The OuterBelt's Podcast
The OuterBelt's Podcast
Cold Skies, Hot Takes
A joke and a weather gripe set the tone, but the story that grabs you is an oil pressure warning at altitude and the quiet, methodical choices that followed. We walk through the cockpit logic—climb for glide, identify alternates, measure thresholds—and show how aeronautical decision making mirrors the best habits on the road. It’s not about heroics; it’s about buying time, staying calm, and keeping safe options in reach when winter makes every mile feel longer.
From there we pivot into the realities drivers face this season: black ice that looks like flowing water, wind that scrubs highways clean in one county and buries ramps in the next, and the way modern lane keep systems can help or distract depending on the day. We get honest about steering feel, alert fatigue, and when to shut features off. Then we zoom out to border crossings. If you’ve ever sat at Canada customs watching the clock flip your pay from miles to hours, you’ll recognize the playbook: bulletproof paperwork, patient mindset, and shelf-stable groceries that save you when delays blow past your ETA. We even unpack the rare but costly scenarios—like long inspections that spoil temperature-sensitive freight—and why some losses are already baked into supply chains.
The lifestyle glue is everywhere: where to park a rig at Mall of America, how to avoid rideshare dead zones on return trips, and why comparing Uber and Lyft can save you big when surge pricing hits after a game. We share old-school connectivity hacks from jetpacks to tethering, because buffering a movie in a sleeper still happens when weather wins. And we close the loop in the air: why a bigger engine heats better, how icing equipment changes go/no-go decisions, and the path to an instrument rating that unlocks safer flying in messy skies.
If you want more conversations that blend road craft, air sense, and practical logistics you can use today, tap follow, share this with a driver who needs a winter boost, and leave a quick review to help others find us. What’s your smartest cold-weather tip that’s saved a run?
Email us: theouterbeltpodcast@gmail.com
Website: www.hyfieldtrucking.com
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What do you get when you cross a turtle and a porcupine? Slowpoke.
SPEAKER_00:Hey everybody, welcome back to the Outer Belt Podcast show on the streaming services of YouTube. I am Patrick, and you all know my cohorts, my friends. Chili.
SPEAKER_04:Buttermilk.
SPEAKER_00:I'm Eric.
SPEAKER_04:Zucchini Bread.
SPEAKER_02:And Jerry.
SPEAKER_00:I'm Eric. No, you're Eric. What?
SPEAKER_02:I'm Eric.
SPEAKER_00:It's you're not going to know this because Jerry's going to add together, but this is like our fifth start. Anyways, uh, so how's everybody doing?
SPEAKER_04:Breezy.
SPEAKER_01:I'm going to dry up and crack up from the cold up here.
SPEAKER_00:Seriously, right? Oh. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:It's like the Sahara Desert.
SPEAKER_00:I'm sorry. Well, we do run the dehumidifier in the middle of winter, too. Yeah. I think that the, you know, you get the 5% humidity level, that's just it's perfect. Okay. Can we get a statewide humidifier? Yes, it's corn sweats. We'll get them in a few months, right?
SPEAKER_05:Yes. Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah. I just keep thinking about that sa song. You know, it's from Christmas. The the uh it's kind of the creepy one, you know. I really must go. Maybe it's cold cold outside. Yeah, like it just it's really cold outside. It's it's not cold anymore. We left cold. We left cold somewhere like on what uh Sunday? Yeah. Yeah, I think I think it was cold on Sunday. We've we've officially gotten into sub-freezing.
SPEAKER_05:I saw a meme that said it was like a picture of the snow and whatever, and it said, um uh for all the things you postponed or put off until hell was frozen over. Uh that list is happening this week.
SPEAKER_00:I think it's just God's judgment on uh Indiana. You know, coming through and and and beating uh Miami when it was clearly their their uh championship, and the judges just gave uh uh Indy that and uh God was like, Well, that's how we're gonna play a game. I'm gonna show you some weather. Did you see people in the game with like the heavy jackets on and breathing out cold air? It was like 50-something degrees.
SPEAKER_05:They got so snow themselves.
SPEAKER_00:That's crazy in Miami.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, yeah. Super crazy.
SPEAKER_00:I so I have a question, and I don't mean to sound ignorant, but I'm gonna be ignorant for a second. They played this game in Miami, at Miami's home home stadium. Was that a coincidence, or do they always pick one of the teams to play the BCS championship at? Because I remember like uh several years ago it happened in New Orleans at at the uh Superdome, which is not there's no no college teams uh play there. So is it just a coincidence it happened to be in Miami this year? It's a coincidence. The Sugar Bowl plays at the Superdome. It does.
SPEAKER_03:So they choose one of the major bowl sites to play the championship game.
SPEAKER_00:Ah, okay.
SPEAKER_03:So it it's strictly coincidence. Gotcha.
SPEAKER_00:So is it ever like in the Pasadena with the Rose Bowl or It has been. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I I didn't know that. I I was watching that and they were talking about I saw the sign for Hard Rock uh Stadium, and I'm like, man, I thought that was in Miami. That's ridiculous. There's no way they're playing in Miami, especially seeing how cold it was. Right. And then I'm like, where is this stadium? And I look it up and I'm like, oh, home of the uh Miami Dolphins in the University of Miami. And I was like, wow. Yep.
SPEAKER_04:Well, would you rather they played in like 50 degree Miami weather or twenty-degree?
SPEAKER_00:I wouldn't I think they should, I think Michigan should have opened up their stadium and been like, y'all can play here.
SPEAKER_06:You know neutral grounds.
SPEAKER_00:100,000 seats, 120,000 seats, whatever it is. It's it's it's still the largest stadium in the world, right? Where's Don? We need our fact checker. I think it's the world's largest stadium right now, or not world's largest, but uh largest football stadium in America. And uh Michigan, really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a big stadium.
SPEAKER_03:It's a big stadium. It seats a lot of people.
SPEAKER_05:Who plays there? Just the college?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Oh you know, you build a stadium for eight games.
SPEAKER_00:Makes sense. You know, millions and millions of dollars on something that gets used eight times a year.
SPEAKER_04:Um there's like a lot of people. Like go there and do their end of the season. Yeah, they probably do.
SPEAKER_03:Well, yeah, I'm sure they have concerts and things there as well. I'm sure it's not just a lot of things.
SPEAKER_05:I can see Kenny Chesney when he did his college arena tour. I could see that being somewhere that he stopped and did.
SPEAKER_03:Well, this wouldn't be an arena though. This would be a stadium.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, that's what I meant. College stadium tour kind of thing. He deliberately only did college stadiums for one of his albums. I don't know for how long ago.
SPEAKER_03:According to um the uh world's most accurate website, Wikipedia. Oh yes. Uh the big house, as it is called, is the largest stadium in the United States and the Western Hemisphere. It is the third largest stadium in the world and the 34th largest sports venue in the world. Official capacity is 107,601. But it's it is hosted crowds in excess of 115,000.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:So because they put people maybe on the standing room.
SPEAKER_03:Standing room.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, standing room. Oh, I was thinking like down on the ground level. Like we did LSU. Yeah. You could get more people in that way too.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:That's a lot of people.
SPEAKER_00:That's a lot of people. That's a lot of people. I mean, game day at LSU, game day at like uh Alabama, those are regularly over 100,000 people too.
SPEAKER_01:Same similar it's just say the SEC.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's just crazy. I mean it for me, it's the whole like the early fall games, it's still hot in South, you know what I mean, South Louisiana. So you're just baking in the sun for two, three hours. You know, you're praying for night games. Like you're just baking. Well, what's worse? Getting baked in the sun or getting eaten by mosquitoes? It's it's like one or the other, right?
SPEAKER_05:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:Fun times. But it was a good game, though.
SPEAKER_05:I think it was a good game.
SPEAKER_00:I completely forgot it. It was happening. I uh had to go out to Bolt, uh they're one of our sleeper providers, and um so I drove a truck out there and uh got back in time to watch the game, just completely forgot it was happening. I just had so much kind of going on. I was on the phone pretty much the whole time with business stuff, and uh when I got back to the house, I was just ready to like veg in front of the TV and I completely forgot about the game. And then uh I got a text message from you, Mr. Vince, uh, about three and a half hours past the time you normally call it. Yes. Uh and I thought that's weird, and then I got a text message from Jimmy, and I'm like, what is happening? These are people that don't say up super late. What's the deal right? It didn't occur to me. So I'm just scrolling through Facebook, half watching the TV show we're watching, and I see someone say, like, something about wow, Miami showed up or whatever, and I was like, what? I was like, oh my gosh, is that today? I pulled my ESPN app open and I saw that it was the fourth quarter with like 15 or not 15, maybe 14, 13, 14 minutes left. And I was like, it's the game. I completely forgot about it. So I had to go search online, but I found it, and Eric and I watched the last six minutes, five minutes? Five, six minutes. What a thrilling five or six minutes. It was a good game. I if the whole game was like that, I'd be dead.
