The OuterBelt's Podcast
The OuterBelt's Podcast
Scorching Heat, Lawn Care Laughs, and The Tale of Hyfield: Midwest Adventures and Autumn Antics!
Ever wondered how record-breaking heat and "corn sweating" are reshaping the Midwest’s climate? We kick off our return to the Outer Belt with an exploration of this quirky but impactful phenomenon, debunking myths along the way (hint: it has nothing to do with enjoying corn on the cob). Amidst the humor, we share personal tales of lawn care drama involving a busted sprinkler system and the unexpected challenges that followed. Plus, we cap it off with a mind-blowing fact about just how heavy clouds really are and the hurdles they pose for airplanes.
Shifting gears, we tackle the sticky subject of humidity and the pleasures of transitioning into fall. From comparing the muggy climates of Florida and Louisiana to reminiscing about the early signs of autumn, we bring you heartfelt stories and practical tips. Discover how mulching leaves can save you time and effort, and why making seasonal soups and preparing for pumpkin spice season is the ultimate autumn joy. We reminisce about the joys and woes of leaf disposal, including insider info on paper bag mandates and affordable lawn care services in Columbus.
Finally, buckle up for a behind-the-scenes journey through the history of Hyfield, from its humble beginnings in 2012 to the rollercoaster ride of the COVID-19 pandemic. We share our resilient pivot from sound production to unexpected gigs like delivering food during the Deepwater Horizon cleanup, and the surprising detours we encountered along the way. Get essential winter fuel anti-gel tips for diesel engines and join us for some hearty laughs as we recount nostalgic stories and inside jokes that have shaped our company’s journey. This episode is packed with humor, practical advice, and poignant reflections—perfect for anyone who loves a good story mixed with useful tips.
Email us: theouterbeltpodcast@gmail.com
Website: www.hyfieldtrucking.com
Interested in joining our team? Email us at info.hysg@gmail.com we have open trucks! You must be part of a team. No solo drivers.
Call us at 1-833-493-4353 Option 1
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Because she kept running away from the ball.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, welcome to the Outer Belt. I'm Patrick and you all know my friends Chili.
Speaker 1:Buttermilk.
Speaker 3:Eric and Jerry.
Speaker 2:And we are the Outer Belt crew. We're so happy you're with us. It's our first real show back from the 2023 summer.
Speaker 1:What year are we in?
Speaker 2:I don't know what's happening here it was the 2024 winter spring season. It was the winter spring what 2024 winter spring season. So we're back from that and you heard our recap for the summer last three episodes. Yeah and uh, this is our first real episode and we're back and we couldn't be more thrilled to be here. And let me tell you, when I say this man is chilly, it's only because he's been inside for at least five hours. At least five hours. Before that, you were not chilly, I was not.
Speaker 4:What were you?
Speaker 2:I was on fire, and not like this man is on fire, I mean like I'm about to melt. Do you know what I saw today? What did you saw today? And you'll have a hard time managing this. I will. The local news channel here, yeah, said today was the hottest day on record.
Speaker 1:Ever. This day was the hottest day on record Ever. I saw that in a lot of places we're going to break that 95?
Speaker 2:7.
Speaker 5:97.
Speaker 2:97 in August, who would have thunked?
Speaker 1:Did you see, the corn Maize Nope Hold on. I don't know if I have this right. The corn humidity levels of the Midwest were included in the Midwest that we're having right now, and it's where it's so hot and the corn is producing so much moisture into the air that the humidity is ridiculous. That's why it gets so hot and humid. Is that what causes that? It's called corn sweating. I think it is.
Speaker 4:Please don't quote me on that. I saw that headline today, though, about the corn humidity.
Speaker 1:It's corn humidity and because the Midwest is covered in so much corn this time of year, humidity is at its highest peak because of the heat, but it does like 30,000 gallons per acre or something is what moisture is being released. I saw that same article I didn't read it, I only saw the headlines.
Speaker 2:Because, I thought it was talking about when you're eating fresh boiled corn on the cob and you get that sweat happening. I thought that's what they were talking about.
Speaker 1:So I mean, we're not just having thunderstorms, which I thought it was weird, that it didn't maybe go up in the air and create clouds and then create rain or whatever, but all it's doing is just putting moisture into the air.
Speaker 2:It's been pretty wild, because I actually— I just thought that was weird, I thought—so stupid. The sprinkler system in my yard broke, so it worked last summer.
Speaker 1:Yep yard broke.
Speaker 2:So it worked last. Uh, summer, yep, and we and fall. You have to winterize it here because the freezing table is at so many feet and if you don't, your cracks will break and it explodes. So we winterize it and have the company come out every year and do all that stuff. So we did all that this year again, like usual summertime. I don't have to bring the company out. I know how to fire everything back up. It works fine. Well, for whatever, for whatever reason, it don't work. We got valves that are busted. We got all kinds of issues, not from being improperly weatherized, just they're old, they need to be replaced. And so we were going to like got a quote to have them come out there and they fix everything for you, right? And we were like we'll get it later.
Speaker 2:It later became, later became, later became later and then we never did anything about it in our beautiful lawn that we've had fertilized and been taken care of for a couple years to finally get it to look nice. Looks like a haunted mansion cemetery out front Looks like a hayfield. Giant splats of brown grass. You know what?
Speaker 4:We have a neighbor who's a retired firefighter.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 4:And he comes out there and he manicures his lawn every other day at least, comes out with no shirt on, gets himself a little sun. His lawn is lush and gorgeous. Yes, right now his lawn is as brown as everybody else's because it's been so hot and dry. Yeah, we haven't got the rain when we first moved here, melissa and I two years ago the third thing was we don't have to water the grass. It rains so frequently.
Speaker 5:Almost every day you're getting some sort of precipitation that's taking care of watering things.
Speaker 4:We haven't had that the last couple of weeks, so everybody's lawn looks like that right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:So even if you had the sprinkler system working, you'd be watering dead brown grass.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, it's kind of crazy too, because you know, when it's this hot outside and you have that much sunlight, they say don't water your grass, because you literally boil it like right, fry it, you kill your grass with your water and sun. So it's it's a lose-lose situation.
Speaker 4:But it's frustrating. Yeah, we're not. We're not getting any grass wet this year as much corn sweat as we're getting well, no grass what are you gonna say, jerry?
Speaker 3:got a little fact for you yes, have it the average size cloud. Do you know how much it weighs? I don't. No, an average cloud weighs 1.1 million pounds.
Speaker 4:Wow, wow.
Speaker 3:From all the water Wow.
Speaker 4:That's crazy.
Speaker 1:That's why the airplanes have a hard time going up through them Right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, they got to muscle their way through the weight.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you ever been flying and taken out of an airport and you hit a chunk of ice in the clouds, no time going up through them.
Speaker 2:They've got to muscle their way through the weight. Have you ever been flying and taken out of an airport and you hit a chunk of ice in the clouds? I've had it happen to me once. I remember talking to Dad years ago and it happened to him Because it's like. You literally feel like, oh, we just hit something Interesting.
Speaker 4:There's an article here on Forbescom about the corn sweat. One acre of corn can release 4,000 gallons of water a day.
Speaker 1:4,000 gallons of water a day. I was a little big, with 30.
Speaker 2:How do we capture that? Can we put a dome over it?
Speaker 1:And like a dehumidifier and then use that dehumidification Distill the corn sweat, just go straight into it copper still and see what happens.
Speaker 2:They release the vapor into the air and just everybody feels better. Oh my gosh, that's funny.
Speaker 1:I wonder if it self-waters itself. Like I don't understand, I get it.
Speaker 2:Self-water, self-water, okay, got it.
Speaker 1:But it's just creating humidity, Like it doesn't form a cloud. It's not.
