During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Richard Naus and Jay Dozier, End Dump Owner-Operators out of Oklahoma, to discuss a little bit of everything from the origin of Port 33 in Oklahoma to new technology and more.
Key topics in today’s conversation include:
- Oakley Update: emergency contacts, occupational accidental insurance beneficiary, owner-operator recognition (2:55)
- The start of Port 33 (8:28)
- The growth of Port 33 (10:21)
- Local work (12:25)
- The origin of Port 33 (14:07)
- Richard & Jay’s trucks (14:57)
- The family quality of Oakley (16:46)
- First thoughts on new technology (19:15)
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
Automated transcription – may contain errors
Richard Naus 00:00
The big thing is this is more like a big family. Everybody is treated the same. You see me once every couple of years, but yet you know who I am when I walk through the door. So that always amazes me.
Jay Dozier 00:26
When I first leased on, I remember Justin saying he doesn’t keep track of truck numbers, that you’re an individual person, and I’ve found that to be true since I’ve been here.
Jeremy Kellett 00:39
Welcome to the Oakley podcast, trucking, business, and family. This show is brought to you by Oakley Trucking, headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. The purpose of this podcast is to communicate with Oakley owner-operators and their families by giving them up-to-date information concerning Oakley Trucking and the trucking industry. From business advice to safety updates to success stories. Also to give an inside to outside truck drivers that might be interested in joining the Oakley family. Hi, this is Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting here at Oakley Trucking and I’m your host for this podcast. This is episode 96 and on today’s podcast I got a couple of Oakley owner operators sitting in with me. We’re gonna talk to them get to these guys a little bit of everything. One thing I want to discuss with them is Oklahoma terminal over there. And as I was coming back from lunch, I was actually thinking, you guys, we get off in a minute, but you guys are one of the first ones over there when we started that port 33. I know Oklahoma, so we’re going to hear from them about those days and how long ago that was and actually coming over and talking about some actual local stuff hopefully has, I mean we actually have some local stuff a lot of people don’t realize it so we’ll discuss a little bit of that too. But first before we do I want to get into the Oakley update, which every week is sponsored by Arrow Truck Sales. Keith Wilson at Arrow Truck Sales in Springfield, Missouri is currently offering $1,000 off your first month’s payment when you finance with transport funding, or $1,000 off the truck price if you bring your own financing. They’re also discounting the cost of an extended warranty by $500. Arrow Truck Sales has been a longtime partner with Oakley Trucking and that’s because they specialize in first-time truck buyers, they don’t do any leases, they have the best-used trucks money can buy (because used trucks is all they do, they don’t sell any new trucks), and the biggest reason that Arrow and Oakley are partners is service after the sale. It is very important to us at Oakley that when we refer you to a company, that they are a good company with good people, they do what they say, and they understand our requirements. So give Keith a call at 573-216-6047 for a good used truck and tell him you heard about it on the Oakley podcast. So on the Oakley update this week, a couple of things. One that some of the owner operators might not be thinking about is your emergency contact that you’ve given Oakley when you first leased on. We need it to be correct. If it needs to be updated, please call us up here. You can talk to Vicki or Wendy and let’s get your emergency contact updated. Hopefully it never comes into play where we have to call you, but once in a while it does help that we have that. Also, on your occupational accidental insurance, make sure you have the right beneficiary on there. That’s important, too. To be honest with you, the only reason I thought of that was we’ve had a couple of our operators pass away and there is, in that occupational accident insurance if you did not know it, there is a $30,000 life insurance embedded in that, so you want to make sure you have the beneficiary right. My name is Jeremy Kellett. If you don’t have one, you can put me down. Just kidding. I’d also like to recognize an owner operator has been with us 12 years. His name is Mike Jagger’s. He lives in Bologna, Arkansas, which is where I live is actually a neighbor cross street anyway. And just a great guy. He drives a 2019 Peterbilt. He does about everything for Oakley holding the hand up. He does do a lot of stuff around here. Now of course he he has in the past. He’s run everywhere and I got a little information from a couple guys that dispatch tema, one long time ago and then one recently and they said Mike takes good care of his equipment. He has a daughter at home with special needs, which sometimes requires extra time and energy. But he manages to do his job well and has a great attitude. The other dispatcher says when I first met him, I worked outside loading and unloading him. And even though I was often climbing out of a hole covered in dirt and Gracie treating me the same there is I’ve seen him treat anyone else in the office. So Mike Jagger’s. We appreciate you Oakley Trucking. You’re an asset to this company and congratulations all 12 years. Okay, gentlemen, let’s get into A little bit of Oklahoma work Muskogee these guys came over surprised them actually. Which, which I try to do I try to get owner operators in here on this podcast that are not expected. So be authentic, which I don’t think you guys have any problem be an authentic but I got these guys in here to visit with me and talk a little bit about their out of Oklahoma terminal and doing some local work over but just to get their perspective on what’s going on in trucking these days and what’s going on at Oakley. So how’re you guys doing today?
