The OuterBelt's Podcast
The OuterBelt's Podcast
The Liftgate Saga: Why Hyfield Chooses Specialty Equipment
Would you invest $12,000 in equipment that most competitors skip? We dive deep into why Hyfield Trucking equips nearly all our straight trucks with lift gates—a decision that goes against industry norms but creates strategic advantages at Panther and FedEx.
This equipment choice opens doors to specialized, higher-paying freight opportunities while earning additional pennies per mile that pay for the lift gate within 2.5 years. We explore how lift gate technology has evolved from rust-prone steel decks to modern galvanized beams with aluminum platforms that look brand new even after years of service.
The conversation reveals fascinating behind-the-scenes stories about handling specialized cargo, from NASA shipments requiring extensive safety protocols to seemingly ordinary vending machines that mysteriously demand air-ride suspension. We share how hazmat endorsements and specialized equipment like lift gates can move your truck to the front of the dispatch line.
We also examine Bubba AI, an emerging autonomous dispatcher designed for independent truckers that can search load boards, negotiate rates, and even translate communications for drivers with limited English proficiency. This technology promises to level the playing field for small carriers but raises important questions about AI decision-making in freight transactions.
Looking for CARB testing information for California runs? Our sponsor OTR Services provides mobile testing options in Columbus, Ohio. Visit otr-services.com to keep your truck compliant and avoid hefty fines when operating in California.
Email us: theouterbeltpodcast@gmail.com
Website: www.hyfieldtrucking.com
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And go. And then I just was thinking like we can get you like a nice throw or a, not a moo-moo, that's the wrong thing.
Speaker 4:We don't want you in a moo-moo.
Speaker 2:A sweater vest, perhaps That'd be nice.
Speaker 4:A sweater vest. I could see you in a sweater vest, smoking coat, a smoky jacket yes.
Speaker 2:We could have three of you.
Speaker 1:Hey.
Speaker 5:Joanne's has lot of fleece. Holy, oh, so many. I feel like most of the store was fleece If you bring your pet in there, you got to get a fleece shot first. Yep, sad, but true Sad.
Speaker 2:We might have heard a little rumor about May. May.
Speaker 1:May might be their ending period.
Speaker 2:Of what?
Speaker 1:Of Joanne's.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:Heather and I went shopping for material for the choo-choo, for the infamous birthday choo-choo.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:Successful.
Speaker 2:No, not that, the other thing. And you went shopping for that and Vinyl.
Speaker 1:Oh, and vinyl Forgot that we Well, yes, vinyl, because we've talked about that on another episode.
Speaker 2:So I had hit up two stores.
Speaker 1:There's five total. On Sunday, Zucchini Bread and I made it a two for one and we hit up the other three stores which are sort of the northeast to the southeast side, and then we looped around and we caught the one on Broad Street. So we did four out of five stores on Sunday.
Speaker 5:So would you say that you just kind of traveled the outer belt? We did travel the outer To all the different joint stores. Yes, it was the outer belt.
Speaker 1:However, when we first started, she didn't put us on the outer belt. She took us some back way, and it was not the back way that I'm used to leaving from my house to go to Polaris and she is Siri. Google Maps Usually she takes me out and then up through Powell, which is just like the little neighboring city, and then straight shot over to Polaris, right on whatever highway that is 743, I think it is. She had me going back streets.
Speaker 5:Did you have a way to avoid highways?
Speaker 1:I thought about that because we had gone on date night on Saturday where we had actually turned off my GPS to avoid highways because we wanted to take the scenic route.
Speaker 2:But no, she was off, so you and Zucchini Bread went on date night the night before. That's what I heard too.
Speaker 1:No, no, no.
Speaker 5:I'm sorry how was it Vince and I went on date night on.
Speaker 1:Saturday night Zucchini bread and I went Joanne shopping on Sunday, but anyways, a very unique route. She took us to get to the northeast section of the outer belt and it avoided the freeway.
Speaker 2:But the remainder of it was all the outer belt. What I understood was that Google Maps, the AI, has gotten smarter, and so you were playing the song Makes Me Want to Take a Dirt Road, and then you followed that with Dirt Road Anthem or whatever the other one is, and it just got confused.
Speaker 1:Well, and Heather and I both talked about that. I'm like maybe she thinks I'm still on there and hasn't quite gotten off of avoid highways Because I did turn it off.
Speaker 3:There were mushy love songs on the radio so maybe it's still thought there was carryover from the night before I had Yacht.
Speaker 1:Rock on which Vince? And I didn't even listen to Yacht Rock on our date night. We listened to Murder, mystery, sword and Scale, so I don't know how she could think I was still on a date. As one does, when you're on a date night, you listen to A murder podcast.
Speaker 2:Murder podcast how to Kill your Significant Other Yep and get away with it. But they never get away with it.
Speaker 4:No, they don't. That's the secret.
Speaker 2:Well, if they got away with it, they wouldn't have much of a podcast, would they no?
Speaker 1:But anyway, joanne's is. We heard they still have a lot of backlog in their main warehouses.
Speaker 4:So for those of you that are, interested in Joanne's.
Speaker 1:We've got a little bit of time, Cool, Don't wait though.
Speaker 2:And so we're going down to the Mid-America Truck Show this week, which, if you're listening to the show, we've actually already been to the Mid-America Truck Show. But are we going to hit every single Joe-ins between here and Louisville?
Speaker 1:I don't think so. I think I have enough.
Speaker 2:Vinyl.
Speaker 1:Oh vinyl.
Speaker 5:We actually found two rolls of vinyl in storage today that you forgot you had. No, I knew they were there.
Speaker 2:Oh okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I knew they were there. Is's the right kind of vinyl or is that the cupboard? Final, no, that is by the right pedal. I don't know, I don't how often our seats gonna need to be repaired oh well, I mean we've done it three times in the three years. I've been off the road and then zucchini break.
Speaker 2:Can you go grab my crystal ball yeah.
Speaker 1:So I don't know. I did grab one extra color that isn't really in the repertoire but I thought maybe it might be. It's kind of a gray.
Speaker 2:Could be fun.
Speaker 1:I got gray, just plain gray. This was a gray, that was kind of a weird color, but I'm like. Heather just sent me a picture of blue cushions Bright blue. I said I don't know that I've ever been in that truck, or seen that truck.
Speaker 2:Is it the Western Star?
Speaker 3:It has a blue table. That's a very old color scheme.
Speaker 1:It's like sky blue. I don't know, Not quite royal blue.
Speaker 3:It's like a cross-scene royal blue and sky blue. Well, not even sky blue, I don't know.
Speaker 5:Not quite royal blue no it's like a cross-scene royal blue and sky blue.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's like that blue. That's great for the radio show. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's an old color scheme. We actually had a truck, our third truck we bought. Our third truck we bought was the same blue color scheme, then it was a 2009,. I want to say yeah, because you called it.
Speaker 5:Big Blue, or something I called it Blue. Yep, that was the name of the truck.
Speaker 2:It was Blue. So that was the surprise when I saw this truck and we walked inside and I'm like, oh my gosh. Like what a throwback. And it's a 2022 or whatever.
Speaker 1:It's a newer truck, but I think that the material, the vinyl that I purchased for stock I think you know the grays, the tans, black, I think somewhere something will eventually match.
Speaker 2:Well, and if we never?
Speaker 1:have to use it. We can always make like pillows.
Speaker 2:Yeah, vinyl pillows for use outdoors.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah for all outdoors, right, yeah, yeah For all weather pillows.
Speaker 2:All weather pillows but.
Speaker 3:I also think maybe For your patio seats and stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, some of the trucks are not so brand new, so maybe that wear and tear is happening.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So maybe more seats might need to be replaced.
