During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Bruce Mallinson, Owner of Pittsburgh Power, live from the Mid-America Truck Show in Louisville, Kentucky. In this conversation, Bruce shares his lifelong passion for engines, recounting childhood experiences that ignited his love for horsepower and torque. He emphasizes the importance of owner-operators in the trucking industry and discusses the benefits of Pittsburgh Power’s Max Mileage Fuel Born Catalyst. The conversation also touches on the challenges of retirement for truckers, the camaraderie among drivers, the critical role of trucking in society, the resilience of the trucking community, and so much more.
Key topics in today’s conversation include:
- Bruce Background and Journey (1:11)
- Importance of Early Exposure to Trucking (5:05)
- Owner-Operators and Their Resilience (6:05)
- The Appeal of Trucking (8:52)
- Community Support Among Truckers (10:32)
- Performance of Various Engines (13:14)
- Bruce’s Personal Retirement Reflections (15:12)
- Listening to Customer Needs (20:43)
- Hurricane Helene Damage (27:51)
- Retirement Realities (38:01)
- The Addiction to Trucking (42:36)
- Retirement for Owner-Operators (43:39)
- The Supply Chain and Trucking (48:09)
- Trucker Appreciation (49:44)
- Final Thoughts and Takeaways (51:45)
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
Thanks for tuning in to the Oakley podcast, trucking, business and family. My name is Jeremy Kellett, and I’m your host for this podcast, which is brought to you by Oakley trucking located in North Little Rock, Arkansas. Our goal is to inspire, educate and provide resources for our owner operators as well as outside truck drivers that may be interested in becoming a part of the Oakley family. So sit back, relax and keep your eyes on the road as we start this week’s brand new episode. Here we are at the Mid America truck show still here, and always get me some good guests to talk about things, to talk to independent contractors, to talk about the business. And it would not be a truck show if we didn’t have Bruce Mallinson with Pittsburgh Power sitting here, and he’s so good at giving me an update every year. I love having you on, Bruce. I appreciate you coming on to the podcast, man, what is going on with Pittsburgh power and Bruce mallison,
Bruce Mallinson 01:11
You know, life is interesting. Uh, I’m 76 years old now. So you look back in your life and you see what really made the changes and what made you the way you are, and I think, why am I like I am? Why do I love horsepower and twerk and what made me love engines? What made me love being in first place, yeah, and I think it goes back to the back in the 50s. And I had my first bicycle. My dad had a one man furniture story at a 1500 series International Truck, and he didn’t look behind it when he’d get in at the back out the driveway, and I left my bicycle behind the truck, and so he got run over. So for that Christmas, this was probably 1960 61 I got a three speed English racer with hand brakes. I was the only one in the neighborhood. Everybody else had single speed road masters. We lived in a very steep valley. I was the only one that could pedal up the hills, you
Jeremy Kellett 02:36
top of the line, because I had
Bruce Mallinson 02:38
gears. You know? What did the word gears mean to somebody that’s 11 years old? 1011, years old, and I had gears, and then I delivered newspapers, and I would take the rear brake off, and I’d take my mother’s clothes line in the winter time and wrap it around the tire and through the spokes, and I made a chain, because I had several newspapers I delivered to the back porch, and I would ride through their backyard, through 810, 12 inches of snow. The tires were skinny on the English racer, so they cut through the snow, and the tire chain would propel me. So I made chains from my bicycle, but now you only have the front brake. So when you’re coming down the steep hill, you have to be careful, because we were on ice and snow, and all you had was the front brake. So you learned to be gentle with the brake. So that was kind of one of the starts. But then the main thing was in 1965 I had my learner’s permit. I was 16. We had a 283 cubic and Chevrolet two barrel Impala convertible power glide transmission, which is two gears. And my dad bought a brand new Impala, ss, 396, four on a floor, and for a 16 year old with his learners permit to go from 195 horse two speed to a four speed, 325 horse with cubic inches and cubic inches made to torque. I fell in love. I remember letting that clutch out in first gear and rolling into that throttle and grabbing second gear and third gear, and we just shot up the hills. And I was hooked ever since. And so that was kind of the start of what made me the way I am. You know, everybody has to have a story. Why are they the way they are? You know, if you take a young man whose dad trucks, or his grandfather uncle trucks, and you take a four year old boy and you take him for a couple day trip in a semi truck he’s hooked. That’s all he can think about and think about, let’s say dad’s driveway is 200 feet long. They live back. A couple acres, and dad comes home in a big, shiny, conventional dual stacks. Back when we had smoke, Jake breaks little, four year old Tommy standing in the driveway. You know, his hands are in, thumbs are in his belt or hands in his pocket, and here comes dad, driving this big monster. It’s shiny. It’s plain dull stacks. Dad blips the throttle, hits the Jake break. What do you think that does it at 456,
Jeremy Kellett 05:26
A year old boy, oh, makes an impression right there that he can never forget. Here’s his
Bruce Mallinson 05:32
Dad drives the monster, and his dad gets out and picks him up and carries him into the house. So they walk hand in hand. So when they say owner operators, the market is going to die, they can. They’ve been saying this for 48 years. I’ve been doing engines, and I’ve been in trucking since 1969 and I keep hearing the owner operators are going to be a dying breed. They are not a dying breed. Look at this show, right? Yeah, even when we’re in a recession, this show is packed, yeah. And we will always have owner operators because of the specialty work. We will always have young people because of dad and granddad or uncle. But here’s what’s amazing, kids, kids raised in northern Indiana that are Amish, and their farms are along the Indiana toll road, interstate 80, okay? And they cling to the fence and they watch semi trucks going by every day. A lot of them are my clients. Now. Several were with the booth, as he showed really. And one young man said to his mother, Amish, they’re Amish. I want a semi truck. Why can’t I have a semi truck? A mom wouldn’t answer her. Answer him, yeah, he’s got a semi truck. Another young man, he’s about 40. Parents said, You got to go to college. You got to be something we don’t want you in trucking. He studied Spanish and math. Became a Spanish and math teacher. I did it for four or five years. I hated it. He’s an owner operator. Got him a truck. Got him a truck.
