The OuterBelt's Podcast
The OuterBelt's Podcast
Zucchini Bread's Debut, Nostalgic Media Tales, and Wintry Escapades: A Journey Through Time and Travel!
This episode discusses NYC's new congestion pricing, aiming to reduce traffic congestion in the city while raising funds for public transportation. The team explores its implications for businesses and residents, debating its fairness and long-term effects on urban commuting, especially for low-income populations.
• Overview of NYC's congestion pricing policy
• Impacts on small businesses and delivery services
• Reactions from the trucking industry and drivers
• Comparison with congestion pricing models in other cities
• Discussions on emergency service response times
• Opinion on the social equity implications of the policy
• Conclusion on the future outcomes of congestion pricing in NYC
We also welcome Zucchini Bread to the #hyfieldfamily and as a regular on the podcast!
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
Facebook: The Outer Belt Podcast
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Oh, that was it.
Speaker 2:Okay, so nope on Turn your head oh much better.
Speaker 4:Hey, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:There we go.
Speaker 4:I don't want to fix it in post.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 4:You're welcome, appreciate it. Sugar Sweetie, sugar sugar.
Speaker 3:All right, so where are you starting from?
Speaker 4:Sugar, sugar high.
Speaker 6:Watermelon sugar high.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, welcome to the Outer Belt. I'm Patrick and y'all are my friends. Chili Buttermilk.
Speaker 5:Eric.
Speaker 4:And Jerry Friends Chili Buttermilk. Eric and Jerry and Jerry.
Speaker 2:It's okay, get it All right Take four Zucchini bread.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you'll find your groove.
Speaker 6:You'll find it.
Speaker 2:You just got to remember what. Madonna told us Exactly Get into the groove. That's right. I was going to say what Madonna told us Exactly Get into the groove.
Speaker 3:That's right, I was going to say Strike a pose.
Speaker 2:Vogue no. What's the other one? You can just go on holiday. No, it's not even Madonna. That's what I was like Earth, Wind, and Fire.
Speaker 3:No, let's groove. Let's groove tonight, totally the same, you know.
Speaker 2:Madonna.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Madonna. Well, as you've noticed, we have a new character on the show. Oh, character, that's what it is.
Speaker 3:There you go.
Speaker 2:Yes, the character will be played by Zucchini Bread. Her stage name is Heather, but her real name is Zucchini Bread. And yeah, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:We're excited Are we Happy to be here. I am, it's more Estrogen. Yeah, we've got it equally divided amongst the cast in the room too. We do, I know.
Speaker 5:I thought we already had enough with me on here, I know, I know At least three of us is half and half Just wait until they start to sync up with you, hey.
Speaker 1:Wow, really.
Speaker 2:We're trying to be a responsible show.
Speaker 6:Oh are we, we're being correctly political. No one told me that.
Speaker 2:Oh well, it's been all these episodes and no one's told me that it was in the terms and conditions that the sponsor gave us. Yeah, I didn't read those.
Speaker 6:You told me to sign them, or else, well, it was a scroll, did you see it? It was long.
Speaker 2:You said sign it or else. What I thought was ridiculous, because it's literally a scroll.
Speaker 3:It was a piece of wood with paper. Four scores and seven years later, and you had to like kind of like those old school comic book things, where you turn them.
Speaker 2:But you had to go all the way to the bottom and then once you had to go all the way to the bottom and then once you got to the bottom, then it allowed you to sign the very top Right, which means you had to go all the way back.
Speaker 3:It was very. It took about two hours. It was half a contract and you only had half the magnifying glass to read.
Speaker 2:That's correct.
Speaker 3:Only half the words on the half contract. It was really complicated.
Speaker 2:So complicated. Well, docuscroll who happens to be our sponsor today?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so anyways, I'm excited to have you Zucchini Bread.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, I am excited to be here. Good, ask me again in a month. Well, let me ask you real quick why?
Speaker 2:are you here?
Speaker 1:Why am I here? Yes, because I got a request by this guy that I know Sounds nice. To come here and try and put his life back together. I guess that's a good way to put it.
Speaker 2:I don't think it is. That sounds kind of harsh doesn't it?
Speaker 1:It does sound kind of harsh.
Speaker 2:Or is it more like to assist him?
Speaker 1:Oh assist.
Speaker 2:Assist, that's the words.
Speaker 6:Assist in putting his life back together.
Speaker 3:Not that it's falling apart, of course not.
Speaker 6:No, it's already falling apart.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm just. He wanted me to be like Darth Vader and lift him up.
Speaker 3:Nice.
Speaker 1:I like that reference.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't like it by the neck though.
Speaker 1:It's like I can't breathe I could do that.
Speaker 6:I'm kidding.
Speaker 2:She's like tap out when you're about to pass out. Yes, well, welcome to the team, welcome to the show, welcome to Columbus. Welcome to Columbus. Welcome to Team Heinfeld. So, as you may have gathered by the insanity ensuing, heather has come on board as an assistant for us. She's going to be assisting Eric and myself in the things that need assisting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:Sounds like a Dr Seuss book. Well, we thought about a secretary. Yeah Right. But then we realized a secretary has such limitations. An assistant has no limitations. They're wide open, wide open, wide open. You know what her job descriptions was? All duties assigned by management. That was it? That's easy. It's the. Not, Dr Seuss, it's the. What's it called, Oompa?
Speaker 1:Loompas.
Speaker 2:No, what's their names? The movie you just referenced, willy Wonka, it's the Willy Wonka Contract, the Willy Wonka.
Speaker 3:Contract.
Speaker 5:It's the one where the font keeps getting smaller and smaller.
Speaker 3:Yes, and then half of it because, remember, the whole room was half.
Speaker 2:I don't think I've seen this movie.
Speaker 3:This is with Gene.
Speaker 2:Lauder, oh, I saw the opening scene. I saw the opening where Gene walks out the trailer. No, where he walks out with the cane and then he does the whatever. Do you know that?
Speaker 3:no one on staff or the characters cast nobody but not even the behind-the-scenes camera. People knew what he was going to do in that moment. It wasn't written in the script, and so all of the reaction that you see in the movie is genuine reaction to his doing the stop and flop and roll.
Speaker 2:I saw a thing that is, I think, rumor, maybe true, I don't know that says that he only agreed to accept the role if they would allow him to do that, because after he read the script he said that there needed to be something to make him more mischievous and he felt that was a way to. You never can trust him.
Speaker 3:We watched the. I guess it would be considered a biopic of him Of Wonka. Maybe it's not.
Speaker 6:No, maybe it wasn't a biopic. I don't think Wonka's a real person, is he? No of Gene Wilder, I think it was actually a documentary, but it was really good.
Speaker 3:I watched that.
Speaker 2:We saw the remake. I think it was with Eric, maybe.
Speaker 3:Johnny Depp.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I don't know if I was with Eric or if I was with someone else, but I remember seeing the remake. It was fine, it just whatever. I really liked the latest one with Timothy Chalamet Chalamet, chalamet, and it's not a remake, it's just early Wonka.
Speaker 6:It's his origin story. It's his origin story when he was a little kid.
Speaker 2:I thoroughly enjoyed that movie.
Speaker 6:We started watching that. You may have finished it. I fell asleep.
Speaker 3:Possibly, which when I fall asleep in a movie.
Speaker 6:it is no judgment on the movie, it's just what I do.
Speaker 2:But if you stay awake, it is.
Speaker 6:It is judgment.
Speaker 1:Then it's a must-see, then it's a must-see, it's a must-see, yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you know what they say. Movies are meant to be watched in 15 parts.
Speaker 6:I agree. I completely agree. When they change scenes, it's out that's it. We'll come back to it another time.
Speaker 1:So Jilly has a Z schedule or a Z rating scale.
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 1:The more the Z's, the worse the movie, the less the Z's the more he saw of it.
Speaker 3:That's funny.
Speaker 4:Jerry, do you fall?
Speaker 3:asleep at movies.
Speaker 4:It depends. If I'm into it, then I don't.
Speaker 3:No matter what time in the evening you start it like a 6 o'clock, you push, play, you're going to.
Speaker 4:If it's something I really really am into, then yeah, I'm into it.
Speaker 2:Okay, but do you have those favorites that you really love, that you can like? I've seen enough, I'm going to bed, oh yeah no-transcript. I remember like you had to sit there and watch it or, even better, record it onto a VHS.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And do you remember the frustration of getting to the end to find out that the last 15 minutes were cut?
Speaker 6:off.
Speaker 2:Cut off because you didn't have enough tape, or it said it was going to be like 8 to 10, so I only set it for two hours of recording but it went over a little bit.
Speaker 5:It was the worst it was terrible.
Speaker 2:It was the worst. Terrible, terrible, terrible. We had some that the first 10 minutes were missing because we're like oh this is odd Quick get a tape and so we just. You know we always picked it up from that point on, but that was back in my day when we had VHSs and could record you had.
Speaker 3:Beta.
Speaker 2:Beta Max.
Speaker 3:Grandma recorded stuff on Beta Max. There was a lot of Garfield cartoons for some reason on Grandma's playlist, I guess when we went over this, but she thought we wanted to watch.
Speaker 2:How old were you?
Speaker 3:I was probably 10 to 13.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's okay, you're aging out of that. Yeah, we always did. We had a bunch of the Warner Brothers stuff, looney Tunes oh loved it.
Speaker 3:We convinced her finally to record Desperately Seeking Susan. That was the year that the cousin and I stayed with Grandma and Grandpa seeking Susan. That was the year that the cousin and I stayed with Grandma and Grandpa and she consented to it being recorded on beta. What is that? Madonna's first breakout movie.
Speaker 2:Madonna was an actor.
Speaker 3:Of course. Oh, she's played in quite a few movies.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 4:Not good movies, but she's exactly.
Speaker 6:They weren't the top quality.
Speaker 2:I love Elvis. None of his movies are watchable.
Speaker 3:You were going to say something.
Speaker 2:You were.
Speaker 3:About Garfield cartoons and beta.
Speaker 6:Oh, I was going to say. Patrick said they had VHS. He looked at me to see what we had. We just watched silent movies.
Speaker 1:Silent films.