Jay Dozier 05:33
Doing good
Richard Naus 05:34
Doing good.
Jeremy Kellett 05:35
Got Richard Naus and Jay Dozier in here. If you guys would give us a little bit of background on you and history. We’ll start with you, Richard.
Richard Naus 05:42
I’ve been leased at Oakley, it’ll be eight years in April. I live in Muskogee. Got a wife and then a cat named Beavis.
Jeremy Kellett 05:53
A cat named Beavis. How long you been married?
Richard Naus 05:56
30 years.
Jeremy Kellett 05:57
Wow. No kids?
Richard Naus 05:59
No kids.
Jeremy Kellett 06:00
What do you do in your spare time?
Richard Naus 06:02
Well, in my spare time, I’m usually at the fire department because that’s my passion in life, emergency medical medicine. So that’s what I like to do, and Oakley has given me the opportunity to do it by being home every night.
Jeremy Kellett 06:15
I can remember when I came over there, I went to your house. I stopped. I can’t remember how that came about. I guess we were talking ahead of time and I said, Hey, I want to be over there. We’re starting a terminal over there. And we need some guys to do this Muskogee run. And I don’t know if you couldn’t come or what.
Jay Dozier 06:34
You wanted to look at his truck.
Richard Naus 06:35
Yeah. You were up at Port 33. And gonna come back by and said, Well, I’ll just run at your house if it’s okay. So you want to come out? Yeah. Yeah. And I still have that pickup that you liked if you’d like to buy.
Jeremy Kellett 06:36
That’s what it was. Yes. What year was that?
Richard Naus 06:49
’78. GMC.
Jeremy Kellett 06:51
Nice. I remember looking at that pickup. You’ve had that a long time.
Richard Naus 06:54
I’ve had it for a long time. A lot of people want to buy it but a lot of people don’t have the money.
Jeremy Kellett 07:00
Well, that’s probably those are probably selling high dollar right now on top of the price vehicles are selling high dollar used. It was good. I remember stopping by there. You also had a trainee examiner? No. Yeah. Yeah, I thought so. I bought
Richard Naus 07:14
unfortunately, I sold that, huh? Just wasn’t practical. I didn’t do it and look good in the shop. But I never drove it. So my daughter things I could spend that money on.
Jeremy Kellett 07:25
What about you? God knows you’re
Jay Dozier 07:27
live there in Puerto just north of Muskogee. Got six kids been married about 15 years.
Jeremy Kellett 07:35
Awesome. Six kids age range
Jay Dozier 07:39
between seven and 12. Is it pretty quieter and you’re never
Jeremy Kellett 07:48
better at it? Now, what you do in your spare time? If you have any?
Jay Dozier 07:53
Yeah, very little. We spend a lot of time at the church. Good. youth pastor there to church. We have livestock. So between kids and animals in church, you could. That’s it.
Jeremy Kellett 08:06
That’s pretty good. That’s pretty good, though. All around. Yeah. Yeah. family, church and animals. Well, animals are not my favorite. Right.
Richard Naus 08:17
I like to eat he wants more. He does, you know.
Jay Dozier 08:21
I like to eat.
