From Costco TVs To A Driver Lounge Built For Road Warriors

The joke started with a six-hour miniseries and a crooked TV install. The payoff is bigger: our new driver lounge is officially open, designed for real-world use by people who live on a schedule. We walk you through what we built and why—an auto-locking entry that protects you without trapping you, Wi‑Fi that actually works, a coffee station for quick resets, showers that make hard days easier, and a simple, clear routine for printing permits during business hours. We also share how we’re handling storage, weekly fridge cleanouts, and why short-term, case-by-case food stashing matters when your truck power goes down.

Parking? We keep it honest. Weekends usually have room; weekdays don’t. We don’t do long-term parking, and a 53-foot trailer won’t fit our lot. Instead, we talk workable alternatives: using nearby oversized lots for meetups, leaning on carrier-approved trailer drops around Columbus, and keeping tight maneuvers to a minimum. The goal is frictionless visits and safe equipment flow, not gridlock.

We widen the lens to the road itself—California’s Highway One, the Golden Gate’s gravitational pull, and the difference between a memory and a ticket. We share practical tips for exploring the Bay Area: rent a car, don’t shoulder-park for views, and plan your fuel on coastal stretches where prices spike and turnouts are scarce. There’s nostalgia too—Sutro Baths ruins, Venice and Santa Monica’s timeless boardwalk energy—and a reminder that the best sightseeing comes from smart logistics, not lucky breaks.

If you’re ready for a lounge built by people who’ve actually driven, you’ll feel it here: safety-first access, honest parking guidance, and amenities that meet you where you are. Subscribe, share this with a driver who needs a better pit stop, and leave a review with one upgrade you want to see next.

Email us: theouterbeltpodcast@gmail.com
Website: www.hyfieldtrucking.com
Interested in joining our team? Email us at info.hyfieldtrucking.com we have open trucks! You must be part of a team. No solo drivers.
Call us at 1-833-493-4353 Option 1
Facebook: The Outer Belt Podcast
Instagram: The_OuterBelt

Transcript

Banter, TVs, And Costco Tales

SPEAKER_02 0:00

So the other day I was telling Melissa that uh I I need to go back and watch Lonesome Dub. I haven't seen it yet, and I think I'm gonna watch it tonight.

SPEAKER_05 0:10

And Melissa's response was You know what's six hours and thirteen minutes long.

SPEAKER_02 0:15

So I laughed and I thought, oh, she's being silly. Like it's obviously okay, it's gonna be a long movie, or maybe it's a hard watch or whatever. And then I looked it up and it it's six hours and thirteen minutes long. What movie's that?

SPEAKER_05 0:26

Lonesome dubs. It was a mini-series.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 0:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Outer Belt. I'm Patrick, and you know my friends. Chili, Chillaximus, Chillsworth the First.

SPEAKER_07 0:47

And I'm just here for the free food.

SPEAKER_05 0:50

Wow. I'm buttermilk. Uh I'll take free food too, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

I'm Eric.

SPEAKER_04 0:57

I'm zucchini bread. Uh I'll I'll make it. Oh, the free food?

SPEAKER_03 1:03

And I'm Jerry. And I'm just here.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

You don't like the free food, do you? No. He's the only person I know who go to Costco together, and he like bypasses the samples. And I'm like, why? Why I don't understand that.

SPEAKER_05 1:16

I bypass all but the cheese. Maybe a cracker. But like the juicy drinks up by the vitamin.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Oh, you don't like the you don't like the juicy vitamin drinks? No. But like the cheese, you know, if they have a meat baby, or sometimes they do like the lasagna samples and you get a little piece of lasagna. I won't do the other stuff. Not even the candies? Sure. But it's just one candy.

SPEAKER_05 1:41

Sometimes they have nuts in them, so I disappoint the colour.

SPEAKER_07 1:45

It's just one drink. It's a sip. Exactly. There's a problem there.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

I know when we go, Eric has to go and like the people think he's so rude. He walks up and he snatches the bag off their microwave or the box or the box and he has to go through and verify there's no sesame in it. And they're like, what?

SPEAKER_07 2:02

I'm like that with TVs at Costco. You snatch them up. I can't stop and look at TVs. I gotta keep walking by. Why? Because I'll buy a new one. Oh, that's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_02 2:11

Who buys who buys their TVs at Costco besides me?