Speaker 4:That's all we had was silent films. I remember grabbing tapes to record and then you don't have Any blank tapes, so you're grabbing something that you don't care about and putting a little tape Over it so you can record.
Speaker 3:It had words yeah, your strip that you could. Et was written On one of them, so you had to make sure, like you said, is it a movie we can record over.
Speaker 6:No, jerry, meant Putting, putting a piece of tape over the clip that you'd pop out so you couldn't record over it. Putting tape over that so you could record over it.
Speaker 2:We did that with the promotional videos that they would send out. I remember when Dixie came to Baton Rouge, the sprawling metropolis.
Speaker 2:They sent a videotape out showcasing their store and she's walking through our beautiful deli and we have hot food available and we have this and the people are eating in the grocery store, which was unheard of back then. Maybe in California it was a thing y'all were doing out on the West Coast, but in Louisiana nobody was going to the grocery store and eating their food in the grocery store. What that's insanity. Now it's like totally normal.
Speaker 3:Sure right.
Speaker 2:It's like Whole Foods is a great evening out, you know eating there. They sent this whole promo out. She's walking down and here's our luxurious Coca-Cola aisle, which you know. In hindsight now it's ridiculous. But we absolutely, because they had the little whole thing. You put a little. We didn't we used the tape was over. But I want to say we like stuff, cotton or something in there and then put a tape over it and then you could record a little bit on there. So yeah, that was good times.
Speaker 3:I've never heard of a grocery store promoting by sending you a VHS. It's the only one I've ever heard of.
Speaker 2:It was the craziest thing I remember. It showed up and it's like, oh, look at this Pontiac. When Pontiac put out their Aztec, remember that? Oh, that was a great piece of car.
Speaker 6:Yeah, piece of car, great uh they sent one out with that.
Speaker 2:And uh, the montana. They did with the montana as well. Do you remember the montana van no? The montana was supposed to be like the latest and greatest. It was going to kick the astro van's tail.
Speaker 2:It was all-wheel drive but it's still it's still a minivan and so the whole promo video is them like driving this thing in the in the desert and like it's a western theme, and they're all like cowboys, like come on, now, everybody, get in. The montana we're gonna go to town and get some chuck or something. I don't know. It's the first ridiculous thing I've ever seen in my life. I gotta find them on youtube and I'll show you.
Speaker 3:But uh, I mean they're sending vhs in the mail. It's like spam mail or whatever Junk mail I guess we would call it. You never got a cassette of anything advertised to you.
Speaker 2:No negative, but y'all didn't have electricity, so I feel like that's not fair. That was a challenge yeah. Did your grandmother get them? No, no, no. Did you ever get any of theseerry? I mean you're kind of from where I never did eric no well, y'all didn't live in the sun in the uh sprawling metropolis of baton rouge, louisiana there we got. We had those high-tech, sophisticated things. What about promo cds? Y'all ever get promo cds?
Speaker 6:yes, yes no, oh my gosh, I mean come on, I got more aol.
Speaker 2:Compu serve prodigy uh of We'd use them as target practice. Eventually I'm not kidding We'd set them up and then we'd take the BB gun out there or pellet gun and just have at it. Because we had thousands of them. People decorated their Christmas trees with them. Do you remember?
Speaker 3:all that, yeah, tons of stuff, jerry's like I've never heard of such a thing.
Speaker 4:What? Oh yeah, I've had tons of them, yeah.
Speaker 3:You've had the CDs too.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I had AOL free for years because I couldn't do them Constantly.
Speaker 2:They would do good for 30. Sometimes they'd do good for 60 or 90 days too.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I remember that Good old.
Speaker 3:I bought my CDs 12 for a penny. Oh.
Speaker 4:I've done that.
Speaker 3:I definitely got my collection going.
Speaker 4:My first round of that was Madonna's Immaculate Collection.
Speaker 3:Thank you, we had to buy the Entertainment Center from Shopko. You don't have one of those like Target. Anyways, it had the CD slots on either side and you'd stuff your CDs and the TV sat in the middle, and down below was the radio system.
Speaker 2:Did you have the beautiful oak finish or did you?
Speaker 3:have the black finish.
Speaker 5:Those were the only two options if.
Speaker 3:I'm not mistaken, ours was oak.
Speaker 2:Remember when Cherry showed up, it was literally black, laminate or oak, and then Cherry came on the scene and it was like what is this high-end luxury we've rolled into? Of course, now you got a thousand colors, but I probably had stock in that company.
Speaker 3:I can't even think of what the cd plug I was gonna ask have you gotten your?
Speaker 2:have you gotten your bmg house?
Speaker 3:I think it might have been columbia house, but in the end I probably had over 500 CDs, because that was way before Apple and Pandora. You had to have a mix of music I was going to say Menagerie A mix of music.
Speaker 2:She whispers into the mic. I remember my aunt got her 200 disc 70.
Speaker 6:CD player that was great.
Speaker 2:You could do random or shuffle. Yes, and it was great because it would be like play a song and then beep.
Speaker 6:Yeah, you hear the robot inside.
Speaker 4:I remember whenever I got my first.
Speaker 2:Just dance, you know like.
Speaker 4:I remember when I got my first six disc CD player for the car and it went in the trunk and to change it you always had to go to the trunk and take it out and put your new six in.
Speaker 3:How about that CD case that you had to have in the car?
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, or on the visor, flip it down and pull out.
Speaker 2:I always thought that the six CD thing I hated. So my aunt, she got a Mercedes when I was in middle school and had the AMFM radio with the tape in the middle, and this because it's Mercedes-Benz and the console it had, the little tape grooves, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:And then in the back she had the 6CD changer and it was such a pain in the butt. It was like if we wanted to hear something other than that you had, like I said, you had to pull over, go through, pull the cassette out, re-init it and put it back in. And I thought it was so stupid because the cheaper version was just an AM FM radio with a CD and I'm like I'd rather it's that than I would Just slide it in, but that was.
Speaker 3:The Ridgeline actually had in the console. When you opened it it had the slots for maybe six or eight CD, the case and everything.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:So that was what my last vehicle I had, and it had the 4 CD, maybe 6.
Speaker 2:Built-in. Built-in.
Speaker 6:What it didn't have, though, was an auxiliary input to jack in your phone.
Speaker 2:Yep, Mom's Ford Explorer had the Pioneer 6 CD changer in the dash, so if you wanted disc 3 out you had to select it and then wait for it to do its magic and then pop it out and you could slide one in. I loved when I was a kid. I had the Pioneer 200 watt.
Speaker 5:Ooh.
Speaker 2:Home stereo 25 disc changer. But Pioneer was genius it had one additional slot.
Speaker 6:Oh yeah, the ones. It was 25 plus 1. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2:Oh, it made it so great. All my usuals were in the 25 and then, if any time A friend would come over or something like that, it was so easy to pop one in. You didn't have to like.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because they were in there like A millimeter apart from each other. They shoved those 25 CDs in there so freaking tight, wow, oh, it was good times Good times.
Speaker 6:But you're right no aux.
Speaker 2:Remember the original aux input right.
Speaker 6:The quarter inch.
Speaker 2:The eighth inch to cassette.
Speaker 3:Yes, I had one of those Eighth inch to cassette. I've had one of those Hooked up to the CD player, the Walkman.
Speaker 2:Yes, because Hooked up to the CD player, the Walkman.
Speaker 3:Yes, because it went from cassette to CD.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:So you had to put the cassette in.
Speaker 2:You had the Walkman.
Speaker 3:And hook it up to the. I had an original OG with the cassette Walkman and then, I don't know, I went to something you hope it had. Skip resistance.
Speaker 4:Yes, I had the anti-skip.
Speaker 3:Because it was in the car now and then it was feeding. I had one of those.
Speaker 2:So we had the Panasonic, and this was one of the advantages of being I'm four years younger than my sister, so she would get things before I would. So she got the Panasonic CD player, with no anti-skip because it didn't exist yet, and so she had that. It had bass boost, which was cool, but literally you would just set it next to your computer and plug your little computer speakers in or something. If you moved it, it immediately stopped working.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:When I finally got around to being old enough to get one, that was out, so mine had like 10 seconds. Does that sound right?
Speaker 5:10 seconds of.
Speaker 2:Antiskip, and that was great. I would actually put that in my pocket and I would throw my. Do you remember the headphones that were out for a while that clipped on your ear?
Speaker 6:Yes, they didn't go in your ear.
Speaker 2:They slid over your ear. I would use that while I was cutting the grass, and you'd go for a jog with it.
Speaker 6:It wouldn't skip. Not a jog when I'm cutting the grass. You weren't jogging.
Speaker 2:But you would literally see me cut the grass and then stop.
Speaker 3:Wait for the skip.
Speaker 2:Wait for the catch up. Wait for the catch up, because it would work pretty good. But I mean after a little bit. It would be like, oh, hold on.
Speaker 6:Got to catch up.
Speaker 2:All right, we're back in business and then keep going again. Oh man, oh kids nowadays don't even know, they don't even know, don't even know. Even iPods are obsolete. How about?
Speaker 3:you gotta take that cassette tape out and use the pencil and wrap it all back in and hope to God it didn't get twisted.
Speaker 2:Do you remember that horror of pulling a cassette out and just grab?
Speaker 3:it and you're like don't break, don't break, don't break. I spent 12 bucks on you.
Speaker 4:I remember when I got my first acura. Oh yes, it actually had cd player in the dash, just a single disc, but it had the hard drive built in, so that way you can load up to like 1000 mp3s, okay, yeah dodge had that for a while.
Speaker 2:Like we, I've never owned one, but I've rented a lot of caravans over the years grand caravans over the years and they don't have car play in them, but they have like an 80 gigabyte hard drive and you could bring your memory card and upload it or whatever. But the transfer times are ridiculous. They take you forever to load it.
Speaker 6:Even the small mini MP3 players. The transfer time was ridiculous. On those, it was ridiculous I never had an iPod.
Speaker 2:We couldn't afford an iPod, so I always had like A Fujitsu version.
Speaker 6:Of the iPod. Well, there were tons of them out before the iPod Showed up on the scene.
Speaker 4:Did you have a Zoom?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 3:Did you For like, maybe a month.