Speaker 2:But does the humidity get down to the roots or not? That's the question. I don't know.
Speaker 1:I don't know that information. I'm not a corn scientist or a farmer.
Speaker 2:You brought us the corny facts. You did bring the corny facts.
Speaker 4:Well, and I was off on my corny facts. I just didn't realize.
Speaker 1:That's why the humidity levels go up so much this time of year in the midwest, because typically we don't have humidity correct it's very dry, but because of the heat.
Speaker 2:Right now we're in a heat wave, like you said, breaking temperatures for ohio um that this corn sweat effect is happening well, it's weird too, because I feel like when I'm like out and about or I'm at the yard or a Frank Lark dealership where I was today, or if I'm over at your house or something, it stays, it's super humid and intense heat. And then I feel like if I'm in my back patio, it's not as humid, it can be as hot, but it's not as humid. And I always thought that was weird because I've got a river back there, like hello, a river is going to cause humidity, but I wonder if it's because it's flowing. It is constantly flowing water. It's dam controlled, so it is constantly flowing, maybe not faster sometimes than others, sure, but I wonder if that's what doesn't allow that humidity to like it's not really baking in the sun like a lake would be, to like it's not really baking in the sun like a lake would be. It is constantly flowing water.
Speaker 1:That's what's pulling it out.
Speaker 4:It's kind of a canyon. It kind of is yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, so maybe that airflow happens.
Speaker 2:My house gently slopes down to the water, and on the other side it's a cliff.
Speaker 4:Your house gently slopes, my guitar gently weeps.
Speaker 2:That's because of the corn sweat. You should climate control that thing. Your house gently slows, my guitar gently weeps. That's because of the corn sweat. Right, you should climate control that thing, I should. I tell you what is weird with it being as humid as it is I have not had to run the humidifier in the basement. That's interesting. It's very interesting. Normally I do have to run that thing and we fill into the bucket out all the time, and last year I had to have it like literally sitting in the bathroom dripping straight in the sink, just constantly running. It was pulling so much humidity out, and this year I haven't really had to do that. So maybe I just have the H, you know the AC working differently. It's probably because it's hotter, yeah, so the AC is working more and it's probably pulling the humidity. Okay, we solved that. So the AC is working more and it's probably pulling the humidity.
Speaker 1:Okay, we solved that. Do you know what I find For high temperatures? We're not even cresting the 100-degree mark, though, are we? They're like 98s, 93s 95s, it's high for the area, which is weird because from Oregon, which is where I hail from, you're talking over the hundreds to make a mark happen 105, 107, those kind of marks are creating record-breaking. So for here I find it a little different.
Speaker 2:the corn sweat was something new well, even in south louisiana, I mean, we have humidity, just we just have it. Marshes, yeah swamps, even down there, like it'll be 95 degrees in here. 95 degrees, the heat index might be what 98 here. 95 degrees, the heat index might be what 98?. Yeah 97, 98?. Down there the heat index is 105 or 108.
Speaker 4:Sure, sure.
Speaker 2:So I'm used to like the heat index, which is, how does it really feel being 10, 15, 20 degrees hotter than it actually is, whereas up here it really makes very little difference. It's not, yeah, it's a few degrees, but not by much. Up here it really makes very little difference. It's not, yeah, it's a few degrees, but not by much. Um, so I, but you know, I think today a high humidity day, it was like 45 percent humidity in south louisiana. That's dry, it's super dry. I mean like really I'm used to seeing 70, 80, 90 humidity. You lived in hattiesburg. They're not crazy difference from us, it same thing where they get crazy high humidity, don't think I was raised, and I was raised in Florida.
Speaker 2:so oh yeah. So you know, yeah, like 90% humidity is not shocking.
Speaker 3:You step out of the shower and you're just soaked.
Speaker 1:Still wet yeah.
Speaker 3:You dry off and you're wet again.
Speaker 2:You style your hair and it falls as soon as you walk out that dryer, I have a dryer.
Speaker 1:That's a good place to get out of.
Speaker 2:A nice little tub will dry. You get out, you dry yourself off, I want fluff. I remember drying myself off and this was a regular occurrence and, like you know, brush the teeth, do the hair, shave, and by the time I was doing all that, I was completely wet again. Yeah, because it's just so hot and humid, or so humid, rather not even hot, just humid, and up here that doesn't happen Once I dry off.
Speaker 1:I'm dry, Even with the humidity we do get. I don't find it that kind of humidity.
Speaker 2:It's not, and it never really hits that high.
Speaker 3:Push through this a little bit, because come Sunday, monday, we're back down into the low 70s, beautiful typical season the humidity is back down into the low 40s. Like it, the humidity is back down into the low 40s. It's going to be awesome.
Speaker 1:We made the first fall soup today. I didn't intend to make soup it's obviously a hot day, like you were all saying, but I'm like I had the leftover chicken Costco carcass and it just makes a great soup. I'm like fall will be here soon. Not that I'm rushing summer, but fall will be here soon. Good soups.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 3:I can already smell the pumpkin spice.
Speaker 2:I've already been drinking it. That's not fair. You were drinking it in April.
Speaker 3:No, it's been three weeks.
Speaker 5:Our sycamore trees in Bridge Park are already changing color and falling off. I know I've seen a few. I'm not ready for that.
Speaker 2:I don't think it's temperature, I think that's lack of water, lack a water Like a water. They're dying, yeah, they're dying Our little willow tree in the front has created a brown grass effect.
Speaker 1:So crunchy brown leaves. They're little leaves. It happens this time of year and basically it's saying you need to start raking and bagging us or do something with us. It's the first tree to go with its leaves. I don't know why. I think it's the first tree to go with its leaves. I don't know why.
Speaker 2:I think it's the first to bloom, so maybe that's why I remember living as a kid I think we had a quarter acre yard and raking that up and hating it, just every bit of it, hating it, moving again to a small yard and then hating that, and that's when I discovered the lawnmower would actually mulch that stuff down and I'm raising my hand.
Speaker 2:Yes, I agree became a big fan of. But I look at something like now. I live on an acre and a half and I'm like I can't imagine Bagging all of it, because my yard's pretty much all lawn. It's not like there's a tree area where you don't have to really worry about cutting it. You have to cut the whole thing almost.
Speaker 5:And we don't have very many evergreens.
Speaker 2:No. So we lose a lot of leaves and I'm like can you imagine if we had to rake that sucker?
Speaker 1:We raked the first year. We did?
Speaker 4:Our backyard was what?
Speaker 1:six inches deep in leaves from that big oak tree we had back there.
Speaker 4:And last year Melissa was out there every third day mulching leaves.
Speaker 1:Small correction. It's a maple tree, which has much bigger leaves and, for those people that know oak versus maple, these are five inch leaves and it was six inches deep. We also came back from a vacation. We decided not to do vacations during leaf just because it was so much work.
Speaker 1:And then at the time we didn't know any better and we bagged. We had like 55 bags. Vince is on the phone. I know we've shared this story, but vince was on the phone with, uh, the city of columbus, how many bags can we pack? You know, set street side, because they pick them up street side. Can I double stack them? He said and, and like we didn't know really what to do. And then last year he's like what if we mulch them with the mulcher? So we did some research and it said as long as you don't have big piles of leaves, because that'll kill your lawn and it'll suffocate it, you can mulch. So we're out there and he's raking the leaves from underneath, where the tree falls way out into the lawn so they're not piley. And then I'm mowing and, like Ben said, I was mowing like every three days to keep up with the leaves that were falling.
Speaker 4:The roots in that tree are also above the ground in a lot of areas, so you can't get the maulmore around under there because the roots are there.
Speaker 5:That's how most oak trees grow in South Louisiana. It's a maple.
Speaker 4:It's a maple. I'm sorry I misspoke.
