what it is.
Brad Page 48:52
So, that’s, I mean, this company is really interesting. I really have to say I like this company a lot, because there’s just not a bunch of trucks running around out there. There’s a whole lot of stuff that goes on that you don’t see that this company does. And you know what’s going on on that river out there? Fascinates me to know when? Yeah, so, so I’ve, I’ve become a student of the whole Mississippi, the whole Mississippi Valley, the Ohio Valley. So, did you know the Ohio River puts more water into the Mississippi than any of the other rivers? Didn’t that win your beer in the bar? Yeah?
Jeremy Kellett 49:30
Good, yeah. It is interesting, for sure. Yeah, it really is. So you decided to come over and what are you doing, pulling a dump trailer. I’m a hopper, Hopper bottom, yeah, okay, yeah, all right. And you started November, November 5, which is probably one of the toughest times to start with, the holidays, you know, like pushing a rope, yeah, getting through here. So get
Brad Page 49:53
your first settlements. Go, man, we are. We’re just killing them down here. The next one is, I paid my bills. Do you think so?
Jeremy Kellett 50:01
Weird. So you made it through some holiday time. Now you have the first of the year. You’re, yeah, you feel good about being an owner operator,
Brad Page 50:09
yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s really cool. What I really like about this job is nobody’s blowing smoke up your six around here, you know, I mean, it’s Lawson’s my dispatcher out there. I got to know Lawson pretty well. Yeah, it’s like the first thing in the morning. It’s awesome. By one o’clock. Hey, dude, how are you doing? Man?
Jeremy Kellett 50:31
It takes us a little while to get around this
Brad Page 50:33
The army gets going early. Yeah, this first time I spent the night here, that’s pretty funny to watch. I wore a lot of my truck at 530 kind of look around. There’s people stirring already. By 630 men get out of the way. Yeah, this place is rocking, yeah. But you know, it’s nobody better I’m in, for lack of a better term, nobody lies. What lies to you around here, there’s no no BS, yeah, straight forward, wrong.
Jeremy Kellett 50:59
No need to. It’s all going to come out. You’re going to find out,
Megan Cummings 51:02
yeah, yeah. And if it’s not from us, it’ll be from somebody on the road, another driver, you know, yeah.
Brad Page 51:09
So yeah. And it’s, it’s interesting too, because just having Oakley on the side of your truck, people come up and talk to you. Well, know about the hall, things like that. So, yeah. I mean, I, when I, when I was in the Fed Ex business, one of my lion haul drivers, he broke out on his own for a little while, and he decided to want to be home a little bit more. This guy, he was pretty cool. Guy is a marine and he had a little bit of PTSD going on, pretty fun to watch. Anyway, I hadn’t talked to him for a while, and so I called him up the other day, just, dude, how are you doing? So we started talking, and he lives over in Scottsboro, Alabama. And I said, Yeah, I’m calling for Oakley. He goes, Man, I see you guys all over the place out there, especially you know that that 72 quarter, we’re up and down there quite a bit. So I mean, if you’re in the truck, business, people know about us. Yeah, yeah,
Jeremy Kellett 52:00
we’re pretty fortunate to have a good reputation, you know. And we try, I don’t know if people know this, but we try so hard to have that good reputation, keep our standards, you know, throughout all these years, because it pays off in the end. Yeah, yeah. You know, when you get that reputation, people understand what you’re doing and what your goal is and what your purpose is, and it pays off. Then you start attracting, you know, good people per head, I mean, and that’s what you’re wanting, you know, to set those standards early as a company and keep them all those years. And then all of a sudden, you got Brad looking at you, hey, I want to go over there and the
Megan Cummings 52:41
Drivers play a big part in that, too. Huge, you know, huge, because you guys are a lot of the times the first point of contact on the road, yep, you know. So you guys help us keep the standard, yeah.