Jeremy Kellett 08:23
Well, that’s how you grow what you eat. Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Now, you guys both came from landstar. Right? Yes, that’s right. And because I do remember recruiting Richard back eight years ago, when we started. Well, we bought port 33. And then we said we need to start a trucking company or a trucking where had trucking company but we need to have a presence over there because there was some stuff going on. And was it was it was that what I was trying to get you to do in the beginning was that Muskogee. Muskogee
Jay Dozier 08:56
is where you put us? Yeah, that was it from the beginning.
Jeremy Kellett 09:00
Yeah, I’ve done that from day one. And day one. Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome, y’all. I mean, so y’all, and I guess to give our listeners an idea, I mean, it’s a local run in Muskogee in it. Yes. It is. Nine miles each direction. Nine miles east direction. And home. They were not overnight off on weekends. That is nice. Right there. That’s good. So you people don’t think we have that we do, sir. Yeah, not a lot. But sir. And you know, for something like that to last this long. Is really unheard of.
Richard Naus 09:30
Yes. Yeah. Justin was, golly, was real. Tell us that. You know, it could go away. Well, yeah. Well, we hope not because we really enjoy it. Yeah, we’re sure it’s a real good force.
Jeremy Kellett 09:41
I remember because there was another company doing that in there and then we moved in and we bought the port. Also, the port Muskogee for people that don’t know Oakley owns the port of Muskogee and port 33. They’re just outside of Tulsa. And when we came in there, it was the There was some work being done at the port of Muskogee. And we’re like, Hey, this is Oakley Trucking is gonna take this over. So we have y’all running them guys. We had to fire a few times a few times. Yeah, they don’t hold any grudges. They’re up. We tried to get some of them actually in the beginning to help. But anyway, it’s it’s worked out. So you guys are seen? seen it grow since day one over there to podia. We’ve seen it all. What are some of the things you’ve seen over there that? I don’t know, Mikey, thank you, hey, this company may use for real?
Richard Naus 10:35
Well, just the opportunity to like we have to be local and be home every night. That’s the biggest opportunity. And that’s what we were looking for both of us when we left landstar. So how long? Were y’all at landstar? Very long. 14 years, 14 years. Wow. I realized that it was a challenge. You know, we were so used to being our own boss and then go back and work for somebody who was hopefully we can make this work and which we did. So yeah, it’s been no problem. Since
Jeremy Kellett 11:04
if I recall, yell, we’re not just really easy to talk into coming over here.
Jay Dozier 11:09
We were both pretty happy. we’ve kind of gotten into, we knew what we were doing. And it worked. It was working. Okay. Yeah, but we were both interested in being home. A little more.
Jeremy Kellett 11:25
Yeah. Well, then your kids were a lot smaller. So yeah. Yeah. It was something it was just good timing where they were looking for us look for more time with the fire department. Yeah, so it worked out good. You know worked out real good. We’ve actually had a pretty good group over there for a long time. We’ve lost a few and couple hold. We have couple retire
Richard Naus 11:45
had one retire that I don’t know how long he’d been here. 20. Some ridges on my jams. Yeah.
Jeremy Kellett 11:51
Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah. Is y’all ever hear from him much anymore?
Richard Naus 11:55
I haven’t talked to him in about a year. But you know, I’ve tried to touch base with him. Make sure he’s doing all right. So yeah, they know Justin was gonna call at Christmas time to see how he was doing. So
Jeremy Kellett 12:05
tell check. For sure. Good. Yeah. Good. Yeah.
Richard Naus 12:10
And then the other original guy, Ronnie, he had to retire and check on him. And he’s doing all right. Sure. He would rather not be retired.
Jeremy Kellett 12:18
Yeah, he’s fighting some health issues.
Richard Naus 12:20
Health issues make you do different things.
Jeremy Kellett 12:22
Yeah. Port 33 has turned into a great deal for us. And there’s more opportunity that we don’t dive into over there for local work, that we really should. It’s there to get, it’s just not always, sometimes this other stuff pulls you in that direction, and not focusing on that real local stuff.
Richard Naus 12:44
Local works not for everybody, especially the ones that want to be out there and make that mileage bonus and get that big check every year.
