The OuterBelt's Podcast
The OuterBelt's Podcast
Trucking Chronicles, IKEA Escapades, and Apple Innovations
What's the secret to thriving in extreme weather? Join us as we chat about everything from unpredictable temperature swings to the impact of drought on local agriculture, complete with a nostalgic spin on our favorite rain songs and the magic of campfires. We also dive into the tech world with our resident Apple aficionado Jerry, who shares his enthusiasm for the latest iPhone and Apple Watch releases. You’ll get a sneak peek into the meticulous preparation and excitement that goes into Apple's product launches, and how one of our crew members even takes a week off just to immerse themselves in the event!
Ever wondered what it takes to manage a trucking business? We’re celebrating our second year as owner-operators by sharing pivotal milestones, like attending the Egg Expeditor Group Gathering in Tennessee and transitioning to specialized reefer freight. From the challenges of keeping underbelly reefer units cool in blistering temperatures to the evolution of custom sleepers in our fleet, we've got plenty of stories and lessons to discuss. Plus, you’ll hear about the camaraderie within the trucking community and our tips for navigating the industry’s ups and downs.
Is shopping at IKEA a marathon or a sprint? We recount a memorable weekend expedition to the furniture giant, sharing our first impressions, favorite finds, and essential tips for first-timers. Along the way, there’s a nostalgic look back at attending the Expedite Expo and the unique sense of community it fosters. We wrap up with an open invitation to connect with us—whether you’re curious about our trucking journey or interested in joining our team. Get ready for an episode packed with insights, laughs, and plenty of practical advice!
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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hey, welcome to everybody's favorite podcast. This is the outer belt with patrick, chili, buttermilk, eric and jerry. Welcome back to our show. So glad to have you. Uh, it's been, uh, some just beautiful, fantastic weather. Outside. We're getting beautiful like like 70-degree morning I'm sorry, 50-degree mornings I know right. And then it goes to like a nice warm 800, and then back down to 50. Yeah, what about 800,? Maybe 80? It was 84, 85 today.
Speaker 3:Was it, yeah, wow, yeah, 92 tomorrow 92 tomorrow In what?
Speaker 1:state 92 here, wow, tomorrow 92 tomorrow. In what state?
Speaker 3:Here 92 tomorrow, that's ridiculous, and 91 on the next day.
Speaker 2:That might be it. Don't hold your breath. But that might be it for the 90s.
Speaker 1:I thought we all wanted to go back to the 90s.
Speaker 2:No, I want 80s, 80s, 80s. I'm an 80s girl.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's crazy hot out there.
Speaker 2:I see the rain's going to set in. I think it's remnants of Francine. She's just going to hit all the Midwest.
Speaker 1:We need it. Oh yeah, we need it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, heavy rains too.
Speaker 4:The rain, yeah Good.
Speaker 2:I was looking at a good half inch or more.
Speaker 1:Nice, nice.
Speaker 5:Here comes the rain again.
Speaker 2:It's so Falling on my head.
Speaker 5:Like a melody.
Speaker 2:What.
Speaker 1:The raindrops keep falling on your head.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a different song. What are you singing?
Speaker 3:You don't know that song.
Speaker 2:Here comes the rain again. That's Eurythmics.
Speaker 3:Eurythmics. Eurythmics.
Speaker 1:Aren't they the sweet dreams? Yeah, I can't they the sweet dreams, yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, I can't stand the rain.
Speaker 1:Missy Elliott, I got nothing. It's my window.
Speaker 4:Well, she redid it.
Speaker 3:I don't know the original.
Speaker 1:That's Tina Turner.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:What's love got to do? There's a lot of rain songs. I liked yours singing in the rain. That's funny. My grass will sure like it I know we've talked about that.
Speaker 5:A couple of episodes.
Speaker 2:Yours is looking a little bit everybody just because most places don't have automatic watering systems, not even the corn fields you gotta have irrigation if you're gonna have corn sweat and you're gonna have drought conditions you gotta have irrigation it's just so weird how we've got drought and corn sweat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like the two don't seem to.
Speaker 5:I saw an article today that said that columbus had to tap into their water reserves because of the drought.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, I saw last week that the governor, somebody of ohio um, claimed state of emergency for some certain counties for the drought so that they can get some sort of compensation for the loss of crops.
Speaker 1:So my understanding is southeast of here. Yes, like in the Hawking Hills area, where it actually gets mountainous and really pretty, you would think they'd have tons of water. They're getting hit the worst by the drought.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Kind of north of us and really where we're at, it's mild, mild drought.
Speaker 3:I think the whole southeast has like a burn ban in effect.
Speaker 2:They do. Yeah, wow, yep, yep, crazy.
Speaker 1:I hate that man. I remember, you know, back when I used to camp out and go places. I say camp out, I me like in a tent, going somewhere and finding out they're in the middle of a burn ban and it's like we got a pickup truck full of wood. We brought gas, a lighter fluid. Gotta bring it all back. Yeah, that was just miserable. It's horrible. But I love a campfire, campfire, bonfire, yeah. So it'd be nice to have some, some rain, maybe get the burn ban gone. I don't know. You know, a lot of times with those burn bands, just one big weekend of rain doesn't really solve it.
Speaker 4:No, it's going to take time.
Speaker 1:Probably next year with all the snow Hopefully we have a wet snowy winter.
Speaker 5:I'm hoping for that. I'm hoping for a wet, snowy winter.
Speaker 1:Like heavy snow, Like icy Three four feet of snow. Yes, the snow that gets all brown and black and funky on the side of the road.
Speaker 5:It never goes away. It's there Just like I'm so looking forward to it Makes me think of. Because that means that the temperature is going to be below freezing.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, Like well below freezing for days on end Days. Oh, I just can't wait for that, listen.
Speaker 5:So forward to it, I bet. Get out of these 90 degree temperatures, am I right? Yeah, let's move right into freezing temperatures for days on end.
Speaker 1:That's right. See Arnold show up. Mr Freeze, get it. Nobody, it's a Batman thing, so speaking of which that was funny. Thank you, I try, but was it too funny?
Speaker 5:No, no, no, not quite there Just funny, that's funny.
Speaker 1:Well, speaking of Arnold and Mr Freeze, jerry, this week we had something exciting happen and since you're Mr Apple, I thought you'd explain.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we had an Apple event this week. I know a lot of people out there enjoy Apple just as much as I do. This is the iPhone event this week. I know a lot of people out there enjoy Apple just as much as I do. But, yeah, we had the brand-new iPhones announced. Is this EDC, edc, what do they call it? Wwdc?
Speaker 5:WWDC. No, that's in June, jinx.
Speaker 4:So this was what was this?
Speaker 3:This is just the iPhone event Every September back whenever I had my old jobs. I actually always took this week off, just so I could focus on Apple and watch the event. Wow.
Speaker 1:For a week. I literally.
Speaker 5:How long is the event?
Speaker 1:An hour and a half, I'm pretty sure people who would be a show didn't take a week.
Speaker 3:I literally would plan my entire week vacation at my old job around this event. I would find out when it was and that's when I would take it, because I have to watch the event. And then I would always do the preorder and I had to be home whenever the phone got delivered, because otherwise they won't leave it. That's true, you have to be there to get it. So I just did all that during my vacation.
Speaker 1:So really.
Speaker 5:You made a comment that you're pretty sure people that actually work the show didn't take a week to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:I promise you they take a lot longer than a week to do it.
Speaker 1:I know I was making a sarcastic comment.
Speaker 5:I would spend probably three months in planning and prep for the show, and probably the month leading up to it was 16-hour days and the day after was another 16-hour day, and then we would hit the road for press tours.
Speaker 1:So is are they still doing the press tours like those just kick off kind of thing?
Speaker 5:yesterday was a kickoff kind of thing, and now they're doing everything. Sorry, I feel like I'm still in jerry's glory here. Now they do pre-recorded for all the events, because they're not. They stopped doing live events during covet and now they're doing prerecorded, but they are still doing. Now. They'll have press folks there to watch it and then after the event they'll still be able to go in and get hands-on with the devices. And then they'll also have briefings for specific press people, like one-on-one briefings with the product manager, and they'll do them all over the world still for people that can't travel to Cupertino for that event.
Speaker 1:Cool, and what did they have?
Speaker 3:First was an update with the Apple Watch. So the Apple Watch Series 10, a little larger display. It's more rounded. New color it's actually aluminum, but they do like this polish on it to make it look jet black.
Speaker 1:Will that replace the Ultra?
Speaker 3:Or no. There's still two different things. Two different things. Yeah, the Ultra. They actually didn't upgrade. All they did was come out with a new color. It's kind of like a matte black. I ain't gonna lie, it looks sexy, it looks sexy.
Speaker 1:When's it coming in?
Speaker 3:pre-orders are open now and the watch will be out next Friday, the 20th. No, I'm not. I still am rocking the Ultra Series 1 oh the antique.