Speaker 1:That's okay.
Speaker 4:But it was still a lot less time than bagging, plus we save money on bags.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and you've got to have good bags. You can't have the cheapos.
Speaker 4:Oh, yeah, they fall apart as soon as you grab them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you have to have the paper bags because Columbus requires the paper bags for leaves and yard waste and any dampness, like if you bag today and they don't come until next Thursday or Tuesday. Any dampness in those leaves makes the bag soggy and when you move it from your storage shed it just blows the bottom out, so it was a waste of time using that bag. So again, we've learned, because, again, we're both from the West Coast. This is not something that you do as bag leaves. So we've learned, we're just, we're mulching, mulching, mulching.
Speaker 2:So we have a company that comes in and mows the lawn. I actually like cutting grass. It's one of the things I enjoy.
Speaker 1:It's my therapy, me too.
Speaker 2:But acre and a half. I didn't have a lawnmower for it. I was going to have to buy one for it when I saw how much it was and how cheap. So one thing you can get done really affordably here in Columbus which is one of the few things you can do affordably is lawn care. Like there, a lot of lawn care companies and so it's not crazy expensive to have your your yard mowed, whereas in south louisiana we had a lot of companies but it was still expensive. Here it's it's really not bad.
Speaker 2:And, uh, they come weekly, even into the fall, when really the grassland needs to be cut once every two to three weeks sure they come weekly just to maintain the control of the leaves yep and uh, it's what keeps my yard from ever having, because we really don't. We do have a couple areas where it's um mulched yeah where they'll accumulate, but like where the actual green grass is our brown grass right now.
Speaker 1:Uh, that stays pretty mulch, pretty nice we talked about actually mowing the leaves into the bag I think I had started with that last year and then putting those bag leaves into the paper bag and he's like why aren't we just mulching? And I'm like I don't know. Yeah, so that's when we did a little more research on making sure it's all spread out so the nitrogen and all that doesn't just kill the lawn come spring. And uh, honestly, this you could see the leaves and the debris all winter long. You know the crumbles that were mulched, you could see it. But by the time probably second cutting of spring happened, you couldn't tell it's just a green, lush lawn.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the problem with winter and snow. Is it just hides everything?
Speaker 1:It does.
Speaker 2:And then as soon as the snow melts, it's like oh yeah, that's right, we still have to deal with that issue, Yep.
Speaker 1:What do?
Speaker 2:you all do.
Speaker 3:HOA oh, I take care of the inside, they take care of the outside.
Speaker 1:There you go, there you go.
Speaker 2:There, you go Nice. That's the difference in mentality. Like we went looking for a place that didn't have an HOA, you were like, oh no, like it's much easier to strike that yearly check than it is to.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't want to have to worry about I am not cutting a yard. I've done enough of that in my life growing up. No, I don't want nothing to do with it. My hostas are almost done.
Speaker 1:Hostas H-O-S-T-A Are they baking.
Speaker 1:They're almost done, they're on the dining. They've bloomed, with their blossom of white flowers, and now the leaves are starting to turn yellow. And Vince read when they start to turn yellow, even at the end of summer, you should actually cut them, because they're not providing any nutrients to the leaves anymore. So basically, the plant is kind of done. So instead of like waiting until fall or winter, when you normally prune stuff, hostas, you could just kind of get rid of them and I'm like maybe one more week and I'm going out with some scissors and because, because they're ugly, at this point they look half dead. The the bloom is blossomed and maybe every fourth stalk of the blossom has one little white flower. I mean, they're just not doing anything. They're beautiful in the spring and early summer, but come late summer they're just done. And I don't water ours and we don't have a watering system, so maybe they would last a little longer if we did water.
Speaker 5:We've had a deer-rabbit problem, so ours have never seen the stage where they turn yellow. I have a deer-rabbit problem, so ours have never, seen the stage where they turn yellow. Oh yeah, we've had a set of leaves little stalk sprouts all over the place.
Speaker 1:I forgot your deer eat yours.
Speaker 2:Remember all that bragging I was doing about all the wildlife we have, yeah there's a lot of wildlife.
Speaker 1:I didn't realize that your deer, I forgot that your deer ate them. We don't have deer, we have rabbits.
Speaker 5:So we have those two, but we don't have deer, we have rabbits.
Speaker 1:But our rabbits aren't eating the hostas.
Speaker 5:And if you smell the yard, yes, Whenever you cut something, the genetics of the plant want to regrow, to reproduce what they lost. We have fresh hosta growing inside of the dead one.
Speaker 2:It's not dead yet.
Speaker 5:So the deer ate it.
Speaker 1:Their stalks are pointing up, but they're never going to get there Fresh hosta growing inside of the stalks. Right Interesting, the deer will eat it again.
Speaker 5:If they can get to it. But they won't stick their heads inside of the current stalks. They wait to get to the new ones. The new growth has to reach out past the stalks of the old growth.
Speaker 2:I call ours Jimmy Hostas, because no one's seen them.
Speaker 1:Oh, that was good, that was good. My daylily in the front. I've got one just outside in the walkway and it blooms, it grows and it blooms and it takes over half the walkway of our steps. It's too big. I need to transplant half of it, but the last two summers I have whacked it. Once it's done, bloomed and done like I cut it back and now it's half the length it was when it originally bloomed, just yeah and just the green fronds, but. But it's containable at this point. But it won't grow much bigger because then we're going to get cold weather. So I get two blossoms air quotes on that out of it. I don't get the flower the orange flower out of it, but the beautiful green leaves I do get a little frowniness out of it, just as long as it's not drooping over and looks like it was drooping over and that's why I cut it off.
Speaker 1:Plus again, it was halfway into to the walkway. I don't. I don't know why somebody planted it there, but why planted it there?
Speaker 2:so I tell you, growing up in louisiana, mom would have some plants around the house but we had like a big azalea bush. We had, um, some box hedges, uh, she was big into ferns. We had ferns, um, and then we had uh crepe myrtles on either side of the driveway. So not a lot of flowers and they kind of. You know they bloom and go away several times a year, especially in south louisiana where it never got really cold. And then we had a really nice yard. You know they bloom and go away several times a year, especially in south louisiana where it never got really cold. And then we had a really nice yard, you know, well manicured yard, and it was just grass and you know, keep your sidewalk trimmed and all that stuff. Surprising a little things like that that make your house pop.
Speaker 2:When I moved to the house that I bought in louisiana I had a really nice yard. I kept it trimmed and then in my front yard, next to my front steps, I had this giant, I guess it was like two or three banana trees and those grew and were beautiful and that was really it. Other than that, kept the yard cut, kept the weeds off the uh driveway. You know everything's fine, so move up here in this place. Has beds like the previous apartment, so it's like okay.
Speaker 2:Well, you gotta do something with that because it's ugly yeah and if you don't, I never realized the lifespan of a flower because I just never was around it. It never was a thing. You know, you'd see them at the stores, you'd see them at on like apartment complexes and stuff like that, but they had people taking care of that stuff. So I never realized, like, the amount of money that it cost to put the flowers out, the amount of time and energy to make sure you put the right flower out, the importance of is it full sun, mid-little sun?
Speaker 2:no sun the importance of this thing. Drinks like an alcoholic on the side of the road and this one can't have any water, but like once every two weeks, you need to give it a teaspoon, like just all of that stuff. Right, and try to figure out. Not only is it all that stuff, but oh yeah, it's a region that we never lived in, because, even though Columbus and Louisiana are very similar terrain, flowers are totally different. We're in different regions, or what are they?
Speaker 5:called Zones.
Speaker 2:We're in different zones, so I love banana trees. I'm a big fan of them. We can't have them here. Love palm trees, you kept them inside.
Speaker 5:I'm not keeping a banana tree inside.