SPEAKER_05:It was showed up, I thought.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. It was, I mean, nail biting. It was a I love a really good game, and it was kind of fun because I had no dogs in the fight.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. I was about to ask, does anybody here have anything emotionally invested in that game?
SPEAKER_04:My mom's from Miami and I have friends in Indiana. That's as close as I get.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, you're divided in. Indiana's a big team, a big ten team in USC who I root for as a Big Ten team, even though I'm wearing an Ohio State sweatshirt because it's freaking cold in here. But is Miami? Just Big Ten. No, Miami's ACC.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, well, screw them.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:There you go. See?
SPEAKER_01:Just kidding.
SPEAKER_00:See, I don't know a whole lot about Miami outside of like the rock plate for them. You know, it just wasn't on my like a team that like Miami never played, and someone's gonna fact check me and be like, You're wrong, they did in 1973. But like really, I don't remember LSU or Alabama really playing Miami. They weren't they didn't travel in the same circles. Um No, completely separate conferences, they wouldn't have.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, unless unless there was a major bowl game tie-in where somebody the ACC certain rank and a certain rank SEC team were contractually obvious to play in a certain bowl game, maybe then, but yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So it just never it just never was anything I watched. I didn't realize because I I'm saying this to Kelly and Jimmy, and they're like, everyone knows Miami. They used they've won multiple bowl multiple championships, they're a great team. And then he goes on to talk about how because they're Seminole fans, how um oh well yeah, they uh played uh they play the Seminoles every year and they play the Gators and whatever, and they you know, they're like how they sharpen each other's teeth, they're on their mortal enemies and all stuff, and I'm like, I had no idea. That's a whole Florida thing, it is a whole Florida thing, yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, yeah. I was I thought it was exciting that Indiana had never won a championship and they went the entire season undefeated. I mean, those were some pretty cool statistics. Yeah. So going into it, I'm like, I'm gonna pull for Indiana. I cheered each way, each direct, you know, ooh odd appropriately for both teams. Yeah. We we just uh I didn't have anything emotionally vested in it other than I was super excited.
SPEAKER_01:If you did you ooh that last throw?
SPEAKER_05:I did.
SPEAKER_00:Oh man.
SPEAKER_05:I did, ooh, that last throw.
SPEAKER_00:That last throw, all the my I love when this happens and I've seen it happen. It's happened against my team, so I'm not being a jerk. It's happened against our team.
SPEAKER_01:For Jerry, the other team caught the ball from the other side of the field.
SPEAKER_00:It was intercept, it was picked off, intercepted. It was beautiful. It was all the Miami, like everything was set up perfectly. Miami, who was three points behind, they're about to throw a touchdown. Not three points, they're six points behind. They're about to throw a touchdown, they're gonna win the game with a uh uh uh uh extra point, like it's gonna be a beautiful thing. And they had a couple fouls, uh not fouls, they had a couple of uh calls that went their way, and it's like this is beautiful, the guy launches it, it's a beautiful, you know the guy's about to catch it, and the wrong color jersey grabs the ball, and it's like immediately from like euphoria to complete dismay on these college students' faces. I love it. I love I've been there, I've been in this situation.
SPEAKER_05:Cool stadium. It was definitely half and half with their colors, very, very burgundy, almost the color Jerry you're wearing, and then the Miami Dolphin or Miami colors, that green, orange. It was uh just the whole thing was pretty cool.
SPEAKER_04:Indiana has the largest alumni base of all the colleges.
SPEAKER_00:But the whole fact that Indiana this is their first BCS championship.
SPEAKER_03:It's like that's their first college football championship.
SPEAKER_00:Sorry, it's their first college football championship.
SPEAKER_03:I'm just saying, like, it's crazy because you think of like of any of the eras, though.
SPEAKER_00:I know, you know, yeah. That's what I'm saying. I think it's wild because you've got Ohio, which has had multiple, you've got Michigan, it's had multiple, like they're surrounded by states that have had multiple wins. But they're not a football school.
SPEAKER_05:They're a basketball school, they're a basketball school.
SPEAKER_03:Indiana's a basketball school. Yeah, but you you have those schools that you have a few schools here and there that are both, but not very many.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:You know, Duke. Duke's a basketball school. Absolutely. They had a decent year, like the last couple years they had decent football years, but they're a basketball school. Sure. But UCLA, they're a basketball school. Yeah. I I know the stat like ten years ago was UCLA was a seven-win team in football, seven wins a year. And it played out if you looked at their records, it wasn't like somebody just threw out a number. It averaged that they won seven they averaged seven wins a year in football, but they were known as a basketball school. USC, a cross-town rival of UCLA. They're a football school. They're a basketball team, but they're a football school. So Indiana is a basketball school. Certainly they can win a championship. They can have those years where they they're great. Yeah. We'll see how far Signetti goes with what he's doing. You know, he's doing big things there right now.
SPEAKER_05:We'll see how far win ever in the history of the college being formed, though.
SPEAKER_03:This is their first ever championship in football. Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Well, congratulations to them.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Congratulations, brother. Next door neighbors. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Neighbors.
SPEAKER_00:I'm excited to see what happens at L Shoe next year. I mean, that whole situ I don't know.
SPEAKER_03:I just That whole situation made me an old Miss fan this year. Well, they're calling for Ole Miss at the tour at the end there.
SPEAKER_00:They had some that they they showed up to fight. They did. They showed up to fight too. They yeah.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, but I don't know. All of it's interesting. But y'all didn't come here to listen to football. You came here to find out about the weather, which we've already addressed. Yep.
SPEAKER_05:Cold, cold, and for the foreseeable future.
SPEAKER_00:And you wanted to know uh how the day's been and and what all we've got accomplished and how life's been, right? I think that's why people come here, right? We're a lifestyle.
SPEAKER_05:I think they really want to know if the driver's lounge is open.
SPEAKER_00:So it's their lifestyle people, right? So they they want to know they want to know like our lifestyle, their lifestyle. No, they want to think about their lifestyle, but they like knowing about our lives, right? Basically, I mean I hear so much about the Jerry uh fanfiction, it's crazy. But um guys. But it's a whole thing that drivers pass it around. It's fine. So um I have uh something that happened today that I want to talk about real quick. Just get it off my chest because I'm so about it. Don't talk about it. I I had pie. I took off today and flew an airplane for twenty whole minutes, and then the oil pressure in the engine just decided to say bye-bye. Oh. Did you pull the parachute? I did not pull the parachute. I did not pull the parachute. We limped the uh airplane back to the airfield. I mean, like in uh in true crisis rope mode of like got as high as we could get and then identified every airport that we as we were going as a place to that we if we lose the engine now, here's we're going. If we lose the engine here now, here's we're going the whole way back to OSU, Ohio State University's airport. We did not declare emergency because it never got there's uh when you lose oil pressure, it's it's it's a fairly slow process. Because you imagine, like usually if you lose oil pressure, it's because you're you've got a hose or something, so you're slinging oil. So you've got time, and so they kind of measure that out, and uh, we never got to the declared emergency point.
SPEAKER_03:How is it how are you made aware that you're losing oil pressure?
SPEAKER_00:Did you get the gauge? There's a warning that pops up. All right. So yeah, the gauge did say it, and there's a warning that pops up. There's a warning that pops up when it gets like, hey, you may have a concern here. Gotcha. Like pretty early on. Sure.
SPEAKER_05:Um, buzzers or a Siri voice talking to you.
SPEAKER_00:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_05:Oh yes, all of the things.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, they take oil pressure pretty pretty seriously on this. And so uh we we flew back and uh did end up making a beautiful landing in the OSU and everything was fine. Uh it is the airport OSU. So if y'all are looking at the University of Ohio and you're like, where is this airport?
SPEAKER_03:Let's let's clarify that.
SPEAKER_00:There's the University of Ohio. I'm sorry, there's a lot of people. If you're looking at the Ohio State University uh on a map and you're like, where's the airport? I don't see this anywhere. It's like 20 minutes in another direction. Yep. So it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, but it is what it is. Uh so we flew to that airport, and uh which is good, that's where their their maintenance bases and everything is. And uh like five minutes from my house. It's very close to your house, yeah. I think about that every time I go over there. Don't come by your house.