Speaker 1:I am shocked. No, I'm not. I still am rocking the Ultra. Series 1. Oh yeah, the. Antique I am shocked, can I be honest?
Speaker 3:I'm really surprised. I thought about it, I really really did Breville.
Speaker 2:I watch.
Speaker 5:Breville I watch. I know you can get a nice trade-in value for that Series 1.
Speaker 1:Well, that's what I was about to ask. Can you just trade those or no?
Speaker 3:You can. I've already checked to see how much Apple would give me.
Speaker 1:What would Snapple give you?
Speaker 3:If I traded this to Apple, they're offering me $310. I'll give you $320. Ooh, which isn't bad. I mean, think about it.
Speaker 1:I've had to watch $310 more than Apple.
Speaker 3:It's a two-year-old watch, now Two-year-old watch and brand new is only $800.
Speaker 1:So that's not a bad deal. It's only $800. Only $60 for $60. I'll look at it.
Speaker 4:It's like a BMW Apple products hold their value.
Speaker 5:I'll give you $320 for it.
Speaker 3:Let's talk after the show.
Speaker 5:Oh, hey, sweetheart. I didn't realize you were sitting there. Yeah, I got to take that offer back, Jerry.
Speaker 1:Sorry, Gotcha. Well, I need a new Apple Watch and you told me to wait, so I need to go look at the 10. Should I consider the 10 or do the Ultra?
Speaker 3:It depends on how big of a display you want.
Speaker 1:I really like yours.
Speaker 3:The 10 is now a 46 millimeter display and the Ultra is a 49.
Speaker 1:I think my old one was a 44. Does that sound right? I had the 4. No, you had the 42.
Speaker 5:So this is a 44. You had a 42. They go bigger, but they don't look a whole lot bigger. And then the new X is thinner actually also.
Speaker 1:It's like iPhones they just get the bevel on the edge Tinier and tinier yeah.
Speaker 3:It's crazy Like even the new watch can now detect sleep apnea.
Speaker 4:Really yes, vincent shared that.
Speaker 5:He texted me that I shared that with her yesterday when I was watching it. That's very cool. And another stat that they mentioned also was 80% of people that have sleep apnea don't know it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Let me ask you another question that's even more important Do you sleep with your watch on? Because that's when I charge my watch. So can my watch detect sleep apnea sitting on the charger?
Speaker 5:next to me. It cannot. That would be a cool trick. The battery life on these watches has gotten so great that you don't necessarily need to charge every day.
Speaker 1:Oh see mine lasts 12 hours.
Speaker 5:The other thing too is you can put it on a charger for 30 minutes and get 80% charge, so you sleep with it. When you go get a shower, you throw it on the charger and you get 80% charge.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's not bad. Yeah, I get that, and that's over a day. Right at this point, yeah, 80% charge is over a day of charge.
Speaker 3:You're probably getting a full day on it A regular one, now this one I can go two full days without charging it.
Speaker 5:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:The battery is really, really big in this one.
Speaker 1:Cool, cool. Well, I'm going to go to the Apple Store check it out. I may end up with the Ultra 2, I guess as well Make it that new sexy color that you keep bragging about.
Speaker 3:Hot pink no matte black, so a new phone and a new watch.
Speaker 2:That's what they came out with. What?
Speaker 3:was the phone? The phone was an iPhone 16. Got announced.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's sweet 16.
Speaker 3:Talking about the bezels. You were just speaking of the thinnest bezels on a smartphone ever to date. The bezels on a smartphone ever to date the bezels on the new phone is only 1.77 millimeters. Yeah, it, literally is just.
Speaker 5:I guess you want a new phone, is that what?
Speaker 4:you're saying it just was sitting there, nobody was touching it. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2:I didn't mean to interrupt.
Speaker 1:If you're just listening, Melissa just threw her phone across the room.
Speaker 2:It was on the armrest and it just like somebody swiped it off there.
Speaker 1:It just committed iPhone suicide. Now you say it's the thinnest bezel of any smartphone.
Speaker 3:Any.
Speaker 1:Most of us don't consider Android phones.
Speaker 5:Oh wow, Them's fighting words for some folks.
Speaker 3:I have to say there's a lot of our drivers that have Android.
Speaker 4:It's crazy.
Speaker 3:Bless their heart.
Speaker 5:I know Well. When I first met Melissa, she had an Android phone.
Speaker 1:Listen, the Bible clearly says for all of sin and falling short, so I'm just saying it took a lot of convincing to switch me too.
Speaker 3:Speaking of the new phone. Ios 18 comes out Monday, so you'll be able to text Android users now.
Speaker 1:And you've been on 18, right, yep.
Speaker 3:So you'll be able to text Android users. You'll be able to have high resolution photos, videos. You won't get that cropped down little bitty square anymore. You'll get red receipts. You'll get typing indicators. All that stuff's coming with iOS 18.
Speaker 1:And that is really courtesy of the European Union, correct?
Speaker 3:Maybe a little, but not really. I mean Apple, just kind of you're still going to have the green bubble, I thought they were getting rid of the green bubble.
Speaker 5:There was lots of talk from the EU and also the United States government about making them more compatible and Apple, I think, on this one preemptively said okay, we're going to do this.
Speaker 1:Kind of like we lost the USB-C thing. Let's go ahead and just jump the gun on this.
Speaker 5:That way we can kind of do it on our terms.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Show that we're doing it. Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. Well, cool. I'm still rocking an iPhone 13 Pro, so maybe I'll get the 16. I like the idea of having a sweet 16 phone.
Speaker 3:If you want the new Apple intelligence features, then you're going to have to get the 15 Pro or the new 16.
Speaker 1:Is there a 16 Pro or no?
Speaker 3:Yes, there is.
Speaker 1:Is it nice?
Speaker 3:It's been redesigned. It has an all new internals, better heat management, upgraded cameras. They added a new dedicated camera capture button now, I saw that. Yeah.
Speaker 5:I did see that, that's pretty slick.
Speaker 3:I think it's a lot of improvements. My other half disagrees. He's like eh, he's still rocking a 14, so yeah, I get that I mean.
Speaker 1:So I have a 13 Pro and AppleCare replaced this phone, if you remember. So I went in for like a cracked lens. I've never cracked a glass on the phone, knock on wood. But somehow I managed to crack one of the lenses on the back. When they went in to check the lens, they found water. So I had to get a whole phone replacement, which was $100. Not even that, I don't even think it was that much. A whole phone replacement, which was $100. Not even that, I don't even think it was that much. So they literally just sent me a whole brand new phone. It was crazy, I thought they would. But yeah, a whole brand new phone. And so since I've gotten this brand new phone, I'm like I don't really see a reason to upgrade now because I have a whole brand new phone. But I do. We travel so much, the better quality pictures and video and everything that really appeals to me strongly, so I would like to upgrade for that. Apple Intelligence.
Speaker 3:I'm telling you, don't knock it until you actually use it. Right now it's limited what I've been testing. They don't have all of Apple Intelligence out there and they've even got on their website that a lot of the features are going to be coming next year. But some of the things that I have been using and doing the beta testing is really really neat, but they are moving towards, like it's going to be deeply integrated, something that no other cell phone carrier can do. I mean literally, like is going to be on the device. It only does anything outside cloud computing. Whenever it has to, it ask you before it does that for privacy concerns. Um, you literally will be able to. Siri is getting way smarter and you will literally be able to just ask siri, like what time does my mom's flight land? And she literally can go into your messages, find it, pop, pop it up, add it to your calendar. The whole nine yards.
Speaker 4:Wow.
Speaker 3:You can literally say like someone texts you a new address and you can say update my contact and Siri will automatically update everything for you.
Speaker 1:Will I be able to do like the, you know, make up with my partner?
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 1:You get home. Like I love the flowers.
Speaker 4:Oh, you're welcome, You're welcome yeah.
Speaker 3:I think it's getting to a point to where what people think of artificial intelligence it's like Apple is literally on their way to providing a lot of that stuff.
Speaker 1:A lot of like really exciting stuff, like the movie AI. Yeah Well, that's very exciting. Yeah, I'll probably end up doing it. It's time, you know, we got on this stupid program to upgrade our phone every year and you don't and we don't I mean like.
Speaker 3:I do every year. I watched the event yesterday and then I got the email last night saying get ready, I've already got pre-approved, I've already done everything. So that way I can just wake up Friday morning and hit one button and I'm ready to go. That's nice.
Speaker 1:Wow, super cool.
Speaker 3:I do it every year. That's my thing. I just kind of put that in my budget. You know, I look at it as I just rent my phone.
Speaker 1:I don't ever want to own it, I just rent it and keep getting the new ones, and I did see, if I'm not mistaken, that the AirPods are newly designed, but the AirPod Pro didn't really have much.
Speaker 3:I would disagree. It's the same design and everything, but they added the ability for hearing aids.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's right, that was it the.