Jeremy Kellett 07:23
I interviewed. Change the subject real quick, but it kind of goes along with that. Bruce, I interviewed one of our owner operators, and he was a commercial airline pilot for 30 years, and then now he’s an independent contractor with Oakley trucking, well. And there
Bruce Mallinson 07:39
are several of those guys, and there are several reasons for that. Number one is the thrust of taking off. Yeah, right, the mass that they control. And the weather changes every time they take off. So being from Pittsburgh, the average is 95 days of sun a year. But you go to Colorado, it’s 300 days a year. You go to Florida, it’s 220 days a year sun. So Mr. Owner Operator that lives in the Northeast, and we live in a lot of clouds. Once he gets in that semi truck, within a couple hours, he’s out of the weather. He’s in the sunshine. True, the weather changes. So airplane pilots are not used to being in one area. A lot of them end up in motor homes, but they are free spirits, and a lot of them end up in semi trucks. State police end up in semi trucks. It’s amazing, people that have owned restaurants and got tired of dealing with employees, end up buying a semi truck. I’ve had engineers from Westinghouse Electric buy semi trucks. It’s amazing. It’s just an amazing industry.
Jeremy Kellett 08:51
It is, and the people in it, I mean, you can just go on and on about how many good people.
Bruce Mallinson 08:57
They’re wonderful people. That’s why I like to ride motorcycles with them, snowmobiles with them. They’re just fun and they’re just great. They’re salt in the earth, the farmer, owner, operator. You can’t get any better than that. I mean, just great people, yeah. So, yeah, I thought I would be retired by this age, and I’m semi retired. I mean, I work from wherever I am. I return calls till nine o’clock at night. I may be boating in the Gulf of America. I may be boating there, and I come back at five o’clock, and there might be five phone calls. That’s okay. I return a call, still at nine o’clock at night. Hey, I called one guy at eight o’clock, puns, tawny, Pennsylvania, Punxsutawney, Phil his wife said, he was sleeping. I said, eight o’clock. She so he starts at midnight. I said, What’s he doing? He hauls ethanol. Works all night. I said, so when I wake up at 3: 30 in the morning, and if I call him, that’s okay. She said he’d love it, so I called him at 3: 30 in the morning. We talked for about an hour. You could. Get over it. I call them 330 in the morning. So that’s a good story. You know, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Saturday or Sunday. It doesn’t matter if it’s an evening or an early morning whenever they’re available. I call you, and I love talking about trucks, yeah, and I love helping the owner operators when you can help a person make their life better, then your life becomes better. Isn’t that
Jeremy Kellett 10:25
the truth? I like that saying, because that is and we should all be trying to help each other be better at what they do.
Bruce Mallinson 10:32
Exactly. Yeah. You know, if we all help each other, we get through life easier. Years ago, the truck was on the side of the road, other trucks would stop. We’ve lost that. Yes, we have. We’ve lost a lot of the CB radio. We need to get the CB radio back. You can leave it squashed down, but you need to know when there’s an accident up ahead, just like what we saw, what six weeks ago in that tunnel on Interstate eight in Wyoming, what 23 trucks in the tunnel piled up. That’s a quarter mile long. Wait a second. You should have I know it was ice in the tunnel, but you should have known what was going on. And if you had your CB on and it was squelched on, you should have heard that on the radio that the tunnel is on fire. Yeah, don’t go in it. That’s right, yeah. I mean, you can see through it. It’s a short tunnel. So,
Jeremy Kellett 11:24
yeah, we’ve lost a lot of that, you know, over the years, but we still attract good people, and they still want to know about Pittsburgh power, you know. And you get a lot of people don’t, don’t know about you, a lot of independent contractors that need to Bruce, will you know,
Bruce Mallinson 11:44
We’re on two radio shows. We write for not just two magazines. We used to write for eight. We’ve been doing this for 48 years. I don’t know how else to get the word out, but I get these phone calls: Max mileage, fuel born catalyst. I’ve run it since New 864,000 miles on my x 15, 92,019 Cummins, zero emission problems. I said, Wait a second, at 500,000 we’re supposed to wash the DP up, get the ash out of it. So I’m not having any issues. I know he’s up over 900,000 miles right now. And the story goes on and on. I had a young man over there, and he said, You know, I do run it in all my gasoline. He’s an old rototiller that I hardly use the gasoline in. It was at least three years old. I started it, I got it running, but it wasn’t running right, and it wouldn’t churn dirt. And he said, I got out my little syringe, I put 2c holds, two gallons, I put two cc’s of the catalyst in, started her up, and within a minute, she was purring. And I went digging for dirt. It works that well. It does. Messages, chain saws. Chain saws love it. Everyone says that the saw never slows down. Now, no matter how hard I push on it, no matter how green or what the wood is. And leaf blowers, people love it in leaf blowers, what makes it so good? Oh, I don’t know. Dr Jane Gates, she’s just that smart. She didn’t, she just raised on a chicken farm and has the work ethic. Four o’clock in the morning, she and her sisters were out there plucking eggs, 60,000 chickens. So she’s come up with this max mileage catalyst. Max mileage fuel born Catalyst, and it’s just doing wonders. I mean, it’s 41% of our business.