SPEAKER_03:Check your security uh your sidewalk for oil drift. Yes, please do. Please do.
SPEAKER_00:But uh yeah, no, so it was the first time we didn't declare an emergency, but we had an emergency in flight and got to experience that and go through those procedures and everything. We did when we did land, we we pulled the dipstick. We're like, let's just take a look. And uh we had oil. So most likely it's just a sensor that was going bad. But you just can't take a chance on that. No, of course. You run out of oil, your engine locks up, and then you're done.
SPEAKER_04:So do you feel like all that education and learning and everything you did beforehand had you prepared for this?
SPEAKER_00:Excellent question. Yes. Uh what do they call it? Aeronautical decision making, ADM. And uh just recognizing the risks and how do we mitigate and how do we deal with what we've got going on. So yeah. Because we did talk about do we just want to bail to the absolute closest airport, but we weren't in the parameter to do that yet. There there is a clear mark of when to do that, and we weren't there yet, so we're like, let's see if we can get back, and that's why we tracked every airport. And like I said, we went up high as high as we could go uh safely to so we had plenty of glide distance um so we could make it to those airports. And this area uh of Ohio, like from uh Columbus, Ohio to Indiana to Fort Wayne, if you can imagine that triangle, there's dozens of airports. Like it's the little guys, yeah, tons and tons of little airports you can divert to. That's not the case everywhere in the country, but in this particular place it it is. Right, it makes sense because I mean like the Wright brothers were from here. Like the birth of aviation is here. The US Air Force's air museum is here. Like it it it kind of all got started here. Uh yeah, we got to do that. It'd have been cool if you diverted to the Air Force Base.
unknown:It would have been.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I'm allowed to.
SPEAKER_05:Are you really?
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah. You can in an emergency in an emergency, anything goes.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Anything goes. You're you're never as long as you put it down on the ground, you're fine. If there's damage, then you gotta answer for the damage, but get to the ground.
SPEAKER_05:Like highways? I've seen stories about that. Oh inner states, I guess, or whatever you want to call it.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So it's kind of weird because like I've been trained how to fly on the plane with the parachute. Right. But if you're so we have thresholds and we set shoot certain thresholds, then you pull your parachute, right? Um if you can't guarantee a a landing on a runway. But if you're in like a Cessna or anything that doesn't have a parachute, your only option is somewhere on the ground. And so that's when you do talk about things like roads. Well, if you're gonna land on a road, traffic, make sure the road's wide enough for your wings, uh, because people don't realize how wide an airplane is. It it's pretty wide, even the little tiny ones we're flying are. Um the uh um overhead cable lines, you know, things across the road, those are super hazardous. So um fields look perfectly flat from above in the air, a couple thousand feet above the ground, which is not far at all. The earth looks flat as can be, but when you actually get there too late into it, you realize, oh, a field is not flat. You know, it's it's very dangerous. So just figuring all that stuff out, um, and and depending on what you fly, that's the kind of way they teach you. So I have a parachute, so it's a little different story.
SPEAKER_05:Sure. Um did you panic like for a split second or a full second?
SPEAKER_00:Or was it just a start being perfectly honest? I was trying to do a cross country. You have to land at least 50 miles away for it to happen, and we hadn't got there yet, and we hadn't landed. So you were pissed. So I was upset. I was like You know, like it's real quick the decision is like, okay, we have to get like safety above everything, right? You immediately kinda know, well crap, here we have to deal with this. But yeah, I was like, wow. So I just burned up nine tenths of an hour for nothing. So it's frustrating. But uh the uh icing on the cake was I had enough time. There was another airplane at OSU airport that I could take. I had an appointment for the dentist this afternoon, and I was like, I wonder if I could move that appointment. So I called the dentist and they were like, Yep, you can move that appointment, it's fine, no big deal. And so uh I came back to the house, I picked Eric up, and then we went back to the airport and Eric got high. Eric got high.
SPEAKER_05:He went on a ride? That's awesome.
SPEAKER_00:He didn't literally go high. He got he went like he didn't get literally went high. He was elevated 4,000, 5,000 feet a little more.
SPEAKER_01:There are too many numbers on that dashboard. I can't tell what's for what. The dashboard. Have you been before? No, never well, commercially, yeah, but never.
SPEAKER_04:Did you trust your pilot?
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:As many times as he's left the house to go to quote unquote class and practice and everything. He's been up there.
SPEAKER_04:So there's proof that he's actually going to the airport and flying planes around.
SPEAKER_00:If he doesn't know what he's doing, where were you?
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_00:I know. I have like 150, 160 hours of flying already. Like it's a lot. Ooh, so just a few more than me. Just a few more. Yeah. A few more.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, like by 150 or 160.
SPEAKER_00:Something like that. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05:How long did you go up in the airport?
SPEAKER_01:2.4 hours. 2.4 hours. We were going against the wind. At least that's what we were built for. That's an important number. So it took longer to get from here to Fort Wayne, is where we fly. Yep. Because we were going against the wind. Flu, whatever. But we got from Fort Wayne back to OSU a lot quicker because we were going with the wind. Nice. We had about a So all the cities I'm looking for, one pops up every once in a while on the way to Fort Wayne. We turn around like city, city, city. Yeah. Twice as fast.
SPEAKER_00:We were doing like 120 knots over the ground, which is about 130 miles an hour to Fort Wayne. Are we doing 184 on the way back?
SPEAKER_06:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:Which is right at 200 miles an hour on the way back. So yeah, it means a lot faster too.
SPEAKER_03:Did we stop in Fort Wayne and check on our tractors?
SPEAKER_00:No. No, we touched we did a touch and go. I didn't even I didn't even do a taxi back. Because we only had the plane for so long. Right. And coming back here to pick Eric up and going back to the airport and everything, it was close. We actually landed. I parked the airplane at at 4.02. And uh so it's two minutes over our time, and I called radio for them to come fill the plane up because I knew the guy was coming. And uh general rule is if you see the person coming to you, give them the keys, that kind of thing. Right. Um try to be polite, or if you know for a fact they're inside the terminal, then you can bring the keys. But if you don't know that, then you put the keys back in the key box. Sure. So I put the keys in the keybox, I'm leaving the hangar, and he walks over and he's like, Hey, are you Patrick? And I'm like, Yeah. He's like, Oh yeah, I'm taking the the plane out that you just got back in, or whatever. It's like, oh, I just put the keys up. I'm so sorry. So he had to walk all the way back to the hangar and do all that, but um, yeah. It was it was a lot I I enjoyed it. It was cool having Eric next to me because it's like, oh, this is what it's like. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I can't tell you this from flying, it's a complete opposite of trying to drive across the country. I appreciated the turbulence to keep me awake. Because once you got above a certain level, it's like floating on glass. You can't tell how fast you're going, you can't feel the bumps, anything. It it puts you to sleep.
SPEAKER_05:Wow. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Heather and I had a similar situation today.
SPEAKER_05:Oh.
SPEAKER_03:With keys. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_05:You went high or flying, or what are we doing here?
SPEAKER_03:No, we we had a similar situation where we need to move a couple of trucks and Heather moved a truck over somewhere else, and I had to give a team some paperwork, and she was coming back to park a truck that she had pulled out to move the other truck. And I gave the team the paperwork, and I go, Well, I'm standing right here, and she's way over there. I may as well go ahead and park this truck. And I parked the truck. Oh, I thought you were gonna say she had the keys, so you couldn't. No, the keys were in the truck still.
SPEAKER_04:Oh instead of having her truck handoff as a truck. Exactly.
SPEAKER_03:It's a plane handoff. So in in this situation, I was we had the keys off. I'd have to go all she had to go all the way back to the to the truck to get in it to move it.
SPEAKER_00:Did anything to do with the fact that the truck was already warm?
SPEAKER_03:No, because the truck really wasn't warm. It hadn't run that long. Yeah. I was there. I was just being polite. That's what I'm saying. Teamwork. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Teamwork makes the dream work.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Similar but different.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I could yes, completely, completely. Uh I I agree. You talk about these trucks taking a while to warm up, too. Uh I left uh Bat and Roach. I left Baton Roach yesterday with D10174. Uh I left Columbus yesterday with D10174 and took it out to Bolt and it was an hour and eight minutes. I had uh seven or six hours of 52 minutes left on my on my clock. Right. So it was exactly that much time uh when I was like, all right, the truck's finally warm enough, I can turn the heater down. Doing 65 miles an hour. Like it was that cold outside. It took 10 degrees up. It took that long to warm it inside the truck up. It's crazy.