Speaker 5:AirPod Pro is all software-based. There's no new hardware in the AirPod Pro.
Speaker 1:Correct, yeah.
Speaker 3:Now that's crazy if you think about it. You no longer have to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a hearing aid. It will literally, and they're getting fda approval and everything I did see that.
Speaker 1:I actually thought it'd be cool for some uh, uh people in my life that are stubborn and don't want to get hearing aids. I thought, well, maybe, uh, maybe, I just need to get dad, some people, uh a christmas gift. I mean, so er Eric and I bought hearing aids for a family member years ago and it was what? Four grand, I think.
Speaker 5:Yeah they're not cheap, super expensive.
Speaker 1:Man, can you imagine $400? But great, and they last a long time when you're not using them. Airpod Pros last forever.
Speaker 5:They do they do.
Speaker 1:When you're using them, they say three hours. They're not lying Three hours, they're done, but if you're not using them on a call, they last for a long time. It's very cool, very exciting stuff. I'm excited to see what Apple's doing. I know some people are not big Apple fans. I think Elon Musk told his employees he can't get it because he doesn't trust AI or something like that with Apple.
Speaker 3:Which is ridiculous, totally ridiculous. It's so secure and private.
Speaker 5:Well, chad GPT he was one of the initial investors in it. He's doing his own AI thing now. It's so ridiculous.
Speaker 1:Well, it's just building hype, that's all. That's all he's doing. So much of everything we see in the news these days is just propaganda. And now you can just put something out there and then it's out there, fact or not, it's out there. So last week we talked about year two or, I guess, year, I don't know what. It was Our second year in business, our first year owning a truck as an owner-operator.
Speaker 2:Oh yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, so I thought we'd catch up and we left off. Okay, one year later we bought our second truck. So we went to a show down in Memphis, tennessee, that they used to do called the Egg EGG Expeditor Group Gathering, met some good friends down there, or made some good friends down there that year Down in Texas Caleb and Annie Harper. He owns Harper's Hot Shot Purple Priority. So if you're interested in running a tractor trailer and maybe you want to run as a solo or something, give him a check out. He runs some cool stuff, does a lot of work in the Midwest and has some beautiful Cascadias. They're all purple Wow.
Speaker 2:Imagine that.
Speaker 1:Staying on brand. We met them hanging out inside of a 2009 Freightliner Cascadia with a 96-inch AA custom sleeper that we thought was the cat's meow, I bet.
Speaker 1:It was beautiful on the inside White cabinets. The bed was not on the back wall, like a lot of trucks are. The bed was on the side wall and it had a dinette set, the bed folded down over the dinette set. It was on the side wall and it had a dinette set, the bed folded down over the dinette set, and it had a big refrigerator on the very back wall. And then it had darn near six feet about six feet of countertop space, wow. And then it had a closet and a microwave.
Speaker 1:We thought this thing was so cool. And they were in there talking about you know, we literally met them in there like, hi, I'm patrick, kind of thing. Um, and they were talking about buying it for their fleet of trucks and how much they liked it. We were like, okay, well, crap, we missed out on this. You know, we hung out with them for a couple days and we were in there again checking it out do y'all want to buy this truck? And we were like, yeah, it's something we're interested in. He's like, all right, I'm not gonna buy it. If y'all want to buy, y'all can, kind of thing.
Speaker 1:So we're like, oh, that's super cool, so talk to the people and sure enough, we ended up buying that truck off them. It was a uh c unit with fedex custom critical and well, it wasn't leased on any carrier. It qualified as a C unit at FedEx Custom Critical. It was our first temperature-controlled unit, t-val a program over at FedEx and had a. It was a real unique design because back in 2009, nobody had really done the, the roof cut out for the reefer unit over the sleeper, so there were a lot of unique configurations. Some people had, um, really short sleepers that you really couldn't stand in and the reefer was over that. Some people had, um, the reefer unit mounted underneath the truck. Do you remember those?
Speaker 3:oh yeah, I had one okay, so there you go.
Speaker 1:Um, and then some people had a modification that they were doing where they literally took the box and cut like four foot up and they would go in three foot and then up the rest of the way to the box and put like a notch in the box itself, like the iPhone has a notch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and they would put the reefer unit in that notch. That's what this truck had. So it was a modified box. It only really had about 18 foot of usable space, but the box was technically 22 feet long. Yeah, that was our foray into the wonderful world of FedEx reefer freight. So did you move into this truck? So we did. We actually bought the truck. Eric and I moved in that truck and then our other trucker, kenworth, we got a team in it and that team actually just retired this past year. They were with us for a long time.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:But they went and got in our Kenworth and ran dry freight. Eric and I literally learned how to do T-Val Freight after buying a truck to do it which is the absolute worst way you can do it.
Speaker 1:Don't do it that way, it's foolishness. We had already done fairly well, gotten our feet in pretty good on the dry van side. We really knew that market pretty well. And so, moving over to the reefer side, we're still working with the same carrier, so we didn't learn anything really from the carrier's perspective, except for how to run the temperature loads. Now, for those of you who don't know FedEx Custom Critical, their temperature loads are actually pharmaceuticals, so it's not frozen pizzas or Hot Pockets or anything like that, it is pharmaceuticals. And so we had to go through all the FDA class and learn how to haul those pharmaceuticals. And so we had to go through all the FDA class and learn how to haul those pharmaceuticals. We had to learn how to use. They have a data logger inside the truck that measures temperatures at four different places inside the truck, one place outside the truck, and then they actually record that and, depending on the customer, it can be anywhere from a 15-minute interval. So every 15 minutes it's recording that temperature which is pretty standard.
Speaker 1:But some customers want five-minute intervals, some people want one-minute intervals. Like it just depends.
Speaker 2:It can do a lot, that can make a long tape.
Speaker 1:It can make a very long tape so you have to program it. So we had to learn how to do all that stuff and how to comply with all these standards. It got real strict with our uniform because it's just, it's considered part of their white glove services, so everything's just a little elevated from that and that is the market today. We currently play in at FedEx. We don't have any dry units at FedEx. We do everything with them on their temperature controlled side. But yeah, so Eric and I had to go and learn it and it's so funny I remember I them on their temperature controlled side. But yeah, so eric and I had to go and learn it and uh, it's so funny I remember I still remember going into fedex's headquarters, uh, and sitting down with angie and, uh, she went through the class with eric and I and they actually walked to a room and they've got a bunch of like did you do all this? They have a bunch of little data loggers set up so whenever I was my first truck with fedex it was chiseling stone standing there for
Speaker 3:five minutes freezing this tail off checking temperatures so did you have like the data logger, kind of like what we have now? Yes, in the dash I actually had an old style one. So we had like a box that was about three foot wide and it was mounted in the sleeper and it had a red light and a green light on top of it. Oh geez. So as you're going down the road, whoever was in the sleeper if you ever had green light stayed on all the time, you knew everything was good. If it ever switched over to red, you knew you had a problem. So whoever was in the sleeper said had to get up and check. But you opened the box up and in that box the four probes were actually like click dials that you had to set like an old watch or something.
Speaker 4:Wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that is what I learned on.
Speaker 2:It's like a Xerox machine of some sort.
Speaker 5:I just want to note something here. I think Jerry's a fisherman. Oh, because the box was about three foot wide. It was about three foot wide, so I just think. Jerry's a fisherman.
Speaker 4:You've got to explain to the audio listeners what just happened.
Speaker 5:Oh, I'm sorry For the audio listeners. Only Jerry told us the box was about three foot wide and he put his hands up. Maybe 10 inches, yeah, Maybe 10 inches, yeah.
Speaker 1:About the size maybe 10 inches, yeah. Maybe 10 inches, yeah. About the size of an apple yeah, an iPad.
Speaker 5:About the size of my iPad. Yeah, yeah. So, just wanted to share that with the group.
Speaker 3:It wasn't three foot.
Speaker 1:And it weighed about 97 pounds. Of course it did.
Speaker 2:Sounds very archaic. Did it have a name for the system? Like, these are data loggers.
Speaker 3:It did and unfortunately I don't remember.
Speaker 2:That's okay.
Speaker 3:I just remember it made a god-awful sound whenever it went off and you always had to pay attention to that light. The sound would wake whoever was up in the sleeper, and if it went red you knew you had a problem.
Speaker 2:So you didn't have what was your proof, because I know, from what I understand because, again, vince and I did Panther, but from what I understand from you fellow FedExers, is sometimes you have to provide that strip of paper as proof to your customer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it printed out a tape. Oh, it still printed a tape, it still?
Speaker 5:printed a tape. Okay, I missed that part Okay. It's interesting Reefer trailers have the lights and the controls on the front of the trailer and you can see those red and yellow and green lights for the reefer out of your side view mirror and that's interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've seen them, you know, going up and down the road.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I was like what's that light? Yeah, what's that light for?