SPEAKER_05 2:14

Vince has raised his hand for those of you that are listening.

SPEAKER_03 2:20

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

In free in free uh shipping, and they installed it themselves for free. Um, which was a fiasco because one guy showed up ahead of time. Eric and I had to install the TV while the other guy supervised. It was weird, remember? Yeah, that's odd. It was very odd. Uh, but you know, it's up and it's level and it's you know. There you go. Did we have to level it after they left? Yes. But you know, I used to install TVs professionally, so at least I have that skill.

SPEAKER_05 2:45

There you go.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

There's always that scratch on it, and then you remember, oh, that's the film. I don't think there's not a scratch on this one though, right?

unknown 2:53

No.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Is there a scratch on this one? Okay, no. It was just the film. There was a mark on it before we pulled the film.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

Oh, it was yes, okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

No, no, you're talking about yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that.

SPEAKER_05 3:02

Like the plastic rack wrapping film. Yeah, it makes sense.

SPEAKER_07 3:05

Well, our last TV was open box from Costco that I was able to negotiate down even further than the open box price.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

I we could have done that, I guess.

SPEAKER_05 3:14

Well, why didn't you?

SPEAKER_02 3:15

Well, I didn't go to Costco. I because I knew if I stopped at Costco, I would end up buying a TV.

SPEAKER_05 3:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

So instead I waited for a Black Friday sale and I was like, well, when in Rome. As you do. You gotta get the Sicilian pizza. You do.

SPEAKER_05 3:27

But you could have negotiated down the open box down a little lower.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

But my box was closed.

SPEAKER_04 3:34

You can open it.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

We had we had someone come and show up and open it themselves. Nice. By that I mean we had to help them, but still. It was a crazy so the person shows up and their helper is like, and this was the helper. Even crazier, this was the helper. And so the main person's like, I'll be there in like 30 minutes. And I'm like, well, this is nice having someone who very lovely man, spoke marginal English. Um, so we're trying to communicate as best we can, right? We're all being civil. And finally he's like, he's like, 30 minutes. So he's like, no, no. And he goes outside, he grabs his tool bag, he comes back in, you know, tool bag in one hand, level in the other. I don't know why he brought the level, and uh, he's like, you you get that side, you get that side, and so we we started taking the TV apart. If am I lying, Eric? Like, this is what really happened. You know what I mean? Spend$2,800 on a TV or something, and this is how Costco shows their appreciation. And uh, we had it not mostly done, but a good ways into it by the time the second guy showed up, and then we were able to sit back and they hung it crooked and then uh left, and then uh Eric and I went in and um fixed it. Now I did uh uh I I I feel weird about like uh when someone comes to your house do things like this, do you tip them or not? Right? Because I never know. Sometimes I'm like, eh, maybe sometimes not so much. This felt like a situation where I needed a tip. I don't know how to describe that. It just did.

SPEAKER_04 5:12

Okay. Does that make sense? Just stand around at the door while okay.

SPEAKER_02 5:16

No. Um no, it felt like it felt like I wanted to.

SPEAKER_04 5:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 5:20

Like installation was your poor job. No, they did a good job. They're just crooked. Oh, just crooked. That's all and it was I fixed it. Okay. So I um the hard part.

SPEAKER_05 5:31

They got it on the wall.

SPEAKER_02 5:32

Yeah, but I did I did break the tip up and I did give the main guy considerably less than I gave the helper. Oh, I get that. Like, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_04 5:42

I mean initiative. He's like, why should we be waiting? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 5:46

Absolutely. And the sooner you can get out of my house, the better. Like, you know, I wanted to watch TV and see what's going on.

SPEAKER_05 5:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:51

And then I think as soon as that was over, didn't we record an outer belt that night?

SPEAKER_05 5:55

Oh, I don't remember.

The 98-Inch Dilemma And Install Fiasco

SPEAKER_02 5:56

I think we did, right? Because the uh yeah, because when you came in, I was still setting the TV up. Yep. Oh, it was crazy town. And now I I love the TV. It's although I will say this weekend we were watching something, and Eric said we need a bigger one. So always a bigger one. I didn't say it, he did.

SPEAKER_07 6:15

So I think you guys have been through like four TVs since we moved here three and a half years ago.