Jay Dozier 12:53
Well, we have some guys that are working with us now that are managing to kind of do both. They do work the local when it’s available, and then they go and do the over a road when things are slow for us.
Jeremy Kellett 13:08
Yeah, and that’s good because we got the opportunity to do that for sure over there.
Jay Dozier 13:13
It works really well for them I think.
Jeremy Kellett 13:14
Yeah, it’s just been a great asset ever since we got that terminal over there things you just don’t realize by getting into another section of the country and establishing an office there what you know what things come up and how many more owner operators are around here that you could put to work and it’s just been great. I come over there every once in a while and take everybody supper, but you guys never show up. What’s up?
Richard Naus 13:40
Well that’s up there at Port 33.
Jeremy Kellett 13:41
It’s only 40 miles, come on. Y’all can come over and eat supper with us. We’ll get down. Yeah, there’s some pretty good guys over there that run a lot of that stuff.
Richard Naus 13:53
I think we’re fixing to be busier at Muskogee, with the addition of stuff coming in. I guess we’re getting soybeans and stuff in those two silos are working on getting them ready to go. So not going to be more business.
Jeremy Kellett 14:07
You were showing me that picture earlier on your phone, a picture of the port of Muskogee that we have that was taken back in—
Richard Naus 14:16
1905 when it was amusement park and—
Jay Dozier 14:19
Had an indoor pool and a zoo and the whole thing really,
Jeremy Kellett 14:22
yeah.
Richard Naus 14:24
Wow was in place.
Jeremy Kellett 14:26
We need to see where you got that picture. We ought to try to get a picture and put it in office or something down there. That’s pretty cool to know what it was. Yeah. What was an amusement park before?
Richard Naus 14:35
Yeah. It was Hyde Park. That’s the road going in, part of it is Hyde Park Road and that picture that I showed you is from 1905, so that’s a long time ago.
Jeremy Kellett 14:49
Tell us about your trucks. Uh, you know, a lot of guys listening always want to know what kind of trucks you guys operate. I want them to know. I know.
Richard Naus 14:57
I’ve got a W 900. I’ve had it forever. TransLink how long I’ve had that time a long time. Yeah, it’s been a long time. Yeah. Did it landstar Yes. At landstar Yeah, it’s an old three model. It’s a little bit over three. It’s a little heavy sometimes if I have fuel on, but it works out pretty good with what we do so,
Jeremy Kellett 15:17
yeah, because a lot are the better over there. Yeah. For money. Oh, Mike. That’s why Jay bought a daycare. today. Can you make a little bit more money? Well, your models at true 2010 10 Good. They’ve been good trucks, I guess. Yeah. Wouldn’t have long hedgers. J. Five years. Yeah, they’ve been that long. Four years been while. That’s good. You know, it’s trucks nowadays or something else. It’s we’ve actually had a course to do don’t take advantage of this. But we’ve had some owner operators retire this year because they can say Aleta go, yeah. Oh, yeah. Imagine at a high price and get out of it. I think they just been waiting for the right time. You know, to sell and get out of it. Yeah. Unfortunately for us, they did, but good for them. I mean, it’s about time it turned around for the truck driver sure to where their equipments worth quite a bit.
Jay Dozier 16:10
That’s true.
Jeremy Kellett 16:12
So don’t we get now that Oh, three? I know you could. And I know it’s crossed your mind probably.
Richard Naus 16:18
Get out of it. When I retire.
Jay Dozier 16:20
I keep trying to talk him into getting a daycare. But he’s not.
Jeremy Kellett 16:22
I know. I know what he should do that as money in the bank right there.
Richard Naus 16:27
That’s true. Compared to what I hold to what he hauls. Yeah.
Jeremy Kellett 16:31
What about, working for Oakley, I know you guys have been on the the local dedicated deal since you started but you’ve also dealt with a lot owner operators, a lot of dispatchers. For somebody outside looking in, what do you think they need to know about Oakley that would help them make a decision?
Richard Naus 16:54
Or I guess the big thing is, this is more like a big family, everybody is treated the same. You see me once every couple of years, but yet, you know who I am when I walked through the door. So it always amazes me.