Jeremy Kellett 13:39
Ever since I’ve seen you, I have been trying to get our older operators that message of, look, you know, Bruce talks about how this does wonders to these new after Mark, after treatment trucks. And you know, we’ve got a lot of them that are firm believers in it that use it, and then we got other ones that don’t. And a lot of them have problems.
Bruce Mallinson 14:05
They have problems. The unit costs a penny a mile to run it, the return is five to six cents a mile. Take what the average truck spends eight to $12,000 a year, plus downtime on emission problems, and we eliminate those problems. So let’s take that eight or $10,000 and the downtime divided by how many miles you drive, and you’ll see it’s a five to 600% return on investment. Wouldn’t you like to be able to give a stock broker $10,000 on January the second, and he gives you back $60,000 at the end of the year. That would be nice to laugh at you.
Jeremy Kellett 14:46
That’s a good way to put it. I mean, to think about it and how that catalyst works,
Bruce Mallinson 14:50
right? I mean, I made 9% my 401, K last year, and they thought it was good. I said, that’s terrible. With 9% my one stock broker had me at. 22% until December hit, and I don’t know what happened in December, we dropped to 18% right? I said, Don’t let that happen next year.
Jeremy Kellett 15:08
Well, I bet he’s struggling this year. So far, he probably worried he’s
Bruce Mallinson 15:11
a good guy. So anyway, this retirement thing, yeah, three winners. Now, I’ve been a snow bird in Florida. I go to Colorado for the owner operator snowmobile conference and to ski with my grandchildren, and then we come back to Florida. So I spent five weeks this year in Colorado. Okay, I still love to ski, I still love snowmobiles, and I thought my skiing was done, and I got into life wave patches last January. Have you ever heard of them? No, sir, they work trans. Is it Trans dermal? It works off the heat of the body. I have like six or seven of them right now. Each patch is about $2.33 so I spend $10 or $12 a day on my body. They were made for the Navy SEALs, for energy. But it’s amazing. It was July, and two of my dealers, Shauna Gray from MD alignments in South Dakota, and Raymond Nast from Nast garage in Napanee, Indiana. They both called me the same day, and I heard about these patches and helping a guy with cancer. So I’m inquisitive. Yeah, I want to know about this. So they both called me, and Ray told me Kathy from Napanee, Indiana, hop steedler has a podcast on Tuesday nights. And I think this was a Monday. It might have been Tuesday, so I got on a podcast, and I’m listening, it’s a half hour, and people give them testimonials. That’s man, I got to try these things. So I knew my skin was suffering at my age, and so I went out this year, and one of the chiropractors from Grand Rapids, Michigan, Guy is full of life. He’s 62 years old. He said, give the patches a year, a year, a year. So I’ve been on since late July. And so I’m in Telluride, Colorado, and I put the energy patches on the shoulder, a brown one on the left and a clear one on the right, a white one on the right, plus the other. And I, my eight year old grandson, likes to ski top to bottom, and I taught him how to ski, and I taught him how to ski with power. And he does, does he not? You know, he’s a little guy, so I still get to pass it, and I get to be sim nice. Here comes Papa. Boy. He just really gets done because he wants to pass Papa. So anyway, they stopped. We start at nine o’clock in the morning, and they stop around noon. And I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to keep skiing. And I said, I’m not ready to eat lunch, but my son in law likes these elaborate lunches, so we stopped, and then we skied about another hour and a half afterwards. I just wanted to keep going. I said, Well, that was interesting. I didn’t get tired today. This was Tuesday. We started on Tuesday. Ski through Saturday, Wednesday, same way. Thursday, same way. Friday, I forgot to put the patches on. I only skied two hours, really. So Saturday, I had the patches back on. I skied through lunch because it’s my last day. I was burning up the slope. And I’m telling myself, slow down, but the body doesn’t want to slow down. I like to ride the edge of that ski. And I come down that mountain, 3545 50 mile an hour riding and carving. And so I ordered a new pair of skis this year, so I
Jeremy Kellett 18:58
You’re not slowing down.