SPEAKER_04:Wow.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Do you drive with the curtain closed? I do. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That way I use my instrumentations uh on the on the truck. You know, well, they have it. This one has the the uh uh autopilot, what's it called? Where you do the adaptive cruise and lane. And it has the lane departure warning, so as long as you listen for the warning, yeah, they're good.
SPEAKER_01:You just we're partnering with Tesla.
SPEAKER_03:I don't I don't know if I told you this, but our newest truck that went out today has the lane keep assist on it.
SPEAKER_00:Do you know Jerry wanted that feature so bad? He made me promise the next truck I put him in would have that feature, and I said, I'm not gonna do it, I'm not gonna put you in a truck with this. And I didn't.
SPEAKER_03:I stood by my word. It is very annoying. Very annoying. One, the steering wheel has no resistance. The team might be listening to us. I told them about it. Okay. And they they had experienced it before, they were aware. Okay. I'm I'm sure what you used to, maybe it's different.
SPEAKER_00:Do you have to use it or it's an option?
SPEAKER_03:You can actually turn it off. Oh, okay. Unlike the lane departure, yes. You actually turn it off and it stays off. Okay. The lane departure you turn off comes back on in 10 minutes.
SPEAKER_00:It's just for uh construction zones.
SPEAKER_03:Construction zones, exactly. So the lane keep, the one that's again the steering wheel, if you're in a parking lot, it has zero resistance. It just spins freely. It's hard to tell where you're at because you're not you're not feeling anything.
SPEAKER_00:So it's like, you know, I kind of felt this way with the Western stars, the the big western stars, the 150s we have. Their steering is effortless. It is effortless.
SPEAKER_03:No, that this is way more effort. It's almost so it's like it's almost like drive by wire. It's drive by wire. You feel like you're not connected to anything at all when you're turning the steering wheel. Is it connected to anything? Have you looked? I haven't looked. I was driven the truck, the truck turns. Well, I know, but I mean like you know, they're the drive shaft.
SPEAKER_00:Well, they do they do true cars. You can get buy cars, they're very expensive that have true uh drive-by wire, and so the steering wheel is not connected at all to the uh anything. It's just uh on a back of it's a slow motor and it tops.
SPEAKER_03:You know, when I did my pre-trip before I drove it, drove it here from Fort Wayne, I did grab the steering shaft and it did feel different. There is a steering shaft. I know that. It did feel differently. That's interesting. I didn't think this is about actually felt it. I squeezed it and they crushed it. Um it's a pool noodle. Yeah, but once once you're on the road, yeah. It's like a car with power steering. You you don't feel it because you're moving, it's a whole different thing. Um but you you feel the steering wheel do like this the whole way. Oh. And it just is annoying.
SPEAKER_00:Is it that's with it on?
SPEAKER_03:That's with it on, but with it off, it's fine. It's fine. Okay. Yeah. So I turned it off.
SPEAKER_00:Well, dang, I wish I'd have done that.
SPEAKER_03:I'd like to try it. I tried it out. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I apologize. No, it's it's all good. Maybe the next one.
SPEAKER_05:Maybe what is it called again?
SPEAKER_03:Lane keep lane keep assist or something? What's it what's it do? It keeps you between the navigational beacons. Oh center dead on, right?
SPEAKER_05:Jimmy Buffett does that for me.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. There you go. Stick with Jimmy Buffett.
SPEAKER_00:You gotta be specific. Exactly. Exactly. Uh I had a weekend with Jimmy Bucket once. That was uh brutal. That was fun. Yeah. Never eat under cooked chicken. Oh. Yeah. Never eat undercooked chicken.
SPEAKER_03:Never under eat cook cooked chicken?
SPEAKER_00:Never eat undercooked chicken. Or you may also have a weekend with Jimmy Bucket. Go on.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, it was horrible. I remember I was driving with my mom and we had a run going up to Canada the night before we had stopped off at the first TA that you cross into Michigan.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, Monroe?
SPEAKER_02:I don't know the name of it, but I know it was the first TA.
SPEAKER_00:Like on your way to Detroit.
SPEAKER_02:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's Monroe, right? I think it's the TA Monroe.
SPEAKER_02:We stopped off there. We had dinner. We were chilling for the night because the next morning we had enough time to get across the border and do everything we had to do.
SPEAKER_00:And you got your chicken rare like you always do.
SPEAKER_02:I had chicken stir-fry. It looked cook, it it tasted fine.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And uh, boy, the next morning we got up to go take a shower and it was on, let me tell you. Like it it took me probably two hours in the bathroom. Mom came to the door, banging on the door. You know, she's like, What's going on? I was crying. I was oh boy. Yeah, so we ended up, she drove, we crossed the border. You have to be up front two people when you cross into Canada. So I'm sitting in the passenger seat with a bucket in between my legs, just going to town, and the guy at the border crossing is just looking at me like, Do I want to let you in? It was uh it was it was not fun.
SPEAKER_00:Oh man, that's brutal, especially doing the border crossing. Yeah, because they will that's that's a sign. Like you have drugs, like what happened? Are you are you a drug mule?
SPEAKER_03:Because you have a balloon burst in your belly.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. Like, what's going on? I'm surprised they didn't like uh was it can we just have you pull your truck over here? They didn't. We had the exciting one where they're like, you can just leave your truck here and get out of the vehicle now when people with M16s, and it's like okay. Well remember that? In the toll, in the in the like in the lane, like in the they had us leave right there, and we left and went into the little security building and had a conversation with some very nice people. Uh and it was it was actually so brief. It probably I've told this story a thousand times. Every time I tell it, it's we've there for hours. I think really we were there for less than an hour. Like it was a real quick remembering a different one then.
SPEAKER_01:That's one where we tried to cross the border, they had their problem. We had to go back into Canada and stay at a truck that was it overnight.
SPEAKER_00:That's a different one. Canada can be fun. That's the one I remember. It can, it really can. Can uh they put the can in Canada.
SPEAKER_01:Not gonna mess with people's money, but uh plan ahead. Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um but the good thing is just keep remembering if you are taking a load into Canada or bringing a load out of Canada back into the US um and you get detained at the border, your truck gets detained at the border. Um that it does count for detention with both carriers that we work with, so you do get paid. So just you have to keep that in the back of your head. So when everything's you know, burning to the ground, it's probably fine.
SPEAKER_02:Huh? What was your longest time?
SPEAKER_00:When he like he said, when we got turned around at the border, I think we were two days waiting to get across.
SPEAKER_02:My longest was three sitting at the border.
SPEAKER_00:We had one not too long ago that was like six days. No not us personally. No, it within our fleet. Yeah. That their their detention pay was like double the run pay. It was ridiculous. Um anyways.
SPEAKER_05:What are reasons that you get held up at the border? Um Is it a you thing or the carrier thing?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you know, everybody points fingers at everybody. Uh no, as uh as drivers, I think, and I could be wrong, and maybe I'm overstating this simple simplicity of it, but they're like you have to have your paperwork just so, but it's not hard to do. And it's all electronic these days. Um so you basically give them a co uh a sheet of paper with a QR code, right? And then they're they're just scanning it, and if everything's here, you're good to go. The problem is they have to have brokers to be able to get the freight uh pass through there, uh, like with uh customs brokers. Sorry, that's what I'm trying to say. So not like freight brokers, these are custom brokers. And then uh you have um a bunch of people that have to touch the load and everybody's gotta do their port. Um and we've even caught one of our carriers, I won't say who they are. They were like, the broker, the broker, the customs broker, we're trying to figure it out the customs broker, yada yada yada. Finally get approved. We go in there and we tell them, and they're like, Yeah, the cust the the the the the the the people at the border, the the customs field at the border were like, yeah, the broker had everything to us just fine. Your carrier had their paperwork wrong. And so it's like, all right. Yeah. So everybody points fingers at everybody, so you never really get the truth of what happened. Sure. Um, sometimes the shippers have to they have to certify stuff, the people receiving have to certify stuff. So if if everybody doesn't talk, you could have issues, which is why I have the 70-20-10 rule. 70% of the time, totally fine. You're in and out, it's no big deal. 20% of the time, oh, it's it's a pain. You have heartache. Uh it could be you being at the border up to a day, you know, like a shift. So, you know, a few hours, six, seven hours, eight hours. That's not uncommon. And then 10% of the time, you have nightmare where they send you back. They literally turn you around, they're like, we can't let you in, and you have to go back into the other country. Which, if it's in America, not a big deal. We got a lot of truck stops here, everything's fine. If it's the other way around, you're not allowed into America and you're stuck in Canada, they don't have nearly as many truck stops or places to go hang out. Plus, now every time you use your phone, it's international. Every time you use your data, it's international. Every time you go to a um store and you swipe a credit card, you're paying a transaction or a uh foreign transaction fee. So that's where it gets to be a little bit of a headache, which is why we always say, like, if you're going into Canada, treat it like you're going into a winter storm. Buy groceries, load up on stuff that you can bring to Canada because you can't just bring every food into Canada. Don't bring your lobster, don't bring your fresh fruits, uh, but everything else, you know, pretty much all your canned and uh what do they call that? Shelf stable shelf stable stable. All that most of that stuff you can bring over just fine.