Speaker 3:And you mentioned the underbelly reefer units, so I had one of those on that truck as well.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:And it was so crazy because that thing being under there, it would not get airflow and whenever you were in hot weather, like going through the desert, out in.
Speaker 3:Nevada or California. It would overheat constantly, so we would have to constantly be fighting with the temperature and try to keep it going and FedEx sending the messages and temp out of range and all the stuff. And I learned a trick from the owner that I drove for at the time we would pull over to truck stop and grab a water hose and spray it down and that would cool it off, yep, and get it back into range, yep wow oh yeah, I knew a person who, um, they had a reefer unit that wouldn't, uh, cool enough because so in the old notch sleepers they kind of had a similar issue.
Speaker 1:They would get some airflow but not as much because the sleeper went above it and so those reefers. If you look at a refrigerator unit mounted to the front of a truck, it's got like a couple vents up front. So, it's meant. As you're driving down the road, you've got that air pressure and it just pushes that air through the reefer and it cools the system down that way. Well, this has a huge sleeper, literally two or three inches in front of it, so there's no airflow there.
Speaker 4:The sleeper is blocking it.
Speaker 1:So that would be an issue on those to a degree not as bad as what you had, but still be an issue. So we knew one guy. He went up there and you know those um, those uh sprinkler system not misters that you can get for your house and put on your back porch he did a rope of those around the top of his reefer unit and plugged it into a sleeper. So if the reefer unit would get too hot or when he was doing super cold loads, he would just turn that on and just soak everything in cold water, which would help bring that temperature down.
Speaker 1:And he uses so little water, it didn't really like deplete his tank or anything. So yeah, interesting Creative ways to do that stuff. I'm glad we've got a much better system now, but yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was. The viewers who currently are running out there for FedEx are saying the same thing.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it's much, much better now. I have another friend of ours who's a fleet owner and she was talking about one of those under-mount units that she had on one of her trucks and from day one the thing had a Freon leak and they never could figure out where it was coming from. The whole thing was completely uh died. They did the dye stuff, they sprayed everything down. They never could find it. So every year she would go into the uh shop and they would just top off the freon so until she got rid of that truck.
Speaker 1:That's what they did every single year wow um, because they never could figure out where it was leaking from.
Speaker 1:Crazy times back then you don't want to talk about vibrating, like some drivers complain about the oh yeah you should have the reefer running, shaking the box in the truck, apu running, I mean so when we bought this truck, eric and I were actually looking at a 2008, I want to say um volvo. I don't know if you remember phil madsen. Uh, they went by the a team on the um on the old forums back in the day. They had a volvo truck with 132 inch sleeper and a little 16 foot box on the back and, um, it had a carrier reefer unit mounted underneath it and we went and test drove that thing before we bought this 2009. So we heard nothing about great things about this truck. It's beautiful truck, it's absolutelyfer unit. We fired it up, that old carrier Supra underneath the sleeper.
Speaker 3:That's what I had.
Speaker 1:Even in a 132-inch ARI with air ride, it was like horrible.
Speaker 5:It was loud.
Speaker 1:It vibrated the whole sleeper. It was like, oh, this is terrible. We tried so hard to get that truck. It wouldn't go to California, but we were so in love with the truck. It was just kept in perfect condition. That dude knew how to maintain a truck. I think the financing didn't work out or something. There was something we were doing with it that just didn't jive, and so we ended up buying this truck instead, this 2009 truck, which was great because it was a workhorse it went to California. It is one of those trucks I was talking about last week that has a DPF filter but not a DEF system, so it doesn't take diesel exhaust fluid. It was strictly a DPF. It had a Mercedes engine in it MBE4000. Got excellent fuel economy, ran like you wouldn't believe, never had an issue with the DPF filter. I mean just a wonderful truck and I thought it was so cool because right there on the side of the engine is this huge Mercedes logo and the Mercedes Benz name across it or whatever, and it's like, yeah, I got a mercedes like.
Speaker 4:You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like like I was so proud of that thing.
Speaker 3:Um, yeah, you drove a mercedes too I did my 2009, the previous fleet owner that I drove for um. Yeah, it was actually purple and white and it had purple blades on the side of the sleeper that was a thing back then oh, was that one of the bent sleepers yes yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So that was one where they were doing um, they were, they had the reefer on top right they had the reefer on top, but it was a flat top, it was a flat top. There was no big. Yeah, exactly yeah. How was the headroom in those?
Speaker 1:I never I've of all the trucks I've been in. That's one variant that I have not been inside. Was there the headroom in those? I never I've of all the trucks I've been in. That's one variant that I have not been inside. Was there plenty headroom or? I never had a problem stand up, walk around was it a flat floor with the cab or did it drop down?
Speaker 1:uh, it was just like what you see today just a little step over the little board, you know yep, yeah, I'd never been inside of one, but uh, yeah, they were the first ones to really do it and they actually developed the reefer notch. So Bence got bought by Bence developed the new reefer mold for the Cascadia, which is kind of what most people know now. It looks just like a factory sleeper with the curving and everything, and then it has the reefer notch out in the back so the reefer actually sits over the sleeper. Uh, with the curving and everything. And then it has the reefer notch out in the back so the reefer actually sits over the sleeper instead of into the box and um. So bence spent I think it was like 50 grand developing that roof mold, um, and he got freight, uh, smartway freightliner, smartway approved or whatever, all that, all that good stuff. So it was really nice done.
Speaker 1:Then bence went out of business and bolt uh ended up buying them out. So uh, that's how it kind of got to where it is now. So bent sleepers is now bolt. And actually bence is a really interesting history where they they actually used to be the oem. They built uh international sleep so like old international tractors from like the 70s and 80s had a bent sleeper on them. Now they were sold through the international dealership. So you wouldn't necessarily know they were a bent sleeper, but that's how they got in the sleeper business.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:Way back then. So, anyways, yeah, so that 2009, eric and I did go out and drive it and we learned the business and our team that we put in. That Kenworth was rocking and rolling. They were doing so well. Eric and I like one day had to like sit down and have a conversation of like we can't lose this team and they're doing so good. Someone is going to take them if we don't put them in a nice truck. So we made the decision to go back into the kinworth and swap trucks with them. So they took the cascadia with the custom sleeper on it. We went back to the factory sleeper and they just killed it in the uh in the reefer truck. And, um, eric and I just rocked the kinworth for a few more, I guess, months. At that point that was from May and by December we had decided we were— I'm sorry, let me back up. That was in May.
Speaker 2:Of what year.
Speaker 1:Of 2014. In July, we went to the Expedite Expo in Wilmington, Ohio. Did you ever go to one?
Speaker 3:Mm-mm, I never did.
Speaker 1:So, Wilmington, Ohio, if you've ever driven through that area, there's the big R&L, is there the big R&L yard? And then across the street on 70 between Cincinnati and Columbus, there's a huge R&L. It's their main headquarters, I think. On 70?. No 71. R&l, R&L.
Speaker 5:I'm trying to figure out who R&L is. Yeah, on 71, there's a big R and L depot.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 5:They have a hotel across the street.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes so across the street is the Holiday Inn with the Max and Irma's and a big convention center. That's where Expo was Gotcha, okay, so back in the day, most everybody would just show up in their own truck which I guess they do the last few expos and we'd hang out in the parking lot and then you'd go inside and do the show. The restaurant that's there now was Max and Irma's back then. Yeah, max and Irma's, and so we walked around the show, met Jonesy Everybody knows back in the day knew Jeff Jones.
Speaker 1:He was one of the two salesmen making these trucks. We loved the product. It was a really cool year. That year he had a truck there, Cascadia, there, with the Bolt Sleeper the fancy Bolt Sleeper. It had only been out for a couple years.
Speaker 1:Because Cascadia was so new back then, it didn't have a box on it. This should have been a little bit of foreshadowing, but the box wasn't prepared in time so they just said, well, don't put the box on the truck, Just bring it without a box. So because of that we were actually able to see the frame and see the axles and how they add the lift axle to it and all that stuff, which was really cool, A great way to get in there and kind of see. Like that was my first time ever seeing what a double frame was. I'd heard the concept of a double frame but I didn't really know what that really meant. And it literally is like a frame with a slightly larger frame on the outside of it and that's how they get that extra strength when they need extra strength in the frame and it's bolted together. You know a thousand bolts and those things, Sure.
Speaker 1:And then, so you know, got to see that, decided all right, we want to order a truck. And I remember it pissed me off so bad. We were sitting up in the uh in that truck and he was in there doing a little sales pitch and we were chatting with him and he said, uh, you know. He said we just bought this truck and, um, you know we're, we want to grow our business and you know, expand. He said we just bought this truck and you know we want to grow our business and you know, expand. He's like great, when you pay that truck off, come and sit with me and talk to me. And it was like no, we want to place an order with you now.