Bruce Mallinson 19:02
And I bought a new snowmobile last year. We set it up to 200 horsepower,
Jeremy Kellett 19:06
and you bought a case of these patches. Oh,
Bruce Mallinson 19:09
I buy a lot of patches, but you know what the patches elk, what they really did was they calmed me down. I don’t get upset in traffic now, and I don’t let little things bother me. So I kind of like it, huh, like what they’re doing. But what are they called? Life wave. Life wave. They were based out of San Diego, but the home office is in Salt Lake, and it’s, it’s multi level marketing, so you got to go through a dealer. I didn’t go through a dealer first time. I paid double. I didn’t do that again. I called Ray, and I said, Ray, these I could spend $374 for some of these bats. He said, You’re kidding me. Why didn’t you call me? It’s multi level marketing. He said, I set up as a dealer. It’s half price. But you know, I get impatient some. Times, and when I want something, I want it, and I wanted to try it, so I’ll try stuff. If you tell me to try something, I’ll try it. I can be skeptical on things, but I listen, and I’ll ask somebody else about it, but I try. And that’s been the success of Pittsburgh. Power is we listen, we listen to what our owner operators want, and we try, and we’ll make that change. And somebody might come in with something really off the wall, and now said, well, let’s sit down and talk about this. Maybe it’s not so off the wall, you know, and I hate the word can’t. Don’t say can’t, and don’t say we can’t do something because we want to do it. And when I was younger, I didn’t like second place. You didn’t, no, I didn’t like second place. When I got into baseball, and I was at church camp, Presbyterian church camp, Camp land back up at Lake Erie, they made me the captain of the softball team. And now that, oh, don’t do that, guys, because I’m going to push you hard. And the barn boys, the guys that were older than us, the tournament was you had to play them. We beat them. And if you didn’t play right eyes in your face, and I wasn’t that big, but when you were screwing up and you were on my team, we talked because you wanted to win. I wanted to win. And then when I got into drag racing and road riding, the fastest car in high school, 348, Chevy three, and two barrel carburetors. Two farm boys gave me these three, two car bear three, two barrel carburetor setups, and the man full they needed rebuilt. I taught myself how to rebuild carburetors and I did it in my bedroom. Had the carburetor cleaned in your bedroom, my parents were square dancing. Have you ever heard of square dancing? Oh, they loved it. They were good at it. And they came home and that house was filled with carburetor cleaner. Everything was pungent, but my dad was a gear head, so I knew he’d get upset for about two minutes, and then he came. Let me show you how to do this. I’d agree it wasn’t unusual. I had wonderful parents. Wasn’t unusual
Jeremy Kellett 22:11
to see a carburetor sitting on the kids table.
Bruce Mallinson 22:16
My dad had Harleys when he was younger, Harleys and Indians. And his parents would come home from the furniture store and he’d have motorcycle parts on the kitchen table. Yeah, you know what they say? The apple doesn’t fall far from the sounds like it. And I even noticed the way my dad would print his ARS. My ARs are the same now, and things that I do and my dad did I wish, and what I want to tell young owner operators. If your dad is mechanically inclined and he’s an owner operator, he’s successful. Listen to your Dad, listen to your uncle, listen to your grandfather. Don’t think they don’t know, don’t think you know everything when you get out of high school, yeah, because you don’t listen to your elders, because they’ve been through it, they’ve done it. And I wish I would have just paid more attention to what dad would show me.
Jeremy Kellett 23:12
Yeah, that’s, I think everybody says that. And now that my boys are getting a little bit older, you know? I think they’re starting to realize a little bit, because now they’ll come back and ask me some questions, you know, and I’m like, man, it’s finally clicking with them, just a little bit. How old are they? 26 and 24 Oh, well,
Bruce Mallinson 23:34
when my kids were teenagers, and something would happen, whether it happened at school or wherever it happened. And I say, Now, what can we learn from this? Yeah. So my daughter, to this day, she’s 41 she’ll say, Oh, Dad, I remember that. She’ll send me, she’ll send me cards, Father’s Day cards, birthday cards, and different things that I would say to her. And I collect those cards, yeah. And so now when we ski together. I taught her how to ski too. We ski. We’ll ski six feet apart parallel, down that mountain. And the ski instructor, my son in law, has done well in life, so they have private ski instructors. And he said, We need to make a movie. You two going down the mountain, because you’re like poetry
Jeremy Kellett 24:17
in motion. That would be fun. I’d like to see that too. Well, yeah, sounds like you’re staying active, and you’re doing what Bruce wants
Bruce Mallinson 24:25