Jay Dozier 17:09
And I think, you know, when I first least on I remember Justin saying he doesn’t keep track of truck numbers, you know, that. It’s, you’re an individual person. And I found that to be true since I’ve been here.
Jeremy Kellett 17:27
You know, it’s not easy to do that course I you know, that’s the only way this thing’s gonna work is if you feel like you’re part of it. And I try to tell people that all the time, you know, guys coming through orientation, it’s your truck pulling our trailer, and we all got to make a living off of it. So we got to work together to do it. Yes. And it’s a you know, it’s a challenge. I was telling this group down here this morning, we’ve got four good guys coming out of orientation this weekend. And you know, I was telling him same thing, you got to buy into the, the partnership here the customer service, the safety that it’s we’re all in this thing together. If you want to say if you’re one of those guys that wake up mad at the world, and it’s all about me, me every day, you’re gonna be miserable here, you’re gonna be miserable, you know, Providence, right? It’s you’re not going to work here. So you got to be able to you know, have customer service safety as a priority and it seems to man then everything seems to fall into place. You know, I’m just glad that this stuff that we’ve done you guys have started eight years ago, and Oklahoma is still rolling and still going and now you’re telling me it’s looking even better it’s looking better looking up and that’s you know, this is great and Justin and cow and guys over in Oklahoma have done a great job of you know, moving that division that part up you know, we’ve gained trucks over there with gain more more local freight more regional freight. You know, they’ve talked about leasing on a couple guys to even be up there around on Nova, you know, in and out constantly. And we’re we got it we’re trying to do that now to to Yeah, give them
Richard Naus 19:11
Give somebody else an opportunity to know what it’s about.
Jeremy Kellett 19:15
You guys came to North Little Rock and got the Geotab put in.
Jay Dozier 19:20
Yes, we did.
Jeremy Kellett 19:21
Just got out fresh out of class. So excited. So give me first, good or bad, give me first thought you just got out of class. You were in the class two hours. So what’s your first thoughts?
Jay Dozier 19:34
I personally think it’s gonna be better than Omni tracks. I was never a fan of Omni tracks.
Jeremy Kellett 19:42
And why you say that? Yeah.
Jay Dozier 19:43
I just like to technology better. I like to be in on my phone. I just was not a fan of the Omni tracks to me was really slow. was just not user friendly. So I think this is, once you get used to it, I think will be a little bit more user friendly.
Jeremy Kellett 19:59
Add a gel, put it on your phone or tablet
Richard Naus 20:03
on the phone right now. Probably end up putting down tablet just make it bigger and easier to do and can do it like that
Jeremy Kellett 20:10
to what your thoughts are Richard on.
Richard Naus 20:13
It’s gonna be all right, you’re just gonna get get used to it. We’re both used to Omni tracks of what we do when we did yard move and everything like that it was just touch and you’re done. But it just slow every morning. Start your truck. Okay, when’s this thing gonna boot up? It’s gonna take five minutes to boot up so I can even do anything on it. So I’m not gonna miss that part of it. One bit, no dinning. Thank you took forever.
Jeremy Kellett 20:38
What about the camera? Everybody’s talking about the camera? The how they explained it down there? Yeah,
Jay Dozier 20:44
that camera and the other one. I
Richard Naus 20:45
mean, we heard rumors you know about the camera that it would talk to you and things like that. And okay, and that’s good. And we were given the opportunity to turn that function off before you wanted. Great. I don’t want to hear your camera talking to me. I’m going to keep my following distance. Right. So
Jeremy Kellett 21:03
yeah, yeah. Yeah, we I mean, that’s, we decided that’s probably the best. We don’t want it to be a distraction. I had a couple people said, Man, that thing’s distracting me. In course, you know, it’s easy for us sitting in his office to go, Hey, if you just not trigger it, it won’t talk to you. If something sounds good on paper. But that’s hard to control.