Speaker 1:Like we're not looking to. Like pay a truck off and in four years buy another one in four years pay another, like that wasn't the plan. Had had that conversation with him and then, uh, he actually we ended up going to max and I was with him later on and and had a great conversation. Very knowledgeable person, it paramount to getting the industry where it is now, towards his end of his career. He kind of did some of that, like put his heels in the in the ground and say I'm not changing some of this stuff yeah so that was kind of frustrating.
Speaker 1:And then he retired.
Speaker 1:I mean, like it would, this industry would not be where it is without him so it was great to kind of dig in his brain and get to learn about um, how he builds these trucks and why he did what he did and how everything came to be um. But we were able to place that order and we were going to have a December delivery and it was like excellent, can't wait. So November comes around and he's like, hey, we're looking more like March. I'm like, okay, I forgot what the issue was Something with the box or something. And I'm like, okay, I forgot what the issue was Something with the box or something. And I'm like, okay, well, that sucks, we really wanted at that point to get another truck. We were like really had the itch to go ahead and add another one on.
Speaker 1:And there was a guy, another fleet owner, still in business, and he had a truck for sale. And so Eric and I were like he had a truck for sale, and so Eric and I were like had low miles, pretty good condition. This was a newer truck. It was a 2014 Cascadia, also a C unit, but this one by 2014,. Again, aa, sleeper, like the last one, sure, but by 2014, aa had started putting a reefer notch in the sleeper, so the box was a full 22 feet long, right. So there was no 18 foot weirdness with the half box and regular um. So we were like, okay, cool, and we ended up, uh, buying that truck from him with the other one still on order with the other one still in order, because we don't know where we're gonna get it.
Speaker 1:So by that time we had, uh, got the financing and everything. We went and picked that truck up and I'm telling you, I took it out on the road the first day and I was like I'm going to die. I was way too trusting of this fleet owner to give the truck to me in good condition. So it was clean, but I mean, like I had to hold the steering wheel at like a 9 o'clock position to be able to go in a straight line. If I let go it immediately would go one way and so brought it back to Texas, put it in the shop down there and then I got it to my friend's alignment shop and that guy worked his magic and then it drove straight as an arrow after that.
Speaker 1:So met up with the same kind of setup in the back there's a side bed just like the last one. This time they had the more traditional oak-stained cabinetry with the gray vinyls and stuff. So it was a really nice truck, definitely a step up from 2009. So we, eric and I, got back in the 2009. Our 2009 people got into the 2014 truck.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 1:And then we filled the Kenworth for about a month and then we realized we're going to have to swap places with them or they're going to leave. So Eric and I ended up swapping back, and so we go into 2015 with Eric and I driving the Kenworth and we put another team in the 09. So you kind of see what's happening here as we keep ending back in this.
Speaker 1:Kenworth Should have just stayed there. Should have just stayed there from the beginning, right? Yeah, so during this time we were also doing things like we were playing with the pay plan, kind of dialing in how are we going to pay people, what kind of bonuses, if? How are we going to pay people, what kind of bonuses, if bonuses, do we want to do? So a lot of the things we do now when it comes to paying settlements, we were fine-tuning during this time wow did some experimenting, got burned a few times and really kind of learned like what works, what doesn't work was.
Speaker 1:It was a. It was an interesting time for us. We were really kind of getting to play with stuff that now we're too big or too structured to be able to really experiment and play with. But a lot of growth, really quickly, both with the trucks but also with how to manage money, how to manage time, that sort of thing. Eric and I had a system down because we were still driving. We're like we would tell the people here's the hours you can call, so like if you were available 24 hours a day because we're driving. But here's Eric's shift, here's my shift. We never changed those shifts, we just held them steady the whole time. That way the drivers never had to guess who do I need to call? Right?
Speaker 1:So 2015 rolls around Get a call from a salesman that wants my business and it's someone I hadn't worked with before but I wanted to give a shot. I wanted to kind of open up and be able to see the differences in two different dealerships. He has a used truck coming available. It's not available yet because the people that are going to be getting rid of it are actually trading it on another truck, so he's just going ahead and getting his buyer lined up for it, right. So I was like that's cool. When do you think it'll be available? Uh, april, ish, march, april, something like that. We're like cool, that works for us. Around this time we get word from the dealership that the March time frame is actually May for the truck we ordered in July.
Speaker 1:So now we got pushed out 10 months. I want to say we ended up picking that truck up like June 1st or June 2nd, it was right, might have been June 5th, june 5th, something like that Almost a year. Almost a year Fell just short of a year and we finally picked that brand new truck up and met Frank in the parking lot. So for those of you who don't know Frank from Frank's TV, what was?
Speaker 4:his channel.
Speaker 5:The Trucker.
Speaker 1:Couple, the Trucker Couple, but he has a new one out now he does it's?
Speaker 1:Frank TV or something. Anyways, met him at Stoops Freightliner. Literally, I drove the truck from Stoops Freightliner. Literally, I drove the truck from Stoops Freightliner if you know where it is in Fort Wayne, indiana. I drove it to the truck stop right below it, got out, handed him the keys and they moved into that truck and went to work in that thing. And then Eric and I stayed in the Kenworth, but not for long. Not for long because we immediately left there and drove out to Fight a Freightliner in Columbus, ohio, and picked up that 2012 truck.
Speaker 1:And let me tell you how scared I was because I didn't understand how commercial lending worked. Really. And are we going to get in trouble? Because I've got financing for this truck and financing for that truck set up separately from two different banks. Like, is one going to find out, oh, you bought that, like, you took a loan out here, but we didn't know you were going to take a loan out there. So, like, am I going to get in trouble now for the like? I didn't understand how it all worked and I was like, oh, please, don't let us get in some kind of financial fraud trouble, whatever, you know, as I'm trying to juggle all this, uh, because we immediately went and picked it up and so we signed two trucks on the fedex, literally like two days apart from each other wow and uh, and then put a team in into the kinworth and eric and I got into that truck.
Speaker 1:That truck's affectionately called old blue. There's a 2012 freightliner cascadia dry van, um, so eric and I stayed. You know we bounced between t-val and dry van at, so Eric and I stayed. You know we bounced between T-Val and dry van at that time. It was a dry van. Had a lift axle on it the Kenworth did not have a lift axle so we could hold heavy weight. Had a lift gate on it the Kenworth did not have a lift gate so we could now do lift gate loads.
Speaker 1:Oh, it was a nice dry van. It was super nice and had a very weak engine. Uh, back in those days they were experimenting with the platform to get the horsepower transmission combination right. Right, and it had what we use now is a 410 horsepower. It had a 370 horsepower, so when it was fully loaded, climbing hills got a little tricky. I believe um got a pretty good fuel economy because of that lower horsepower rating, though. But yeah, we moved to that truck. All the countertops were blue, the table was blue, the background behind the bed was blue the seats old blue because the truck itself was blue no, the truck was white the interior, the sleeper was blue, that's weird.
Speaker 1:Ba-da-be-da-ba-doom Right. Oh man, I love that truck. We ran that thing to death. Yeah, had a lot of fun with that thing and we ended up putting it. Just going to shock you, we ended up putting another team in that truck.
Speaker 2:To go back to the Kenworth and going back to the Kenworth and went back to the Kenworth, nice.
Speaker 1:And the team we put in that truck was some friends of ours that we made through an acquaintance from Louisiana. That was exciting. It was our first time putting a team into a truck that were like friends.
Speaker 1:They weren't people we found randomly on the internet or whatever friends they weren't, people we found randomly on the internet or whatever um, and so they ran that truck for a long time. They uh had the misfortune, on that one, of spinning a, uh spinning a bearing in it in houston, texas. So we had to go through the process of a warranty on a long block for a DD-13. And I mean, that's an experience, I believe it. We had to go and, like I, had to get all the maintenance records from the previous owners, because I had a rough draft of what was done. I didn't have every single receipt and everything had to get all those receipts, had to get all that information submitted, all the Daimler so that they could make a determination on if they were going to pay for the repair or not. And, sure enough, they ended up replacing the entire engine. We had to pay like $300 in oil, because when they replace your engine it doesn't include oil. Well, that's consumable. That makes sense, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:That's not bad, though, for an engine price? No, it's not.
Speaker 4:It's truly not.
Speaker 1:It's not bad. What was bad was the two and a half months it was down waiting, still paying insurance.
Speaker 4:Yep, you know there's no oil in it. Yeah, that's what you try to turn on.
Speaker 1:Well, it did remind me. So last week we misspoke, so I want to fix that real quick. Eric was talking about we had an exciting engine rebuild that we had to do and it was that truck.
Speaker 4:No, I was talking about another one, no, it was the Kenworth.
Speaker 1:It was the Kenworth.
Speaker 4:Yeah, not Old Blue, not Old Blue.
Speaker 1:This is the original truck that we bought. One of the teams we had in it at one point. We had in it at one point.
Speaker 4:we had to rebuild that engine because it was a team but his co-driver ended up having to go home for some personal family.