Speaker 3:Or not replaced. Refurbished P refurbished possible repaired.
Speaker 2:It's possible. You know, a lot of times too, when people hear us talk about recovering these seats, it's uh, because they they take the vinyl. They may put a fancy something in seam or something in there and that'll bust and then, yeah, it's ripped so you can't resew it. It's just something we deal with. We get stock. I like it.
Speaker 1:We're prepared.
Speaker 2:And we're not really out that much money because a lot of it's on sale, right.
Speaker 1:It was at 40%, I believe 40% off. Most of the entire store was at 40%. Some of the candles and decorations and their home decor was still at 20%, but most of the material was at 40%.
Speaker 2:I wonder what their actual cost on that kind of stuff is.
Speaker 1:The one store had zero thread and most of Joanne's if you've ever been in Joanne's have huge circular kiosk of thread, displays thread and most of Joanne's if you've ever been in Joanne's have like huge circular, like kiosk of thread displays, yes, and like a triangular, both sides, all your different kinds of silk, whatever embroidery.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thread.
Speaker 1:We went in, I think two of the four stores had zero thread.
Speaker 2:I remember going to Joanne's as a kid with my mom and people were like y'all talked about this already and we would go over and we'd have to find the right Run DMC number.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And that was always fun for me to have to search through this wall of Run DMC and you find the right one and you're like I got it, I got it.
Speaker 1:What were you going to say, Vince? Oh, you had a thought.
Speaker 5:I did.
Speaker 1:About Joanne's 20%, 40%, no thread.
Speaker 5:Oh, I was going to say you know, at this point the inventory in Joanne's has been sold to a liquidator, so it's no longer the Joanne's company selling the stuff. They sell all their inventory to a liquidation company that then comes in and sells it and they make as much as they can profit from what they bought the stuff from Joann's for Sure.
Speaker 1:They did have like a two yard minimum on most of the two yards I saw a couple that were three yards, but I don't know what that might have been like. The upholsteries something like that, but all of the regular bolted fabric was a two-yard minimum. No returns, no personal checks, no gift cards. You know all the things you're doing when you're going out of business.
Speaker 5:Mel was telling me too that she saw something in the Joanne stores a sewing machine of some sort and that when you go to the manufacturer's website the MSRP was less than what Joanne said their normal price was. So she said they're marking things up to the regular price to then discount them, so you think you're getting a good deal on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we only saw one store out of all of them that had sewing machines.
Speaker 3:There were a couple.
Speaker 1:They all had something different, Like they were stocked with things different. One out of the four stores. There was literally a 45-minute wait to get just your material cut.
Speaker 3:The others. That could have been the time of day that we got there. There was like a prime middle of the day.
Speaker 2:That's the best time to get your fabric cut.
Speaker 4:In the prime of the day.
Speaker 3:We all know that right. Now, if you go sub-prime, much easier Because the first place we went was still early and they had just opened. There was hardly anybody there.
Speaker 2:People are still sleeping Breakfast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, especially on a Sunday Church.
Speaker 2:Whatever, sunday brunch, sunday brunch, sunday supper.
Speaker 1:It was a successful Sunday outing. It sounds fun.
Speaker 5:It could have been at the dirt track, could have been Sunday.
Speaker 2:Sunday Sunday Sunday Monster jam Did Sunday Sunday Monster Jam, Did y'all go get coffee we?
Speaker 1:did, we did. Where'd you go?
Speaker 3:Sweet Waters Coffee and tea, Okay well.
Speaker 1:In Polaris, I know.
Speaker 3:I was a little disappointed too, but she's still.
Speaker 2:you know we have this really good place here in Columbus. It's a boutique place, it's Starbucks and it is fantastic.
Speaker 5:I've heard that Very, very consistent.
Speaker 2:Every one I've been to tastes exactly like the last one.
Speaker 1:Theirs was good. I could have used more ice. For some reason in an iced Americano we don't use enough ice, so when I get it tonight Is it always that way? I've noticed.
Speaker 5:We've had a couple. We had one Saturday. That was that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you and I did it coffee day, so it's more of a chilled Americano, not an iced Americano. Yeah, Like, by the time you get it you only have three little half ice cubes floating.
Speaker 2:Now, if you could never find a good Americano, what does that?
Speaker 1:say Well, we have found one.
Speaker 5:One we found good Americanos.
Speaker 3:We found a couple.
Speaker 5:We found bad Americanos. I asked Melissa. I said are we just coffee? Ignorant because we don't like the way these really popular places, popular local places, make their coffee. Is it just us being just? We like regular coffee as opposed to this fancy stuff.
Speaker 1:Well, most people are getting all the syrups and the whipping cream, and so you don't even taste the coffee, correct, whereas we're doing just iced espresso with heavy cream on it, yeah no, I agree.
Speaker 2:I think that's the case because I I drink, you know, a lot of times I'll just get espresso like yeah nothing else. I'm not even getting the cream, like that's. Give me your shot espresso, don't put a lid on it, I'm gonna just pound just as I get it. And so many of these places have really bad espresso. But if you get a, uh, chocolate, mocha, sippy, uh, when nixie right, then uh, you can't tell.
Speaker 2:You're like, oh my gosh, this is really good chocolate it really is, and what's funny is, when you get all these places, they're all using the exact same syrups and and everything it's. So it's okay. Well, all you did was really just kind of change a feature here or something.
Speaker 2:Well, last week we were talking about a bunch of different things and we mentioned that we had run out of time, unfortunately because we had such an interesting conversation going on that we weren't able to talk about trucks. And I said you know what, this week let's go ahead and start with that. Let's get that out of the way, that way we don't again run over. So we've been talking. Last year at the end of last year we were talking a little bit about the story of Highfield, why we do the things we do, how we came to the truck specs and all these different things, and so I kind of wanted to keep writing that out.
Speaker 2:A little bit more about truck specs and kind of a semi-controversial thing that we do on our trucks, and that is, we, with the exception of three trucks, we put lift gates on every single one of our trucks. So a lift gate, if you don't know, that's the big platform on the back of the truck that enables you to take a pallet from the ground and bring it up to the air to make it level with the back of the truck, and then you can take a pallet jack and bring your cargo on into the truck and bring your cargo on into the truck. And if you look at our two big carriers, fedex and Panther on FedEx, most of the FedEx trucks you see have them and if you look at Panther, most do not.
Speaker 1:Correct Outside of our fleet.
Speaker 2:Outside of our fleet. So the question becomes why?
Speaker 2:do we do that and what's the benefits, right? So at FedEx, where we got started back in 2012, if you ran a dry box which means you don't have a reef ring on your truck, they didn't require a lift gate. There's six I want to say four bars and six and six straps was all the equipment you're required to have and you could take that and go run car parts and all this stuff no big deal. Once you stepped up into their temperature validated fleet, at the time they actually had it broken out between white glove and surface freight. Surface freight was generic car parts and things like that. White glove was more hands-on stuff, right? So back in those days you could actually be a white glove dry van or a white glove temperature control truck, t-valve truck, and so Eric and I were.
Speaker 2:We got into white glove, so we started with a service truck. And so Eric and I were. We got in the white glove, so we started with a service truck. Then we got into a dry van no lift gate, very basic. Then we got into the reefer freight, so we got into white glove that way in the reefer business. And then the next truck we bought was a dry van, white glove truck, and we operated that, had a, a lift gate, we had pallet jacks, we had like 10 load bars, 12 straps, 24 blankets, back in those days um wow uh, dolly, tripod dollies and furniture dollies like a lot of equipment in the trucks and remember those days.