Richard Naus 21:27
And if anybody looks at the speed we do over there, you’re gonna be amazed that you’ll get it done. Because, well, it’s so many different speeds on 70. When you come out of the port, well, I might be doing 60 Till I get to peak Boulevard changes 55, 50. And that’s it. So
Jay Dozier 21:43
why don’t we just stop lights and stop signs? And so, yeah, the camera. I mean, I’m impressed by the technology when he was talking about it. You know, it seems pretty neat that it can the AI can pick up the signs and do all this other stuff. Who would have thought they could do that? It’s a little I mean, it’s a little creepy, but that it can recognize that much stuff. But it’s, it’s neat. You know,
Richard Naus 22:10
probably the one thing I’ll miss about Omni tracks is if you had the map pulled up and it had the speed limit in the corner, when it’s 50 on people aboard. It was 55 on that. So it seemed 55 I can do fit. Oh, wait, that’s not right.
Jeremy Kellett 22:28
The other technologies just come along while he’s crazy. And you if you if you’re not using it, I mean, then they it when something happens, they get you and go Why don’t you use it? Right? You know, well, that’s to be honest with you. That’s the conversation we had about turning the voice off on the camera, “you have it, why aren’t you using it?” Type deal. We had to weigh in of it being a distraction or somebody saying why wouldn’t you use it? Anyway, it’s all good. It’s a change, we just got to get through it and move on, just like it was— I remember when Qualcomm came out, my gosh, we’re gonna lose every driver we had. I mean, it was a nightmare, but we didn’t ever get used to it guys.
Richard Naus 23:15
Get over it. And just like the cameras I mean, you got to protect yourself in this day and time ’cause everybody’s out for that free money if they can get it, especially when they’re advertising on TV and or buy truck.
Jeremy Kellett 23:29
billboards everywhere. Yeah. Yeah, we’re guilty. We’ll
Richard Naus 23:32
get you lots of money.
Jeremy Kellett 23:34
Yeah, that’s exactly right. Well, I don’t want to keep you guys very long today. So I know y’all got to get back to Oklahoma and get busy hopefully working you know working or not
Richard Naus 23:45
now supposed to be barges coming in this weekend. So hopefully we have a good week Julie’s are picking back up it’s been rather slow but
Jay Dozier 23:54
it’s does this every January January. You plan for it
Jeremy Kellett 24:00
Nobody gets in a hurry to get things going in the new year after the holiday it’s it still takes time we get it and here it is the end of January. Exactly.
Jay Dozier 24:09
Yeah it’s already the end of June yeah no. Crazy
Jeremy Kellett 24:13
Well I sure appreciate you all taking time to do this I know this was thrown on you as for the moment but I it helps. It really helps our listeners to be able to hear from guys that in a different part of the division different parts of trucking doing some local stuff which you know hopefully tells the listeners out there that are even recruits listening that hey yo please get some stuff that fit your needs. We got a lot of different stuff for you when it comes to different divisions Hopper in DME pneumatic we got local regional where the road I mean we really, really try to fit everybody’s needs the best we can so I’m not sure everybody we’re fitting yells in your fitness for eight years. I played
Richard Naus 24:51
eight years in April and anybody that’s thinking about coming over here, you will not regret it. So it’s been good to us and everybody He will take care of you as long as you take care of your customer. That’s what it’s all about.
Jeremy Kellett 25:04
That’s it’s the name of the game. Yes. Well, I appreciate y’all coming over. Jay. Good luck with all those kids. And thank you. I need to take care of him. Richard, we got to talk about that. Oh, GMC pika? Oh, yes. But you know, appreciate it. And I appreciate everybody listening to the weekly podcast, something we put out every Wednesday, so be sure and share it with everybody and, and do that like and subscribe and comment that helps. That helps us get out to everybody. And if you ever got any questions about Oakley man, just give us a call period office and we’ll be glad to visit with you. So we thank you for listening. We’ll talk to you next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Oakley podcast: trucking, business, and family. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate or review the show on the podcast platform of your choice and share it with a friend. We love hearing from our audience, so if you’ve got a question, comment, or just want to say hello, head over to our website, theoakleypodcast.com, and click the “leave a comment” button. We’ll get you a response soon and may even share some of the best ones here on the show. We’ll be back with a fresh episode very soon. Thanks for listening.