SPEAKER_02 6:20

There was a 65, the 75, the 85, and now we're in the 98. Yeah, and we're still on the 65.

SPEAKER_07 6:27

Which fits. I mean, yeah, I I joke with buttermilk all the time about getting a new TV. We don't need a new TV. Our TV is just fine. Well as much as you know, I like electronics, is like, why?

SPEAKER_02 6:39

I I felt the same way. So we actually bought this TV last year or in 2024, so two years ago. Two years ago, but really 13 months ago. You know what I mean? Sure. Uh I guess 14 months ago. So uh I bought it then on a Black Friday special and it was five grand. And I it yeah, it was one of those things where you order it, and it's same with this one. I ordered it for Black Friday special, and I didn't get it until January. Like it just takes that long for them to come in. Um and while this thing was on delivery or whatever, I'm like, I can't spend this much money on a TV. This is ridiculous. And so I did go back and canceled it last year or in 2024. So when it came out this year and it was less than half price, I'm like it was less than half the price it was the first time. The first time. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_07 7:25

So I'm like, ah, okay, I'm gonna buy it. Our TV was like 1,500. It was a previous year's model and it was open box. Yeah. And I got it for 700. And I got the Costco extended warranty because it was over the certain price originally, and they threw it all in. I mean, they didn't deliver or set it up, which was fine. You know, I it doesn't my ours isn't mount to the wall. It does, but we don't mount it to the wall. Yeah, it sits on a TV stand, but it fits our room, it fits our space.

SPEAKER_02 7:55

It does. I I've been in your house many times. I've never walked in and been like, oh, you need a bigger TV. Yeah, exactly. Right? Exactly.

SPEAKER_07 8:02

How do you watch things on that?

SPEAKER_02 8:03

Yeah. Well, if you did, it would be like uh Jerry and Don's. Jerry and Don's TV is way too big for their space. Now they love it, and if they do, that's great. That's all that matters. That's all that matters. Is if you're happy with your TV. I think y'all would agree. Like, I have a a large living room. It's two-story living room, it's it's big.

SPEAKER_07 8:20

You can easily your seating is is far enough back from the TV. You're not sitting right there on top of the room.

SPEAKER_05 8:26

It doesn't feel like you're watching the movie.

SPEAKER_07 8:28

Right.

SPEAKER_05 8:29

Yes, like at the first row of the movie theater. And then you can't see. Wait, do you ever and you couldn't really see out to your left and right? Like your peripheral would never go that far. Right.

SPEAKER_02 8:39

I think where I sit is 18 feet from that wall. That's that's quite a long way.

SPEAKER_07 8:43

That's not an exaggeration.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

No, it's literally like 18 feet. Yeah. So it's I think if you look at this at the what you know, they had those scales where they're like, if you're this far away from the TV, you can have a TV this small or this big, and you'll feel comfortable. Yeah. We're definitely on the upper end of that, but we're still within those boundaries. I think technically we could go a little bigger, but the price jump from a 98-inch to like a 110 or 115, it's like$100,000. That's not sarcasm. Wow. It's literally$100,000. Yeah. Really? And I'm like, I could buy, I don't know, a house or a TV that's gonna be worth five grand in two years. Two years. You know what I mean? Six months. Yeah. Like it doesn't make any sense. The benefit, though, of you buying a new TV is the hand-me-downs.

SPEAKER_07 9:27

Hand me downs that we get in the driver's lounge. Right. Very true. I mean, the TV in the driver's lounge is I don't know how big, but 86 inches. It's a beautiful big TV that is there for our drivers when they come in and they're at EOW taking care of business or something. They can come and hang out and watch TV in the driver's lounge. It's got Direct TV on it. You know, it's it's there for them. Is it officially open? Is it open yet? I know it's still an ass. Officially open, I don't know what that means. However, we do have the access code on the front door now.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Um Yeah, I was gonna ask when I was there earlier, why is it taped to the front door? I feel like that's counterproductive. The code number?

SPEAKER_07 10:07

Yeah. Well, because somebody comes in, they haven't seen their their newsletter that has the code on it, uh, that hasn't gone out yet. And then they're they they have the code they can just, oh, just read it and punch it in and go in the door.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

Okay. Yeah. Well, what about burglars?