Speaker 2:I do and, um, we had a lot of customers at that point that used a lot of that stuff. We had, uh, casino customers, so we were doing slot machine runs all across america don't require temperature control, but they require a lot of hands-on care. Um, we were doing government freight. We were doing a lot of chemical um, gas, those kind of places, moving doers and cylinders and all that stuff, and so it was a really good business to be in where you could also haul the car parts and everything. But you could then haul this additional freight, and so that was what we did. But part of the white glove requirements were a lift gate. You had to have one. So that is kind of how we started down that road of okay, we're going to go ahead and start making sure we have liftgates on our trucks, because for the white glove side of FedEx it was required. Now, a few years ago, fedex changed what they did and they pretty much got rid of using the white glove name, surface name. Now it's pretty much dry and ree and reefer freight. So they have temperature validated freight and they have dry freight. That's the way they differentiate themselves now. So there's not really any more white glove drive-in trucks, um, and they are still mandating that if you run a t-val truck which is temperature validated, which is a temperature controlled truck and mostly used for pharmaceuticals, that equipment has to have a lift gate on it.
Speaker 2:Wow, so, uh, we went to panther and started that process up. We looked at how do we want to spec out the trucks? Right, we know we want to work with panther. We're going to build trucks specifically for them, because panther doesn't really do temperature freight on their dry side, I mean on their on their, uh, straight truck side. They only really do dry freight. So we were like all right, we want to come over to panther, we want to come in with a bang and we want to differentiate ourselves by something. What is it? So we chose to go a couple different ways. Well, first and foremost, custom sleepers. I think that's pretty much what we're known for in the industry is all of our trucks have custom sleepers on them and they're really nice trucks.
Speaker 2:So that was one thing we did, because that wasn't standard back then. It's still not standard today. There's still a lot of factory sleepers at Panther A lot of them but there's more custom sleepers than there used to be. We committed to doing heavy-duty trucks, so these are trucks with three axles instead of two axles. And then we looked at the liftgate situation and decided we already have liftgate trucks in our fleet. We already know how they run.
Speaker 2:Let's give it a shot at Panther. For a couple different reasons. One is to open up freight opportunities at panther outside of automotive freight. So this does open up stuff to trade shows. They do some of that uh, air gas type stuff where you can pick up cylinders and those things around. They do work with some of the auction houses that require it.
Speaker 2:So panther does have a need for it. So we're like all right, there's not many of them and they have a need, let's provide that need. And the second thing that really helped us out with it is panther pays a little extra on your rate per mile if you have a liftgate, and so because of that we looked at it and ran the numbers and basically said about two and a half years into the truck that extra pays for the lift gate. So it's kind of a win-win right like our teams make a little bit more money for every mile they run because we have that lift gate on the truck and in two and a half years it's ran enough miles that the lift gates paid for, so it didn't really cost us extra. We we put the money up front but we recouped it back.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:And we're able to haul that freight that no one else is able to haul. So that's how we started and that is the reason we put lift gates on our trucks at Panther. A few years in we did move and built several two-axle trucks at Panther not three-axle still put the lift gates on them and had pretty good success with that for a while. We still think that there's more market in the three-axle trucks, so we went back to that, back to the three-axle trucks, after experimenting with the two-axles for a while and we did do some. Actually relatively recently was it the beginning of this year, end of last year? I think it was the end of last year we did some non-Liftgate trucks. So we have three non-Liftgate trucks over at Panther and right now I can't tell you how they're doing versus the Liftgate fleet because we don't have enough data.
Speaker 5:It hasn't been long enough. It hasn't been long enough, it hasn't been long enough.
Speaker 2:So you know, I really need a good year of information to know how it compares. But right now we do have those trucks out there running. We're not really getting complaints. Those trucks haven't come back to us, no they haven't. They're still out there running, which is a good sign.
Speaker 3:The truck hasn't come back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so come back. Yeah, um, so we are. It's only because we want to tap into the automotive freight. And um, when I say that, you might be thinking like, well, if a truck's got a lift gate, why can't it haul automotive freight? Excellent question patrick and uh vince, I think you would be best person to answer this, since you had to deal with this. You and your lovely lady were running the roads for Panther.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so the biggest issue with automotive freight is when you pick up or deliver at a automotive facility. When you go to any loading dock most loading docks these days uh, they have an arm that actually comes out from the ground. It raises up and grabs onto your bumper. It's mechanical, this mechanical arm that locks onto your bumper so you, the truck, can't pull away from the dock right. Well, with lift gates you don't have that bumper because it's taken off with the lift gate on for the arm to lock into.
Speaker 5:Now, some places they get a supervisor with a key and they can overwrite that. So if you drive a truck, you know what the little box looks like where they control the arm and the door. If you don't, there's a box inside the door that has buttons. You raise the door and you raise the arm, or you raise the door and you raise the arm, and if the arm can't latch on to something, it never gives a green light inside to allow someone to go onto your truck yeah and in a lot of places it is against their policy for someone to go into the truck without a green light showing on their side.
Speaker 5:So sometimes places you know they talk to you, you know, can you dump your airbags, drop your landing gear?
Speaker 5:and then they'll talk to your wheels and then some places they want your keys as well to make sure you don't drive away before they're ready for you to. So some places they'll call a supervisor over. They'll make sure you're doing those things. They'll use their key to override the box and allow their people to go inside either unload or load your truck. So there are some facilities that will not take a truck with a liftgate and no IC bumper. They would just flat out refuse to take your truck. Whether they're loading you or unloading you, they just will refuse. They do not allow any override at all. So in those instances, or in a lot of instances where we might get a dispatch that says no lift gates, yeah.
Speaker 5:And we'd have to call dispatch and say well, I've got a lift gate, and there were some where they knew they'd override it and others really didn't, and we didn't lose. I think we may have lost one load because we had a lift gate.
Speaker 2:That we were aware of.
Speaker 5:But we had plenty of other loads that it didn't bother us. We weren't thinking am I not getting freight because I have a lift gate?
Speaker 5:You know, we just didn't know, because we just didn't get the offers. We had one load where we got the load offer sent to us. It said no lift gate. We called before we took the load and said, hey, it says no liftgate and we lost that load. But you know, it didn't hurt us a whole lot overall, but to have access to that freight would be great if we didn't have a liftgate. Yeah, yeah. On the other hand, we had access to loads that required a liftgate.
Speaker 5:A lot of them, a lot of them, and we could maximize those loads, because a lot of times those loads came with either a hand unload or a hand load yes, using our liftgate, and we could maximize our income on those loads, because now you need my labor in my liftgate. Let's talk.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, it's definitely a marketing chip, for sure, and that's what we've seen throughout the years of the liftgate services. It gives you the opportunity to maybe get a little extra bump in revenue on labor and, of course, highfield pays the labor to the teams 100%.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so it's a little bit nicer to get more of that money, like just the quantity of loads and plus, like what I like about Panthers they're not dumb, so they know if I've got a truck. You know that I need a truck in Dallas, texas, no New York City. I've got to pick a load up from New York City. There's an auction house up there. I need a lift gate. They look at their board. There's no lift gate trucks anywhere near New York City. I've got to pick a load up from New York City. There's an auction house up there. I need a lift gate. They look at their board. There's no lift gate trucks anywhere near New York City. But they'll look and they'll see that like all right, well, this truck's sitting in Laredo, I've got these loads coming out and this load goes to Pennsylvania.
Speaker 5:It goes to Philadelphia, it goes to Philly, it goes to Philadelphia it goes to Philly, it goes to Philly.
Speaker 2:Let me get that liftgate truck on this load, right, get them up there, and then they'll be available to do that load. Sure, and sometimes you know whether or not they'll admit it, I don't know, but sometimes that bumps you to the top of the list, right? So maybe you're really the fifth person out that day, but because we need that truck in New York, you just became the first person out on a long load. They did the same thing with hazmat.