to do. I’m staying active. I got back into bicycling in Florida, especially in the winter time, you know, sometimes you wake up in the morning and your head just, you know, something, just, you’re fuzzy. You get on that bicycle, and you ride for about maybe a minute, and then I put it in the highest gear, and I just pedal like hell for about 60 pedals, and then the heart rate’s up, yeah. And then you let it calm down, and then you do, I do that about three times or on a circle, and it might be a mile around a circle, maybe three quarters a mile. On, I go around that circle two or three times, and I work that hard, man, you come back in the head’s just clear. You know? What else have I started doing? Sometimes you’re in meetings and you’re on a fountain and you’re not at a Zoom meeting so nobody can see it. So I keep dumb bells in the office, 358, 1012, and 15 pounders. If this meeting is a half hour and you stand there and you hold those dumbbells in the air and you just move them slightly and do different positions, you do that for a half hour, you will be stunned at how firm those muscles will get. Now, believe me, at my age, the firmness goes away, but you can get it back. Yeah, yeah. And then you feel really good. You’re dedicated. Then I have the exercise ball I lay in that at least twice a day to, you know, put the back this way, because when we sit, when we’re at a desk, we’re hunched over, yes, and that’s bad. And you see people hunched over. I never want to be hunched over, yeah, me either. I talked to my chiropractor. I’ve been working with the same guy since 1979. He also retired from me, but we won’t let him retire. We went to his house, and other people went to his house. He gave it up, and there would be cars lined up out of his driveway. So he had to start another practice. And he’s He’s two years older than me, so he’s 78 he’s a fixture of health Central,
Jeremy Kellett 26:25
Arkansas truck and trailer strives to take care of our owner operators as quickly and accurately as possible. As a family owned and operated company, they understand and value the importance of relationships just like we do. That is why Oakley owner operator Joe Williams continues to return to their shop for service on his truck. I’ve
Joe Williams 26:43
I have been with Oakley trucking for two years this April, 1 time owner operator. It was a shock to the maintenance and the repairs on it, because I’ve never done anything like this before. And I told my wife, we’ll try that Central Arkansas truck and trailer, you know, because they’re so convenient right there off the interstate, right down the road from Oakley trucking. And I talked to Nathan, and being an owner operator, he tries to get the owner operators in and out as quickly as possible, because he knows if we’re not rolling, we’re not making money. If it’s, they tell me they can get my truck in at a certain time. They get it in at a certain time. If they tell me, well, it’ll be ready at this time. It’s ready at that time. So I can really count on they’re competitive with anybody around, probably better than most.
Jeremy Kellett 27:33
Next time your truck needs service, give Central Arkansas truck and trailer a call at 501-568-2185, and let them know you heard it here on the Oakley podcast. Tell me about this. You mentioned before we got on here that the hurricane wasn’t good for you down in Florida. Yeah,
Bruce Mallinson 27:51
I have a 37 foot back co with an isc Cummins 8.3 liter six and a quarter horse and, oh, she runs nice. I bought it with 100 hours on it. Now, I’m at 212 but it’s on a boat. Oh, it’s only 37 feet, 22 22,000 it’s half a boat, whatever. That’s huge. Now, 37 feet, yes, a boat. No. Well, I show you, I show you a real one. Let me see. I’ll show you a real boat. Now you have to buy these ewes because they’re just too much money. How much fuel does your boat hold? This one holds 300 gallons. The other one holds 1900 Oh my gosh. However, when you buy an older boat, one in Florida is fairly new, so I was fortunate. It only had 779 hours on it. That’s out of that, oh, my good green. Now that weighs 112,000 pounds.
Jeremy Kellett 29:00
That is a lot of boat,
Bruce Mallinson 29:01
yeah? 3412 cats, 2700 horse fires. I
Jeremy Kellett 29:07
don’t know if she’ll be able to zoom in on that, but we got
Bruce Mallinson 29:10
it here. Let me show you a better picture.
Jeremy Kellett 29:13
Oh, is this the one that was on the lift? No, no,
Bruce Mallinson 29:16
no, this boat can’t go on a lift
Jeremy Kellett 29:19
that so that’s not your boat, yeah, that one is, this isn’t the one that was yet. Okay, this is in the water. Oh, man, she sleeps 12. That’s a yacht.
Bruce Mallinson 29:31
It is. That is, we took it. We took it to the Bahamas in 2017 and people said, You’re not a captain. Listen, no, I’m not a captain. They said, you’ve never boated an outside land. I said, You’re right. I said, How you going to the Bahamas? I said, I’m going to start up those V 12 caterpillars. I’m going to put them in gear, I’m going to set that chart plot, or I’m going to the Bahamas. And we went, you’re serious. They said, if you miss you don’t have enough fuel to get to Spain. I said, I’m not going to miss you. Yeah, people, that’s another thing, you know. Don’t tell me I can’t. People told me I can’t. When I bought the first one, it was only 64 feet, but it was the 1984 so I went to the Annapolis boat show after I sold my first diesel shop and we built the new shop. Had some money in the checkbook. You never go to a boat show for your boater with money in the check book. That was in 2014 so it had the 12 Detroit’s, and it was 64 feet. And people know, I came from a 19 foot ski Nat, and we boat in the Three Rivers of Pittsburgh, which you know, you’re never outside of land. And people said to me, how are you going to drive that boat? The dock slip, it was in. You had to back out, make a 90 degree turn, back out, spin at 180 degrees, and head out in