Speaker 1:And he ran solo for a while For that reason or something.
Speaker 4:So this guy was running by himself and decided to put. In a freeze, I believe it was called, I don't remember what went there, but he put the wrong fluid in the wrong opening.
Speaker 1:Coolant in the oil oh, yeah, so not intentionally, and you know how some things happen.
Speaker 4:He probably did it in the dark.
Speaker 1:You know how some things happen and you're like, eh, was this intentional?
Speaker 4:or not.
Speaker 1:No, this guy didn't do this intentionally.
Speaker 5:He didn't have that kind do this intentionally.
Speaker 1:He wasn't that kind of person. We were actually in a really good basis with him right um he had. At that time we were using uh mobile one. I'm not mobile mobile uh delvac engine oil and in on those like new. Like the new engines, the detroit diesels that are out now, they sip oil.
Speaker 5:Man, you can go whole oil change and not have to add it.
Speaker 1:You still need to check it because you might have to add it, but usually you don't. The Caterpillars from back in those days not necessarily as well machined as the new Detroits are, and so they would use a little oil. So every now and then you would have to top them off, but not often, but still you would occasionally. And we also were using the red coolant. Peak didn't make a red coolant, oh okay. Um, there wasn't many options to get it. You could buy, like I think the freightliner sold a version of it. Caterpillar sold their own brand version of it. So mobile red coolant was actually the cheapest option. All right, which you would think is crazy, because now it's one of the most expensive options, but that at the time was the cheapest option and they were in identical bottles. They were both black bottles.
Speaker 2:Oh, somebody didn't think that through. In marketing One had a black lid.
Speaker 1:One had a red lid, but that was it. So, just like Eric said, mill the night, go on the top some engine oil off, pull the dipstick. Yeah, I need to add a little bit.
Speaker 5:Just reach in the toolbox and just grab the wrong one, To be fair today, if you go into our storage unit or our inventory and grab two bottles, two black bottles, one could be coolant and one could be oil, absolutely. And if you don't look at the bottles very carefully, it's easy to mess it up. Easy to mess it up? Yeah, you have to read the words that you know. Yeah, delvac, 55 w30 oil or whatever it is. Yeah, or you know antifreeze, you still do, absolutely. And back to your point about the kate, the freight liners, the detroit engine sipping oil. In the two years just over two years that I've been working in the yard, I've had one truck come back that was low on oil. Yeah, I didn't top it off because it was going straight to the shop for for an oil change it was just that it was yeah, it was just that time it was.
Speaker 5:There's been one, literally one truck in that two years that we've had they came back with low oil and it wasn't. It wasn't super low, yeah, but if if it was, if it wasn't due for service, it would have got oil because it was low enough. But yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 2:Coolant and windshield washer fluid though. You go through a lot of coolant and windshield washer fluid. Oh, we do.
Speaker 5:Yeah, we do, we certainly do A lot of washer fluid, a lot of washer fluid. The price on that stuff has gone to the roof it really has.
Speaker 1:It's like four dollars a gallon at walmart. I know used to be 99 cents, used to be less, I don't remember it, but yeah. So I want to say it was very quick, like I think he drove it to the shop well, he realized the problem and yeah, and just that little bit of time.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it was enough.
Speaker 1:It was enough. Because your antifreeze has I don't know if it's alcohol or alcohol-like properties and it just destroys the oil.
Speaker 4:It just destroys it, but it also has water in it too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and once it's in there, that's it.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it's done.
Speaker 2:So you're up to four trucks, now Five trucks.
Speaker 1:So we're at five trucks now. So this was a big year. We bought a 2009 Cascadia T-Val truck, we bought a 2014 and a 2015 Cascadia T-Val truck, and then we bought the dry van for 2012. My experience with Fido was so pleasant we actually ended up switching most of our business to them.
Speaker 2:Wow. I know Still today.
Speaker 1:So today we work with everybody. I mean we just do. We work with Valley Freightliner, stoops Freightliner, which is now Truck Country. We work with Fyta Freightliner. We were working with Buckeye Western Star but they got bought by Fyta Freightliner. We work with a couple of Volvo dealerships. We just yeah.
Speaker 3:Whoever can get the truck out fastest. Yeah, absolutely At the right price. At the right price, yeah.
Speaker 1:We bought a truck out of Flight of Phoenix last year. Uh-huh Bought a truck out in Phoenix.
Speaker 5:Yep.
Speaker 1:So I mean it's just yeah, phoenix Arizona.
Speaker 2:It's just Phoenix Arizona.
Speaker 1:That's the one.
Speaker 2:That's an interesting trip. I should have said Phoenix, Oregon.
Speaker 5:Yeah, phoenix, oregon, that would have been funny.
Speaker 1:What was nice about the.
Speaker 5:I remember the stories from that trip. Yeah, the cab airbags, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:That was a fun trip. That's a story for another day.
Speaker 1:You can go back Well it's a story we've already said. I think I'm pretty sure you can go back to one of our previous episodes last year and you hear all about it. It was a lot of fun. But yeah, that was kind of our, you know, middle of the year. We're starting to ramp up, we're starting to get teams in. You know, we've been working on the model, We've been dialing it in and yeah, that's how we're there.
Speaker 2:I feel like you're on the high dive and you're on the ledge, and then you just took the dive and five trucks later Yep, and you know to your point.
Speaker 1:What's going to be exciting is next week we're going to be underwater, oh, oh.
Speaker 2:Do you need a life preserver thrown towards you? We felt like it.
Speaker 1:Well, we'll have to wait.
Speaker 4:I'm excited to hear about that.
Speaker 1:Talk about that next week. Yeah, oh, you know what we didn't talk about. We did get to do one of my favorite trips ever happened that year, while we were in the 2009 Freightliner Cascadia. I just thought about the 2014 Cascadia was the first one we never drove. We never drove that one Wow.
Speaker 1:Anyways, while we were in that 2009 Cascadia, that was when we did our Mount St Helens trip, which I can't believe it's been that long that we were there. But yeah, that was when we went out to Mount St Helens. We brought our FedEx truck out there, just was blown away, is it too?
Speaker 2:soon. Is that too soon? It might be. I don't know what happened in the 80s.
Speaker 1:It was just completely shocking. Have y'all been out there? Any of y'all been out to Mount?
Speaker 2:St Helens.
Speaker 1:It looks like the volcano blew up yesterday. It's unbelievable how much destruction there is. Oh yeah, you know, 40 years after it happened, it's just it was. It was, uh, amazing in the worst kind of way. Sure, you know like it was. It was pretty crazy. Yeah had some fun times on that trip. That was one where we kept finding truck stops where we could like park somewhere scenic and open up the windows and just relax, because a lot of truck stops you can't.
Speaker 5:A lot of truck stops.
Speaker 1:You open up the window, you're going to get diesel fumes, or worse, in your sleeper. Or worse, or worse in your sleeper, and so that one we had a lot of pretty good success with and yeah, we had a trip like that in Indiana.
Speaker 5:I want to say where we delivered on Monday morning. We got there Sunday afternoon like 3 o'clock in the afternoon. We were able to park on the customer's property and they had a huge parking lot and a huge lawn Nice. So we parked next to the lawn and it was so far out in the middle of nowhere we could let Annie run around, you know, without a leash and enjoy the grass. We would open the windows. No apu, no rooftop air, just open the windows and let a breeze roll through it was a really nice day.
Speaker 5:It was a very nice day very nice day I want to go back there, go camp on their grass it was beautiful grass.
Speaker 1:It was a golf course, but you know Close.
Speaker 4:Close Flooding green.
Speaker 1:It's okay. Well, you know, good times, good memories. It's so weird thinking about all these things because in some respects it feels like yesterday and in other respects it's like so much has changed since then yeah.
Speaker 2:So much has changed. It's been a hot moment ago.
Speaker 1:It has been. Yes, it has it's been a hot moment ago. It has been. But I tell you what's been really interesting is this past weekend I got to do something fun with Melissa and I got to take her on a first experience and it's a first experience that genuinely surprised me, that it was her first experience. Like I thought she was lying to me at first and it's like no, it was really her first trip. So, Melissa, you want me to tell them, or you want to tell them what we did?
Speaker 2:No, yeah, sure, sure, I mean, I'll tell you my experience, but where did you take me?
Speaker 1:I took her to Pharaoh Harley Davidson.
Speaker 2:That was a firstie.
Speaker 1:It was. That was a firstie.
Speaker 2:We've driven by Vince and I several times, no real need to stop.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's that really nice, harley Davidson, when you go north on 71, just past Columbus on the right-hand side. There's like a two-story beautiful.
Speaker 5:Harley Next to the outlet malls, next to the outlet malls, and there's a pilot flying J right there there is.
Speaker 1:Yep and.
Speaker 2:We weren't interested in a harley, so I guess no real reason to go. You can always window shop, I suppose. But yeah, just no real reason to go there. But yes, you did take me there, but that but that was just.