Speaker 5:That's why we encourage all of our drivers to get hazmat.
Speaker 2:if they don't have it, they pay a little extra per mile and they will absolutely move your truck if they need you for a hazmat load somewhere else.
Speaker 5:We had that happen with one of the teams we mentored. They were sitting in Castaic, at the pilot there in Castaic and they were talking with what state is that? California, california sorry.
Speaker 5:Just north of Los Angeles, south I-5,. Sorry, they were talking with another Panther team. It wasn't a high field team, but another Panther team and the other team was number one on the board. They were number two on the board and, as they're talking to the team, they got a phone call with a load offer. It wasn't hazmat, didn't require lift gate. The other team's like well, why are you getting that call? We're sitting here side by side. Yeah, well, it turned out their next load was a hazmat load and Panther was moving the hazmat team closer to that load. So yeah, they were not number one. Panther does things differently now as far as how they dispatch and load board position, but it worked out for them that they had the qualifications for that second load and they got paid to get to that second load.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely those little things make a huge difference.
Speaker 5:Oh sure.
Speaker 2:And you know, we get a lot of pushback on like I don't want to get a hazmat, it's just a bunch of money. And then do I really want to haul hazardous freight? Well, the one thing I'll say about Panther versus FedEx is Panther doesn't haul anything nasty.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 2:Everything is very basic, flammable, which is pretty safe. I mean most of that stuff that Panther holds. Even if you get in a wreck, you're not really I'm choosing my words carefully you're not really in danger. Danger Of exposure, yeah, of exposure it's more of you just need to know to tell people don't approach your truck and when fire services get there, let them know hey, this chemical's on my truck so they can handle it.
Speaker 2:Fedex, on the other hand, totally different story. They handle nasty, nasty. So I get some of the trepidation there. But again, both carriers are non-forced dispatch. So you see something you don't like don't take the look.
Speaker 5:We get trucks back sometimes and they'll have a stack of extra hazmat placards. And I look at the FedEx ones and I'm like yeah, no, thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm good. I got very comfortable with it because that's what we did so much of it over at FedEx. You follow the PPE, you follow the rules. When you have poison inhalation hazards in your truck, you open the box while you're standing upwind of the door Like if you do everything right it's fine, yeah, it's fine.
Speaker 2:Again, the nice thing about Panther is they don't have all that stuff, and the reason I'm talking specifically about Panther versus FedEx is they are. Panther is the one that's really good about deadheading and routing a team to where they need to go Not deadheading, but giving them loaded miles. Fedex doesn't do any of that stuff. It's a much screwier situation. Panther's much better about this than FedEx is, and I love FedEx. Don't get me wrong, but this is one area that Panther kills FedEx.
Speaker 2:To circle back to the liftgate thing that's one reason why we've kept them and why I've kept putting them on trucks. We did so. Panther did tell us they're getting a little more automotive freight and so that's why we are experimenting with those non-liftgate trucks to see how that compares revenue-wise. But there's still a good amount of demand for the liftgate freight, which is why we're still putting them on the trucks. The other thing that is one of the reasons why we're experimenting with the no-liftgate trucks is when we first started buying these trucks, a liftgate it was $6,000 or so installed and today they're bumping $12,000.
Speaker 2:They've literally doubled in price since we started doing it. So yeah, it would be a nice thing. I will say this for liftgate technology it's come a long way. The liftgates we put on today are galvanized steel beams with aluminum decks. So in five years they look brand new. They look, great they look awesome, those old school, like we just got rid of one, your old truck.
Speaker 4:We just said bye to y'all's first truck we did.
Speaker 2:But that truck had the old-fashioned, jerry, do you remember these? They were the black steel decked lift gates. So, like Layman or whatever, you know what I mean. Like when you opened them up it was black steel, it wasn't aluminum, and after like two years of being on the road they were just covered in rust. Yeah, oh, you never had one like that. No, I didn't oh you never had one like that. No, I didn't.
Speaker 5:Child Spoiled rotten when you go to unfold it. You got to get your whole body weight into it to unfold because they were so heavy.
Speaker 2:They're so heavy and they had that little lip on them right away. Right, you immediately have to go up a little two-inch hump to get onto the deck so we moved to aluminum very quickly after getting these steel lift gates. It was a couple years. We might have built five, if even that four or five of these steel decks and we were like we hate the black ones. How much would it be if we went to aluminum decking instead of having that black steel? And it was dirt cheap.
Speaker 1:It was like nothing.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, oh, I wish I would have known this ahead of time. So we moved to those. Yes, sorry.
Speaker 3:Does that help with weight as well? It?
Speaker 2:does. Yes, those aluminums are quite a bit lighter than the steel decks and you can tell when you open them and close them.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:It's quite a big difference, which is good for the truck. It means you can haul more freight, right. So we did that. So we have a bunch of gates that are the aluminum decks, but they've got the black iron arms.
Speaker 5:Supports.
Speaker 2:Supports, and then it was probably four years ago that they came out with a galvanized option, uh, for those supports. So now our gates are galvanized steel, which is that kind of white, not white silvery looking, I don't know yeah, telephone pole looking thing silver, um. And then they have the aluminum gates and that's my favorite combination so far. They again. Five years from now they look, or I guess four years they look brand new.
Speaker 3:They look like they really do.
Speaker 2:Now their cart stops may not work. We may have to get a couple things. We put the remotes on them, so if you are sitting next to the gate you can raise and lower it with the switch. But if someone's in the back of the the truck, they can actually operate it with the remote and it's a wired remote and those things get corroded. They do.
Speaker 2:I've repaired more than a few yeah, and so those things gotta get replaced every now and then. But the actual gate itself looks great and that's such a big boost when you are using it, and that's that's such a big boost when you are using it. It's not covered in rust, right? Um, because even on that black steel a lot of that rust would. It would eventually eat through the metal, but it it wouldn't right away. It just looked ugly like it's not structurally damaged, no, it's just's, just the presentation is horrible.
Speaker 2:You're loading a 200 pound doer of helium or something like that on this rusty liftgate. It just looks funny. That's all I'm saying. I'm really happy with our liftgate game right now. We've experimented. We did layman's, we've done Waltco's. We have two Maxons that are brand new. I'm anxious to see how those go.
Speaker 3:They're brand new to us.
Speaker 2:They're a couple years old, a couple of.
Speaker 5:Palfingers.
Speaker 2:A couple of Palfingers. So we've experimented.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of manufacturers out there of Liftgates. Huh, there are.
Speaker 2:Maxon and Waltco are probably the biggest.
Speaker 4:I was about to say, they can haul the most weight right compared to Lehman.
Speaker 2:So it depends on what you buy. All these manufacturers have different levels of gates. Actually, the layman, the two-cylinder layman, can haul 4,500 pounds, whereas a Walt Co can only haul 4,000. Now, that being said, having worked at liftgate quite a few times, I never want 4,000 pounds at liftgate.
Speaker 2:That's way too much for one person to control. If it gets loose it'll run you over. It's a lot of weight, you don't need anything like that. That's way too much for one person to control. If it gets loose it'll run you over. It's a lot of weight. It's a lot of weight, you don't need anything like that.
Speaker 2:But those Waltcos I like a whole lot better than the Lehmanns, because you ever driven behind a liftgate or a truck with a liftgate and you see the black tube and there's that shiny metal piece that comes out of it and it's just like, while the gate is tucked away and closed, you, while the gate is tucked away and closed, you see that pretty shiny piece of steel. Walt Co does it the other way around. So when a Walt Co is collapsed, you don't see that shiny piece of silver. All you see is the little black tube and the silver comes out when it actually is being used Right. And so what this does is it keeps all the road grime and salt and everything off of that actual tube which is raising and lowering it.