Speaker 4:And then I was like, okay, I'm getting an iPod. I just can't handle this.
Speaker 2:No, but I remember iPods came out there the size of an iPhone.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, the very first one. They had the scroll wheel, the click wheel. I had one.
Speaker 6:A lot of people say they still work if you have one and you've got a FireWire cable, yep, but that was the game changer, though, for the iPod was the Firewire connection.
Speaker 5:It's fast Because it was so fast. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It was so fast, yeah, I remember years ago I worked with a church and I helped put together a scavenger hunt for the youths. We were like, okay, the goal was go around and do something, but then you had to take a picture of it and I'm like, how can we pull this off? Because by that time Polaroids were pretty much gone, so you couldn't just buy a Polaroid camera. They were extremely expensive. Nobody had cameras on their phones anymore.
Speaker 2:Or if they did they were terrible and iPhones weren't out yet, so it was like, what do we do? And we ended up buying these cheap digital cameras at like 80 bucks a pop and gave them to every team and they went out and then we had to upload those pictures into the laptop and that took so long that we didn't plan for. We were like we'll announce the winners next week.
Speaker 6:Like we just didn't know it was going to take that long to upload every single picture Super slow.
Speaker 2:Brutal.
Speaker 3:Those kids probably were so disappointed.
Speaker 2:They forgot about it by the next week.
Speaker 3:I'm sure they did.
Speaker 2:I don't know if we ever announced the winner.
Speaker 1:We actually did a scavenger hunt like that in Europe. A friend of mine put one on and the cell phones and that were good enough, so we had them take pictures of things.
Speaker 6:And it's the same thing.
Speaker 1:I mean, it took like an hour for us to go through everything. I was too drunk, I didn't do it, but I was told it took a really long time to go through all the pictures.
Speaker 2:I love reminiscing, but let's reminisce about the past three days.
Speaker 6:Past three days. No thank you. Can I be excused for this session, the past three Since Friday.
Speaker 2:Since Friday. Yeah, what's happened Friday?
Speaker 6:Snow.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 6:Yes.
Speaker 2:Oh, I thought y'all just got it.
Speaker 6:Can I be excused for the session? I'm just going to hang out. You guys talk.
Speaker 2:You can't be excused, but you can lay on the couch If that helps.
Speaker 3:So it started Friday.
Speaker 6:Yeah, it started.
Speaker 3:Friday. I was waiting for you to finish.
Speaker 6:I was just giving the reason why I wanted to be excused since Friday.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I wish we would have gotten more. It's been cold and snow. We got quite a bit yeah set the whole company down.
Speaker 4:What did you say? I wish we would have gotten more snow.
Speaker 5:Apparently he wasn't in Cincinnati.
Speaker 4:Yeah, Cincinnati got cold Apparently he wasn't in the yard.
Speaker 2:It was so funny. So Eric and I were out of town and we were driving up from Florida and on the way up there we get to Atlanta, which we had planned to be our stop for the night, and I saw the weather was just really getting bad. So I sent a message over to Vince and I'm like, hey, I think we're going to hang out here in Atlanta and Jimmy and Kelly, who work for us they don't live very far, a couple hours away we're going to go see them and just hang out with them all day tomorrow and we're not going to attempt to make that drive back. And you're back and you're like well, it's only going to be like four inches of snow, what are you worried about? And I'm like Cincinnati's getting a foot, a foot of snow. And you're back a little bit later you were like oh wow, you're right.
Speaker 3:It's going to be bad. It dropped down. It ended up dropping further below.
Speaker 2:I-70. It went south, it went way south.
Speaker 3:Otherwise, I mean it was literally on target. To just come clear across the 70. But somehow it shifted a little bit and it did did go like even here in Columbus, further south, down by Hocking Hills and Chillicothe and Circleville, and all of that got hammered a little harder than we did.
Speaker 6:They got more snow.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 6:What hurt us was the wind.
Speaker 3:Wind is brutal. Was it sustained?
Speaker 2:20 miles.
Speaker 6:My ability to function outdoors was the wind.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 6:You know, because even when it stopped snowing, the wind was still blowing snow around everywhere 20 to 30 mile gusts they were having and that chill was just insane.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know we were looking at.
Speaker 6:Single digit wind chill yeah, and snow blowing around everywhere yeah, our neighbors. Yesterday morning, when I was leaving for work and it was snowing, our neighbors were out shoveling their driveway and their sidewalks. And when I got home yesterday afternoon, you couldn't tell. If I hadn't seen them outside shoveling, I would have had no idea they were outside shoveling and it stopped snowing, but the wind had just covered everything back up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I noticed that yesterday when I got back to. So I finally got back yesterday. First thing I did was fire the snowblower and I went and did a couple lines of it just to like make sure it worked Right. It had electricity and everything.
Speaker 2:It's not gas-powered, it's battery-powered electric and it did, it worked great. And I was like cool, I and it did, it worked great. And I was like cool, I'll do the rest tomorrow morning and put it back up. And when I came out this morning to do it you could kind of tell where I had walked. And it wasn't supposed to snow last night and I woke up and it was snowing.
Speaker 6:It wasn't like it was snowing again this morning.
Speaker 2:It wasn't like oh, the wind blew, and so a little snow came out of the trees.
Speaker 6:It was legit full-on snowing.
Speaker 2:I was surprised. I looked at the radar and the radar said snowing. The weather said snowing, but the radar was like crystal clear.
Speaker 6:Yeah, nothing, nothing on it at all.
Speaker 3:It was weird. We probably got what six to eight inches, six inches.
Speaker 6:I think officially we got like five inches.
Speaker 3:It was a good shovel path for the backyard.
Speaker 6:We also are into that cul-de-sac, where all the wind blows everything and it just kind of stays there too it does, Even at the yard.
Speaker 1:that was about five, six inches that we were scooping up.
Speaker 6:It was a good amount of snow.
Speaker 4:Well, they're calling for more.
Speaker 3:Friday we just got to make it tomorrow to Thursday. I know, tomorrow to Thursday, thursday is going to make it tomorrow to. Thursday. I know Tomorrow to Thursday.
Speaker 4:Thursday is going to be cold, Like. The high is like 18. That's okay. The low is like 7. That's fine.
Speaker 2:That's fine until we have to fuel the truck.
Speaker 3:I'm okay with that too. You know those days.
Speaker 2:So Buttermilk and I we're going to pick up two trucks we just bought. We bought them out of Missouri, we're bringing them back, so we're flying out tomorrow and then we'll pick the trucks up the next day. I was just thinking how many times have you been like hey, your t-shirts, flip-flops, it's 86 degrees inside your truck, 72 degrees in your truck. You're doing great, whatever. It's like alright, I gotta pull over and use the bathroom. You pull into the truck stop and you open that door and it's like oh, I forgot.
Speaker 6:Oh, I forgot.
Speaker 2:Especially if it's not snowing, it really screws.
Speaker 6:If it's snowing, you get a hint.
Speaker 2:But if it's not snowing and beautiful sunshiny day, oh it hurts.
Speaker 3:It's cold, it's going to be cold, but we're going to make it happen. Just no snow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no snow.
Speaker 3:Next 48 hours, no snow Between St Louis and here.
Speaker 4:They're saying one to two inches. Friday it's supposed to be.
Speaker 3:Friday, we'll be back.
Speaker 1:Friday Late Friday no snow, no rain. You'll be good.
Speaker 6:Yeah, if it can wait until I get off work Friday afternoon, I'm okay.
Speaker 4:From what I've seen, it says late. Friday.
Speaker 3:Yep, at any rate, we need winter, we need some water. We were in a deficit last summer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, bad drought.
Speaker 3:Which we talked about that. So I don't know if it works. The same as Oregon, can it just stay?
Speaker 6:out in the farms and not come to the city where I've got to work in it.
Speaker 3:I don't know if they hold water Like where it sweats. Yeah, like you know, on the West Coast you have to have snowfall and rainfall to fill up the lakes.
Speaker 6:I just want the snowfall and the rainfall and the cold to stay out of the city where I'm at.
Speaker 3:But my question is is Ohio the same way Like? Are we filling up reservoirs so that it'll water everything, or do we really rely on water?
Speaker 2:I don't think that we're counting on that. I think we're counting on the snowfall in Michigan, because a lot of Michigan's watershed comes through Ohio.
Speaker 6:And they do have mountains in Michigan. We do have reservoirs. We have Hoover Reservoir. They have mountains in Michigan, yeah but they're not deep around here.
Speaker 3:Anyways, I just don't think it's the same like Oregon or California, where we rely on that water.
Speaker 5:I hear you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's no snow caps, no so.
Speaker 3:I really think that where we live depends on the rain that we get organically throughout the summertime, because, I mean, we've even talked about that they don't have sprinkler systems on their crops.
Speaker 6:Yeah, they're on the farms up here they're waiting on the rain to happen. They don't have sprinkler systems on their crops. Yeah, they're on the farms out here, they're waiting on the rain to happen.
Speaker 3:They don't do irrigation. No, they might do flood irrigation, but again, wow.
Speaker 6:Or they might do it on smaller vegetable crops with the big cornfields. It's all natural when we first moved here two and a half years ago, we were concerned about having to water the lawn and take care of stuff. We didn't have to water the lawn the whole summer because it rained every couple of days enough to keep the grass green.
Speaker 3:Last summer was rough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have an irrigation at my house, but only because I'm at a grade and there's only like three inches of soil above bedrock, so it doesn't hold any moisture in, but, like my dad lives where they live, it holds water in. It's fun. Yeah, but it's a fun place this state we live in.
Speaker 6:Yeah, it's really fun. It's really truly fun, and I'm done with it.
Speaker 1:So are we publicly announcing that we're relocating to Miami.
Speaker 6:Yes, please.
Speaker 2:Yes, tomorrow let's go. I can't because come July you'll be like.
Speaker 6:so about Ohio? No, come July I'll be happy. I'll enjoy the heat and humidity. I grew up in Los Angeles. I can deal with the heat.
Speaker 2:Los Angeles and Miami are two different, that's different. I can deal with the heat. That is Los Angeles and Miami are. Los Angeles and Miami are two different, that's different. I still can deal with the heat that's brutal.