the Chesapeake Bay. And they said, You came from mosquito and you’re going to Nevada. I said, That’s right. They said, Well, you know how to drive it? I said, Well, it’s got engines. Got propellers. I’ve been boating since 1973 but I had a good teacher that helps. I have a good friend, Tom Kennedy. That is his name. Tom Kennedy quit school in the eighth grade, and he was a Ford fan attic several years older than me, we water ski together, and he had a 55 foot burns craft house boat with dual 450 for us, and we’d take it through the locks down the Allegheny River to the point in Pittsburgh. And there’d be a regatta going on, boats everywhere, and Tom would sit there, forward, reverse, no bow thruster. He’d put that houseboat in him where he wanted, and I just sat there and I’m watching him. That was years ago, but that’s how you do it’s a Bulldozer, right? Bulldozer doesn’t have a steering wheel, yeah? Tracks eternal. A boat with twin screws does the same thing. So
Jeremy Kellett 31:59
back to the hurricane on
Bruce Mallinson 32:02
hurricane. So this is, this was the picture. So during COVID, I’m in Colorado, I got insomnia for three days. I didn’t sleep. It was horrible. And I told God, if you’re going to do this to me, just take me, because I can’t live this way. And I can go one night at what I see, but not three in a row. So we go to Florida to visit my sister, and it was 82 degrees January 15, four years ago, and I slept, I said, Maybe God’s telling me I need an easier lifestyle than being in the in the snow, and so we found a condo at a marina, and I’m sitting there on the Lanai watching boats coming and going for two weeks. And just like an owner operator, if you take an owner operator out of his truck, and you put him in our diesel shop, he will ask every other owner operator that comes in, what do you have on the trailer? Where are you going? What’s it paying per mile? Three questions they will ask everybody, right? You know how long that lasts? I tried it three times with three owner operators and two to three weeks they’re back in the truck. You can’t take an owner operator out and put them in a building and have them be in one place like that. It does not work. No, it does not so I found this 37 footer with a commons in it in Rhode Island, had it shipped down. Boy, that’s that expensive, $11 a mile.
33:43
So that’s oversized, I’m sure, 13 three wide,
Bruce Mallinson 33:47
yeah, but that was the picture the morning after the hurricane. Not good, guy, not good at all. Guy that helps me. Oh, so I’m in this condo for two weeks. I gotta have a boat.
Jeremy Kellett 34:08
You’re tired of watching them come in and out of there. You gotta,
Bruce Mallinson 34:11
I can’t do it. So I got this picture. They said, Bruce, you got some damage. I’m in Maryland for three hours. I got everything packed in the pickup truck, picked up the rudder that helps me and Debbie and we’re on our way to Florida non stop. We got there at 8: 30 the next morning. There’s no electricity. The back end is still on a lift. I got six gallons of salt water in the engine too, because of the way it’s coming up, going in the exhaust pipe, through the turbo taking the valve cover off. Number six and number two exhaust valves are open, so that’s how the water got in, but for six gallons to get past the rings, so I’ll show you some of the damage. That’s a hole, right? Oh, yeah. Know, yep, and bigger
Jeremy Kellett 35:03
The hole was, Oh, man. The
Bruce Mallinson 35:07
propeller was wiped out, the rudder, the inlet strainer,
Jeremy Kellett 35:11
Well, the engine was ruined, I guess.
Bruce Mallinson 35:14
No, no. Water won’t hurt an engine. You pull out the dipstick, you don’t even see the water. You see the oil, because it was only in there for two days. I had it out of there in two days. So the engine’s perfect, pulled the injectors, siphoned the water out from on top the pistons, pump the water out of the oil pan, new oil and filters, and I’ll change it again on first week of May, because the boats going indoor storage with air conditioning now, because I’m not messing around with any more hurricanes, I’m done three years in Florida, three hurricanes. Oh, hurricanes continue. I’m out of Florida, but we’re going to see how good GEICO Insurance is.
Jeremy Kellett 35:57
Are you out of Florida? You don’t live, you don’t have a condo there anymore. Oh, I still conduct. Oh, okay, okay. So
Bruce Mallinson 36:03
GEICO Insurance, they were out there right away, and then they were good. And the lady I’m working with is in Alexandria, Virginia. It’s about a 40 minute drive from my place in Maryland, but we’re gonna see they’re gonna get the bill next week. Oh, we hadn’t yet. No, they haven’t got the bill, 76,000
Jeremy Kellett 36:23
to fix it, and then, wow, is it already repaired. Oh yeah. Oh, good.
Bruce Mallinson 36:28
Three weeks ago, good. And it’s perfect. You know, it’s going to be perfect. I’m going to make you not. You’re not going to have it. If it’s not, I could tell already. And we changed the color slightly on a hall and made her three, three shades lighter, and no, she just runs. Great.
Jeremy Kellett 36:48
Oh, man, what’s that say on the back? Miss Deb. Miss Deb.
Bruce Mallinson 36:51
That’s my girlfriend’s name. So anyway, I’ll let you know how GEICO does. I’d like to know. I’d like that to be good. I think deductible 16,000 that’s good. I’m okay with that. Then let’s see how the rest is. Yeah, yeah.
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Jeremy Kellett 37:58
What else have you got?