Speaker 2:So it's way more reliable. Nowhere near as many breakdowns. Lehman's having all that exposed. We replace cylinders all the time with Lehman and their customer service was terrible. I mean they made a really great gate. It was a solid gate. They were fairly reliable. But we did have to replace those cylinders quite a few times and I mean they're probably $600, $700 of cylinders so you don't really want to replace them, whereas the Waltcos very rarely do we have to replace a cylinder. So that's why we've kind of stuck with Waltco, even though it is a little bit less capacity gate who cares?
Speaker 5:We're not using that much. I mean, we have a 2,500 pound gate on our truck. Yes, we have 2,500. I think all of our trucks have 2,500 pound gates and you're rarely getting that much weight on one skid, or a long skid even.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5:If you're putting two skids on there, you might get up there, but chances are, if the skids are that heavy, they're using a forklift on a dock. Absolutely Not very often you're taking that much weight off on a on a lift gate.
Speaker 3:we had one time it was a art sculpture thing and it was about as long as the box. Okay, so it was.
Speaker 2:We were able to get it loaded with forklift, but they didn't have the dock yeah, when we unloaded, that was fun and because we do put the lift gates on, we do put pallet jacks in the trucks, we do put the dollies in. We don't necessarily do the tripod dollies, although I think we have a few floating out there, but we don't buy them anymore.
Speaker 2:We do put the tin bars in there. We put the dozen straps so that they're equipped for if you do go to a trade show where they're going to load you up with a bunch of boxes that are just randomly placed, you can strap them down easily.
Speaker 2:Or if you do an art thing, or if you do an auction thing that maybe you have to have a blanket for, or something. We don't do the 24 blankets anymore, we do a dozen. We do a dozen, we do a dozen. We step that down because you get to a point where even at a dozen it's super rare you'd use more than a few.
Speaker 2:I remember back in the day one of FedEx's customers. It was a slot machine customer. They were ones that man. They would use every blessed blanket, which makes sense, if you're sure, if you're telling slot machines that stuff's got to look pretty in a casino, it cannot have a blemish on it right sure so they use tons of blankets. Um, but that was really the only customer I could think of, jerry, did you ever have any besides that? That used not use blankets?
Speaker 4:period, because we had a lot that used blankets but used that number of them it was rare, but there were times that we did art loads where we had to use every single blanket, every strap, every bar is that one of those multi like where they would do the the truck pack of like this box had to go with it right here, because if we didn't do it exactly right it wouldn't fit the one that I'm it's coming to mind is uh, we did a load to this huge mansion in beverly hills and that truck was packed from nose to end.
Speaker 4:Yeah, they had to get it in there a certain way and tetris huh everything was used. I mean we even had to go buy more straps because they needed more to make sure that we had enough to get everything to where it went.
Speaker 4:And then I remember I had to like go up the road at the bottom of the hollywood sign, no, and whenever I went to the driveway, the only way to get into the driveway was to back the truck up this long driveway that had like two bins in it and then park. And then, luckily, whenever I got everything up there, we didn't have to touch nothing though, because they had movers and people that was like categoried everything as they took it into the house and all that stuff. But yeah, we had to use everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow.
Speaker 5:We had a load one time we got dispatched on we required 15 straps. The dispatch said you need 15 straps, no problem. I stopped by TA, grabbed the extra straps, had the straps and we used four, no problem. I stopped by a TA, grabbed some extra straps and we used four.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that would happen a lot.
Speaker 5:I would use blankets a lot too, just to protect. If I had to strap something, I'd put the blanket between the cargo and the strap buckle so we wouldn't have anything, just get damaged. That's definitely something we had to worry about with slot machines.
Speaker 5:We had a little time where I did that on a big crate and we get to the other side and they had three engineers and a bunch of other people that worked this place come out to inspect the crate before it came off the truck and they were making notes about everything. It was one of those and I was like I'm glad I put that blanket in there to protect that strap, because this would have been a huge deal.
Speaker 2:We did some stuff for NASA back in the day and they were like that they were super strict on all that stuff. You would be securing it, but they would be overseeing your securement to make sure that you were securing it properly. I would be overseeing your securement to make sure that you were securing it properly. I would always get a kick out of those.
Speaker 4:I understand, because it's really really important. I know you've had these scientists and everybody come out and they've worked on this stuff for years or whatever. I understood why they were doing exactly what you were just describing, but I would always get a kick because then you get to the other end and it would be one person they were just jerking off the truck Exactly.
Speaker 3:That happened to us.
Speaker 2:We did one up at a certain place I'm sure we've all been Breathtakingly beautiful NASA site in the mountains. We had a safety meeting outside the truck. The truck doors were open. We had to drive all the way in the building. There was no loading. That's outside. Inside the building doors are open. We're all standing there, we go through a safety briefing. Everybody knows what they're doing. All the stuff it's one box. It goes to the dead center of the truck and we strap it on, put the furniture pads, we do the load bars and all that stuff right.
Speaker 2:But I mean everybody like okay, mr Fork, love, arterator, so you're going to do this, this, this step and this step, and then, once it's inside the back of the truck, this person's going to pallet jack it to here and then, when you get the pallet jack out, you have to do this, and that it's like everything was so to the T. And then we get to like I don't know one of the space launch pad sites across the country and it was exactly that they came in there with a JLG boom lift and grabbed it out and we're like all right, y'all have a good day. Like no inspection of the box, no, making sure it was fine nothing I feel on the load that Vince is talking about.
Speaker 1:it wasn't so high level on one end, and then we carted it from east coast to west coast. Like jarring roads whatever and then we get to the other end and Vince is is like we had to have a safety meeting.
Speaker 5:Debriefing who's touching?
Speaker 1:what who's? Doing this? What straps coming off first, left or right, whatever you know yeah, like it was highly volatile and I'm like which. It may not have been, but that's that. That was their persona of it and in my head I'm thinking we just did. You know, 2,800 miles on non-bumpy roads. Have you ever been on a?
Speaker 1:interstate yeah and you're all acting like you know this thing needs to be taken off with you know kid gloves and feathers and a pillow of this and don't breathe the wrong way, and yeah uh, it was very unique and I it took longer to get it off than it felt like it took to drive the whole drive.
Speaker 2:Did y'all ever do the crates with the shock sensors?
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, yes, and the tilt sensors, and the tilt sensors and all that.
Speaker 2:That stressed me out. I don't know if it was tilt or shock. I had one of those sensors we show up at an air forwarder to pick the cargo up. It's a big box. It's a big box. I mean it's six foot tall, four foot by four foot. It's a big box and the sensor's already messed up.
Speaker 2:And I'm like nope I took a picture of it and they refused to document it and I sent it out to FedEx and we sat there for hours waiting on the customer on the inn that was receiving this, which had already gone home for the day because we're on the West Coast Sat there for hours while I chased someone down to get them to approve us taking it because FedEx is like I'm not taking that liability and I don't blame them. I didn't want to take it either, because we share in that cargo claim. I'm like no.
Speaker 3:We had one that had to be replaced before we could leave. Same thing when they were putting it on the truck. They juggled it whatever, and so they're like oh crap, so they had to redo it.
Speaker 4:You know, and it goes to show just how well the airbags are on these trucks. Oh, yeah. Because you think we would always get those loads with the shock sensors and stuff and and it's like going across country and you're bouncing and you're rocking and you see that box behind you tilting like this and you just know everything is going to be all blown out.