Brad Page 52:53
Plus with the customers too, yeah, that’s saying. You have to remind yourself of them that shark up in Livonia, picking up glass, kind of looking around, going, you guys ever get a broom? Yeah? So us Oakley guys can get up this big old
Jeremy Kellett 53:13
ramp up that side. There you go, yeah. But you learned a lot the first couple months. Oh yeah,
Brad Page 53:18
yeah. I’m still learning. So, you know, it’s always interesting seeing one this end of the food chain, literally, yeah? So that’s always kind of interesting
Jeremy Kellett 53:30
on the front end. You
Brad Page 53:32
I know, no, I am not going to ever haul chickens. Yeah, that just isn’t going to work. I don’t mind dropping that stuff off in the back of the chickens, because chickens love to eat. I know that. Yeah, I’m pulling chicken feed into those folks all the time and and whoever knew you needed crushed limestone to put into chicken feed to help put
Jeremy Kellett 53:53
it’s something all the time. You just learn out there. Well, I mean, we can’t piece it together. We just know we haul it, you know, most of it. Don’t even know what it’s for. What it goes to is, you know, no, we haul it. So Hoss, much different material. Yeah, any other questions? I know we’ve gone a long time on this, but it’s been such an interesting conversation. It’s been fun, and I just enjoy showing, I mean, other sides of our owner operators, and giving our listeners. I mean, you know, Luigi red. I mean, we have so many of them out there that you just want to, you know, like I said, Art, or you want to take the next guy coming in and, Hey, sit down and we want to talk. We want to quid you too. So that
Brad Page 54:36
sounds interesting, too. In the trucking business, good luck. The general perception of the public looking at a truck driver, what a bunch of morons. That’s a truck driver and probably one of the coolest guys I ever parked out in the middle of nowhere one night, and then this little, tiny truck stops and this prime, flat bed guy parks next to me, and I’m out thumping my tires, and he’s checking his load. And we start talking. This boy’s got an MBA out of Ohio State, and he’s got a PhD in theology. And so we wound up having a pretty long, involved conversation, and he said, You know, I just love this end of the I love doing this, and that’s why I’m here. It’s
Megan Cummings 55:23
so common. It’s always a love. It’s like people start out doing it and then do something else, come back to it down the line. It’s just, we see it all the time. It gets
Brad Page 55:33
in your blood, yeah, it doesn’t go away. You know, my kids are having a bad time about it now. So my younger son, he designs jet engines for Prad and Whitney. So he’s a geek, but my older son worked with me on the Fed Ex side. He was in the Coast Guard and was a diesel mechanic. So he worked on all my trucks for me. And so part of me I love, I love spinning wrenches. So that transferred to my sons and so anyway, when my younger ones design jet engines, he’s having a great time, but my younger, my older son, is part of a diesel drag racing team. Oh, really. So it’s pretty fun to see that going on. I bet
Jeremy Kellett 56:19
it is. So they, you get to go to some of them. Yeah, we get to go
Brad Page 56:23
to some of them. You know, they have one engine they built with triple turbos on the thing. I mean, it’s wild to look at this stuff. So it’s pretty fun to watch this kid. You used to empty his diapers, and now he’s actually doing something. Yeah, pretty cool. Yeah.
Jeremy Kellett 56:39
It is, it is. It is good to watch him grow up, yeah, become something, yeah. Any words of wisdom before
56:45
we go give
Megan Cummings 56:46
to it. Before you do that, you should do it like if you’re flying a plane, you should give it to us. Yeah?
Brad Page 56:56
Along those lines, just one last quick story. My younger son was going to Arizona State University. That’s where he got his engineering degree. And so he’s living in Phoenix, and we were, we were out in Georgia by then, so he’s coming out to meet, coming out to Atlanta to spend Thanksgiving with us. Yeah, we booked the flight on a Southwest flight. And turns out it was my flight. I did not know it. And what do you mean? It was your flight? I was flying. Used to do. I was flying that flight. Oh, you were still flat. Yeah, I was still flying. So I’m gonna fly that flight. And I’m going through, look, Nick man, I call up my son’s dude, is this you’re on this flight. He goes, Yeah, that’s my flight. All right. Well, I’ll see. You know, I mean these boys grew up with me flying. So No, dad’s a captain, so my son sitting in the back, I got to do the PA. And next thing I know, I’m on Instagram. Did he go viral? I don’t know if everyone went viral, but my son could not believe that his dad was making a PA. It’s like, Dude, you’re almost 21 you know, since you’ve been born, Dad’s been doing this, and he was just shocked to hear his old man. That’s pretty good. So anyway, it’s still kind of a family joke. You shout at him or anything. Oh, shout out to both my boys and my lovely bride, Corey and Michael.