SPEAKER_02:So the majority of my headaches going into Canada was not going into Canada, it was coming back. Yes. The majority of my headaches was coming back into the U.S.
SPEAKER_03:Loaded or empty?
SPEAKER_02:Both. Because honestly, I I'm not being this to be one side or the other. It's just they treat you like you're a criminal, whether you're a U.S. citizen or not. Like they have to prove that you need to be here. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Literally. You're guilty until proven innocent.
SPEAKER_05:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yep. But I mean, again, it it makes up for it in rate. Those loads do typically pay very well. And again, if you get detained, it just pays even that much better.
SPEAKER_05:Right, right.
SPEAKER_00:So that's that's where the advantage is. And we do tell people like I encourage everybody to get their passport and do it. It's it's certainly worth it. Um, and there's not a ton of people that can, which just drives up your value, right? Right, right. Um, so it's it's definitely interesting. Um just patience. Just patience. Just think of it you have to kind of lose your temper.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you have to take off you're living in the same truck, same sleeper, you'd be anywhere in the world. Just go make you a coffee, sit down and watch TV, yeah, and calm down until your carrier fit figures it out.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and remember, when you switch over to detention, you go from being a miles-based revenue to an hourly worker. So, you know what I mean? Like really, because we charge detention by the hour. Right. So once you get into detention, lots of patients. The more patient you are, the more money you're making.
SPEAKER_05:Right.
SPEAKER_00:So it's uh yeah, no, it's it's very interesting. And customs doesn't care. We did have a shipment that we brought in uh of pharmaceuticals out of Detroit, crossover uh from Windsor to Detroit, and they want to do an inspection on us. We opened up the truck, it was a negative twenty load. We told them, you know, we can only have this product out for I want to say 45 minutes was the rule. Might have been an hour. And uh they had us there for like two and a half hours, and they had the doors open, the freight out of the truck for that long. I think it was intentional, honestly. I could be wrong, but it felt intentional, and uh the product spoiled. So we put it on the truck, we finished the load, FedEx said finished the load, and when we got there, they took it off the truck and they have they like have a um basically incinerated, but they just have to destroy it. And they they the the shippers, the pharmaceutical companies that do this, they know this happens, it just gets built into the price of your medicine. So yeah, crazy town.
SPEAKER_05:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:Uh but that's Canada. It's still worth it. I don't regret it at all. And if you do have to go, bring a bucket just in case. Jimmy bucket. Jimmy bucket, yes. We should um we should do that. We should get like uh plastic buckets and get like a nice wrap on them that's very tropical. Yeah, it'll be your jimmy bucket. And then we could you know sell those. And they're like, what are these for? Mop buckets? No.
SPEAKER_04:Preventing the mopping.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yeah, absolutely. You could oh so many, so many good ideas.
SPEAKER_05:You could put one of the kids' potty training or one of the um do you remember the foam built toilet seats that was pushing in your butt? Oh, yeah. You can put that around so you could have you know comfort when you're leaning over it.
SPEAKER_00:I'm telling you, it's a million dollar idea. We need it, we can put them in every dollar tree, dollar store, family dollar, Walmart, as soon as you walk in. In the Jimmy Bucket. Right next to the uh the purple seat.
SPEAKER_02:Um, the purple I'm sure I would say.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, Iowa, and they don't take up much space. I mean, you stack a bucket, you know.
SPEAKER_05:It could be a multi-bucket.
SPEAKER_00:It could be like where you're going with that. Jimmy Cuppet. Oh, Jimmy Bullet. I'm telling you, we are onto something. We we need to we need to work on that. Let's uh let's troubleshoot or not troubleshoot, let's brainstorm this a little bit later. I think it's I think would you let us know in the comments. Would you buy a Jimmy bucket? We should. Oh man, what a great idea. What a great idea.
SPEAKER_05:Only if he's wearing the flower tropical shirt.
SPEAKER_00:Well, we don't have his license, so we just had to be a like a just a generic round head. Like, do you remember the Seinfold episode? I don't know if you do, where George has someone um airbrushed out of a photo back when they actually had just regular photos, uh, and uh the guy erased the wrong person, so then he had to add Back in, and it's just a big circle with a smile on it on his face. It's like, what is that?
SPEAKER_01:That was good times. I love that episode. It's a good thing we don't have to worry about that going to and from Mexico. No. Uh over the border.
unknown:Oh.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, the border, yeah, yeah. You might want that Jimmy Bucket even more because we're going to and from Mexico. A little bad water. I believe it's a Jimmy Shit.
SPEAKER_01:No, I'm talking about uh logistics.
SPEAKER_00:So, Eric, we were talking about flying, uh, and uh you you getting a chance to experience this with me today for the first time. What what did you think of the scenery?
SPEAKER_01:White white and barren. Yes.
SPEAKER_05:It's winter.
SPEAKER_01:It I I he made a comment a while back about land being flat and you can't tell the difference from the sky. Well, I can tell where the five degree temperature has been blowing snow and where it got caught on the hill.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah, you can see the skin.
SPEAKER_01:The snow makes it look like hills and little mini mountains. Yep. But if it weren't for the snow, yeah, it would be you wouldn't be able to tell the difference in elevations.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and we flew directly over Bellfoun and all that. And you know, that area is super hilly, and they got very isn't there like a like a ski resort over there too? Yeah. Yeah. But I guess you can't you couldn't tell there's that much elevation change. Like it's crazy.
SPEAKER_01:The snow really brings it out. Yeah. Well, the snow with the wind blowing it. Yeah. Another funny thing, he's trying to tell me, look over there, there's an airport. Well, uh, I can't see it, Patrick. What are you looking at? I'm like, and he's like, look at that patch of trees right there, and it's behind the patch of trees, but a little to the right. I'm like, patch of trees in the Midwest. Which one? There's only a hundred of them.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Uh it is funny. Spotting airports and spotting airplanes is something that you have to like, you have to get good at it. It's tricky. Today we we like we didn't have any close calls. We didn't have any airplanes we came close to. And when I say close calls, I mean within a thousand feet above or below us, which isn't safe. There's nothing wrong with that. So we had nothing like that, but we had to so I was like, well, I still want to try and look for airplanes. Like I want to build that skill, right? And so we're trying to look for them. And you know, white airplanes again that are below you, and you're looking at a big white field of snow, they blend. I bet they do. Yeah, they blend. I mean, there were a couple that we were like right on top of, and it's like, oh, there it is. Like it it's yeah, it's it was difficult.
SPEAKER_01:Uh and even even with no clouds, no clouds at all, we were it's a beautiful day. Completely clear day, and it's still hard as heck to find other planes in the sky.
SPEAKER_05:Different than yesterday.
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Those 40 mile an hour gusts.
SPEAKER_00:I I didn't fly yesterday because of it. It was too much.
SPEAKER_05:Vince said, speaking of like what Eric was talking about, the blowing wind, Vince said that uh they got the snow and then the wind would have a gust, and it just blew the snow out of the yard parking lot.
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_05:So they didn't have to have anybody come remove the snow.