Speaker 4:Miami is like March April.
Speaker 2:That's true, it's time to leave. Yeah, I always think like, oh, it'd be so great to be, you know, have a summer home and a winter home and all that stuff. But I just think about like the maintenance. I feel like if I had a winter home in Florida. Every time you go home for the winter, your first week or two is just fixing stuff knocking the cobwebs out. Down there it's getting rid of the roaches, like it just.
Speaker 1:Scorpions.
Speaker 2:And then when you think about all of, the winter you're missing by being there.
Speaker 5:It's completely worth it.
Speaker 2:Well.
Speaker 5:I'll spend that week fixing stuff up. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Mr Wonderful, or one of them, was talking about how vacation homes are such a waste of money, and I think they're right Money's different.
Speaker 6:I mean, you know there's some value there. I think it's like paying somebody to change the oil in your car. You can do it yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the difference is the return on your investment. You don't see until you sell it, which could be after you're dead.
Speaker 6:So you know, I mean like Sure, but if it's strictly an investment. You're buying cheap, selling high yeah. But if you're using it and you're reaping the benefits of it immediately for just the emotional and physical well-being of not being in freezing I almost cursed in freezing, cold weather all day long yeah Then it's worth having that investment in something that you can enjoy.
Speaker 2:But that's why I'm saying an airplane.
Speaker 6:I hear you Because you could just fly south Fly south for what?
Speaker 3:Fly south for the winter? No, fly south the whole winter, all right. What are we birds?
Speaker 2:Friday afternoon get off work, get in the airplane, fly to Florida. Spend all weekend there fly back refreeze. Yeah, refreeze, exactly.
Speaker 6:Exactly. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm sitting here in a hoodie. You are, and you're sitting there in a t-shirt.
Speaker 2:It's warm down here.
Speaker 6:Because I'm still not warm. From earlier today we got the fire going.
Speaker 2:I'm still trying to warm up. Got the synthetic fire going. I'm still trying to warm up Well.
Speaker 3:Synthetic fire, one little candle flame I'm at the behind the camera.
Speaker 2:There's a way over there. Well, it makes noise and I don't want the noise I get it.
Speaker 3:Well, so we've got our one candle flame. Yes, you can have it around the fire.
Speaker 6:Today the sun peeked through for half a, second Funny Half a second Funny thing, Half a second. Driving south actually longer than that driving south the sun peaked through. I was like, oh look, there's sunshine, and then we get down to Grove City and it's partly cloudy skies. Huh, and it was snowing on the way down there.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 6:We get to partly cloudy skies in Grove City. Grove City had to deal with God or something to have a little partly cloudy, and they could see blue sky and the sun today, while the rest of us were dealing with friggin' snow.
Speaker 1:It is a four-letter word.
Speaker 6:Snow it is. I was going to combine a couple of four-letter words there, but it is so pretty, not anymore. Now it's all nasty and dirty.
Speaker 2:When I drove in last night. It was beautiful.
Speaker 6:You know, when you look outside after a first snow it's gorgeous. I have a picture actually from the yard from Friday morning where if you're looking in the back corner behind the trucks, beautiful if you take out the chain link fence, it was a beautiful picture of the snow and the trees and everything. If I could just stand there and stare at it for a little bit. Great, like I said, when you're standing out looking out the front window in the first snow and it's beautiful, this blanket of untouched snow, maybe some rabbit or squirrel, droppings or squirrel droppings, yeah you know, or footprints, or footprints.
Speaker 6:Or footprints.
Speaker 5:Or footprints.
Speaker 2:Or footprints. That makes more sense. It's gorgeous.
Speaker 6:Now it's been trampled. We shoveled it, yeah, no.
Speaker 3:Can I give you a little bit of good news? 72 days until spring.
Speaker 2:That's not good news. That sounds terrible.
Speaker 3:It does sound terrible, it's a dead sentence.
Speaker 6:It's still 72 days.
Speaker 3:Hey, it could be more.
Speaker 6:Yesterday it was 73 days. I apologize for my negative attitude. I really do. I asked to be excused. He wouldn't excuse me, so you got negativity, because I'm tired of the damn cold.
Speaker 1:And it's just started.
Speaker 6:Yes, it's getting colder.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Heather. Nothing but getting colder. Thanks for keeping it real. Nothing but getting colder. I mean you can dream, Jerry, but getting colder I mean you can dream.
Speaker 3:Jerry wants five feet of snow Right.
Speaker 4:I have to admit I enjoy it, I like it, I love snow, but I do get to work from home and so I get to enjoy the prettiness and everything. So I really do think I am all for. We need to shift positions around, and Vince just needs to assist me in the IT department during the wintertime, all right, and who's going to help Melissa in the yard? That's totally your call, not mine.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right. So here's what I'm thinking.
Speaker 5:What are we having you assist in?
Speaker 1:Vince, tell me what you think I got to come Rose.
Speaker 2:You do video editing and IT solutions in the winter? Okay, I'm listening.
Speaker 4:And if you, even have my name come out of your mouth.
Speaker 3:Jerry loves the snow though.
Speaker 2:He does love the snow. And then Senor Burrow.
Speaker 4:Okay, Senor Burrow Does not work for Highfield. That's cute.
Speaker 3:Do you go out and do snowball fights with Dawn or? Make snowmen or make snow angels.
Speaker 1:Does this look like the?
Speaker 3:face of someone who does you do nothing in the snow? You just like to look at its aesthetics.
Speaker 4:I just said, I like to you know.
Speaker 3:The aesthetics.
Speaker 4:I woke up Saturday morning after it snowed all night.
Speaker 3:Friday night With your cup of coffee.
Speaker 4:Yep, and I went straight to the door and I took pictures and I took video and it was all pretty and pristine and, yeah, I just want to stay inside and look at it, we should go sledding. I just want to look at it. Are they sledding?
Speaker 6:right down the road. Here they were Nice.
Speaker 2:I really want to go to Vail or somewhere like, like that that's a different kind of snow. And drive into Denver or fly into Denver, drive the Jeep up into Vail and get into the nice Chalet and sip hot cocoa and stare out the window for two or three days and then fly back.
Speaker 4:I have said that over and over. I would love to do that I would love to just go and be in front of the fireplace, larry.
Speaker 2:Miller, who is a comedian hysterical comedian, if you don't know who he is. He has a whole bit on skiing and he said the best thing about skiing is the secret to skiing is you go and you ride the ski lift up and you see the beautiful scenery and enjoy the company, the people you talk to along the way. He said then just ride it right back down. As soon as you get down, the waitress gives you another beer. You get back on the ski lift.
Speaker 6:Go right back up and do it all over again oh that's funny, I say no.
Speaker 3:No, I agree.
Speaker 2:The secret to skiing is to stay at the lodge. Yes, but you've got to have a big giant window when you're watching everybody else do it.
Speaker 3:Oh yes.
Speaker 2:I've done. Watch the ski paramedics out there. When people walk back, you kind of guess or gamble on what the injury is. I think it would be great. I think it would be a blast.
Speaker 3:It was a lot of fun. I've done it at Nashland before and I've done it at Mount Bachelor in Bend, oregon. It's a lot of fun to just sit in the lodge and watch the mayhem and be warm. The young children, your young children, my young children were out there freezing, but they had a good time. So that's all that matters.
Speaker 1:I'm not a fan of hot tubs, but that is one time when it's cold outside to sit in a hot tub, especially when it's snowing. That's actually kind of fun.
Speaker 2:It is fun. Vince and I are not allowed in a hot tub, especially when it's snowing, that's actually kind of fun.
Speaker 6:It is fun. Vince and I are not allowed in the hot tub together. No, we're not. We are not. That's a long story.
Speaker 5:I was going to say that my first time ever going skiing with friends. We were there for two days and the first place they went was Breckenridge where I attempted two times down the mountain. First I thought I would do skis like everybody else. Ended up almost wiping out of school of nine kids in the process. So I thought skiing's not for me. Let me go put on a snowboard, see if that's any better and even worse.
Speaker 5:So that was the first day of our skiing. The second day we went to keystone, which, if you're a truck driver and you're hauling hazmat, you know you can't go through the Eisenhower Tunnel. You have to drive all the way up the bypass to the Loveland Pass. I think that goes all the way up to Keystone. And when we did our trip the second day to Keystone, hot chocolate in a lodge huge window watching everybody go by.
Speaker 3:It was so beautiful and safe. Nice, I didn't have to worry about anything. Nice.
Speaker 6:Sometimes, if I'm being totally honest, I sit in the car with a cup of hot coffee and just look out the window and watch Mel Lee work.
Speaker 2:I feel bad for the teams that are moving in. This is not the weather you want to be moving into, and it's impossible to get the trucks clean Because as soon as we drive them to the truck wash the truck wash, which is literally a block away a thousand feet maybe away.
Speaker 6:By the time you drive it right back, it's got black streets and stuff all over it from the freaking salt and all the crap they put on the road and then the next morning when we go to do the move-in, everything's frozen the locks- are frozen the toolbox are frozen and then we can't clean the floor. We usually wait until the morning of a move-in to do our final cleaning of the floor, Because after we get it cleaned we're in and out of the truck still. Well, we can't clean the floor because as soon as you spray cleaning solution, it freezes on the floor.
Speaker 5:It's just fun.
Speaker 6:What's really fun, though, is when a team comes in on a day like this to move in, and they're just not prepared.
Speaker 3:And you're going to hang out outside.
Speaker 6:We get out of the van and we're all bundled. I got my hoodie on with my balaclava and thermals, do you? Still use the electric jacket or not, I still use the electric jacket and the lights on they can see the light on my jacket and you walk up to them and it's like you weren't prepared at all for this, were you?
Speaker 1:Well, we're going to spend the next 15 minutes outside the truck.
Speaker 6:So if you've got a heavier jacket you want to put on, why don't you do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, but then every now and then you meet that one person who's in flip-flop shorts and a t-shirt and they're like, oh, I'm fine yeah.
Speaker 6:Like all right.
Speaker 5:Now we're going to spend a half hour out here, yeah, I want to push that boundary.