Speaker 2:That's the only way you can have one year-round A lot of banana trees are strictly just aesthetic and people, whatever Mine, actually grew bananas, that's how nice they were. Palm trees here, I quickly realized. Well, at the end of the year they're digging them up and putting new palm trees down in spring. They do a lot of that stuff In the area of town we live in. There is a lot of money here. So, like, when you go across the river from my house, you do see along the golf course they literally bring in trees every year Trees, Not flowers, Trees. You know they bring in all this stuff and so that's why it's all perfect and I'm like who could spend that kind of money on maintaining a house? Hoa Again. I was about to say, I reiterate, hoa.
Speaker 1:Well, it's crazy I see why mom like ferns. Uh yeah, my fern has done well this year outside. I'm looking forward to bringing it in the house for the winter and see how it survives and if I can take it back out again.
Speaker 2:It's just shocking about in all the flowers that, like man, they bloom and they're beautiful for a week and then they're gone and your yard has that Whoever lived here before did that.
Speaker 1:They did daffodils during daffodils, and then they did irises during. Irises I mean like they Do.
Speaker 2:We have lilies too or no? You do have a few day lilies out along right at the entrance to the driveway.
Speaker 1:But whoever did it knew what blooms on what season, and they're all planted in the same flower bed, but they shoot up at different times and provide continuous beauty during the four weeks of spring yes, but that's it that's it, and then, once that's done, see you again next 11 months that's right, it's that's. It's so strange to me it's like yeah that ebb and flow.
Speaker 2:I'm just not used to it you know what a neat thing part of growing up right. I'll tell you who got it right. There's a tractor out there running a tractor trailer not a John Deere, but like an ARI sleeper on a big tractor, and under the window they painted in a flower box. So it's actually like the sleeper, I think, is white, and then it's got a flower box painted on the window. So it looks like, and I'm like, that's how you do it. You never have to worry about potting soil, Soil.
Speaker 2:We had to buy soil Like. Isn't that just dirt in the ground?
Speaker 4:No, it's not Because you've got to have nutrients and minerals, and then it's just whatever.
Speaker 2:And then the humidity that comes off the flowers. I don't think they're having flower sweat though I don't think they are either only when they see, you know, someone walk around with that roundup, then they start sweating like crazy. Uh, not the daffodils. So, uh, it was mentioned, yes, that for this season, one thing that uh, people have inquired about possibly doing would be for us to share a little bit of Highfield behind the scenes. That doesn't roll off the tongue very well. We need to workshop that Highfield after dark. No, that's a different thing. Highfield at sea I already got that Highfield. Help me here At Expo.
Speaker 1:No, you've done that too Highfield that, highfield, help me here at Expo. No, you've done that too. Highfield, highfield. I like behind the scenes, behind the scenes, but Highfield.
Speaker 2:Highfield in the making ooh, I like that something Highfield in the making, highfield, highfield, history, highfield. A peek behind the curtain, no, ooh. Highfield behind the kindle, no, I was about to say Peek Behind the Curtain, highfield Behind the Candle no, not to say that.
Speaker 3:I swear to God I won.
Speaker 2:What was that? Who was that? The Candle Lover thing that was.
Speaker 1:Vince, you got one.
Speaker 2:Who's the Candle Lover guy? He's from Liberace. That's the one, liberace, thank you.
Speaker 3:Don used to call our truck Liberace. Are you serious.
Speaker 1:That's funny, that's hysterical, highfield sneak peek.
Speaker 2:I liked the one three times ago. What did?
Speaker 1:we call it. I don't remember I don't either. Highfield.
Speaker 2:Behind the scenes no Sneak peek.
Speaker 1:I just said that.
Speaker 2:A sneak peek at Highfield, oh my goodness Highfield sneak, at any rate, anyways sneak peek at Highfield. Oh, my goodness, a Highfield sneak At any rate. Anyways, we'll workshop it. We'll workshop that. We'll get back with you. I said, okay, well, let's do it. If we're going to do it, let's do it.
Speaker 1:There we go.
Speaker 2:A brief Highfield lesson. I thought it would be fun. So if we're going to do this and let's get into incredibly rich detail, that's going to bore all of y'all, but if you asked for it, you've got to be careful what you ask for. So, eric was born.
Speaker 3:That's too far back July.
Speaker 1:Why are we? Talking about Eric, by the way.
Speaker 2:Because he's older than me. I was going chronologically so in 2012.
Speaker 1:That's when he was born.
Speaker 2:No, you look great In 2012,.
Speaker 2:Eric and I were living in Louisiana and I had an illustrious career in the world of sound and production. I did sound, video and lighting for major concerts and corporate events and all kinds of wild stuff loved. It is great, uh, great time my life. It was probably my first uh peek behind uh airplanes and got me to that because, uh, part of that lifestyle is you do get to fly in some private jets and stuff was really really, really happy doing that line of work. And then the, shall we say, 2008 housing crisis finally caught up to Louisiana. So because we were such an oil petrochemical industry-based economy down there, we didn't get all those 2008 housing crises. The resale property or the housing prices didn't get all those 2008 housing crises. The retail property or the housing prices didn't drop. We didn't feel any of that bubble. It was very strange. We were one of the few places in the country that didn't experience that. That's interesting.
Speaker 2:I had friends that had family homes or vacation homes in Florida and they felt it, but in Louisiana, we really didn't feel it. South Louisiana, we really didn't feel it. South Louisiana, we really didn't feel it because there's so much in that petrochemical world. We did pretty well for a while and then, by 2012, like I said, the economy grinding to a halt just finally reached us. You know, if you don't have any money, you're not spending it on entertainment, which means you're not going to concerts, which means they're not putting them on, and then those of us that supported that industry don't have work.
Speaker 1:Can I tell you something? I know you've shared this story and I don't mean to interrupt. I don't honestly remember 2012. I must have been too young at the time 20s but I can only equate it, or I just don't remember it.
Speaker 4:That's a hell of a math problem. She just worked out there 20s.
Speaker 2:I was 20s 14 years ago. What I'm saying is I don't remember it.
Speaker 1:It wasn't on my mind, right.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:But I could only equate it to maybe COVID, when COVID entertainment industry shut down.
Speaker 1:So every time you've shared this story and I know maybe for some viewers this is the first time you're hearing it and I didn't mean to interrupt, but I'm interrupting, I don't I could again I can only imagine how it was from your stories to COVID, and I clearly remember COVID and how there was nothing. There were no concerts, there was no live entertainment at your local bar, there was nothing. And the way you always share your story, it feels that shut out and shut down and for those entertainers during that time I just, I don't know, just weighs kind of heavy on my heart every time you tell your story about that. So anyway, that's all I have to say about that, I guess.
Speaker 2:I will say I definitely think COVID was a worse time. Everything kind of ground to a halt and slowed way down, but it never was completely turned off sure you could still go pick up gigs here or there.
Speaker 2:You could still make some money, right, um, but the money we were making in the the yeah, what we were doing before that was gone. So I was trying to figure out what could I do with my life. We all knew the economy was going to come back. We all knew production and concerts and all the stuff was going to come back. So I really looked for like, what can I do for now to make a little cash and sustain myself until it comes back? I had a cargo van at the time and that led me into singing about cargo vans for expediting, did my research, as one does or should do, and found out that there's a there's just not a lot of money in it, and then b the cargo van I owned was too old. Most of these companies do have age restrictions on the equipment. They they will sign on, and mine was just literally too old, had 66 000 miles on it it was wow it didn't have a lot of miles at all, it was in great condition.
Speaker 2:It was just too old. So that research, what I did find out was this whole world of straight trucks. That got me intrigued because I saw straight trucks with sleepers and I I researched uh landstar and and uh panther and um fedex, custom Critical, where we ended up and there was also back then there was like Express One and a few others that are no longer gone or they've been bought out and rebranded or something. I saw this idea and I sent it over to.