SPEAKER_07 10:19

What about they're not smart enough to get in there because it's the code. It just seems they're just not gonna recognize it.

SPEAKER_02 10:25

It just seems silly. That's all I'm saying.

SPEAKER_07 10:27

It seems silly, but really if you think about it, it's not. Okay. Don't think about it because I don't want to start a fire. But if you think about it, it really it really isn't.

SPEAKER_02 10:36

Um Well, and the fact that you put it on a post-it note, too. I mean, do you think there's so much wind that goes to there? How long do you think it's gonna last?

SPEAKER_07 10:43

Well, you know, get there now and you can you know the code.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

If you don't get there, if it's not already if it's not already gone, it's gone. It's raining, so it's probably melted. Sipping, dripping wet. Sipping wet. Sipping wet.

SPEAKER_07 10:55

Uh no. The driver's lounge, we got it all set up with the TV, coffee maker, coffee. Yeah. It's got a bathroom with a shower, um, water machine, a microwave. A water machine. Water machine, yeah. It makes water. We have a washing machine. Yeah, if you if you push the button, it water comes out magically. Are we doing the heat? We're not doing the heat, are we? The heat, the hot water? Yeah. Ah, run it through the Keurig or run it through the microwave. Oh, there's a Keurig? There's a coffee maker. I shouldn't name the brand because they don't sponsor us. Oh. So there's a coffee maker. But they take K cups. They do take K cups, which a lot of coffee makers these days take K cups. Would you recommend them bring their own K cups? They can bring their own K cups so they have a brand that they like, or they can use the coffee that we provide for them. And there's a decaf. There's a regular non-decaf coffee.

SPEAKER_05 11:44

Sugars? Yeah. There's a coffee station.

SPEAKER_07 11:48

You've got your sugar, your artificial sweeteners, and variety of colors.

SPEAKER_05 11:54

I thought I saw, I thought I saw some kind of vanilla pump.

SPEAKER_07 11:57

There is a vanilla creamer pump there. Yeah. No, it's just vanilla. Just vanilla. Straight vanilla. Straight vanilla. Lovely.

SPEAKER_05 12:05

So the teams that have already stopped by, what are what are some of the things you've been hearing?

SPEAKER_07 12:10

They're loving it. Wednesday TV getting mounted on the wall. But I take care of that. When will we have TV service? Um, do we have uh do we have uh direct TV in there yet? We do have direct TV in there, yes. Cool. We have direct TV in there. Uh there's internet in there as well. Nice. You need internet access while you're there. Uh during business hours, uh, if you get a hold of one of the staff that's there, we can print things for you. If you have permits you need to print it, that kind of thing, we can print things for you. Um but you know, that's during business hours, of course. Um but yeah, it it's it's uh it's ready to go.

SPEAKER_02 12:43

I was gonna ask about that printer because that was a much much really excessively debated. It was debated excessively. It was excessively.

SPEAKER_07 12:50

I really overthought that.

SPEAKER_02 12:51

I know. The fact that we uh like went and looked up reviews for printers that have been made in in six years, the fact that one person on staff literally recommended a dot matrix. Right. That was where do you find a uh a PCI? No, but not print uh a printer cable. Where do you find printer cable to USB C adapter? Jerry?

SPEAKER_05 13:17

Are you serious? So you're talking to like an iPad? Like a laptop? Like a laptop, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:22

You gotta be able to hook it up. And dot matrix don't have uh Wi-Fi.

SPEAKER_05 13:27

You can't do like remote?

SPEAKER_07 13:29

Not on a dot matrix. No dot matrix. No. I mean, I guess we could run it.

SPEAKER_02 13:34

No, the paper's not crazy hard to find. What's hard to find is that little table for it to sit on. Yeah. You know the one with the little slot on the bottom of it? Oh man.

SPEAKER_07 13:43

I mean, we were we were all in on the dot matrix until we couldn't find the table.

SPEAKER_02 13:47

Yeah. That was the only thing left. And we thought about custom manufacturing a table, but it seemed like that's excessive.

SPEAKER_07 13:52

That's excessive.

SPEAKER_02 13:53

So that's when we eventually went to uh laser. Laser. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:57

My dad used to bring home the extra paper from work, so we'd use that for coloring and stuff.