Speaker 6:But we do get there early and get the heat going inside the truck at least. So once we get in the truck it's a little warmer.
Speaker 2:You're talking about the floor getting it clean. We had a team, so one of the very first we started buying brand-new trucks. We started buying trucks and bought used trucks. When you buy a used truck you've got to go in it and find out what's wrong with it and all that stuff. So Eric and I would do that and get it ready for a team and then put a team in it. We thought, buying a brand new truck, we don't have to do all that, the truck's ready to go. So we had one of our teams pick their truck up and she moved into it and they moved into it and they had all kinds of minor issues, but still issues up front that now again, we don't do that anymore. We pick them up and go through them ourselves. But she called me and she was almost in tears because she's like I've cleaned this whole truck but I can't get the floor clean because it's just turning into ice as soon as I spray it. Because it was January in Colosal.
Speaker 6:Idaho.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, don't worry about it, I'm going to pick it up and bring it down to Louisiana and there's no ice down there.
Speaker 5:We'll get it cleaned there.
Speaker 2:We'll get it cleaned there. I get in the truck. It is spotless. You could eat off literally the floor, but she couldn't get it any cleaner and I'm like yeah, it was insane but that was. I remember getting that phone call, just being like it's turning to ice and almost in tears and I'm like it's not that big of a deal, We'll get it cleaned 72 days.
Speaker 6:You're trying to make it sound like it's great. I have an idea.
Speaker 2:You've heard of an advent calendar, right.
Speaker 6:Yeah.
Speaker 3:We should do 72 days of whiskey 72 days of whiskey and rum.
Speaker 1:So if we say within a half month, it would sound like less Does it?
Speaker 2:I don't think so. 72 days of winter remaining. Yes, you start with dark, heavy whiskeys. So every night you get to have like an ounce, and then it gets lighter, okay, and then at some point it goes into rum, okay. Because, rum is more spring. And then you, just you know, eventually you have Bacardi Silver To celebrate.
Speaker 6:To celebrate, I'm going to pass on the Bacardi Silver, but you know that's quality rum.
Speaker 3:We did this last year and I think the year before, because this moment in time happens and the cold happens and we talk about it. Let's do the positive. The positive is we have so many days until spring. That's a positive. No, it's not and every day we wake up.
Speaker 6:It's a shortened period of time this is not like the christmas countdown I got 72 sleeps till christmas?
Speaker 5:no, no no it's.
Speaker 1:I got 72 more days of 15 degree weather. Really put an actual number on it.
Speaker 6:No, no because we'll get faux spring. We'll have first faux spring and then, winter, and then second faux spring and then winter, and then you'll have a month of winter before you get the third faux spring.
Speaker 2:Hard winter, too Hard winter Snow.
Speaker 1:People's pipes will burst It'll be hard winter.
Speaker 3:And then summer immediately happens. Immediately In 77 days, in 77 days, summer will immediately happen. Immediately In 77 days, in 77 days, summer will immediately happen.
Speaker 2:And summer flips a switch. Yes, summer is like I think it's spring. It's kind of nice, it's like hot. Yep, here I am here I am.
Speaker 6:Summer just shows up, it just shows up.
Speaker 2:It's like the drunk uncle at the party he's like I'm, here. I'm here. How are you drunk already, but no one knows when they're arriving. Is summer coming, maybe?
Speaker 5:I think March 1st is the first official day of spring. The first fake ones come in April. That's why it's called April Fools.
Speaker 2:It's kind of nature's way of saying it yeah, but last. I was going to say last winter.
Speaker 6:He said it, not me, he owns the company.
Speaker 2:So last spring FCC can direct your attention to Last spring. We didn't get a spring. I don't think we got a spring last year, did we?
Speaker 3:We skipped. It went straight from freezing to hot. It was 72 days from now and then it went 77.
Speaker 6:The uncle came bursting in. We did have a couple different faux springs.
Speaker 3:We did.
Speaker 6:But we never had an official spring. We had faux spring, winter, and then from winter to, like you said, maybe spring, nope, summer.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It was really unique.
Speaker 2:It was an off year. Last year was an off year Because last year. Summer didn't want to end.
Speaker 5:Summer was here for the party.
Speaker 2:Summer was here, for the Summer was like November. It was like what's this Thanksgiving thing? You?
Speaker 6:guys talk about.
Speaker 2:I want to experience that.
Speaker 1:I'd like to visit and then you guys are wondering why we have snow right now. She was upset and then, old man, I didn't get my chance. Now I can.
Speaker 2:Old man Fall fell, old man, winter came in with guns blazing. He did which you know.
Speaker 6:He got all the summer hoodlums out real quick.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, yeah, so that's Snow Talk. That's a new segment that we'll have for the next six weeks, and I won't be here for that.
Speaker 3:Do you read articles from Freight Waves? I do, nice.
Speaker 2:I do and speaking of, I saw an article on Freight Waves and I read it. I read it not read, it Read it and it was interesting. So, New York City, our good friends at New York City. Yeah, good friends at New York City, shout out to New York. Jerry, you've been there a bunch. You like New York, right? Yeah, if there's one thing you had to say about New York you've told us many, many times, it's that it's uncongested right.
Speaker 2:That it's easy to get in and out no issues, right, yeah, is that really what you're saying? No, no.
Speaker 4:No, it's congested.
Speaker 2:It's congested as Unless it's COVID. It's as crazy as COVID what?
Speaker 3:We got across the GW in record time during COVID Nobody was on the bridge. We're like 45? The whole way, no way.
Speaker 2:Way.
Speaker 3:It was way.
Speaker 2:So New York City has introduced and made official and passed the New York Supreme Court and all this stuff. They are now doing congestion pricing for Manhattan, yeah, for Manhattan, yeah. So what that means is, if you drive into Manhattan in your personal car, in a commercial truck, in an 18-wheeler, you pay a dollars to go into the city. It's like a toll that you have to pay for what they call peak travel times, which is pretty broad, because it's like 6 or 7 am in the morning until 9 pm on the weekdays and at night it's 9 to 9, 9 am to 9 pm. But if it's outside of those times, you still pay a toll, but it's less. It's considerably less and what they're trying to do is a few things.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:They're trying to one make it less congested, like, if you want to drive to New York City, it's going to cost you, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so they're trying to get people $9 a day or whatever. I think it's $9 a day for an individual car.
Speaker 6:Yes, that's what I'm seeing here.
Speaker 2:Like a person just driving their car to work, so it's $9 a day for an individual car. Yes, that's what I'm seeing here. Like a person just driving their car to work, so they figure $9 a day.
Speaker 2:You're going to go to work five days a week, that's real quick math $45 times 4.3, which is the weeks in a month, is $180 plus some yes, Trying to make it to where it's like oh, that's really expensive. I'm not going to do that. Instead, I'm going to take a $2.25 subway into the city and go that route, so it's to limit congestion. Get cars off the road so they are like a toll bridge is told, so that they can pay for the construction and upkeep of the bridge. Right.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:This is a penalty toll. This is we don't want you here. So if you're going to come, we don't want your vehicle here, we don't want your vehicle here. So if you're going to drive your vehicle here, you're going to pay a toll, a tax, one may say. I've actually heard it called that. I'll explain later what it means by the tax. And so get rid of congestion is one of the things. The second thing is, uh to um limit the number of trucks that are in the area during those business hours. Now, they've been trying this for years with uh, peak times to come in the city and not for trucking, and suggestions, and they've had all kinds of schemes on that for years and years and years.
Speaker 3:Um, it's never really worked how are they supposed to get their supplies?
Speaker 2:They say come after hours, oh, okay. Like bring your stuff when businesses are closed.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Which sounds like a great idea. If I'm at Target Store in the middle of Manhattan or Kmart, which was my favorite place to go to outside of Penn Station. It was like a three-story Kmart.
Speaker 5:Anyways, Eric, everyone, all right, yeah, it was huge it was great.
Speaker 2:So you would like. It makes sense that guy can show up at midnight, that Kmart can unload them and restock the shelves, and when it opens in the morning it's fine. But what they're not thinking about is what about construction, Job site construction? What about a lab? A small lab that's got six people that work there, that's only open business hours. So it's got some issues, which is why it really hasn't worked, Because most places don't have after-hour delivery available. We don't. If someone wants to deliver tire chains to us at midnight tonight, they ain't doing it. We don't have the ability to. That's why it's never worked out before in the past. So, getting commercial trucks out of there, overall, relieving congestion from everybody else. They're also looking at all that increase of money, because there's still going to be a lot of people that go. There's going to be those people that are making half a million dollars a year that are just going to look at that toll and go like yeah, whatever.
Speaker 2:Just pay it A lot of them if they're high enough in their company. Their company is eating it, not them. That will be a perk for certain companies to say like hey, we'll pay your congestion fee.
Speaker 2:They know there's going to be a lot of money incoming to the city. They say we'll see how this goes. They're saying they're going to take all that money and put it into the subway system Mostly. I mean they also say like rapid transit in general, but the bulk of it's going to the subway. And I don't know if y'all spend a lot of time in New York City, if you're listening to this podcast and you spend a lot of time in New York City. I don't mean in a truck, I just mean like out and about New York City subway is amazing and crumbling at the same time. It'll get you everywhere. It's great. It's fairly on time. Fairly it's not great, but it's decent. It goes everywhere, but it's crumbling. It's literally. You can sit there and see concrete like cracking and falling out of the roof. It's crazy how bad a disrepair it is. They've got articles all about like almost all of the delays are crumbling, infrastructure-related repair and maintenance. It's very rarely staffing issues.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 2:So their goal is to take all this money and help beef this system up so that it gets more reliable, right? And then, lastly, they're saying, by having less people in the city, emergency services will have faster times in and out of the city. So if you're having a heart attack, and seconds count, well, if the ambulance is stuck in traffic, not a lot they can do about it. But if there's not that traffic there, get to you and potentially save lives, save your lives, wow.