Speaker 5:Eric. At the time I was working at Jason's Deli as a delivery driver and after being there for like three or so years driver and after being there for like three or so years, the girl who was in charge of delivering to the power plant sorry chemical plants along the Mississippi River she did something that ended up getting her fired and I was let go let go behind her.
Speaker 5:I had been at Jason's Deli the longest, so I ended up picking up her work, which left me, like I said, delivering to the chemical plants up and down the Mississippi River with nice tips. Enough that I didn't complain about it at all. I consider myself pretty lucky at that point in life to be making that kind of money.
Speaker 2:It was a sweet gig.
Speaker 5:Yes, very sweet In the process of that at some time.
Speaker 2:It was the oil spill, wasn't it?
Speaker 5:No one step before that. Somehow I met up with Patrick. We became friends, and so we were together. At the time I was working at Jason's Deli.
Speaker 2:Yeah, by 2012 I'd moved in.
Speaker 5:And while I was doing that, that's when his recession happened with the sound industry, so they did have the oil spill.
Speaker 2:That's Deepwater Horizon.
Speaker 5:Deepwater Horizon happened in the Gulf and the people that were doing the cleanup put contracts out for food delivery and apparently Jason's Deli won the contract for it. So now Jason's Deli is in charge of pallets and pallets of lunch boxes that had to be delivered to Venice, Louisiana, which, if you know that on the map, that's where the gravel road stops and the water starts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the end of the earth. That's the end of the Mississippi River and the water starts. Yeah, that's the end of the earth. That's the end of the Mississippi.
Speaker 5:River. You can't find anything past that without a license or a professional or a boat or anything.
Speaker 2:You got to have a boat and also Gulfport, mississippi right. I forgot the name it was Gulfport.
Speaker 5:It was in Mississippi. Pascagoula Started with a P, can't remember for which one it was.
Speaker 2:It might have been Pascagoula Started with a P.
Speaker 5:Can't remember for which one it was. It might have been Pascagoula, pascagoula or Picayune, not Picayune, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think it was Pascagoula.
Speaker 5:I'd have to look it up.
Speaker 2:It's close to where the shipyard is down there. I think it was Pascagoula. You might be right. Anyways doesn't matter.
Speaker 5:Well, to begin with, I'm making good tips delivering to the plants along Mississippi. I got to go to new places every day. It was not a show up at the office, spend eight hours there and leave miserable in the afternoon. I got to show up, find out the exciting places I'm going to be bringing food to and hop in my vehicle and go make some people happy by bringing their food to them. So when the oil spill happened, jason's won the contract to deliver food to him. They found out the hard way that you need a Class C driver's license to be driving a box truck with food in it. Oh, so whenever they found that out then we had to go take classes, get our Class C driver's license, and that was also the time when Patrick wasn't doing the sound thing anymore so I invited him to come ride with me to each one of the locations.
Speaker 2:That was when it was starting to slow down, because that was 2011,. So it wasn't quite completely shut down, but it was definitely starting.
Speaker 5:It was slowed down enough where you could find the time to come with me.
Speaker 2:Those were grueling. Those were like show up at 9 o'clock at night and then make the round trip, which you know I never did the Venice one, but like going to Pascagoula and back at night when you're not a commercial driver who's used to it.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 5:Plus, even with my regular deliveries on the Mississippi River, I'm used to showing up in the morning and being done like 12, 2. In the afternoon I get to go home. This is a complete change showing up at 9 o'clock at night to deliver and then be back at 5 in the morning. So it was a complete change of schedule for me that, along with trying to do my regular day deliveries on the river, what's a Class C?
Speaker 2:That wasn't every day. I do remember that they wouldn't let you do it back-to-back. The laws went a lot. But Class C in Louisiana is a chauffeur's license. So if you're an executive car, black car, a limousine service, you have to have it.
Speaker 5:It's mainly because it was a commercial box truck.
Speaker 4:So was it weight differences I?
Speaker 2:think so. There's some rules about it. What I think, especially when it comes to freight? I think it really boils down to insurance and some other things like that that dictate it, because even when I was doing sound, I drove a 26-foot and a 16-foot truck several times doing gigs and even got pulled over and weighed and it never was an issue. So there was something special about what y'all are doing. You might have had a 33,000 pound truck when you did your um it was delivering food.
Speaker 5:I can imagine boxes of food being fairly heavy, sure, and you gotta remember so this was crazy, because eric told me about all this.
Speaker 2:all right, but I I didn't ever go to jason's deli or his work like we'd go, maybe sometimes sunday after church and and grab some food, because I do love me some Jason's Deli, yeah very good, very good, and that salad bar with those corn muffins.
Speaker 2:Anyways, y'all Squirrel Got those corn sweats going on. Oh, that's good. So what they did was not the. It wasn't the location you worked at. It was actually a different location in town. They actually rented this. Their storefront was in a strip mall. They rented the entire same-size restaurant next to it to set up.
Speaker 5:They just so happen to have vacancy next door to their restaurant. So they took over that for a short period of time, and I mean tables and just people in there, just line working Line working.
Speaker 2:They're just constantly packing these boxes, build the pallets, send them out while they're still packing more so they can get it. It was insanity.
Speaker 5:And this happened for over a week, because imagine how long it takes for people to clean up the golf from oil. I was going to say that was months.
Speaker 2:It was months. I remember it very well. It was months and what a great man. Jason's made bank on that.
Speaker 5:Anyways, anyhoo. So that gave me a little experience driving a larger vehicle than I was used to and I wasn't scared or nervous. I might have been a little nervous but I quickly got used to it. So that got me used to driving a commercial truck. Then when Patrick did his research and he found out about a special division of FedEx that dealt with not daily deliveries but kind of like what I was doing with food pick up in one place, drop off somewhere else and never the same place twice and it sounded kind of exciting and that made me comfortable with his next step in our adventure.
Speaker 2:Well, I think also by that point, if I'm not mistaken, so by mid-2012, when we started researching this and we had to go get our CDLs, because even as Class C, I had to be upgraded to a Class B, I had to go from a regular license to a Class B, the hazmat and the tanker and all that stuff. Because we did all that from day one, jason's was asking you to come in and like do food prep too, not just deliver, right.
Speaker 5:No, it'd been much later. In my work with them, it must have been five years, five years since I had been there. Maybe a year or two after the spill they tried me to get in-house more and more, putting more food together. I hate putting food together.
Speaker 2:I remember talking with you about it and you were like I was hired to be a driver.
Speaker 5:Yeah, that was the excitement of the job. That's what I came in to do.
Speaker 2:I don't want to be cutting baklava and stuff. I don't want to be putting po'boys and sandwiches together. Yeah, and I don't want to cut baklava either. I mean, I love baklava, it's delicious, but that is a sticky nasty.
Speaker 5:Can you?
Speaker 1:imagine getting a sheet of that and having to of course you can, but It'd be hard not to just eat it all until you're sick of it.
Speaker 5:Yeah, you're sick of it. I love baklava Anyhow. So that started changing a little more and more what I did at work and I got more and more tired and aggravated with it. So eventually, yeah, I was willing to find another job.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:Wasn't actively doing it, but it'd be easy to pull me away from what I was doing to do something new. So I actually started looking around trying to find a fleet owner, because I read enough that said hey, if you're going to do this, you're going to buy your own truck. Go drive for a fleet owner first, learn the business and then go buy a truck. That's what most people do. They go drive for a fleet owner for a year or two and then buy a truck. At that point fleet owners are very small four or five trucks, that's it.