Bruce Mallinson 38:00
I want to tell people not to retire. Why? In Florida this? This was a shock to me, and I’ve been watching this for three winners. Now there’s a lot of people older than me, some hunched over working again because of inflation. What’s happened the last four years has really hurt people on a fixed income. One guy retired from Ford Motor Company. He says, I thought I was okay. He says the inflation got me he’s in Home Depot. A lot of guys in Home Depot, another guy in Home Depot, Punta Gordo, he built, he engineered and built golf courses. He said there’s not a machine that I can’t run. He was interesting. Guy we taught for over an hour. Oh yeah. He said he walks 27,000-7000 steps. You try to do 10,000 steps a day to lose weight. He’s 27,000 steps in Home Depot. And there’s retired electricians, retired plumbers. You want to know how to do something. They’re there. Yeah. And one guy works a fuel dock, and builds custom homes. He says, I thought I was coming to Florida. I was going to play golf and lay out on the beach. He said, That lasted 90 days, three months, so I couldn’t stand it. I said, you like pumping fuel and gas. I love it. Look at the people I meet. Look at the people, I mean, look at the people we meet in this industry. I have seen mechanics retire at 62 and sell their tool box. Oh, big mistake. Never give up your tools. Never give up your semi truck. If you’re in your 60s and you think you want to retire, you. I’ve been dealing with owner operators for 48 years. I hear a lot of stories. They’ll call me up, Bruce, I got to find another truck. What’d you do? I sold my truck and trailer. I said, How many weeks ago? Six? I said, you flunked retirement in six weeks. I just had a lady in my boot say, and you know what she said? What I say, when you’re home alone and your husband’s on the road, you don’t cook, do you? You pick? She said, Yeah, we don’t cook. We pick. You walk by the refrigerator. You grab a piece of chicken, right? You grab a beach stick, you grab a piece of salami. Think of this lady in rural America. She might have a job. That’s one thing. If she doesn’t, she might volunteer at the church, volunteer at the hospital, go to bingo, whatever she has. Her lady friends, they have their own life. And here comes Mr. Owner Operator. He’s home for the weekends, or maybe he’s only home every couple weeks. Now he’s home. 24/7 he wants breakfast, lunch and dinner
Jeremy Kellett 41:07
doesn’t work. Well, just
Bruce Mallinson 41:09
think if he lived in that same house for 40 years. The house gets ignored because the truck needs attention, right? The truck is the bread winner. Yeah. So the truck gets ignored. I mean, the house gets ignored. The house is not a man’s Castle, it’s a woman’s palace. That list comes out, honey do. This is this long, yes, and he’ll call me. He said, My God, is she working me hard? I never worked this hard in my life. I got to get a truck. I have to get out of here. And one guy got a job in a factory north of Cincinnati. The second day I called me, said, Bruce, there’s no windows. That’s where you’re in a factory, but I don’t know what’s going on outside. I said, you don’t need to know. He said, They ring a bell at 10 o’clock. I get a 10 minute break. They ring a bell at 12 and they ring it at 12: 30. I get a 30 minute tee, then they ring the bell at 2: 30. I get another 10 minutes. So what do you think it was going to be? You know, how many weeks did that last? Six, six back in another truck. And this goes on and on. We’ve
Jeremy Kellett 42:18
I’ve seen it too, yeah. I mean, so they do it till they physically can’t anymore. I mean, really, we’ve got a bunch of owner operators that just stay driving until they physically can’t do it anymore. And that’s when they have to give it up. And it’s
Bruce Mallinson 42:35
and we make it worse, yeah, because when you have a great running truck, you never feel the floorboard. You just kind of move that big toe. You roll into that throttle. Let’s say you’re cruising along at 789, pound of boost. You’re coming to the grade. You roll into that throttle. You take it up to 25 or 30, whatever it’s going to take to go up the hill. And you should know that before you get to the hill, and that truck just does this. That’s torque. It releases three chemicals in the brain. One is dopamine. Drug addicts get high on dopamine. One is Endo, morphines, I don’t know where that comes from. And the other is adrenaline. The three together are more powerful than cocaine. So what do you think happens? You’re addicted to the truck. There’s only one way you can get that high. That’s a torque high. You get high on torque, and you get high on the mass, and pull on the hill. It’s a real thing, and it’s a real thing. Loggers, people and heavy equipment, airplane pilots, owner operators, don’t do well with retirement. So if you think you want to retire and you’re 6566 years old, and your trucks paid for trailers paid poor detail, it. Change all the fluids. Change the in, the hubs, the axles, the transmission, the differentials, the engine. Detail it. Make it like you’re taking it to the Louisville Truck Show. Find a place to put it inside, whether it’s a neighbor’s barn, if you have to go rent a garage, but take it off your property. Get some sheets, sew them together, cover it all, keep the dust off. Go about your retirement. You might go to Costa Rica. A lot of owner operators would go to Costa Rica, yeah. And what’s that place? Down by, I’m trying to think of down by Cancun. Cozumel. Cozumel, they’ll go to, I’ll think of it, and some go to Florida. Some go to Arizona. But when they come home, beginning in April, they can’t wait to get in that truck. But even those that don’t go and then they stay home and they start on the honey do list, and they go. About their retirement. It’s about six weeks, and it’s less than that. They’re out there peeking, looking at them and off the property. That truck is more than just the money maker. It’s freedom. It’s your freedom. Look at how many posts you see on Facebook of my morning office view looking out over the hood of that Ken or that Peter built. It’s usually a model that can work too. Yeah, the cross brothers, La Verne and Dean cross do it a lot. Dean’s in at 379 la burns in and a model. The sun’s rising. My morning view, no traffic, open road ahead. I mean, it doesn’t get any better. It’s
Jeremy Kellett 45:42
addictive. I see it all the time, and thank goodness we’ve got some good ones that are out there. And they keep doing it because that, that old school owner operator. We’ve got a lot of those at Oakley. And those guys are super, super good human beings. They take care of each other. I mean, they take care of Oakley for sure. So Bruce, I had to get out of here.