Jeremy Kellett 58:27
Oh, man, did you do it on the plane, on that flight? Oh, yeah, I did it directly.
Brad Page 58:32
Yeah. You know that’s what brings up a whole bunch of other stuff. Yeah, just to pick politically correct. Oh, but we used to have some pretty fun stuff back there. Yeah, yeah, we can’t do that anymore. Oh, so, oh gosh, you know, maybe I’ll change now with the new administration. Save
Jeremy Kellett 58:47
some of it, Brad, for next time, because we got to have you, yeah, we got to have you back. That’s fun. Get you a good you know, get some seasons in here at Oakley, yeah, and then you can come back, because I I would like to spend a little more time next time on making that step, becoming an owner operator, coming to Oakley, hauling bulk material, you know, getting used to a dump trailer, all that kind of stuff. And we don’t have time to do that today, but yeah, because we went down the rabbit
Brad Page 59:16
hole, but it turned out great, yeah, yeah. So, the biggest thing, I would say, is technology. And I know we got the cheater, our little tattoo tail boxes on all the trucks. Now that stuff is owned by Amazon. And guess who was the first group they tested it out on really Amazon freight. And so we, I was highly entertained when I heard everybody complaining about it out here. It’s like, Dude, we even had the inward facing camera at Amazon. And the only thing we’re missing here, which I would highly recommend that we do here, is the driver I app is the sister to the tattoo tail box. And you can see. See your score we’re doing Yeah, are we going to do it? We’re doing
Megan Cummings 1:00:03
it now, right now. Yeah. Is it out? Yeah, yes, okay, not
Jeremy Kellett 1:00:07
all of them were there,
Megan Cummings 1:00:08
yeah, call safety and get a log in, right? Yep. As
Jeremy Kellett 1:00:12
we’re doing these meetings, we talked about,
Brad Page 1:00:16
I mean, all I have to do is get a new password and I can log back in. We talked
Jeremy Kellett 1:00:19
about it on last week’s episode about the app and how you can see how you rank amongst everybody in the company. So, yep, yeah, that’s already I’d
Brad Page 1:00:29
I will be rolling with about 1100 1200 score, thinking I am somebody, and then I go into Atlanta, tank. Oh, it would tank immediately, because everybody’s cutting you off. And yeah, Atlanta is just a zoo trying to, yeah, push a truck through that area. So
Jeremy Kellett 1:00:47
Brad, I appreciate you sitting in with us. You have an interesting, very interesting story. You have to be proud of it too. Well, I’ve been blessed. You can, you can surely tell some good ones. Never be bored around you. I can tell
Brad Page 1:01:03
you, every airline, every pilot, has their story. Yeah, so I think it’s very interesting. So yeah, we all just used to have big watches too. So yeah, and when you flew with a military guy, because they were always dog fighting, you know, you shoot the watch, so they’re flying the dog. So I Oh, you’re a fighter pilot. I’d cover my watch immediately, because, like, you’re not shooting my watch, man, the pilot jokes, yeah, oh yeah, there’s plenty of them. So all right,
Jeremy Kellett 1:01:34
Well, thanks. Hey, I just want to say thanks to all our listeners. You know, you guys are awesome. I didn’t know which direction this was gonna go today, but I felt like it went great. I just love these kinds of stories. I wanted to, you know, know our owner operators out there. I mean, you’ve got a retired airline pilot that might have flown you around, and he’s out there in a truck driving on the Interstate today, and it’s in good hands. And we got a lot of people like that here at Oakley, a lot of fantastic owner operators, and we’re gonna get to some of those stories. I love hearing them, and we’re gonna find some more guys like this. So appreciate everybody listening to us. 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.