Speaker 1:Everything's flashing when you get there.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and then you open it up and everything's fine.
Speaker 2:The driver, the cab of our trucks, the driver's seat is the most uncomfortable spot in the truck. It's sad to say, but it's true. If you look at like an entertainer, coach, so like the rock stars, the country artists traveling around the country, when they are going down the road, where are those people sitting? In the very back of the bus, in the lounge, or in the back where their bed is, or whatever? You've got four wheels or, I guess, eight, six, eight wheels under you.
Speaker 2:You've got two axles, you've got multiple airbags. They ride super smooth. That's why that space is back there. Our back of our trucks is the exact same way. Now if you go to the very back of the box, if you just put something on the very back of the box, you get a little bit of that back of the bus, back of the school bus, feeling Right.
Speaker 2:But even that's different, like back when I was a kid. My parents used to always be like back when we were kids our seats didn't have cushion and we had rust spots that we could see right through the floor and the bus driver was smoking, grinding gears or whatever. And I'm like okay, well, I didn't have that. But we did have air conditioning on the bus. We did have heat but not air conditioning, which is great in South Louisiana where you need heat and not air conditioning. But our school buses didn't have air ride suspensions, they had just leaf springs. So you were in the back of the bus, you hit a bump, you'd hit the dang ceiling and fall back down and laugh, laugh hysterically.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You'd be laying in halfway on someone, just whatever. So fun. Nowadays all these buses have air ride suspensions and I'm like these kids will never get the joy of being flown, and going over a railroad track a little too fast.
Speaker 3:They'll never get to experience that they need to go down a gravel road without seatbelts.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yes, exactly, but no. So our cargo gets the premium spot, which makes sense.
Speaker 5:That's where they make the money we had a load one time that requested an air ride truck and we get there and the guy's like you got air ride right? Yeah, we got air ride and they loaded us with two vending machines. They were vending machines for a work site. So, they vended safety glasses and that kind of thing.
Speaker 3:But he was sweating that we had air ride for these two vending machines.
Speaker 5:They were empty. They were empty, yeah.
Speaker 3:Delicate stuff in there. I guess you know the mechanics of a vending machine.
Speaker 2:I will say this Air ride is way more popular today than it was even when Eric and I started this business. When we got started in, air Ride was required for white glove trucks. It was not required for drive-ins at FedEx, and so there were quite a few that were still out there on the road that didn't have Air Ride.
Speaker 2:We never bought a truck like that before and I never would, but it used to be a very common thing. Even nowadays, a lot of like. You've seen these companies. They're buying up old Ryder trucks, old Penske trucks. They're yellow and they cut a sleeper into the front section of the box. If you look at a lot of those, a lot of those are not air ride. Some are, but a lot of them are not so air ride like we. A lot of them are not um so air ride like. We. Take it for granted because we've just always had it. Even when you hauled glass I'm pretty sure y'all had air ride on those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we did um, oh yeah, but it's not like industry standard. Look at amazon trailers. A lot of amazon trailers don't have air ride, like it's super, super common even still. So I get that concern. Although v vending machines All right, you know what that tells me. He had one claim yeah, the truck didn't have air ride and he's spoiled for the rest of his life. We used to do those because we would do those IBM towers. Those were required to ride an air ride truck. They weren't climate controlled or anything like that, but you had to have the air ride suspension so they always went white glove.
Speaker 1:What if it's like a magnet or a scale or something in them? Like a magnet or a scale or something in them?
Speaker 2:Could be. Could be Electronics, plastic glass, who knows? Alright, well, so that's lift gates for you. I got really nothing else to say about it. I know it's a fascinating conversation fascinating. Who would think we'd have so much to say about a lift gate?
Speaker 5:we all have our experiences with them, though it's a very uplifting subject the one time we're fully loaded and get to the consignee, and we had a dozen Marines waiting to unload our truck after we got everything down on the lift gate. The lift gate wouldn't work.
Speaker 4:I've had that happen.
Speaker 5:Somehow. I don't know what happened, but pushing buttons and I was on the phone with the trailer shop and trying to troubleshoot it and I pushed the button and it worked. I was like let's get this stuff off while it's working, hang the phone up the trailer shop and trying to troubleshoot it. And I pushed the button and it worked. I was like let's get this stuff off while it's working, hang the phone up. Let's get this stuff off.
Speaker 2:Now I have some amazing memories of being on a truck talking to a shop and some old redneck country boys like do you have a screwdriver on you? Yes, sir, I do, Thinking I'm about to unscrew something. No, take it and put it across that terminal and that terminal. And it's going to pop, so don't be scared Like. I've done that a few times. We don't encourage our drivers to do that, but I have done it myself.
Speaker 5:We do not encourage our drivers to do that, but I have done it myself. We do not encourage it. As a matter of fact, just last week a truck came in for a carb test. Yes, and when trucks come in for a carb test, I talk to them, I talk about their truck, I look at their truck. If I see a problem, I point it out. If it's a safety issue, I call maintenance. Yes, hey, this truck is in the yard and it's got X, y and Z.
Speaker 5:This driver is telling me about his lift gate and that it's not working with the switch or the remote. But we got to work. We got to get Talking to somebody that did something to it. He told me to use a screwdriver and short it out across here and you're good, yeah, that's the last time you do that. And I called down to the trailer shop and I said I had a truck here using a shoe driver, send him down. And he went down and got taken care of. So, yeah, we do not encourage that. If your truck is doing that, please let somebody know so we can get it fixed.
Speaker 3:But we have maintenance that's available 24 hours, right, exactly, we do 24-7. We do.
Speaker 2:Solenoids, fuses and circuit breakers. They're good things. They are, they really are. But since you mentioned the car testing thing, I do want to mention today's sponsor. Today's sponsor is OTR Services. We want to thank OTR Services for helping contribute to keeping this show alive. If you have, we all know, listen, we all feel a way about California. We do and we all understand that they make things difficult and challenging. They do, and we all appreciate how pretty the coastline is.
Speaker 5:We do.
Speaker 2:And the mountains.
Speaker 5:Yes.
Speaker 2:And Donner Pass.
Speaker 2:During the spring During the spring and summer, but they do have testing requirements now. If you're not aware, but your truck has to be tested for emissions control systems. It's called a CARB test. These tests have to be done twice a year in 2025. Next year they have to be done four times a year, Every 90 days. It's easy to get those tests done in 2025. Next year they have to be done four times a year, Every 90 days. It's easy to get those tests done in California.
Speaker 2:The problem is, if you're going to California, you have to have it done before you get in the state. So we have partnered up with OTR Services to start doing carb testing in Columbus, Ohio, and they are doing wonderful things for us and helping us get these trucks tested and make sure they're compliant. And if you're out there and you're thinking I go to California and I don't know anything about this carp testing stuff, you can go to otrservicescom, check out their website. They've got a bit of information there about California. They've got a. I believe there's a diagram on there, right, Jerry? That says when you know your truck is due, Because not every truck is due all at the same time, right?
Speaker 4:Yeah, if your truck is registered in the state of California, they're actually going to go by your registration. If you're not registered in the state of California, it's going to go by the last six of your VIN.
Speaker 2:Yes, and so there's a little chart on that website. It's otr-servicescom yes, otr-servicescom, and they have some information there and they tell you how they can use their mobile carp testing to come out and see you all across Columbus. So I want to show some appreciation to them for sponsoring the show and let you know. If you do go to California and you're not familiar with this, or if you're driving for a fleet owner and they're not familiar with this or anything like that, let them know about it, check it out. The last thing you want to do is go to California. I think it's like $5,000, fine, it's a huge fine.