Speaker 1:Uh, that was that was like that was a that was a teaser no, uh, I took melissa for her first ever experience to get Ikea Swedish meatballs.
Speaker 2:He did. I've never been to Ikea, so where I lived in Oregon there just wasn't an Ikea. Maybe Portland might have one, seattle area for sure Portland might have one. This wasn't. I mean Portland was four hours Four hours, yeah, four hour drive, so it wasn't like you were just going to go to the mall or Ikea for the day.
Speaker 4:We just went from Lafayette to Houston Baton Rouge, to Houston Baton Rouge to.
Speaker 1:Houston, baton Rouge to Houston, and then I think they were rather new too.
Speaker 2:Probably by the time they were around, I already had my house furniture. All my needs met in home goods.
Speaker 5:You can always use an extra Billy shelving unit, though.
Speaker 2:Yes, so anyway.
Speaker 1:Or a duoflong Right.
Speaker 2:Exactly so I had no idea what to expect. Obviously it's a huge building, so you know you prepared me. You said wear walking shoes.
Speaker 4:I did.
Speaker 2:Which I did, and we started our IKEA experience in their cafeteria. And I did have the Swedish meatballs. They were good.
Speaker 5:You had the ligand berry sauce.
Speaker 2:The gravy was a little—reminded me of grade school gravy. It wasn't bad, but the berry sauce was very tasty Did you mix it with the gravy.
Speaker 5:I did Okay.
Speaker 2:I had peas, no potatoes. Very tasty. Mix it with the gravy. I did okay. Um, I had peas, no potatoes. I had green beans as my potato, but the peas were. I love peas. They were really, really good. The peas were delicious I cheated.
Speaker 1:I had the mashed taters and the gravy.
Speaker 2:It was so good it was the view in there is beautiful in that cafeteria, um, but anyways, we we started our, our journey. I was going to ask you this you started a timer. Did you ever stop the timer?
Speaker 1:Yes. Or is it still going? No, I did stop it. I did stop it. Do you know how?
Speaker 2:long it took us, because you said no, because I asked you.
Speaker 1:It was 41 hours later, but I did stop it.
Speaker 2:So he's like just a second, just a second. And I'm like just a second, just a second. And I'm like what are you doing? He's like I'm setting my timer and I'm like for what? He's like see how long it takes you to get through here. He's like we're doing this at your pace and I'm like, okay, so obviously it's going to take me a while, I guess. So I started and there we went, and before long we ended up in this gigantic warehouse and then we're checking out, because I did buy one item, um, thank you you're very welcome.
Speaker 2:And uh, we got to the warehouse and I'm like, when did we come down from the cafeteria? Like, is it a gent? Like, is it a gentle, slope, like we just because I feel like we just kept doing a big circle around the entire you know circumference of this huge building and I'm like maybe there just was a gentle slope that I missed.
Speaker 1:Dante wrote a book about it.
Speaker 2:One of you is like well, we took the stairs down at the cafeteria and I'm like we did. It was so long ago I didn't remember making that move down but, overwhelming for a first time you could definitely get a gist of what they've got. So I guess now in the future you could put that in your repertoire of where you might want to go shopping. Um, but so much, so much. I I honestly didn't know what an ikea was. I thought it was just kind of furniture.
Speaker 2:I, I, you know yeah, I have cousins or vinces talked about it, you guys, the shelving or whatever you know. You've talked about things, but, um, I just didn't realize so much so much, so much. I had fun. My knees and my ankles were sore the next day not the next day, but that night, definitely walking out the parking lot and into the car, I couldn't wait to sit down. I could have worn even better shoes. When he meant walking shoes, he meant professional grade walking shoes.
Speaker 1:It was easily a mile, I think. Oh, probably Easily.
Speaker 2:And then we strolled right. We didn't really run through you stop and look. We paced, yes, yes, and we did each cubicle because you have to, you have to, yeah, so if you've never been um, there were some cubicles that were the full house set up that I full apartment, yeah that I told patrick and eric.
Speaker 2:I'm like if we could just take this and put it on land with a finished yard, I'd be a happy girl, like it was perfect. I love it was. It was just the quantity of space. Right now our space is not that big, but this was even better. It was less. It was tiny, but it was still big and spacious and it felt full. But there were some really cool ideas in there.
Speaker 1:Well, I think the one that you really liked was like what, 450 square foot or something like that?
Speaker 2:Yes, that sounds about right. Yeah, the only thing I needed to figure out was how to put a door between, because it was a very open concept.
Speaker 1:It was very open.
Speaker 2:There was like a half wall or three-quarter wall between the living space and the bedroom. There wasn't necessarily a door, but I'm like if you could figure out a door to so you could be truly separate and watch two separate TVs on the opposite sides sides of the walls that would be pretty cool, or even take a nap and not have to hear the tv sure, sure, yeah, but it was, it was a very neat store again.
Speaker 2:I, I did uh end up buying one thing, and yeah, and it was a gift anyway, but yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1:We had that other thing too, that may or may not. You did.
Speaker 2:You show him that we haven't got to that since he's been home okay, well, I mean, I did share that with him that I wanted to go back, but I wanted to show him pictures first to see if he was interested.
Speaker 1:I thought it was interesting that it was like okay, here's a place. If you've never been to Ikea, go If you're driving a truck. They have huge parking lots. Oh my goodness, it's a great place to go.
Speaker 4:Their cafe is healthy-ish.
Speaker 1:You could make healthy options.
Speaker 4:It's certainly affordable compared to an iron skillet Absolutely.
Speaker 1:A little tip is, if you join IKEA Family, which you can, it's free. It's their rewards program. It's free hot coffee, regular coffee in the cafe. So you know, get your cup of water, get your coffee and a meal and hit that coffee three, four, five, dozen times.
Speaker 2:They did have bathrooms precariously, which was nice because I ended up doing tea. They only offered tea in, like the pre-bottled Lipton or whatever it was. So I did that. I did get a glass and did ice and poured some tea in there, but then when I was done I put all the ice back in because I wanted to walk with a beverage but it was, you know, had a lid on it so I wouldn't spill it. Um, because they really don't have fountain drink cups like you can't drink and then walk.
Speaker 2:I don't think they want you to which I get that and I respect that because there's so much of its display yeah, so again, I had a lid, uh, but they had bathrooms precariously because you would need those, especially if you ate and then took a walk, or if you had children.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so I wasn't there.
Speaker 2:No, you weren't, you were gone.
Speaker 5:I wasn't invited.
Speaker 2:Well, you weren't even in town, I wasn't.
Speaker 5:I went to Michigan with some friends for the Michigan-Texas football game Hook'em Horns. And I was talking to my friends ball game hook them horns, um, and I was talking to my friends. I was like they asked me what melissa's doing this weekend without you there. She enjoyed your time and I said, well, today she's going to ikea with some friends of ours.
Speaker 5:And I said I figure I'm going to get back home to a brand new house full of furniture and they were like no, you'll get home to a bunch of boxes of furniture that you have to assemble, yeah, so I was very pleasantly surprised. I didn't come home to boxes of furniture that you have to assemble, so I was very pleasantly surprised that. I didn't come home to boxes of Billy bookshelves.
Speaker 2:It was on the cusp. I was almost ready to pull my trigger on one piece of furniture.
Speaker 1:Is it the one I'm thinking of?
Speaker 2:It was the very first one.
Speaker 5:Oh, are those the ones we talked about that you mentioned to me? Yeah, granted the last one, the yellow one I was-.
Speaker 4:Was your favorite.
Speaker 2:Yes, granted the last one, the yellow one, I was, yes, but I I think what he's gonna like would be the first one.
Speaker 1:I could see that, but I think the yellow one is more you yes, and our house so for our decorations.
Speaker 2:At any rate, it was a shelving system.
Speaker 5:If everybody wants to know, we'll have to show pictures when we decide to get it, which one we do decide to get. Yeah, know, um, we'll have to show pictures when we decide to get it. Yeah, which one we do decide to get.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, but anyway, I had a really good time. Uh, it got me out of the house, otherwise I just uh, you know, true crime did up while you were gone, because nothing like being home alone with just your dog watching true crime I kept thinking like, hey, I didn't know if she'd like anything in the store. Oh, I did.
Speaker 1:Because it's a mix of super economy furniture, like really really inexpensive stuff to pretty nice stuff. Their kitchen cabinets and countertops. They're putting in multi-million dollar homes, it gets to really nice stuff you go from particle board to solid wood. Yes.
Speaker 5:You have everything in between Correct, yeah, so it's fun.
Speaker 1:It's interesting that way, and it was fun too going to all their little setups, because they actually have these mock homes or the mock living rooms or the mock bedrooms, depending on where you're going, and they do such a good job. It's not like if you ever go to like Pier 1 or one of those type type of bougie furniture stores and everything is just so just perfect, everything's super nice. No, you look slipped in the books are scattered Right, the throw is half hanging on, half hanging off.