Speaker 2:Fedex actually had a rule that said no more than five trucks. We said, okay, we'll go find a fleet owner, we'll go drive for them and see if we like it or not. Worst case we don't like it, we'll come back and I'll go back into sound and Eric can go back into catering, because we knew he could get a job anywhere because he had all those contacts on the river and everything. So it was like cool, let's give that a shot. We looked everywhere and everybody kept saying, no, we're not interested. No, are you two guys driving? No, we're good, like a lot of people. And so I was getting pretty bummed out and frustrated by it, and it was actually Eric that found an ad.
Speaker 5:I decided one day to go look on Craigslist that old advertiser.
Speaker 2:Is that still around?
Speaker 1:I don't know it is. I don't think it's the go-to place though.
Speaker 5:It's been around for years. I'm surprised it's still here. One day he told me about the job he was looking for and somebody to go to contract with. I just said, what the heck, I'll go look on job or yeah, the job he was looking for and somebody to go to contract with. And I just said, what the heck, look on craigslist for commercial truck drivers. And um, I just so happened to found the craigslist and I found expediter services who was advertising for custom critical drivers are expedited truck delivery.
Speaker 2:Yep and um, uh, told patrick what I found you you emailed it to me, you emailed me the ad, and so I had and did his research I went in and, uh, I'd already seen their name a few times from doing research, um, but I, uh, hadn't never seen their advertising or anything, I'd just seen their name before it. So this was the first time I was like, oh, here's the phone number, here's a way to contact them. And they were very much, um, when I talked to them, they're like we have this availability at panther, yada, yada, yada. I, like most people at the time, was like I want fedex because you know, I didn't know any better.
Speaker 2:I didn't know. You look back on things now and it's like okay, I get it. So I I said I want fedex and and they're well, we can do this for you. At that point they were the only fleet owner allowed to have more than five trucks. They had 100 and something at FedEx. They had another 150 or so at Panther, but they were the only ones allowed to do that. Nobody else was At that point. They were like you have a Pulse and a clean medical card, come on and drive for us.
Speaker 2:Wow, so they sent us the apps, which thankfully they were, and we kind of had the same philosophy with our company. Now, because of it, we did the FedEx apps went through all that. That was old school though. That was like print them out, scan them, email them back.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean there was no driver pulse or any of this fancy stuff they have now and Jerry's shaking his head, he remembers those days. And so we did all that. And then actually my family was going to Gatlinburg like just a family vacation. They had a class at FedEx, an orientation that was like the next week All of our stuff came back clean and they're like, yeah, we'd love to have you Made us the offer. So we and they had the truck in Ohio, so Expeditor Services is based out of Memphis, tennessee, but truck in ohio, so expatriate services based out of memphis, tennessee. But they actually had the truck sitting in ohio, uh, maybe 45 minutes from where our, 30 minutes from where fedex was. So we're like cool, rented a car, went and did the family trip in ohio and found out, I'm sorry, went, did the family trip in gatlinburg and find out in gatlinburg we had to go do drug test again. We're brand new, we didn't know about all that so all that To explain how new we were.
Speaker 5:I had always been an employee. I had never been a contractor. Whenever he brought this idea to me and we left for it, I had to tell my boss where I was going at the time. I literally told him we're going on vacation, I'm going to talk to somebody else about a job. I don't know if I'm going to get hired for an interview or an orientation for something I already got. I didn't know what I was walking into.
Speaker 2:We really didn't know. The communication was nowhere near what it is now, so there was definitely some like we think we have a job for me. I was a freelance person so I don't have anybody to work to tell Jason. Eric had already told Jason. I don't have anybody to work to tell. Eric had already told Jason. I don't know if I'm coming back or not, because here's what I'm doing and we're not real sure. It was very vague what you and Delina do, prepping people night and day, different than what it was when Eric and I went.
Speaker 2:Did you feel that way when you went to FedEx? You were like I'm not really sure if I'm supposed to be here or not Absolutely.
Speaker 5:It was very strange.
Speaker 2:And so, like I said, we get to Gatlinburg and we get the email that like hey, you need to get a drug test done. So I had to write them back and be like I'm in Gatlinburg, tennessee. So they found us one. They're like cool no big deal.
Speaker 4:It was three and a half hours away.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness, I'm like you couldn't have sent us to Knoxville, which is literally an hour away. Three and a half hours away.
Speaker 5:It's a good thing we waited until the end of our vacation to go do that drug test. We didn't do it in the middle of it.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 5:So it wasn't a three hour trip both ways.
Speaker 2:So we go over there and it literally we like following early Google Maps and we're driving down this country, little bitty road. We go this huge valley and there's a big dam with. I tried to find it, I can't find it, I don't know where it's at, huge dam with a big lake behind everything. It's really pretty. We're driving and then the road just turns to dirt and we're like, well, that's interesting. Wow, you know, we're in this rental Chevy, corsica or whatever, we're in Cavalier, and it's like, oh okay, the road just turned to dirt, let's go a little farther, let's see if it, you know, maybe it turns back into concrete a little further. We went a little further and it turned into sketchy dirt and we're like, let's turn around Sketchy dirt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we turned around and got back on the main highway and then I rerouted the Google Maps and they actually did find me another way. I took it, showed up in this sketch sketch drug testing place. I mean, you know, some of them are already sketchy. This one was definitely sketchy.
Speaker 2:And like no names on the building at all, like just a little glass, just a little sticker on the glass door Go in there, do the drug test. I don't even think. I don't remember them having the lights on. I think it was just the lights from the front.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness, that was crazy.
Speaker 2:Did all that? Fedex got the results like the next day or whatever. We still had a long drive back up to Lodi, ohio, where the TA Lodi We've all been there.
Speaker 5:We go there, the only truck stop with Starbucks.
Speaker 2:Yes, Great, I love that. That was nice. But we go in there and they said the guy in maintenance, the shop will have your keys. So we went over there, got the keys, we go to the truck and no walk around, no introduction, just like here's the keys, it's truck, this, this and this. So we had to go over there, find it. We were scared, we were going to get hit with the car. So we like, unloaded our stuff in the truck and then drove the car over to the front of the TA and left it there. And then the next day we got up, drove the truck to FedEx, did our first day of orientation at FedEx and then brought the car and then drove the truck back to the truck stop. And in the process of just back and forth the check engine light came on on the truck, and not like the little mill light, I mean the actual check engine light with like the red check engine light.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:And so we were able to turn it off, turn it back on and go a little further, and then it came back on and so we did that back to the truck stop. At that point we went into the on and go a little further, and then it came back on and so we did that back to the truck stop. At that point we went into the shop and the guy's like yeah, the guy that runs Expedire Service Maintenance, he's already called, here's your new truck.
Speaker 2:So then we had to go and swap all of our stuff over from one truck to the next because they had back in the day they used to store their trucks there. They had a deal worked out with them they don't need more but they used to, and so you swapped in the new truck, then we took that back and that thing drove great. It was rock solid. Um, the only thing that was crazy about it was it was a year older, had a few more miles on it, but it was great. And the inside, the layout, identical. It was identical, uh, from the other one, except for the out. The couple little aesthetic things on the outside were different and it was red, the red truck back in the day.
Speaker 5:X-bars used to have red kenworths and tons of them.
Speaker 2:They're like cockroaches blue fedex on the box, and so we literally got out of class. They made us go to a? Um driving school down the road, and then they made us do a, a, a test drive, like with an instructor, to make sure we could drive these trucks again. They don't do that anymore either.
Speaker 3:Like, wow they sent me to atlanta for that same thing.