Speaker 2:It's a huge fine if you get out there and you don't have it done, so it's well worth just getting it knocked out. O, it's well worth just getting it knocked out. Otr-servicescom. And again, thank you so much, otr Services for sponsoring the show. Nice, thank you. That leads us to Bubba Bubba, bubba, bubba, bubba.
Speaker 3:I don't have anything else really.
Speaker 2:Bubba, bubba bubba, bubba, ai. Yeah, it doesn't really, it doesn't really, it doesn't just go.
Speaker 2:It doesn't go. So, Melissa, I saw this article that you sent us and I like it, and I can't wait to hear you talk about it. I do have one thing to say. Well, yeah, Keep in mind, we are filming this before we go to the Mid-America Truck Show in Louisville, Kentucky. Yes, but you were hearing it after we go to the truck show Mid-America truck show. So why this is relevant is this article that you're about to talk about is being featured at the Mid-America truck show.
Speaker 1:I saw.
Speaker 2:So we reserve. My disclaimer is we reserve the right to come back and change our opinion in two weeks. Yes, we do the right to come back and change our opinion in two weeks. Yes, we do. We're going to talk about it now, green. Yes, but we may come back and change our opinions on it, correct, so don't hold us to it.
Speaker 1:So Bubba AI, I'm super excited. He's super cute too. Just want you to know he's got glasses. Cute little mustache.
Speaker 5:And he's blue.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:He reminds me of? Is it Moriarty, the movie with Sherlock Holmes? No, he was a pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean.
Speaker 1:Oh, I don't know what's his name.
Speaker 2:No, there's an actor.
Speaker 3:Johnny Depp was in it, johnny.
Speaker 2:Depp played Moriarty in that this guy reminds me of him. Oh See his picture right here. Huh, every time Okay.
Speaker 1:So Bubba AI is launched for independent truckers and small carriers and it's an autonomous dispatcher, and I thought this was pretty cool. The tool can search and negotiate for loads while truckers focus on driving. So they're basically talking about how drivers. You know, we're juggling our everyday life. Maybe we can't book our own loads, and this is for people who are using load boards, whereas what highfield's doing with panther and fedex? They're the ones that dispatch it, so you're not looking for your own freight, which is what this app is doing. So I thought this was really neat. It said that it can do manufacture of bubba ai, demonstrated to freight waves because that's where the article comes from how bubba searches multiple load boards, engages in real-time negotiations with brokers and validates rate confirmation without human oversight, like he's doing it all for you. So I wonder if, like when you download the app, you tell him what your rates you?
Speaker 3:you what?
Speaker 1:you'll agree your lowest, your, highest, your, and then he figures out how to do it.
Speaker 4:I mean, that's what I was thinking. There's got to be some guidelines that you're giving it some parameters of some kind for different types of rights.
Speaker 5:Well, it says that bubba uses lane data.
Speaker 1:I was going to say that too.
Speaker 5:So that's a part of it is looking at what that lane is paying and negotiating around that, I'm sure, versus just taking a load or overbidding the load. If the lane is paying $1 a mile, bubba's not going to go in there and negotiate $1.50 or $0.50. It's going to try and get that best rate for you. I'm sure you would put your own parameters as well, sure.
Speaker 1:Bubba can also push back and seek better rates on behalf of the carrier during the negotiation. Can we talk about his name? Come on, Bubba. One of Bubba AI's features is its voice-first multilingual capabilities. The AI enables truckers to communicate in their preferred language, while translating and relaying their messages to brokers and shippers in English. This helps independent truckers secure farrier rates sorry, farrier rates and better deals, regardless of their cultural background.
Speaker 5:I thought that was really interesting when I read that.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 5:That it's going to do the translation for a driver. Yeah, I thought that was really interesting.
Speaker 2:I was kind of curious how that plays into what we talked about last week or two weeks ago. Last week, two weeks ago what is time?
Speaker 5:Two weeks ago. What is?
Speaker 2:time we talked about how drivers are required to speak a certain proficiency of English.
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 1:Is that what Arkansas was curious about?
Speaker 2:I'm sorry. That was Arkansas's conversation, Well it was about Arkansas, but it was about FMCSA requires it for anybody with CDL. And so when I saw that, my first thought was like I don't know. Okay, that seems like it goes counter to what we were talking about with the law.
Speaker 2:But then, the more I thought about it, the more I thought like you know, what you can learn enough English to be proficient to drive but not be proficient to negotiate. I see where they're coming from. I do see where they're coming from, but I am curious if they're going to. I do see where they're coming from, but I am curious if they're going to get pushback on that.
Speaker 5:Yeah, that's a possibility, right, what I read here the cultural background part, helping them get fairer rates regardless of their cultural background is if someone with a heavy foreign accent calls and is talking to a broker and if that broker has a bias you know, they get quoted one number versus Exactly.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Exactly, so this might make that a little bit different. Yeah, now we all know how translation software isn't perfect, correct, so there could be an issue there, but I think it kind of levels the playing field, if we're talking about being fair.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but the AI thing too has gotten a lot better.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:When I talk to somebody that I realize is a bot or an AI. It's nowhere near what it used to be. It has certainly gotten way more proficient.
Speaker 1:It does say, beyond load matching and negotiation, bubba AI is designed to manage the entire operational ecosystem of a trucking business. Future development plans include an autopilot mode which will let truckers set preferences and have Bubba AI automatically find, negotiate and book loads without their direct involvement. Additionally, hey Bubba that's the actual name of the company who came out with Bubba AI is working on integrating AI-driven relationship building capabilities, which will help establish long partnerships between carriers and shippers.
Speaker 4:I think that's amazing.
Speaker 1:We want to highly customize the hey Bubba experience. Right now, the calls that happen are more transactional. Next, we are building a custom engine which will have a complete relationship-driven context.
Speaker 2:It's cool, it's interesting to see what's happening with technology and how AI is taking over, because what they've basically done is they've said hey, small fleet, you don't need to hire a dispatcher anymore, we can do this for you. So there's a couple different ways to look at it. There's the we don't have to hire a person, so someone's lost a job aspect.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:But there's the other side of it, which is it's less of a burden on a startup company, on a small fleet, on you know being able to like. If you have a five-truck fleet and you are, you know, hauling cheese out of Wisconsin, then you're probably finding backup loads to get your trucks back every week. Something like this would be great to be able to go in and say, all right, well, this truck's delivering June 2nd. I need to find it a load back so that we can keep this thing going.
Speaker 2:So, I certainly see a lot of benefit to it.
Speaker 1:Can't wait to seek them out at the Mid-America Truck Show.
Speaker 3:I'm excited to see how much you can interact with it. I am too.
Speaker 2:I am curious too, I will say, with the negotiating process. I really want to know how that plays out. I hope there's some follow-up, because I could see an AI going the wrong way with it where it's like all right, we've got a situation where this truck's been sitting for X number of hours. I need to make sure I get this truck a load, and then accepting a load too cheap.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then the driver gets it and they're like I don't want to run for that cheap, but you've already accepted the load because you've been empowered the AI to do it. So I just I fear, if enough people are on this, does it become a race to the bottom?
Speaker 1:I don't know Of course it could.
Speaker 2:It could also be the other thing. What happens if it becomes a race to the top and then all of a sudden you've got shippers going. Y'all are colluding. You know, A couple different ways you can look at it.
Speaker 5:What I'm skeptical about is just that AI is not perfect. It learns from looking at other information, other data, correct, and if there's an anomaly somewhere in your business, how does that affect what the AI does? Will brokers eventually learn that it's an AI and not want to deal with it or learn how to game?
Speaker 3:it, yeah. So there's a lot of questions here. Deal with it or learn how to game it, yeah.