SPEAKER_00:On my trip to Fort Wayne, A was very slow going. There were quite a few uh assault trucks they got behind, so 35 mile an hour. Like it took me four and a half hours to get to bolt. Wow. Which is not it doesn't take that. It's two and a half-ish hours with no traffic, three if you encounter some traffic, four and a half's unheard of. Driving out there, the the snow was blowing over the road. And I know y'all have seen it. I'm I don't know how to describe it, but it's like it just looks like flooding water gr crossing the road fast, but it's not, it's snow. And it's all really low. It's you know, it's only um fluffy. Yeah, it's just it's just right above the road, but it looks like it's crazy flooding. And it was so much wind and there were patches of ice that we were going over to that I'm like, oof. It's just it nerve-wracking. But so I get there and I'm like, well, at least I booked an SUV to get me back home. Because I'm like, I want four-wheel drive, I want something safe. And if I don't get front a four-wheel drive, at least the SUVs are at front-wheel drive, which is safest, right? The worst thing you can get is like a rear-wheel drive pickup truck. So I get there and they give me a rear-wheel drive pickup truck. And I'm like, It was a butch truck. It was nice, a big GMC, four-door. I told the guy too, when he picked me up at the at Bolt, I was like, he said, Well, I got the, you know, get this thing, it's nice and warm for you. Should be a great truck to get you back over there. And I'm like, Well, it's but it's snow and ice, the roads, roads are terrible. Like, I don't know if this is a good idea. We get to his lot, he has nothing else there for me. Like, I the other option was like a Chevy Aveo, and I'm like, I'll take my chance in the truck. At least, you know, they both have the equal chances to wreck, and I'm pretty sure I'll be safer wrecking in the in the GMC.
SPEAKER_04:Did you ask him for some salt or bags of chains or something to put in the back so you could weigh it down?
SPEAKER_00:That's a good idea. I should have. Uh, I did not do that. I just went and took my time getting back home. Spoiler alert, I did not have any damage, didn't have any issues or whatever. But uh, oh, so as we're pulling into I said this and he's like, nothing to worry about, you'll be fine, right? We're pulling into the enterprise. He pulls over to the like shoulder to turn in, puts his brakes on, and we go sliding across the ice.
SPEAKER_03:Past the driveway.
SPEAKER_00:Past the driveway. He has to put it in reverse and then back on the shoulder up to get into the enterprise parking lot.
SPEAKER_04:Exactly. Just don't stop.
SPEAKER_00:You'll be fine. Yeah, just don't stop. Or turn. Or anything else. So it actually had me take it had me take uh uh uh the Flying J. Is that 30? US 30. 33th, I think. Is it 33? I think so.
SPEAKER_05:Way up there?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Which one is right here?
SPEAKER_05:33.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, then it's 30. It's the one that's not right here.
SPEAKER_03:That's right, because you transfer off to 33.
SPEAKER_00:So 30, uh, have me take 30 all the way over to where 30 and 23, which is the road that goes along the river and goes through Delaware. Yeah. Where they connect.
SPEAKER_05:We've done that.
SPEAKER_00:So it's a big huge turn up north or whatever, and then you get the road kind of splits, you go to Mansfield, or you can go on our Busyrus going down south. Have me take that crazy path. But at least I was on four, you know, four lane highways, and they it was mostly nice. But it was even when Google Maps is like, don't take the side roads like it always does every single time I've ever gone to Boltz. Right. That's what it was like, yeah, it's it's bad. Um, and I didn't know because they do such a good job of keeping the streets in Columbus clear. I just figured it'd be fine. Had I known how bad it was, I wouldn't have gone. I would have just said I'll take the truck another day.
SPEAKER_04:That makes sense.
SPEAKER_00:But oh well, it's fine.
SPEAKER_04:That's there now. It was like night and day though, because in the morning it was snowy, it was yucky, whatever. Oh yeah. Then with all the gusts and everything, we're driving around in the afternoon, it was like there was no snow at all.
SPEAKER_00:Sunshine. Was it sunshine here too?
SPEAKER_04:A little bit, yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah in the afternoon.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Vince gets home yesterday and he says, the only place in all of Columbus that still has snow on the road. And I'm like, I'm like, are you talking about our immediate cul-de-sac road or the next road it leads to? Uh because those could be kind of close or similar. Uh he's like, nope. Our cul-de-sac road. He said, uh all of all of the others were like you said the wind blew the snow right off. Everything was clear.
SPEAKER_01:Your cul-de-sac must be on the upside of a hill.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_05:I've never thought about that.
SPEAKER_00:What you gotta do is just they keep advertising to me. It's this company that sells heated floor mats. Like they're big, like rugs. They look like they remind me of like you ever see the the they're usually black rugs that they have, like when you walk into a school or you walk into like a church or something like that. They're these big they're maybe like eight foot wide by four or five foot deep. They look like those.
SPEAKER_05:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Um, you know, usually from Centas or whatever. Right. They look like those, uh, but they're they you put them outside and you run electricity to them, and they just heat that little area. So they're they're showing you all like sidewalks and things. I think they have models you can drive a car on, but I'm not positive. So what I think you should do is just do that to your entire street. Take a collection, you set up a toll booth at the at the end of your street, and um, and then you don't have to worry about this, you know that. Just have I don't know how you pay the electricity bill because it can't be cheap.
SPEAKER_04:Well, they have heated driveways, so I mean, why can't they do it to the streets?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:I think we should just take up a collection and have somebody come in and give it a snow plow.
SPEAKER_03:I think we should move to somewhere warmer. Oh.
SPEAKER_01:Do you tell them about that new vendor in Minneapolis?
SPEAKER_05:That doesn't sound warmer.
SPEAKER_01:It is not just saying great summers though. It's always warm in the Mall of America. Well, that'd be a good thing for people to say the people who have been to Mall of America. What's your favorite shop there?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, the alpaca store, of course. They can use that. Fur coats. Yes. The alpaca store is great. I love the alpaca store. Um we never went.
SPEAKER_05:You never went in the three years we were out.
SPEAKER_02:I never did either.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, it's a big mall. Wow. Yeah, it's a big mall. Gigantic. It's a theme park in the middle of it. Roller coaster. I've ridden a roller coasters. It's plural in there. Plural.
SPEAKER_01:Roller coasters. One of our favorite restaurants is there too. If we do a field trip, we know we're eating that night.
SPEAKER_03:Crave.
SPEAKER_00:Um we were just talking about that crave. Uh it's one of those restaurants that you like, you're like, oh, this is like a chain meh kind of whatever restaurant. Like fake, nice like um trying to think of what would be a good example of this. Like the ones I'm thinking of are in South Louisiana. Y'all probably wouldn't know who they are. Longhorn Steakhouse.
SPEAKER_05:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Right? It's it's a nice steakhouse, but it's not like a fancy steakhouse. Right. You know what I mean? It's that's this place. And so you're like, I kind of have an idea of the quality of food, or and it's like, no, the food's much better. They're batting way out of their league. Uh, but from what I can tell, they're only like in the uh Twin Cities area, they're not anywhere else.
SPEAKER_01:So they're like a really localized and it's very like you said, long it's a very they have a wide variety of options on the menu. Yeah. So if you like pasta, you like fish, you like steak, they've really good sushi over there. Even sushi. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:We only had one sleepover in Minneapolis, I think, in our three years that I can think of. And then that was very early on, like the first three or four months that we're out. And we opted to do a major league baseball game. We're doing that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. It was it was towards the end of baseball season because football season was started.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I will warn people in commercial trucks. They are a little bucky-ish. You can park your truck during the day out in the back of the parking lot, but they will not let you park overnight.
SPEAKER_00:And specifically, if you are like, okay, I want to stay, I want to go to the Mall of America, and I want to watch it. Not watch it, I want to go there and like hang out. They're cool with it. Uh, but truck parking is unless it's moved, which I don't think it has, because I we were there not too long ago and it was in the same spot. It's kind of like on the IKEA side of the parking lot. So if you're looking it up, you'll see where the IKEA is. There is a little section in the back. Uh, it's a pretty good walk in uh from there. I was it's where the old Sears is, but I don't think that's gonna help anyone who's never been. You know, down by where the Texco used to be. Right. Um But yeah, the IKEA is still there, so you're you're kind of near the IKEA. If you see the IKEA, then you're in the generally right spot. You'll see other trucks parked there. Uh buses too, because they do a lot of like um tours. Not not tours, but like uh field trip type stuff, or like a church group that's coming through or or or or whatever, like they may do an afternoon of the mall or something like that.
SPEAKER_01:And I would highly recommend seeing if you haven't getting your steps in for the day.