SPEAKER_02 14:04

So I can neither confirm nor deny how we got our dot matrix paper because I don't want to get sued by a multinational company.

SPEAKER_07 14:10

The uh the um the uh what do you call that time?

SPEAKER_02 14:15

The statute of limitations of limitations is not no no uh we uh the thing that was cool about the dot matrix printers back in the day, if you ever had one, those are the ones that were like everyone had them at when I was a kid. So in the 90s, it's maybe the only printer you had. If you had a uh if you had a printer, and if you had a uh what was the other one? The uh inkjet. Oh you living high on the hog data. Fancy pants. Exactly. Um exactly, but you could not print anything discreetly. No. I mean, the whole house knew if you were printing, yes, dot matrix or inkjet, the whole house knew because the inkjets weren't quiet then either. No, they were not. Everything has changed so much since uh I was a kid. Like everything was loud.

SPEAKER_06 14:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:59

Like even just turning a computer on, you know, you had like this uh 100 horsepower fan to cool the power supply. That was uh they had just just invented transistors.

SPEAKER_05 15:12

I was just a dial up tone for AOL or I was on I was on Juno at the time, but nothing was quiet.

Announcing The Driver Lounge

SPEAKER_02 15:21

Oh, I remember Juno. Oh yeah. Yeah, we were Prodigy until Prodigy went away and then we went to AOL. But we had but even like you wanted to like let's play Monopoly games, so we gotta put the Monopoly and load it in. Right. So you put the the Monopoly uh the floppy in, and then you go with the little key. It was a thom. And then you had to download it and install it. Right. Because there was nothing running off of it.

SPEAKER_04 15:45

You couldn't play right off.

SPEAKER_02 15:46

You couldn't play right off. That was unheard of. I remember when CDs came out and you started having games where you can actually just play them off the disc and it was like, I don't I don't have to install anything. Right.

SPEAKER_04 15:57

Yeah, but sometimes you had to wait for it to download to the next screen.

SPEAKER_07 16:00

Well, right, there was a C had to spin up and we don't have any of that stuff in the driver's lounge. We're not that advanced to have CD rooms and floppy disk in the driver's lounge.

SPEAKER_05 16:10

Right now, we do have Wi-Fi, though, is what I do.

SPEAKER_04 16:13

So bring your own we have a little charging thing if you happen to forget your cable in the truck and don't want to go out there. Got a box of extra cables.

SPEAKER_02 16:21

We don't have a Blu ray. We don't have a box of extra cables. I don't have a Blu-ray player, I didn't hook up one. I I feel like if we have a special circumstance where we really absolutely need one, we do have a couple spares and you would have to go grab it and hook it up. But I'm telling you, between the walls let me tell you what.

SPEAKER_07 16:40

Let me tell you what.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

We don't have a Blu-ray player.

SPEAKER_07 16:43

I wasn't involved in this. But what was so let me tell you a little story. When we first set up the TV, uh we had a direct TV box that we connected to the TV and all was good. And then we had a little bit of an issue with getting direct TV boxes from our provider because they're using the same direct TV box that we use in the trucks. Correct. And we had a bit of an issue getting direct TV boxes from the provider, and we had a team coming through that wanted direct TV and we wanted to satisfy them and get them a direct TV box. So we took it off the driver's lounge TV. And the lounge wasn't open yet either. So it wasn't open. We didn't need it, and we gave it to them. So when we started getting our shipments, our regular shipments of direct TV boxes, Jerry graciously came by to install it, and uh he didn't have fun. I wasn't helping, I was doing other stuff. Jerry did not have fun, and I've heard words come out of Jerry's mouth that I've never heard Jerry say before. Because he is a southern gentleman. And so, no, we will not be hooking up a Blu-ray player to that TV if you cannot stream it and cast it to the TV, you will not watch it on that TV. Telling you what, telling that right now.

SPEAKER_02 17:54

So if you want to watch something off Blu-ray, bring a TV in with your Blu-ray player and then send it up on a TV.

SPEAKER_07 18:01

If you want a Blu-ray player for your truck, reach out. I got one or two. Yeah. Uh that's great. Sorry, I feel like that last part was ranting. That whole whole point of that whole conversation was the driver's lounge is open. Uh if you need the code for the door, look for the red post-it note. If it's a purple or blue or green, it's not gonna work. The red post-it note or you can reach out to fleet support and they'll provide it to you.