Speaker 2:So that's what's happening, that's the way they're selling it. They're selling it and it sounds great, right, like at first glance it's kind of like okay, that's kind of cool. We've experienced it, uh, in um, london, london, uh, like england, london, england has it in their downtown area. It's still reasonably congested, there's still a lot of buses and people around, but it's not bumper to bumper. New york city insanity. And the reason it's not is because years ago they actually implemented congested tolling and so they do have people like if you want to take your car in, you get taxed. Now the taxi cabs are exempt, the buses are exempt, the garbage trucks are exempt. You know, those kind of services are exempt. I'm not sure what New York City's doing. I'm sure the taxiicabs will be exempt, but I don't know about Ubers. I'm kind of curious about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was going to ask about Ubers or Lyft.
Speaker 2:Everything I've read hasn't said which way it's going to be. I'm not sure yet, but I do know this.
Speaker 3:Or do you add that on to the person's fee?
Speaker 6:Well, that's interesting, though, because cars have a daily rate they do. They're not paying every time they go in. They're paying a daily rate, yes, so that could be more reasonable.
Speaker 2:I agree Than $9 a day is the cost of doing business.
Speaker 3:Right yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think about a lot of airports. If you do Ubers a lot and you fly in and out of different airports, you'll notice a lot of airports now are charging Uber and Lyft fees.
Speaker 6:Oh yeah, it's one of the reasons.
Speaker 2:Yeah, per ride. It's one of the reasons why, for a long time, uber wasn't in a lot of airports. I mean, like the whole reason I have Lyft on my phone is because I flew somewhere. It might have been Tulsa, oklahoma or something, and Uber wasn't there, and it might have been you, jerry, that actually told me to check out Lyft. I think you were using Lyft a lot back then.
Speaker 4:I was.
Speaker 2:Vince used Lyft a lot, so I downloaded Lyft and sure enough they had cars. And so I was like that's weird and looked it up. And sure enough it's, because Lyft was fine with paying the fee and Uber was like trying to do a hard no and twist the city's arm. Well, long story short, uber's learned that doesn't work with municipalities. Cities don't care, government doesn't care. So now if you take an Uber at one of those places, you'll notice there's always a little airport charge Not always, but a lot of times there is an airport charge.
Speaker 6:If the airport's charging that extra fee, then lift an Uber and pass it on to them Absolutely. Same thing with taxi cabs, though, too. Yes, you know, taxi cabs picking up the airport are charging an extra fee as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and a lot of times they put it in a base rate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly They'll say like oh, the base rate's $4.50, and then it's every so-and-so right. Right, so they're hiding it, but it's there talk about, because I have opinions on it and this is an interesting group of people. We have some relatively conservative people among us, we have some relatively liberal people among us and I thought this would be a fun topic to talk about because, depending on where you're sitting, this either sounds great or horrible. So, as a trucking company that charges the tolls back to the customer doesn't affect us a whole lot because we're just going to pass that on to the customer. So your package that you need us to deliver just got $14.80 more expensive, which on a $3,000 delivery who cares?
Speaker 6:It's nothing, not a huge deal. Not a big deal at all.
Speaker 2:But if you are a small local company like this article talks about, they talk about this guy. He's the head of the I forgot what the name of it was Trucking Association of New York. That's the one so he runs. Trucking Association of New York. That's the one so he runs. Trucking Association of New York. He owns a rapid delivery express company within New York City. All they do is New York City, so New York to New York. They might go to Jersey, but they're not going very far. Sure, and he's talking about how unfair the system is and how the prices on his parcels are so cheap that that toll does add a lot, because he feels like he can't pass that on. And he was saying I think $8,000 a month is what it's going to add that also, saying every time for trucks yes, it is.
Speaker 6:Every time for trucks. That's the point I was trying to make earlier. I realize you hadn't got to that.
Speaker 1:But trucks pay every. It is Every time for trucks.
Speaker 6:That's the point I was trying to make earlier. I realize you hadn't got to that, but trucks pay every time they enter. There is not a daily rate for trucks, and trucks pay more than do cars.
Speaker 3:Yes, but yet they want supplies.
Speaker 6:What's that? Yes, they want supplies. Yeah, it's kind of like Connecticut's tax on trucks, right? It is when, yeah, they want their supplies, but they're taxing trucks coming through Connecticut, absolutely Just passing through using their roads. So I mean, you're still. I'll let you finish what you were saying.
Speaker 3:Eric had something to add.
Speaker 5:You said what I was going to say. It's a tax on trucks that aren't even doing business there. They just need to get to Massachusetts or anywhere else northeast past New York, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Connecticut's is rough like that. Now New York City's tax is only going into Manhattan, so if you're taking the GWB or something, you're not getting taxed on it and they actually have a grid of streets and I don't know.
Speaker 3:So it's the hub of the skyscraper area of Manhattan.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yes, absolutely that, absolutely. That makes sense, it is.
Speaker 3:The congested area.
Speaker 2:So it is streets and avenues below 60th and all the way. That's it. Now they do exclude the West Side Highway, the FDR Drive and the Tunnel Main Roads the West Side Highway, the FDR Drive and the Tunnel Main Roads. So those are like it's a weird interstate that shouldn't be there. There's an interstate on the east side, west side Well, it's on both sides of Manhattan, that's. It's an eyesore. I don't know why they have these. They're not taxing those roads Because they are full-fledged highways. These are more for like surface streets.
Speaker 3:Sure, you're crisscross one way.
Speaker 2:Exactly All of that running the grid of your skyscraper downtown yeah so if you're like coming through a tunnel and you're going to jump on that freeway and then drive it out, they're not taxing you. But if you're coming in and you want to stop at Dunkin' Donuts and then get on that freeway, you're paying. He was saying that again it's going to add about $8,000 a month in his cost for his company alone and again he represents the Trucking Association of New York and they're suing to overturn this, and it seemed like their biggest gripe was what Vince was saying about the unfairness of trucks being taxed per load versus the cars. So it's almost like they're kind of accepting the fee, but not really. But kind of accepting the fee. They just don't like the fact they have to pay every single time.
Speaker 3:So a car can go in, a car can go out, a car can go in 20 times say an Uber like an Uber and he's only going to get charged the $9 for one day.
Speaker 2:Or you drive in, you go to work for a couple hours, you drive up to the Bronx and you have a meeting with someone and you drive back to your office. So you went out of the zone, back into the zone. Then for lunch you popped into Queens to have something to eat for lunch and then you go right back into your zone. You're not paying anymore. You've paid your $9. You're good to go right. Then you drive back home.
Speaker 3:But for the delivery driver for this trucking association, he's going out to get supplies, bringing it back into store. A going out to get supplies, Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Very common for construction sites. So a lot of times, a construction site, you'll go, you'll make a delivery, you'll go right back to the construction site's distribution warehouse. Yeah, staging area, Because in Manhattan there's no staging area. So you really are like, okay, go ahead and bring stack A of 2x4s.
Speaker 5:Right.
Speaker 2:And you go get stack A and bring it back and then, you have to go back and get stack B and be back here in two hours with stack B. So every single time they're getting dinged $14, though not the $9.
Speaker 2:So $14 for a straight truck. They call it a small truck, a single vehicle, commercial vehicle. And then they say it's $22 for a or $21.60 for a two-wheel vehicle, truck, 18-wheeler. So you look at 18-wheeler costs. If that's what you're running in and out with a construction company, $22 per trip in and out is a lot. I mean, that could really rack up a lot, Sure.
Speaker 3:I have opinions. Are you ready for them?
Speaker 2:I am or you have more story. Well, let me just see. I think I've given you all the information, so yeah, let's talk about it.
Speaker 3:I would fight it too, because you're bringing this, especially if you're a smaller company like you said, maybe a construction company or I could picture like a little delivery truck. I know when we did a couple loads into New York City, there was, you know, the bread or the, you know whatever your local deliveries were. So why not a flat fee? Or why not a flat fee for the month for said companies? You know you have 10 trucks. You're going to average the amount of loads into the community.
Speaker 3:So we feel $500 for 30 days would be enough for tax. You come and go as you please. Yeah, you know, like a round number. Ultimately, you're just trying to get money to redo the system. My question is is if you're forcing everybody out of their cars because maybe people don't want to pay and you're putting all those people on the subway, is the subway really holding that many people? How crowded are you going to be? Are you going to have to amp up more trains, more lines like where? Where are you driving the people to the subways? Like that would be my question well, how does?
Speaker 3:that change buses.
Speaker 2:So there's a few things here that's kind of fun. One is they are saying that that's part of the tax, part of the money or the toll, rather is going to go to the subway, because, even though you'll have an increase in ridership, so, like now, the subway is literally getting more money because people are paying to go on the subway. Sure, it's not enough to quickly buy more trains. It's not enough to quickly ramp up your infrastructure, right, you need a lot of money for that. So by this they're able to buy so many trains I forget how many it is. I did actually like I said, this article is specifically on trucking, but I have actually seen other videos and articles on what they're doing and it's quite a few trains. They're buying quite a few cars to be able to handle the influx of people, right? So, yes, from here it's like, oh, that's not good, but they're already starting to invest in buying that equipment, knowing this money's coming, because government's just like a business they can buy on on credit, knowing that, okay, well, this is coming. So they're already doing that.
Speaker 2:The other side to it is the subway. As much as I love the subway and you just heard me say it's great, it goes everywhere. It doesn't actually go everywhere. There are large areas of New York City where the subway doesn't go and, shockingly, those are in predominantly poor areas, so it's making it more difficult for people that are in lower socioeconomic situations to get to the better jobs. So the tax I was referring to is poor tax. People are saying what they've created is a poor tax right. You can only afford to drive your car into the city, so now you have to pay more money because there is no other option, because our subway doesn't go to where you live.
Speaker 3:Sure, so now you've got to take a cab, a bus or whatever.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 3:You have to get to the subway to ride the subway. I get it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I don't know. I like the idea of the tax I do if it's going to help beef up your infrastructure. Also, do there really need to be that many cars down that area? Vince and I did it. How many circles did we do before we could pull over and offload? I think we did six, six loops in manhattan before we were permitted by if you cross the wrong streets, but but permitted by the, where we were delivering to.
Speaker 3:It's now time for your truck to park here yeah we're ready to unload you, but we literally had to do loops around the blocks, for I would say we did three to six loops. But cars, but I thought the people quantity was a lot too on the streets and walking Sure.