SPEAKER_00:Especially in winter. That's I feel like that's the only time you and I ever went to the Mall of America was in the winter. Every time it was, I can't think of like a pretty day. The only I tell you what, the only time it was pretty outside when we actually went, we did what you're not allowed to do, so don't do this. Is um went parked at the Mall of America, went into the building and walked through the building and out into the parking garage where the train is, the train stop is. We got on the train and we rode it into downtown Minneapolis, and then spent the evening in downtown Minneapolis, went to a uh cool uh burger, not burger joint, like a it's almost like an Irish pub, I guess is what it was. Yeah, had fish and chips, all that good stuff. Uh it just had a great time in downtown and then uh rode the train back. So um yeah, because it that's uh like going into a downtown area is not easy. Now it's easier now with Uber and Lyft. You gotta remember, we're old, so when we were around you couldn't you couldn't Uber and Lyft everywhere. It was only certain cities. Um so that's why we had to use it.
SPEAKER_05:But uh yeah, no, it's uh things have definitely progressed in a quick fashion since y'all started.
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah. Well, Jerry, do you remember that? Uh y'all have probably been on the too young for this, but Jerry, do you remember like checking the city to see if Uber was here yet? Oh, absolutely.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:No, we've been to a couple cities where I think we took it for granted. The one I could think of is out in Georgia and we had a date night. We we were able to get one in.
SPEAKER_06:Right.
SPEAKER_05:And we were telling our story to the staff, and they're like, Oh, well, don't stick around here past Exo. Yeah, you won't get one.
SPEAKER_03:Where was that? I know exactly where it was.
SPEAKER_05:And their loves had just opened like four days before we got there.
SPEAKER_03:Wow.
SPEAKER_05:Uh it's outside of Atlanta.
SPEAKER_03:I think that's a just east of Atlanta.
SPEAKER_04:Learning thing. Make sure wherever you're Ubering to, yes, that you can get an Uber back.
SPEAKER_05:Yes, before we ran into that too. Lexington, Kentucky, we ran into that too.
SPEAKER_00:And check for sporting events, because we've had that happen where you're going into an area and you don't realize that the stadium with a hundred thousand people is gonna be letting out about the time you're done with dinner. And then, you know, you can get an Uber, but you're paying five hundred dollars for it.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So it's a great tool, but you gotta definitely gotta pay attention. But no, but I mean I remember back in the day it was like, oh my god, this town is Uber. Like just being so excited. Like we can actually go places and do things. And we never had Lyft. Like that was I didn't get Lyft until we started uh like I just had to like fly places and pick up trucks and move them or whatever. That's when I finally got Lyft. It actually was Jerry who was the one that convinced me to do it. Commerce, Georgia.
SPEAKER_04:Commerce, Georgia. Now do you compare the prices? Check Uber or you check Lyft to see which one's better.
SPEAKER_00:In general, no.
SPEAKER_04:Are they different?
SPEAKER_00:In general, no. I prefer Uber. I think Jerry, you prefer Lyft, right? I think so. So my my problem has been I've had enough. Am I allowed to use the word janky?
SPEAKER_05:Sure. I was gonna say our ride in commerce was a little janky.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. I've had enough janky rides with Lyft that Uber seems to have rules like you need to have running uh engines and uh your light, your headlights need to work, and your taillights need to work, and the car needs to be built within the last twenty years.
SPEAKER_04:And decent looking inside. No, yeah, a little bit cleaner side.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. And uh in Lyft is kind of like go-kart, yeah, we have that. That's that's a lift go-kart, lift cart.
SPEAKER_04:I found the same.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So I I typically do Uber only, and then I will do Lyft when it's like the price is astronomical, or Uber's having a hard time finding me someone or whatever. And that usually works. Uh usually does. But uh like I just had a situation happen where I went to an airport and I had to Uber somewhere. And when I got there, the um checked in Uber's like, it'd be like$38 or whatever. I'm like, that's fair. I it was going pretty far. So I'm like, huh, that makes sense. Uh, we're looking for cars for you, we're looking for someone for you, we're looking for someone for you, can't find anybody, can't find anybody, can't find anybody. And then it pops up a new screen like, oh, well, we actually have Uber whatever pricing. Right. And so your new your car now will be$78 or something. It jumped up that much. I was like, what? And so I pulled up my Lyft app, and Lyft was like$28, and someone immediately accepted my ride. So I mean, in times like that, yeah, I'll use Lyft. And some I don't know if it's as bad as it used to be, but for a little while there, there was a lot of airports that wouldn't let you use Uber, but they would work with Lyft. I guess Lyft was willing to pay them like a few cents per ride to be able to use their service. Yeah. So for those that you don't have a choice. But I I don't think that's as bad anymore. I think Uber has kind of loosened up and started paying some of those fees, right? Yeah, they have. So they have. It's crazy. It just like to know all that and then to also remember a time where that just didn't exist at all.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, sure. I can remember a little different kind of same shadow anyway, but I can remember back in the day of cell phone towers only being 3G, and Verizon was the first ones to come out with 4G before the other networks kicked in. And I can remember getting my first jetpack from Verizon.
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah. Oh, we had a jetpack. I remember that.
SPEAKER_02:And then looking at the Verizon map every time we were like laid over somewhere, seeing where the nearest 4G areas were. And like I remember being out in Washington and having to get like within so close to Seattle to get a 4G signal, and we would like go to rest areas and try to find a parking spot just so I can get that faster signal. Oh that's crazy.
SPEAKER_00:We never went that far, but what we would do is we would always like we stopped the truck, and it's like, all right, let's see what we got here. We got uh the jetpack, how's it looking? Uh it says no signal or is it one bar? Okay, what's the phone half? Because I had the old school ATT unlimited everything, everything, everything, so I could still tether from it. And so I was like, okay, well, let me like whatever one was best, that's what we do. And there were plenty of times we watched movies or TV shows with buffering in the middle of it just to try to get through. I mean, I shoot, we we took DVDs on the road with us uh when we first went out because even with tethering, it wasn't strong enough signal 2011, 12, like it still wasn't enough signal.
SPEAKER_02:We literally had a whole like one of our bins where we kept closing stuff later in the day, but we literally had a whole bin that was nothing but movies because that's all we had.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. When we uh so our very first truck was a Kenworth T660. Oh T600, sorry. T600. We drove for out of the company that we bought a T660. Uh but the sleepers were identical. They were the studio sleeper. If you've seen where we've gone to the Mid-America truck show, we've actually shown you off that sleeper a couple times. It's a really cool layout. Like, I still think it's better than the modern Cascadia factory sleeper, but uh, you know, it I guess you could make more money with the modern one. Uh so uh that that sleeper had a little shelf right at the back of the bed that was maybe two and a half inches wide and maybe like three or four inches tall, and it went right all along the back of the back wall. So we actually hung a TV in there, and then I was trying to find a DVD player that would fit, a bluer player that would fit in that shelf and still work standing up, because a lot of them won't. And I was and I was trying to figure out what we could do, and I did the measurements and I was like, I wonder. And I looked up a PS2 three, PS3? A PS3 has the bluer, right? Yes, yes. So I looked up uh PlayStation 3. We're not gamers, we don't game at all. Uh, but I was like, let me see what it is. It perfect fit. So for Black Friday, we went. Out and bought a PlayStation 3. Yes, and it's when it came with the Grand Theft Auto 5.
SPEAKER_05:Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_00:So we had Grand Theft Auto 5 and we had a Blu-ray player. And it it worked perfect because the little door slid down and it was still like you put a DVD without having to like pull the player out and put it back in and everything. It was a great fit. I've still got it. It's in the basement under the stairs.
SPEAKER_05:And you only used it for movies.
SPEAKER_00:We only used it for movies.
SPEAKER_05:Well, yeah. It's probably worth something to someone.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. Collectible.
SPEAKER_05:The collectible fine works. I've got a Wii in my basement.
SPEAKER_00:You ever use it?
SPEAKER_05:I used to use it, but I don't anymore. The Wii.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I know. I saw his face says you used to have a Wii in your basement.
SPEAKER_03:No, it's still down there.
SPEAKER_04:I go in the basement sometimes to go Wii, Wii. I like to do family game night on the Wii.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that's fun. I would I I wish my uh N64 worked. That's the one. Like I grew up on Atari and then we moved on to Sega Genesis. Sega. My my real one that I love was N64. I had Pod Racing game and a couple others I just really enjoyed. That I still have it. I just don't own a TV that takes a yellow video cable. It was yellow, red, and white. That was your two audio and your video. I don't have a TV that does that anymore, so kind of screwed. Which is crazy because I still have the RX thing on the back.
SPEAKER_04:I don't know if you can get adapters that would be a good thing.