Speaker 2:Yep, I mean don too crazy stuff they used to do back then. And then they uh once did that we had to leave and go to another place and have the back of the box wrapped in just white vinyl, just basic white vinyl, because they were doing a rebranding thing and if you didn't have a white cab you couldn't have the FedEx logo on your truck anymore.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness so we do all that, all that to be able to go and begin our expediting careers. And I mean, you literally go back to the truck, stop, you sign in, all right, twiddle your thumbs and let's see what happens. But we used to brag about that truck man. I used to tell people we could just drain the engine full of oil and still go run another 5,000 miles. That thing was bulletproof unless you're in Detroit in the middle of winter. So Eric and I are from South Louisiana. I'd never heard of anti-gel. I didn't know that diesel has paraffin wax that turns into a gel when it gets super cold. I'd never heard this before in my life.
Speaker 2:We go up to we're on a load, or I think we were dispatched a little bit, we hadn't actually picked it up yet and I had the AP running the heater on. It was nice and comfy. And then it was like, alright, it's time to go, so fired the engine up and I could barely make out of the parking space. And then it's like you know, and it's like, oh, this is not good, try it again. Okay, something's wrong. Call maintenance. Well, you're at a TA, do you? Do you think you can get it into the shop? And I'm like, yeah, I could probably get it in the shop. It's not going to be pretty, but I can get in there, so cool. So get on a list, we're good to go. In a couple hours we get in the shop, they replace the fuel filters and a couple other things and send us on our way. But we still didn't add antigel. We didn't know that was a thing.
Speaker 5:We just thought it was a bad filter Get the problem fixed.
Speaker 2:So we just froze, we just re-gelled the filters back up, right, didn't think anything of. It Ended up getting towed to. Well, obviously. Then the you know, the maintenance guy who thinks we know about that is like well, clearly, something else is wrong. They get us towed over to a Kenworth dealership and I might have been a caterpillar dealership anyways. The next morning we get up, they, they bring us inside. The guy comes and he's like hey, uh, you're all done. Um, looks like the filters were just gelled up. But we put some 9-1-1 in your fuel tanks and we got those fuel filters replaced for you should be good to go. What do you mean gelled? So this guy was like what do you mean? What I mean?
Speaker 2:I was like I I don't know what this, I don't know what this means, and so I thought maybe the fuel had turned like rancid, like gone bad, and he's like, oh no, let me show you. He said when it gets cold, or he told me he's like when it gets cold the fuel has waxed and I'm like, oh, and I guess I had a look on my face where he's like come here. So we actually went on the shop. He got the old fuel filter, he brought it over to a saw they had and he literally cut it in half, cut the filter in half, and showed me that it looked like the filter was full of petroleum jelly.
Speaker 2:It was just like no, nothing liquid at all it was just pure petroleum jelly looking stuff and so he's like this is paraffin wax that is just gelled. You know, it's fine when the truck's running and it's got a lot of heat and stuff, but when it gets cold enough it does this. And he's like you should always use anti-gel. And he said I don't know which one you use. Call your maintenance guy and he'll tell you which one to get. So we did that and uh, never had that problem again.
Speaker 5:But that was a crazy learning experience. That's a tough lesson. Twice Alyssa was asking what's 911?
Speaker 2:Oh, 911 is like anti-gel that's on crack. It is super anti-gel and you really only use it once you've actually gelled up. So it comes in a red bottle, the same like diesel power, whoever it is power service or whatever they make it. We buy the white bottle, which is their anti-gel. We use that in our trucks, but the red bottle is for once you've already gelled up. The white bottle is not strong enough, so the red bottle is what you use. It's twice the price, it's very expensive, um, but it doesn't just prevent it, it actually goes in and and undoes it, if that makes sense it's a good chemical reaction in there.
Speaker 1:Yes, if you can get it into, goes in and undoes it. If that makes sense, makes a good chemical reaction in there.
Speaker 5:If you can get it into the filter and fuel line.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you can get the filter and fuel line, great, but if you can't, you get it in the fuel and then replace the filters. Does the same thing.
Speaker 1:Got it, so yeah that was. I relied on my team driver to make sure we had anti-gel.
Speaker 2:Well, your team driver to make sure we had anti-gel. Well, you're team drivers from where it gets ice cold. You know Los Angeles, I'm kidding.
Speaker 1:I'm kidding, I was aware of diesel freezing up.
Speaker 2:We never even had a diesel, we always had gas engines. Never had diesel engines in our vehicles. I just never. I mean even then, when I rented trucks and drove them back in the day, when it's 97 degrees outside, you're not really thinking about anti-gel.
Speaker 5:So a quick question for people who haven't had to deal with cold weather or thinking about driving and may end up in it Once a fuel has gelled up, does it un-gel back into a liquid or is it chunk? So?
Speaker 2:if you get it hot enough, it will Right, or if you have, if you put 911 in there, it will.
Speaker 4:It'll fix the problem, it'll fix its problem.
Speaker 2:Okay, but you know, if you completely gel the filter then you won't have a way to get the fuel into the filter. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Yeah, if it's in the filter and gelled, you've already got a problem. You're already done.
Speaker 2:You need a shop. Correct Toad, however, else Gimp it and a lot of times you can gimp it because they are not plugged solid, so you may not be able to do 70, but you may be in a position where you can get it off the road or have enough power to get you over to a place. The best form of treatment is prevention.
Speaker 1:Sure to a place the.
Speaker 2:The best, best form of of treatment is prevention.
Speaker 2:Sure, it's just.
Speaker 2:You know, we telli think I'm trying to think how we phrase it with our teams but if the weather's going to be below 20 degrees and you're going to be parked overnight, treat your tanks.
Speaker 2:Otherwise you don't really have to worry about it.
Speaker 2:Like if you're driving down the road, like, say, I'm going to top off my fuel tanks and then I'm going to drive 500, 600 miles, not really a concern, because what diesel fuel does is it actually goes from your tank into your high-pressure fuel system on your engine and it gets really hot during that process, like really hot, and then they only put a little bit of that fuel back into the engine to make it run and the rest of that fuel gets sent right back to the fuel tanks and so you constantly have this loop of piping hot, crazy hot fuel going right back into your diesel tanks.
Speaker 2:That's why if you ever touch your diesel tanks, even in the middle of winter, they're usually warm if you've been running because you're just getting that hot fuel right back into your, into your fuel tanks, so it doesn't really it didn't have a chance to gel. But if once you're sitting and you turn that engine off. That stops and you've got a tiny thin piece of aluminum as your only insulated barrier between your fuel and and uh, the outside elements. And if you see people like especially in canada, are people that run strictly the north in the middle of wintertime you'll see insulated blankets that they have around their fuel tanks.
Speaker 2:Oh interesting, Because they're running so cold, Like when you get to Alaska, even keeping the engine running won't help it. You're still going to have that gel start to form on the outside of that fuel tank, Like the inside wall of the fuel tank.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:So they outside that fuel tank, uh, like the inside wall of the of the fuel tank, oh um, so they put an insulated blanket on there to help keep it nice and warm which is the same thing with tragers, right like trager grills, don't?
Speaker 2:they have that insulated blanket to help them when it's really cold outside. So it's yeah, it's really cool to see the little things like that. Just like uh, up north you'll see a lot of people have, um the fronts which are just like little snap-on grill covers because you'll cool your engine down too much if it's cold outside.
Speaker 4:With all the cold air coming through the engine. It cools it down too much and power steering will freeze it will.
Speaker 3:I learned the hard way going to Alaska.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and again, for what we do. It definitely decreases performance. Sure, because we don't have those on our trucks. It decreases performance, but not a lot Like because you'll find yourself one day in North Dakota and in two days you'll be in Laredo.
Speaker 2:Sure it's kind of all over the place and like the DD-13, the Cascadia is the Western Charms we run. They don't even have the snap things for them like they do older trucks. The systems have gotten smart enough. They'll literally like your hot coolant that's in your engine. They won't even put it in the radiator if it doesn't need it. If the temperature of the engine is running too cold, it just won't pump the water there. It'll let that water warm up inside. The engine's running too cold, it just won't pump the water there.