Speaker 6:It's a very densely populated area so you can't find parking. But you know the poor people tax has been brought up a number of times in different scenarios when it comes to things like express lanes on highways. In California, around the Los Angeles area, you have the HOV lanes. For a long time we're free. If you were running carpool Two or more in a car, you were free. You couldn't be in there if you were a single. And then they brought on the express lanes where they told you even if you were in a carpool during certain hours and if you were single, you could ride it if you were paying for it.
Speaker 6:You know people who, of lower income, couldn't afford to pay that extra money above and beyond the repairs in their vehicle and fuel to pay that express, so they're stuck in traffic. So on one hand, you're penalizing people that can't afford to pay this tax to use these lanes. On the other hand, if that tax is going towards a infrastructure upgrade or something that benefits the masses versus just the well-to-do, I think I'm okay with charging people with money to help take care of things for the masses, whether it's mass transit or whatever else. It may be Not saying that other folks need to be on a bus or something. But if you're taxing a particular group by choice, not forcing someone look, you make $20 an hour. You're paying this extra tax not that way, but saying, hey, you're choosing to use these lanes and pay this toll. Well, that money is going to go towards something that helps everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I'm kind of torn Well and the city of New York has done a lot of things to improve its public transit options. So, like the city bike thing, they've got city bikes, which is city bikes because it's named after Citibank. They sponsor it, but the city bikes are everywhere. They're free to use. You have to form an account online, but you can check a bike out, ride it and go wherever. And to back that up, the city of New York has put in hundreds of miles of bike paths that didn't used to exist, so now you have dedicated bike lanes as opposed to just trying to ride in the streets, run in people over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they've done a lot of improvement on that because they recognize some people don't want to ride a bus. They of improvement on that because they recognize some people don't want to ride a bus. They would rather get on their bike and go ride somewhere. So they are trying to come up with multiple ways of doing things. When I look at something like well, the subway doesn't go to certain areas and Eric and I have been a victim of this Victim, that's a strong word.
Speaker 5:But we were Subject to.
Speaker 2:Subject to thank you. We picked a hotel out one time we were staying in New York City and we were like, oh, this would be great, let's go and stay at this place. It's an ancient hotel. It's been there since the 1700s and it was a hotel for the sailors when they would come in to the harbor to stay at.
Speaker 2:And it was really cool. They had all these really tiny rooms and then on the corners of the building were the officers for the ship, their places, their rooms and stuff. So it was a really cool experience. So we stayed there. We didn't realize there was no bus, there was no subway, there was no transit at all.
Speaker 5:It was the last building before the Hudson River. Yeah, before the Hudson River there was no transit at all.
Speaker 2:It was the last building before the Hudson River, yeah, before the Hudson River there was no options, so it was literally like get off the subway and we're just going to walk for the next 30 minutes to get there.
Speaker 2:Oh, it was brutal, but it was a cool experience. But we did get to see. So like I do think about that when I think of like there are certain areas of the city that are just not served, and that's where I'm like, okay, that's tricky, but if they are putting more buses on those on the street, if they are, you know, I don't know they're going to expand the subway anytime soon, they really need to work on, um, upgrading and and taking care of what they've got, and then they can think about expanding it some more. Um, so it's not like those new areas are going's, not like those areas are going to get new subways anytime soon. And even if they did, that's two miles of subways, a decade project, a 10-year project. So I like the idea from that perspective. I love the.
Speaker 2:So when you read the numbers of people in London and Paris has done it too, and there's a couple other cities that have done it, that have put this congestion pricing in and cleared up their downtown areas. It's also good for pollution. It gets a lot of pollution out of the city as well, when you look at the response times from EMS and the amount of people that survive time-critical ailments. So not you broke your arm, but again you're having a stroke, you're having a heart attack, you're having a seizure or something like that. It does go significantly up.
Speaker 2:Those cities have seen a dramatic increase and when you look at the polling back in the day, it's a lot of people are against it, they hated it, and if you really look at the numbers today, everyone loves it not everyone, but most people love it, right like most people love that paris is easily accessible downtown, whereas 10 years ago it wasn't. They love that you can easily get into downtown London, whereas again ten years ago you couldn't. And I think over time that's going to happen in New York City as well, but I don't know. I may see where it goes. I've already talked to some friends who hate it and I'm like I get that too. I understand the downside. I understand people don't like it.
Speaker 1:What's your guys' opinion over there on the fellow couch. I'm just curious on the areas where you're saying the subway doesn't go to because I didn't pull up a map or anything. I mean, are those, even in the tolling area, like could they drive to a hub and then get on the subway and without having to be told?
Speaker 2:Yeah, some of the outer places can, but like, if you're in the Bronx and you're trying to get into Manhattan, there's a couple subway lines that go up there and it's all city between the Bronx and New York City. There is no place to park and do that.
Speaker 5:That's true, just extra info. The place you're talking about, from there to the nearest train stop, is an 11-minute walk.
Speaker 4:Jerry, what's your thoughts on this? I'm all for it. I mean, whenever I stop and think about it, whenever you weigh the good with the bad, there's more good than there is bad. There's more good on the outcomes of it. And whenever it comes down to versus a personal car and a truck, there's always going to be more of a cost to do business. Sure, always versus the individual. It's that goes with anything from credit cards. Business cards are always going to pay more. Whenever it comes to you get a business, internet at home or office, you're going to pay double or triple what a home would pay. It's always going to cost more to do business. Those businesses are just going to pass that cost on to more people. You're going to see, like that guy in the article, I think he's going to see a cost but he's just going to turn around and pass that on to the customers. Right, that's what every business in the world does.
Speaker 4:It's the only option we have Right Sure.
Speaker 4:And I remember back in the day, whenever you know they were coming out with redoing health care and Obamacare, whatever everybody calls it I remember Papa John's coming out saying oh well, I'm going to have to raise my pizzas by 87 cents to give health insurance to my staff. Well, I would much rather pay 87 cents more for that benefit of your staff having health coverage and all this other stuff. I would rather pay a little bit more if I choose to take my vehicle into these areas because of the good and the benefits that it all provides.
Speaker 6:The unfortunate thing a couple of unfortunate things there is. There are people that don't have that same attitude as you and don't want to pay the extra 87 cents for that pizza. They want the cheapest thing they can possibly get. The other thing that, and I get you. The other thing, though, is that the companies I can't speak for, pop to Papa John's directly, cause I don't know, but there are a lot of companies, when that happened, decided oh well, our employees are no longer full-time employees, they're now part-time and we're cutting their hours. And those people didn't get benefits from the company because the company decided that that was their way of cutting those costs.
Speaker 6:Speaking of low income, I did dig a little deeper. There is a 50% discount available for low income vehicle owners enrolled in the low income discount plan. The discount begins after the first 10 trips in a calendar month. So if you make 10 trips in at full rate, then you are eligible for the discount. You have to apply for it and prove income. There's also a low-income tax credit for residents where you can get a. If you have an adjusted gross income less than $60,000, you may qualify for a tax credit in the amount of tolls paid. So there are programs here to help people, the lower-income people that have to drive in. There's also exemptions for disabled persons, emergency vehicles, school buses and special government-owned vehicles.
Speaker 1:What about for companies, though? Are they doing the same thing for lower-income companies?
Speaker 5:No.
Speaker 1:Like he was saying, ups, fedex, there's no such thing as a lower-income company.
Speaker 5:I hear what you're saying, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 6:No, if you're a business, you're paying full boat.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:No, but I mean think about what our future commander-in-chief said. He paid no taxes. Like there's a lot of small business owners who make money, but when it comes down to taxable income they don't.
Speaker 1:So there's you know there's small business owners that take it counts as business expense.
Speaker 2:Well, no, they take full advantage of the exchange. The insurance exchange and they get it for next to nothing. And whether that's crooked or smart, it's not for me to decide. Well, is it legal?
Speaker 6:Or is it legal? It is legal, it's legal. It's legal.
Speaker 2:But I learned. So when I went to college I had to take an ethics class and there's ethics and there's legal.
Speaker 6:They're not the same. They're not.
Speaker 2:So that's the question I have when I think about these things. Now we're in a situation where we have a large enough staff that we have insurance benefits for everybody, and so we just joined that plan. That is how we pay for our health insurance. So we're not on the exchange and we're not buying that way. But there's a lot of people to do, A lot of people to do, and it's not illegal. The system was set up for that. So if you can show that you're not making any income, you are getting a low income, even though you run that bakery, even though you have a house in Rehoboth Beach.
Speaker 6:You know what I mean Sure, sure.
Speaker 2:Like if you can show and you can get into it. Now I mean, don't get me wrong, there's a lot of people that go to jail for fraud. So I mean, you know that happens too. But yeah, I'm sure there's going to be people who take advantage of that.
Speaker 3:I do think, though, that there should be some kind of a plan where you're paying a whole number if you're having 40 franz bread trucks yeah going in every 30, 40 minutes probably doesn't happen that quick. It's new york city, let's get real but you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:It might be though but.
Speaker 6:But what I'm saying is if you're having, you happen to have 50 to 100 trucks delivering, whatever it might be coffee beans, so there's a lot of coffee shops.
Speaker 3:Whatever it might be, if you're having multiple vehicles multiple times a day, I do think there should be a cap on it. I think that would be fair. I don't know what that cap looks like, I'm not part of the the courts of making decisions, but I think there should be a cap. And I get where the trucking association guy is saying something's not fair or not right. I hate to say not fair because life's not fair, come on, people, but I do think there needs to be a cap on it of some sort, because that business. I mean, how are you ultimately going to what if you do two bread deliveries to the same company in one day? Are you literally charging them the $24, $28, whatever it's going to be?
Speaker 2:Or flour or whatever. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3:A bakery might have several loads of flour for a 30-day period for a company that has a quantity of so many trucks crossing your street lines, your boundary lines. And that would just be my take. Otherwise, I think the whole thing sounds pretty cool, in my opinion, if it's helping the infrastructure of transportation.