SPEAKER_00:I'm sure I could.
unknown:I'm gonna do something else.
SPEAKER_02:Just get you a Nintendo Switch or something, and then you can subscribe and play all those games.
SPEAKER_00:Oh that's too much effort.
SPEAKER_02:You can play all those games on.
SPEAKER_00:I remember Pong. Did you well was it uh like real Atari Pong or was it like a uh no, like the screen was just a green I know what green is battles?
SPEAKER_04:I don't know. It was not uh no, it wasn't fancy.
SPEAKER_00:What so was it just that the game was only Pong and that is it? That's all we had. We had that too. So we had the Atari Pong, which took the um God, was it round ones, yeah? It was a round, it was a round, twisty thing, and they had an orange button on it. Yeah, and that was it.
SPEAKER_04:I had to handle a joystick, yeah. Thank you, yes.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome. Oh fun stuff. What do y'all do to keep yourself entertained when you're sitting? I'm curious about it. Who doesn't? But I mean, I I think that we're more suited for when you're driving.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know, because we're not gonna make you laugh out loud.
SPEAKER_04:And wake up your sleeping.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. Exactly. We may help you sleep, uh but ultimately my question to you, Eric, is after now that we've done this, we have taken the maiden voyage. Can you see us, Outer Belt crew, all of us getting in that plane and flying somewhere?
SPEAKER_01:Judging by the numbers you had to poke into the computer this morning for weight, we may have to configure it.
SPEAKER_00:Everybody has to get a everybody has everybody has to get a jimmy bucket and a and a big and a big uh chalky fluid before the flight, so we get everybody just to I warn you if you want to be on the plane, you're going to have to release your weight information.
SPEAKER_03:That's true. I travel with a a cat skill ticket far away. That way it's not certified. Yeah, it's certified.
SPEAKER_04:Are there that many seats?
SPEAKER_00:There's only five seats.
SPEAKER_04:I was gonna say.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, you can squeeze a third. That's five seats, yeah. It's it's three back there. More comfortably. More actually very comfortably. Uh I've not sat in the back yet, but I have been told it's actually like super spacious. Um, and the seats are like they're not like crappy seats. I I'd call it like seats out of an Audi or something, right? Like they're that nice leather of like kind of sporty, kind of nice, reasonably comfortable. I didn't complain about that. So it's uh that I will say this, it was so stinking cold, it was negative eighteen degrees when we were up there. It was cold. And uh so being up at negative eighteen degrees, that heater on full blast, ooh. It's wasn't great.
SPEAKER_05:Still not giving me heat, huh?
SPEAKER_00:I mean, it was putting heat out. It just the heat didn't last as fast as the the freezing temperatures on the outside of the windows, you know what I mean? Like it just so you were bundled? I was I yeah, I was layered up nicely. Eric was freezing.
SPEAKER_01:Thank God I thought about it before we left and the underarmers the th thermals. Thermals, yeah. I asked him if I should wear them, and he his answer was I'm wearing them right now. And I'm like, that's good enough. I'll be right back. Oh, it's so thank God I did, because I was still very cold.
SPEAKER_05:Just like a blanket or something, too.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Well, what's crazy is so like the airplane I'm flying on a day-to-day basis, the one the oil pressure died on today, uh, it's they're physically identically the same size, but the one I'm in has a bigger engine, so it goes faster, and it also has uh it performs better. It also has larger fuel tanks and it has the anti-icing equipment on it. And so that's why I'm doing my instrument studies in that airplane, uh, because we can fly into bad weather and we can turn the anti-icing stuff on and fly. The one that Eric and I flew today that I can rent and fly uh is uh doesn't have the anti-icing. Even though it was as cold, there's no moisture in the air, there's no clouds, so there's no chance of icing. Right. So that's why we could fly it today. But so when I when I flew out this morning in the truck in the airplane, that bigger engine, we were comfortable and fine. Smaller engine with Eric today, it did not put out nearly as much heat. I was surprised. I we're up there and I'm like, it's chilly for me. And normally these airplanes will sweat you out. It just two different engines, and and that massive engine puts out so much more heat than that little tiny one does. So it uh right.
SPEAKER_01:It made a difference who was facing the sun when we're going east or west. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Eric, we turn around and we're flying back, and Eric's like, oh my gosh, the sun, it's so much warmer on this side. Uh yeah. So now I'm looking forward to doing more of this. I have 20, like 22 hours, 21, 22 hours left that I have to get to before I can take my check ride and test out of it. Um, so that's nine or ten more of these just random, pick a day and go fly for a couple hours. So uh getting close to the uh instrument check ride, hopefully in the next two months or so. How exciting done. That'll be great. I can't wait. Then I can rent the big plane. I'll never rent the small plane again. That'd be the Uber Deluxe. Oh, it's so much faster. Anyways, um well, cool. I hope you can see us uh going places and doing things in it. I'm excited. I I really enjoy it, and uh to be able to share that with other people is is fun to me. So if you like what you've heard today and you want to help support us, uh you could use our GoFundMe, but we haven't set one up yet. You could use our Patreon, also not set up yet. You could join our VIP, don't have one. Uh the best way you can do cost you nothing is. YouTube memberships? YouTube memberships? Do we have a YouTube membership yet? Super chats? We should do a live and do some super chats. You should.
SPEAKER_05:There's a lot of people that want to do lives. I've been hearing that again.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's uh it seems like it kind of comes in waves, right? It seems like it's time for lives again, because yeah, yeah. At any rate, we could days of our lives. Hey. So um great. I just demonetized our episode. So uh we're gonna get sued by RCA. Um so uh if you want to support us, yeah, the couple different ways you can do it. One, hit that like button, subscribe to this channel. Uh if you really think what we've done has a been a banger job, share it. You could there's a little button there with an arrow. You can share it, send it to someone, say, hey, these guys are absolutely crazy, stupid, fun, uh, whatever you want to say. Um one person talks too much, but the rest of them have great uh insight. Uh share that with other people so they can hear it. Well, we hopefully will help people get down their uh drive a little better, a little faster, a little easier. Uh, we've all been drivers, we know what it's like behind the steering wheel, and it is nice to have someone in your ears. We just want to be that for uh a little bit of your time to help you out. And uh if you have anything you want to tell us about our podcast, drop us a comment. Uh if you're watching us on YouTube or one of the platform services that allow comments. If you are not on an episode or on a platform that allows comments, uh make a review. You can drop a review and say, hey, these people are great. Give us five star reviews. If you want to give us less than five star reviews, don't give us a review. You can uh also shoot us an email at the outerbeltpodcast at gmail.com. That's the outer beltpodcast at gmail.com. Or you can personally call Jerry at 833 Highfield.
SPEAKER_02:That's 833 493 4353, option one.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. I know how to transfer.
SPEAKER_00:And uh that'll get you uh that'll get you one of our fine people in recruiting. Uh so if you want to uh hear more about what we're doing over here at Highfield, what we're doing with our custom trucks, tractors, straight trucks, reefers, dries, all the stuff we're doing now. It's so hard to keep track of everything we're doing.
SPEAKER_05:It is so hard.
SPEAKER_00:It's just gone crazy. Uh and I even told you about what we're doing next. I know. So um blimps.
SPEAKER_05:Ooh.
SPEAKER_00:And drone operators. Nice dirigibles. Dirigibles, dirigibles. Dirigibles. Maybe Simi? Simi Dirigible. Okay. Simi Simi Rigid, dirigible. Semi Rigid Dirigible. Uh well, you Google's right there. Anyways. So uh if you're interested in what we have to say, you can actually reach out, like she said, at this phone number. Uh option one, get you in touch with uh a few of our different recruiting people. They're great. Mulsa's one of them. Uh and uh they'll kind of give you a head uh uh uh a recount of what we're doing and um a recount.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I will recount to you all of the wonderful trucks and options, whether you're a class B or Class A um experience or no experience. We'll recount it all.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. So uh in the meantime, are we feeding anything, Jerry? Is that pretty much everything?
SPEAKER_02:That's pretty much it.
SPEAKER_00:All right. Well then in that case, aura. Until next time. Peace out, now we're getting sued by GE. Right records. I think we can we can probably who's the other one? Uh uh What's a fifty cents record?
SPEAKER_05:All right, peace out, see down. Does that work? Is that better?
SPEAKER_03:I don't know. I can't think of it.
SPEAKER_00:In the meantime, stay safe, make good decisions. Don't leave money on the table.
SPEAKER_02:And keep those wills at all.