Speaker 1:It'll let that water warm up inside the engine. Interesting so it's. Can I put a Christmas wreath on the front of my truck to keep it warm?
Speaker 5:I was going to say at the time the weather starts getting cold, that's Halloween Thanksgiving, if she can put you a little skeleton on the front.
Speaker 1:I know I mean like will that block some of that air?
Speaker 2:I tell you what. I don't tell people not to do that. But if you get pulled over by a cop and for some reason you don't have it secured properly and they give you a ticket for it, it's your ticket. That's what I always say.
Speaker 1:I was joking about keeping the engine warm.
Speaker 2:I don't think we've ever did a wreath. I don't think we've ever done anything on the front.
Speaker 5:We were always moving from one truck to the other too much. It wasn't worth investing in the decor and theme.
Speaker 2:We did a piece of cardboard once on that first Kenworth we had.
Speaker 5:That was a rough truck to begin with.
Speaker 2:We did a piece of cardboard on the front because we were having trouble getting the engine warm enough. We were running from Great Falls, montana, to somewhere in New York. But that was again. That was an old Kenworth that we don't even run those trucks anymore. But that was.
Speaker 5:And, I think, a good philosophy. As far as anti-gel goes a little. Anti-gel is a lot cheaper than a filter replacement after a tow and the truck stops.
Speaker 2:The big thing with anti-gel, don't just dump it in right before you?
Speaker 1:That was going to be my question.
Speaker 2:Dump it in an hour before you know you're gonna be stopped. You know, if I know that, like hey, I'm gonna be stopping in chicago. I don't know why you would, but I'm gonna be stopping in chicago. Okay, well, in, like toledo, top your truck off with antigel, so by the time you get over there, it's already and also make sure you run it through.
Speaker 2:if you're your apu and if you have a reefer unit, make sure you run it through your APU, and if you have a reefer unit, make sure you run it through that too, because those all will freeze. They all run off the same diesel tanks.
Speaker 4:So I would say don't top it off with anti-gel, yo, please don't. So, add the prescribed amount of anti-gel and then top it off with fuel so that anti-gel gets a chance to flow through all the systems. And again, like patrick said, run your apu, run your reefer run your run your s-bar heater. Uh, so you make sure you get that, that anti-gel, through the lines and mixed in with your.
Speaker 1:So if I've, come from the south on my two tanks of gas fuel and diesel and now I've arrived in detroit, where it's chilly and that's my parking destination, but I fuel before I park. I'm going to put my anti-gel in the tanks first fuel park, continue to let my engine run for an hour. If I have a reefer, run that for an hour, run my s-bar heater, obviously because I'm cold, because it's cold weather, and also run the APU and then eventually shut my engine off and the reefer off after about an hour to get that in. Is that how that would typically work?
Speaker 2:So ideally I would say this is where we're professional drivers.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So the professionalism comes in. I know that Detroit is zero degrees outside and that's my final destination, so let me stop. If I'm coming up from the south, let me stop in just north of Indianapolis or in Effingham or something like that, and let me go ahead and add that anti-gel in there, top off my tanks and then not get diesel in Detroit. That way it's well mixed and I can run that reefer en route and everything's fine. So when I get there, I can go to bed.
Speaker 1:I'm not worried about it.
Speaker 2:That makes sense If it sneaks up on you, which it can happen Sometimes. You get somewhere and they say the weather's going to be one thing and it's different. It does happen. I mean mistakes happen right. So if you find yourself in that predicament, absolutely Run that engine, idle it up high Almost all of our trucks can be high idled, which is where you get those engine RPMs up to close to 1,000. Let that thing go for an hour it's going to mix those tanks up really good and set your alarm and then get up and crank it off. Don't let it idle all night, sure no, no, no.
Speaker 2:Because then you'll have new issues which are emissions treatment issues. You'll have your DPF filter will start to clog. So you don't want to idle that truck all night. You can do that. That will kind of have the same effect.
Speaker 1:It's part of trip planning, really, but it's really part of trip planning really.
Speaker 2:But it's really part of trip planning. Just like you should be checking the weather, you should be checking highway conditions throughout your trip and that sort of thing which is the expediter lifestyle yeah, it is, it's, it's again.
Speaker 2:It's going from that like I'm not going on vacation, I'm a professional driver. Um, when you download like pilots app and a few other people's fuel apps, you literally check like are you a car person? Do you have an rv? Are you a professional driver? We're professional drivers, so that's part of being a professional driver is the trip planning aspect of it. I have to jump back real quick and just wrap this up so we have more for you next week. That T600 Kenworth that Eric and I drove for Expedire Services the second one we got into one day after we got the first one. That thing was solid. It had a CAT C11 engine in it, no liftgate, no lift axle. It had a factory sleeper. It had a Thermo King Tri-Pack APU, no reefer unit. That thing was bulletproof. It was awesome, loved that truck. And in May of 2013, eric and I decided, six months in, we're buying a truck. This is our business. Wow, we really like this.
Speaker 5:I thought the lifestyle was really fun.
Speaker 2:We just made it through summer. Spring had already started coming and it was really becoming fun. And so we're like we want to buy a truck. We scraped together our pennies, realized we didn't have any credit for a truck and we did what a lot of people did at that time, which was went to Expeditor Services and said, hey, we want to buy a truck. And they said we've got a few for you to look at. Tell which one you want and let's make it happen. And they got us started by buying our first truck from them and it was a very nice jump from driver for them to owner-operator with them up buying a 2008 Kenworth T660 factory sleeper, no lift gate, no lift axle, dry van identical except instead of a C11, caterpillar C11 engine, it had a Caterpillar C13 Acer. And we'll pick up next week.
Speaker 1:Ooh.
Speaker 4:That was a great story, Patrick. Can't wait until we hear more from you next week. Thank you Thanks for sharing that. If you have ideas or questions for us, please, please reach out to us. You can email us at theouterbeltpodcast at gmailcom. Or you can leave a comment below this video, or a comment or review on the your favorite podcast half if you're listening to the podcast you can also text us?
Speaker 3:yes, you can. The link is there if you're listening to the audio version of the podcast it's in the show notes there.
Speaker 4:So, uh, thanks again for coming along for the journey with us, listening to us. We really appreciate it absolutely.
Speaker 2:And uh, whatever button you see in front of you thumbs up, thumbs down. Uh, press them all. Send uh share this. If you think there's anybody that's like hey, you want to hear a little something about how uh these fools started this company. You know you can share that and uh this.
Speaker 2:You know we're gonna be talking about this a lot over the next several episodes and hopefully uh get to share a little more about where Eric and I came from and how we got all this going, maybe even let you know why we do some of the things we do, because history dictates a lot of what we do now. Right, so I look forward to it. It's been nice going down memory lane. I know there's been a couple times off camera. Jerry's just been over here howling, laughing, because he just remembers some of the same stuff because we got started. He's a little bit earlier than we are, but still in a similar vein and just yeah, I think it's great, can't wait. Thank you so much for being a part of this and, in the meantime, stay safe, make good decisions.
Speaker 3:Don't leave money on the table and keep those wheels of turning.
Speaker 1:Hey.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Why was Cinderella?
Speaker 5:so bad at soccer? I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Because she kept running away from the ball. Bye, thank you.
Speaker 2:So you're saying the ball like a dance.
Speaker 1:She ran away from the ball and lost her shoe on the stairs. I know, and.
Speaker 2:Prince, whatever I kept thinking of, like, where is there? Like this Indiana Jones-esque scene where there is a ball chasing her?
Speaker 1:I'm like did you see the Did I see the Disney version.
Speaker 2:You saw the DreamWorks version.
Speaker 1:What happened here? Oh, so confusing Sorry.