Bruce Mallinson 46:04
Going on. I got one more thing I got to talk to you about. Well, tell me then, all right,
Jeremy Kellett 46:09
He’s demanding.
Bruce Mallinson 46:10
Yep, persistent. Never give up. I read a story about a guy who sold campers. He got caught in the state of Washington in a pickup truck with a sliding camper, and he went down a road that was being closed because of snow, and he slid off the road. He kept a journal. He lived for 66 days, and then his body was done there. He had no food. I’m sure he melted snow, left the rear tire in a ditch, and died. But I got to hear about this journal at a snowmobile conference. So if we can live for 66 days, and people usually have enough food in their house. They could make it 234 weeks. Now, if you’re a farmer and you can, you’ll make it longer, but these trucks stop today. How many days do we have? Life is fragile. Do we have 90 days when grocery stores will be empty. An average large city has a three and a half day supply of food. You get on Interstate 80. And look at the reefers going to New York City on Sunday afternoon. It’s just reefer after reefer crossing Pennsylvania, going to New Jersey and New York. The general public doesn’t realize how important these trucks are. Hungry look whenever, look at what happened in the pandemic, toilet paper, paper towels, water, we couldn’t get bottled water. Just think if they stopped today,
Jeremy Kellett 47:52
it would be mass chaos. I mean, I
Bruce Mallinson 47:56
know the people that live in the farms and have plants, they will survive. The rest of us are dead. We’re gone in 90 days or less. That’s a way to put it in perspective. You really have to think about how great this industry is, this trucking industry. I’m gonna leave you with two other things I heard this years ago, from the time a raw material comes out of the ground until it’s a finished product in a store to be purchased. It’s been on a semi truck a minimum of seven times. Think about that. Think about a farm in the Midwest. What’s it take to plow the field, to plant the field, to cultivate the field, to harvest the field, to take the grain, the corn, the soybeans, to the grain elevator, and then from the grain elevator to where it’s going to be made into something, and then from there to the food warehouse. Food warehouse to the grocery store. Average seven times, seven times, and the cost of a good sold. These chairs were sitting in let’s say this chair was $1,000 it’s only worth 250 in materials and labor. 750 was transportation. From the time everything was a raw material to it got to where it was going to be manufactured until it got to the store to be purchased. Seven 5% the cost of a good soul of this transportation. The general public needs to know this stuff. Yeah, we need to be on the six o’clock news, The 10 O’Clock News, instead of hearing all the other BS. We have to hear, we need to have stuff about this great industry. I agree?
Jeremy Kellett 49:40
I agree. It is a great industry, I mean, and it’s a
Bruce Mallinson 49:44
wonderful industry with wonderful people and necessity. And I tell people, I’m going to hang in so long as Trump’s president. When Trump retires, I’ll retire. You retire. I have four more years.
Jeremy Kellett 49:59
Well, good. It. Well, I’m glad you’re still doing it, and I’m glad you come to this and come on to my podcast every once a year. I think it’s great. All my listeners love it. Owner operators love it. Love to hear from you. Always get a lot of comments and stuff, so I need to pass them along if we get questions about some things. So sure does to you.
Bruce Mallinson 50:18
You know, I love talking trucks. I love it. All they have to do is call the shop, leave a message with Kathy, say I need to talk to Bruce, and if I’m in one of my offices, the phone will ring. I answer. If you get voice mail, just leave me a message with your name and your phone number and what your question is, and I’ll call you back. And I’ll call till nine o’clock at night. And if you say you can call me at three o’clock in the morning, and your chances are you’re going to hear from you, you’ll do it, won’t you? I love talking trucks.
Jeremy Kellett 50:48
We need more Bruce mallisons. In this world, I can tell you that people, Hey, all my listeners out there to the Oakley podcast, I really appreciate y’all listening and tuning in every week. I sure try to give you some good content like Bruce mallison, Pittsburgh power, I recommend you look them up. What’s the website Bruce Pittsburg power.com, okay, check them out. Give him a call. Ask him all kinds of questions, just a little insight into his life and his story. At Pittsburgh power, appreciate y’all listening. We’ll talk to you next week. Thanks for listening to this episode with Oakley podcast, trucking, business and family. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate or review the show in the podcast platform of your choice and share it with a friend. We love hearing from our audience. So if you’ve got a question comment or just want to say hello, head over to our website, the Oakley podcast.com and click the leave a comment button. We’ll get you a response soon, and may even share some of the best ones here on the show. We’ll be back with a fresh episode very soon. Thanks for listening.