Speaker 2:So I might have a little bit of an insight-ish on that. So he does say how do you pass on these calls to the consumer? Maybe a bigger trucking company like UPS or FedEx can withstand that. I know a lot of small companies can't. He's talking about how a lot of people are trying to get out of the business or reconsider doing business in New York and all that stuff which to me is very reminiscent of when California passed all the original CARB stuff and said you have a DPF filter and then you have to have an SCR filter. So many people I mean who's the guy on the radio that was like stop going to California, russ.
Speaker 6:Limbaugh. I'm just throwing out names, I don't know. Rutherford.
Speaker 5:Oh, Kevin Rutherford, he was like just don't go to California anymore.
Speaker 2:There's lots of freight outside of California. And he's right, there's lots of freight outside of California. But what happened was the people that could go to California started charging more for it. So the same thing is going to happen in New York, Right Like already. If you go to New York and get a double cheeseburger, it's like $6. Where it's here in Ohio it's $4.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Like you're already paying a New York tax because it's so much more expensive. Go to Alaska. That same double cheeseburger is like $8. Like there are some things that come with where you're at regionally, but when he's talking about the big companies can absorb it. So those big companies the UPSs, the FedExs, those giant LTLs that go in and out of New York City, and all the tolls with the GWB and all the parking tickets and all that stuff, what they do pretty much all of them do every year. They go to the city of New York and say, how does $100 million sound? And the city goes sounds good. They write a check for $100 million.
Speaker 2:That's the end of it, so less than what they probably want, Less than what they owe, but it's a quick settle. The city gets their money immediately. Anyway, it may be $10 million, but still it's whatever it is, they're writing a check. They're writing a huge check one that would make all of our eyes water, just to make it go away.
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 2:And so I can't help but wonder are they going to do the exact same thing? They're going to go in without the toll passes, they're going to get all the fees and fines and everything, and then once a year they're going to go into the city of New York and say a year they're going to go into the city of New York and say let's settle for a little less. Yeah like how does this sound?
Speaker 3:Yeah, hmm, it's interesting for sure.
Speaker 2:But a little company can't do that.
Speaker 3:No. So another question is do you have some sort of a I think of Moo Moo car wash, the little scanner on your windshield that's got a chip in it? Are they going to have scanners at every intersection of said street? So when you cross it, it's going to ding you.
Speaker 6:That's absolutely right, and when?
Speaker 3:you leave, it's going to ding you.
Speaker 6:They're pushing E-ZPass, which is their toll thing right now, and using E-ZPass for it, or if you're not using E-ZPass, you'll get the toll by mail.
Speaker 5:New York City owns EasyPass. They are the makers of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, EasyPass is a New York City company.
Speaker 6:Tolls by mail will be more expensive. The prices that Patrick was talking about. Those are all EasyPass prices. If you don't have EasyPass, the tolls will cost more.
Speaker 2:But most of those people already have EasyPass because you have to have it to get in the tunnels, you have to have it to get across the GWB. Every single one of our trucks has it, like it's a super common.
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 2:Especially if you lived in New York.
Speaker 3:But they're going to put these little trackers of some sort.
Speaker 2:Scanning device.
Speaker 6:Change the program.
Speaker 3:But on corners, like on 64th and 5th, oh sure. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:That's probably not a street intersection.
Speaker 3:But you know what I'm saying. They'll have a transponder, so anywhere you're going and you cross it, it's going to go bloop and it's going to ding you.
Speaker 1:So that's what I'm saying. So you're talking about whatever. Well, yeah, it could be every 20, 30 minutes, because their warehouse is here and the company is here. Companies here Across the street, across the street.
Speaker 2:The big ones will be the people like, literally, your bread route people, your milk route people. Anybody that's doing those routes is going to have to re-evaluate those routes. Because if your truck has you go out of the bounds, across the street and back down, across and back up. One truck could rack up $100. You're going to have to re-route your trucks to make sure once they get in the route. They stay in it they stay in it, do everything they can and then leave.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 2:Here's a fun fact.
Speaker 6:I love fun facts. There's already rate increases planned into this thing.
Speaker 2:Well, okay, yes, there is rate increases planned into it. I saw that too. But there's also this thing started at 40% of what they wanted it to be, right, sure. So originally, the city of New York said I'm not going to put this through, I'm going to hold it tight, yada, yada. And when he finally agreed to, they had dropped the prices. Either they dropped it 40% or they went down to 40% of the original. They went down to 40% of the original.
Speaker 6:That's not how I read that. Okay, yeah, so today, for a car peak period, it's $9. In 2028, it goes up to $12. And in 2031, it goes up to $15. For a single-unit vehicle, today it is $14.40. 2028 goes to $19.20. And $24 in 2031. And for a multi-unit vehicle, it's $21.60 today, it goes to $28.80 in 2028 and $36 in 2031.
Speaker 2:What's going to be really fun is when you're over the road, like our trucks are, and you took the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Speaker 5:Which, oh my gosh All the way across, so you're at $100.
Speaker 2:Over $100 before you ever get to New York Well over $100. Then you jump on the New Jersey Turnpike for a couple minutes. Not long. Just pay them, whatever that is. You jump across the GWB, which is another About half of the Pennsylvania term, About half about $50, $60. You cut into New York, you go down into the city.
Speaker 5:And then you've got to get to Bronx Because you've got. Well, not the Bronx, You've got to get to Manhattan.
Speaker 2:You've got to get to one of those customers there and I can't see who the customers are. But both carriers we work with have customers in that area.
Speaker 5:Yes they do you get?
Speaker 2:down there, yep, and then you remember that you had that really great pizza place you wanted to go to and they won't let you, so you bounce out of the area. Yep, go back. Yeah, that's going to be a conversation. Oh, we have to have a conversation.
Speaker 4:We're going to have to monitor this In our position, though I mean that's really going to come from the carrier.
Speaker 2:I mean we're going to Absolutely 100% the big over-the-road guys. A lot of that's going to get passed on to the carrier. If you're paying thousands of dollars to have something shipped, 15 bucks, who cares? It is going to get passed on the carrier. But our situation is because a lot of our teams pop into New York City and they have their little private areas to park.
Speaker 2:you know I'm talking about and uh, I could see one of them easily like hey, let's drive over to fill in the blank street and get a piece of cheesecake or a piece of pizza or something and then drive back and they accidentally pop out of the zone and back into it like when you cross a bridge it's pretty obvious.
Speaker 3:But if it's just like a random street, so maybe that's where they have to take an Uber or walk or the subway, exactly, and we may have to have a little email go out just telling people. Or maybe they get the surcharge pass along to their pizza.
Speaker 2:Sure, you know what? Listen, I'm telling you right now. I'm not even kidding. I've had pizza and I've had cheesecake worth $32 of surcharge. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie.
Speaker 1:My thing is I don't think it's a big deal for it to be going up for the personal vehicles right, because that money is slowly going into the infrastructure for the subway. That's going to grow. More people are going to go on the subway, so it's going to balance each other out. But the truck business isn't going to change. They can't unless they find some other way. Just taking advantage of delivering their stuff. Why are they? Why should they be getting that?
Speaker 2:That's just a new tax. They can't do anything else. In my opinion, that's a new tax. It's just a tax.
Speaker 5:They can't do anything else. In my opinion, that's a new tax. It's not like luxury traveling. Yeah, extra travel, exactly.
Speaker 2:It's the Connecticut thing. It's just a new way to get more money out of trucking in general. It's going to be interesting.
Speaker 3:I'm excited to see the fallout, the blowback, the positives, all directions of it, to see where it goes and, in our industry, with either carrier, see how teams be smart about it and maybe include it or trip plan differently. Hopefully some of our teams are watching this and the hubbub will spread that this is going on and you do need to be. Maybe there's a map. Is there a map?
Speaker 2:where you can download. It's everything south of 60th Street.
Speaker 3:So, you know, be very conscious of your. How many loops around the city are you going to do? Vince and I drove them. Would we have been in that or would we have been in and out, in and out, in and out when we did our loops? I mean, to me that's all part of trip planning and if they're not ready for you to pull up and offload and you do have to make a loop, are you staying within the loop? Are you going to get charged coming in and out? So definitely, I'm excited to kind of see the fallout and the positives, the negatives. Yeah, let us know if you've already experienced it.
Speaker 5:Also for some information. You said it was 63 and south of that.
Speaker 2:The 60th I believe 60th and south.
Speaker 5:So for the record, 59th is the bottom edge of Central Park.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 5:So two streets north of Central Park is where it starts.
Speaker 2:Let us know what you think about it in the comments. Shoot us an email at theouterbeltpodcast at gmailcom. Also known as theouterbeltpodcast at gmailcom. And one more time from the new one.
Speaker 1:The Outer Belt Podcast at gmailcom. Oh, she's in, she's in, she's good she makes the cut.
Speaker 2:Please let us know real quick. What do you all think of Zucchini Bread? We'd love to hear your comments as well on that. Should we keep her or not? It's going to be completely in your hands, and by that I mean mine, so we'd love to hear what you say. If you were like what is this trucking thing they do? The first half had nothing to do with it. The back half had everything to do with it. Jerry, how can we find that out?
Speaker 4:Visit us over at highfieldtruckingcom. You can find out all there is to know about Highfield on there. You can also reach out to us via chat to our recruiting department or give us a call at 833-493-4353. Option 1 for recruiting. They would love to talk to you all day long and tell you all about everything that we do at Highfield.
Speaker 3:That's 833 Highfield Option 1.
Speaker 2:833 Highfield.
Speaker 3:Or 833-493-4353. Option 1. It's so funny Monday through Friday.
Speaker 2:If I have to give that number out, I have to ask him.
Speaker 3:Every time it's a text 8-3-3 Highfield.
Speaker 2:In the meantime, until we see you next week. Welcome back to second part of season.
Speaker 3:Happy 2025.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 4:Season three.
Speaker 2:Oh, I thought you were saying 2023. I'm like no.
Speaker 3:That indeed is real. 2025, season three.
Speaker 2:Yes, we have some great things planned for y'all. We have some fun to be had, and I'll keep it short. Looking forward to good times and warm weather, yes sir 72 days. Drive safe. Make good decisions. Don't leave money on the table.
Speaker 4:And keep those wheels a-turning. Good night, bye, bye, bye. Thank you, bye.