Speaker 5:So there's a lot of questions here. I'm curious to see how it works out. But, like Melissa said, we'll check them out at Matt's and see what they're talking about.
Speaker 1:Jerry, your thoughts, your techie, over there too, I could see that for sure, I think.
Speaker 4:But you also, reading the article, said that they could put the driver preferences in. So I'm sure, like I said before, there's got to be those guidelines that it's not going to go outside of that. And AI has gotten really, really good. Have you tried Google Gemini?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 4:It's literally an app you can download on your phone and have a conversation. I literally sit down two, three times a week and have a full-blown conversation with my phone, a conversation like I have with me or you. The difference is he's cursing us out, do what.
Speaker 5:You just scared the crap out of me with that.
Speaker 3:Where's Don?
Speaker 4:I'm with Don 24-7. I don't need to talk to him anymore.
Speaker 2:I haven't seen Don in a while. Jerry's gotten big time into AI.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Interesting.
Speaker 4:It's so awesome, though. If you're trying to make a decision on something, you can literally talk to it and say I'm trying to weigh the pros and cons of this, and it will walk through both sides with you and talk to you like it's your best friend for 10 years. That's interesting. And help you make that decision.
Speaker 3:Well, I don't know if anybody's seen the Last Rookie, but there's the Gemini or I don't know what they call it, on the mission. But this chick was talking about how she didn't like her friend and so it walked her through different versions of how to kill her Interesting I could totally see buttermilk doing that.
Speaker 1:So I'm like I'm not going to take AI for it. I don't know.
Speaker 2:I definitely think there's got to be some safeguards with AI. So I am concerned about where that leads eventually down the road. But because I could see you know you have these parameters and it's like you tell AI hey, let's slide all those parameters one time just to help me get it, and then does it think every time we're in a pinch.
Speaker 5:That's the pattern.
Speaker 2:And then all of a sudden it's like wait, why am I always running for 79 cents a mile?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure.
Speaker 1:And then I also wonder if it's got like the understanding of where you deliver and the amount of rest time that you need, right, and then the amount of time it takes you to get up and get behind the wheel after a pre-trip and then on your way to the next destination to pick up, like, does it, does it know, or is it doing like full next day booking? Like how does it know when you're ready to pick up another load?
Speaker 5:well, the, the, the founder of um you know what I'm saying hey, bubba has done other he has he has experiences. It has years of experience in the trucking technology space. I'd imagine that he understands hours of service and that kind of thing and is looking at building that into. This is only my speculation, obviously. Looking at building that into it, I mean otherwise, how does it work?
Speaker 5:Yeah, because if it's booking you a load, it fails immediately if it books you to pick up a load before you've delivered or calculating deadhead mileage versus a rest break.
Speaker 2:So I'd hope that he's got that in there, but some of the stuff too is like a lot of the load board stuff is not time critical, so there's play involved, right?
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Like if you're running off load boards, you're not putting your freight on a load board if it needs to be picked up.
Speaker 4:9 am or morning?
Speaker 2:So there's wiggle room right.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That helps, I think.
Speaker 3:So how much is this going to cost?
Speaker 1:Well, you can get it for three free months. I did read that here at the bottom. It said to celebrate its launch, hey, bubba is offering three months of free access to all new users who sign up with their Department of Transportation registered email. This is designed to let independent truckers see firsthand how Bubba AI can impact your daily operations. And then, of course, it will also be showcased at the Mid-American Truck Show 2025.
Speaker 2:I do love that all these tech companies have really learned from the drug dealers. The first taste is free.
Speaker 3:They've really gotten slick with that.
Speaker 2:Nobody buys a television streaming program anymore without getting their first month free.
Speaker 1:They really figured that out, but I don't know how much it costs. You'll have to do your own research on that. I don't know that yet.
Speaker 2:And, who knows, it could be built into the brokering discussion. You know they book the load for $2.09 a mile. They pay you $2 a mile. Right, it could be. It could be hidden.
Speaker 5:It certainly could be Sure.
Speaker 2:Robinhood kind of works that way too. Way too. If you you work on, like if you work on robin hood and buy stocks on there, there's a a micro gap between when you buy a stock and when it's actually purchased, and they factor their fee into that gap. So, um, if you buy a stock for 18 cents, it really costs them 17 cents well that that happened to big brokerages too.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Where you might buy a stock at 18 cents and the brokerage can buy it at 17 cents, and that's what they're doing.
Speaker 2:The difference is it's very manual, Robinhood's all automatic.
Speaker 5:Well it's manual, because you're calling your broker and your broker's doing that for you, but anyway, but back then they were like I got the stock for $300, and they paid $120 for it. It's called a spread. Yeah, seen it a bunch of times, yeah.
Speaker 2:There's a whole movie about it, right, was it?
Speaker 4:Boiler Room. No, well, maybe I was thinking Wolf of Wall Street, wall Street, yeah, wolf of Wall.
Speaker 2:Street Cool Cool yeah.
Speaker 5:Well it's not available in the App Store yet. Well, soon. Soon, soon soon.
Speaker 2:Yes, all right. Well, we didn't really publicize Mid-America Truck Show. I think next week we're going to have a little short synopsis of what we did there. We were only there for one day, so if we didn't see you we apologize for that. It was a real quick in and out type scenario and I bought a new camera for it. I'm anxious to see how Jerry edits it.
Speaker 5:I'm anxious to see how you use the camera.
Speaker 2:I'm anxious to see how you use it as well.
Speaker 1:We're going to come back and we're going to have, like old, real clicky clack 60mm coffee can? Pictures don't move.
Speaker 2:Got 10 minutes of standing still it's going to be a slide show of just us in front of one of those old Kodak slide projectors and we're going to just be talking about it while Jerry videos us doing the slide projector thing. Kind of like back in elementary school they would do the thing where they put a picture up on the thing on the projector and then they'd press play and you'd hear a little cassette tell you the story while you're just looking at a picture.
Speaker 2:And then it would be like beep and you click the next picture. Yes, I am that old stuff.
Speaker 1:Oh, let's hope we figure out the technology that is.
Speaker 5:Absolutely. I remember when they used to actually have somebody talking while the other person was using a chisel and hammer. Dictation and they were carving pictures in the rock while the person talked about whatever the story was. Those were the days.
Speaker 2:I wonder if that's what they call giving Dwayne Johnson a tattoo. Anyways, it's been a lot of fun. Again, thank you, otr Services, for sponsoring this week's show. It's otr-services's, otr-servicescom, otr-servicescom, otr.
Speaker 1:Not the word dash, dash, the symbol dash.
Speaker 2:Yes, servicescom. But if you're interested in what we're doing over here at Highfield and you want to chat with us, you can reach out to us at highfieldtruckingcom. That's highfieldtruckingcom H-Y-F-I-E-L-D truckingcom. If you wish to call us on the phone, jerry will give you those details 833-493-4353.
Speaker 4:Option 1, monday through Friday, 8 am to 6 pm Eastern Standard Time, or 833-HIGHFIELD.
Speaker 2:And if you need that number and you forgot what it is, it's going to be in the description of this video, I believe. Thank you all so much for supporting us and if you enjoyed what you saw today, give us a thumbs up, write us a comment. If you're listening to us on a podcast format, drop us a review on that platform. Whichever one you're using, it helps us out, lets other people hear us and learn a little more about us and a little behind scenes, peek of Highfield and just who we kind of are as people, and hopefully give you a little entertainment as you go down the road. If you didn't like what you saw, hit that thumbs down button twice. Please do not leave us a review and in the meantime, until we meet again, stay safe, make good decisions.
Speaker 4:Don't leave money on the table and keep those wheels of turning. Bye, bye, thank you, you.