Speaker 2:They had clothes hanging on the hangers in some of these rooms and they had them zip tied on.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But I agree, if you're out there trucking and you have time on a load or you need to get out of the truck, go.
Speaker 1:Especially in winter. When winter hits yeah, oh, it's a great way to go walk and kill a couple hours, sure, and just meander and you'll find stuff. We probably had IKEA stuff on the truck. I mean like it was Ikea stuff on the truck.
Speaker 2:No one says you have to buy to get out of the truck, correct. We've always said that Go to any mall, you don't have to buy, just walk around.
Speaker 1:I do think it was funny. Both Melissa and I were looking at white bowls that were 99 cents and we were both like I don't know why we need these, but I feel like we need these there was something calling my name. We both resisted. We didn't buy any, no, but we both looked at them and had the same thought of like this shouldn't be so cheap and so nice.
Speaker 2:But it was like a medium size. I pictured, like your mashed potatoes for. Thanksgiving or your green beans. It was kind of a serving bowl, but it wasn't huge and it wasn't. I could see a nice Big Mac salad for one person in there, Like there was enough space. It wasn't just like a cereal bowl. It was an in-between size and it was nice.
Speaker 5:So I hear the two of you talking about the trip to Ikea. Yeah, and I know that Eric went with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he did.
Speaker 5:Was Eric just looking at plants the whole time you?
Speaker 1:guys were walking around, because I know that's Eric's happy place. No, but we did spend the most amount of time in the plant section, but that's neither here nor there. Eric, what did you do?
Speaker 4:I enjoyed the plants at the end of it.
Speaker 2:Sure, that's your happy place, which is where they were. He had to walk through all of it to get to the end of the plants.
Speaker 4:Another thing I enjoyed in their home models their windows have fluorescent light on the back of them that look like outside light. And then they had clear cityscape pictures. Not all cityscape, I think some of them are nature.
Speaker 2:Backyards and nature, and then they've got curtains so it looks like you're looking out a window.
Speaker 4:So it's kind of like walking through a museum with different picture displays.
Speaker 1:Well, it'd be neat We've talked about, like at the house, in the basement there's a bedroom which a lot of people in Ohio have a bedroom in their basement and there's no window. This would be great to put in there and fake it.
Speaker 4:It looks just like a window. It looks just like a window.
Speaker 1:It's natural sunlight. No.
Speaker 5:But it would just be the ambiance of it, it would give you that appearance of having an outdoor view versus being cooped up in a Same bulb light and dimness yeah.
Speaker 2:It was fun, we had a good time. Cool, lots of laughs.
Speaker 1:I did say, as we were leaving have you been to Ikea?
Speaker 5:I have Not this one, but I have been to Ikea before.
Speaker 1:Okay, I did say as we were leaving and driving, said I'm kind of glad Vince wasn't with us and she was like what Like?
Speaker 5:for a tell.
Speaker 1:Sure, and I'm like I just don't know that Vince would enjoy spending three hours walking around an Ikea at a meandering pace.
Speaker 2:I think we were there that long you didn't yet Was it three hours.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I think we left around 5.30 and another store wanted to go too close to 5.
Speaker 5:So I didn't think we were going to be there that long. But you also stopped and had lunch too.
Speaker 1:We did stop and have lunch.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, no, I grew up in a big city and we had a couple Ikeas. So, yeah, I went to Ikea before.
Speaker 2:It was fun. I enjoyed it. I can say I've been, I will most likely be back. I may use the shortcuts next time.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, once we did the whole walking path, then we told her, like, by the way, there's shortcuts, you don't have to actually do the whole thing. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And if you order online and pick up at a store, you just pull up to the front and back up. They'll bring it out, load it for you and everything.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, well, that's kind of missing the experience, but I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, so I did that. If you go to my office, my entire back wall of my office is all shelving big base cabinets with the open shelving on the sides and then the middle is glass doors or whatever.
Speaker 1:All that's Ikea. It's all real wood. It's all real wood. It's all solid wood. It's super nice, and I actually did that. Eric was out of town and I knew I wanted to do this, and so I went and bought it all from Ikea. I had to get most of it from the Columbus Ikea and then had to go to Dayton Not Dayton- Cincinnati.
Speaker 5:Had to go to.
Speaker 1:Cincinnati to get a couple more pieces and then came back and hired someone, some college student it was before because now you have what Snap? Do you have TaskRabbit? Now I think we have TaskRabbit.
Speaker 2:TaskRabbit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have TaskRabbit in Columbus now, but it wasn't back then because this was five years ago, something like that. So I hired some kid to come over and me and him built the whole setup.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:And so when Eric came back he was like holy crap, like completely changed my office.
Speaker 5:That's one thing with Ikea too they're shipping because they will ship to you. It's expensive, it's insane, oh my goodness, it's crazy.
Speaker 2:It's insanely crazy. Are they shipping it from Sweden?
Speaker 1:China, it's China, it's insane. Yeah, iceland, maybe, I don't know. It's crazy, it's crazy expensive, it's like oh, that thing's only $20, but it's $100 shipping, Wow.
Speaker 5:And that's no joke. Yeah, it's outrageous.
Speaker 4:That's how bad, it is Wow yeah.
Speaker 1:I like them, like them. I appreciate. I think it's on.
Speaker 1:I the other thing I talked about was um, even if, like sometimes, I will use ikea for inspiration, like if I have a thought and I'm like I can't quite picture how I want this, sure, just walking through there now, granted, if it's a living room thing, then I'm going to go to the living room section, right, but then I might also hit the, the bed in the closet space and that kind of stuff, because they have, you know, like, just because a piece of furniture is supposed to be a, or because we call it something, Exactly.
Speaker 5:It doesn't mean it can't be used for something else Like a nightstand could be a printer stand, yeah, things like that.
Speaker 1:So I have walked through. I will walk through those other sections. I'll be a lot brisklier than I would through whatever I'm actually looking for, but I've definitely got some inspiration. Sometimes that inspiration is oh, that is what I want to do. I just don't see anything here I want, right. So then I'll buy something from another place, which I know they hate.
Speaker 5:But that does. That's kind of the cost of doing business the way they do it really is. They're giving you ideas, hoping you're buying from them, but you may not find exactly what you like there.
Speaker 1:So the furniture in here in this room right now the couch, the love seat, these two chairs are postmodern. I love postmodern everything. I got inspired by that from walking through an Ikea. They had a postmodern couch and they have two chairs that are very similar to this. I just didn't exactly like what they had and I found this stuff elsewhere.
Speaker 5:But that absolutely came from them. I absolutely love this stuff. It's so comfortable.
Speaker 1:It does its job.
Speaker 5:So comfortable so next week you're going to. I could just sit in this chair again next week.
Speaker 2:Be here sitting in that comfortable chair.
Speaker 5:I wish I had one of these at home.
Speaker 1:Well, I'll tell you where I bought them. Yeah please do Acme, acme Furniture.
Speaker 5:Roadrunner works there, doesn't he? Beep, beep.
Speaker 1:All righty. Well, next week. I think we're going to, I think we might. Next week might be interesting.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it might be.
Speaker 4:It might be interesting.
Speaker 1:next week we may have some trickery up our sleeves, but that's for next week. In the meantime, please hit all those buttons in front of your screen. Give us a thumbs up, give us a thumbs down. If you hate us, uh, leave a comment. Uh, share us. You know almost everything you got right. There has a share button. Send it to a friend and be like hey, you should listen to this. Um, thank you for supporting our channel. If you have any ideas, uh, you're like, hey, hey, I really wish I would talk about XYZ. Drop us a comment or you can shoot us an email at theoutofbellpodcasts at gmailcom, also known as theoutofbellpodcasts at gmailcom.
Speaker 3:One more time Theoutofbellpodcasts at gmailcom.
Speaker 1:And you can call us on Jerry's personal phone number at 212-555-1212. I know.
Speaker 5:I'm in212. I know I'm in trouble now. I gave it out. He'll probably edit it out anyway.
Speaker 1:You can actually call us Well, a couple of us. If you go to highfiltrettingcom, there's a contact us there and you can actually have the phone number of the company 833-HIGHFIELD 833-HIGHFIELD.
Speaker 1:You can reach out to us and, uh, we'd love to talk to you all about you know, we're an established company now. We're talking about how we built it, but we're an established company now if it's something you'd be interested in doing, or if you, you know, know a couple people and you're like y'all want to drive together, it's a great opportunity to start. Um, we'd absolutely love to opportunity to chat with them. We've got melissa and delena and kayla and kelly all working together and Jerry does a chat function on there too, or something like that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1:Well, until next week, drive safe and make good decisions and don't leave money on the table and keep those wealth at home.
Speaker 2:Bye, we'll be right back.
Speaker 4:I'll see you next time.