SPEAKER_04 18:30

So we don't have red post-it. Exactly.

SPEAKER_07 18:32

That's my point. Yes. Woo, you picked up on that.

SPEAKER_02 18:38

This is fun. It is fun. I uh I'm looking forward to actually being able to hopefully, when the weather gets nicer, do some events there, maybe do some next weekend hangouts, do uh hot dogs, you know, in in keeping with our our brand. We have, of course, we mentioned before, it's not a surprise, the absolute cheapest coffee I could find for K Cups. And um, and uh one of them is terrible, and I do apologize for that. That's why we have the French vanilla, and the other one's tolerable. Yeah, sweet. Um so when we do the hot dog uh cookouts, I'm or when they do the cookouts, I'm thinking um the red uh hot dogs. Yes. You know the ones I'm talking about? Uh it's like they're from Nebraska, by the way. 16 of them for 33 cents. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 19:22

Yeah. Yeah. Heather knows somebody. We can get them in bulk for a discount. But the problem is we got a ship. Well, they need to make like 20 cents a hot dog.

SPEAKER_04 19:29

I don't know. I'll be going home in a couple months.

SPEAKER_03 19:32

So I mean, we've got tons of FedEx trucks with reefers. Go get them, bring a whole shipment.

SPEAKER_02 19:36

Yeah, but if you get them, if you go, if you go now, you don't need a reefer.

SPEAKER_07 19:40

Right. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

You can just take a box truck and just read. You actually give me a reefer so you don't freeze too deep.

SPEAKER_04 19:46

It is getting to be 50s and 60s out there.

SPEAKER_02 19:48

So we did have a friend of ours reached out to me and Eric the other day. Uh he runs um uh a fleet of tractors um under his own authority, and they haul cheese and ice cream and all this other stuff. And they uh they had a truck breakdown in Columbus. And uh not a truck, the reefer broke down in Columbus. And they said, Hey, do you happen to have a uh reefer truck we can borrow for a couple hours, throw the stuff in here and and and and hold on to it? And I said, Well, I said, I I don't have one that could do that. Um or I I might can, I'm not sure, but I I just checked, do you really need it though? Because it's so cold outside. What are you worried about? He said, That's the problem. We can't let it uh freeze that deep. Yeah. And I was like, oh, snap. Yeah. And so uh I said, let me work on it. And then a few minutes later he wrote me a text and said, Hey, I actually found out I've got a truck in the area, they're gonna go switch over there and grab the load. So it ended up being fine, didn't have to bother anybody. But um they uh yeah, that was the whole thing. It was just so freezing here, we had to keep the you had to keep the ice cream warm.

SPEAKER_04 20:52

That's weird.

SPEAKER_02 20:53

It did a crazy thought. It's a crazy thought. Absolutely. I get it. Uh so in my basement, I have a uh freezer, refrigerated freezer. It used to be upstairs in my kitchen when I bought the house. I ended up uh was it my pair, personal aesthetic style. So we replaced uh we replaced it, but it worked fine. It just aesthetically I didn't like it. So we got put in the basement because why not, right?

SPEAKER_05 21:17

Beer fridge.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

Yeah, beer fridge. Literally or busy fridge or garage.

SPEAKER_07 21:23

Or when you send somebody to Louisiana to pick up a bunch of atuffe or or crawfish tails or whatever. That's exactly where it goes.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

When we do the big uh the mentor retreats, right? A lot of times it's it's racks of food and stuff like that. So um and it my freezer then that thing was actually too too cold, and we lost a lot of food to Freezer Burn because of it. So and it's been I've been backing it off and backing it off, bagging off. I finally bought um they're called uh freezer thermometers.

SPEAKER_04 21:52

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

I highly recommend it. Specifically for your freezer, yeah. That definitely is ideal. Opening. When you see that it's in the danger zone of two frozen and you've already backed it off two clicks, I got an overachiever.

SPEAKER_05 22:13

That's good though to get one of those.

Amenities, Coffee, And Printer Debates

SPEAKER_02 22:15

Yeah. I'm excited. So I did go by the office today, or not the office, the shop today, and I did see uh a lot of what y'all had done. It was a very busy day, so we didn't really get a chance to hang out and talk too much. And it happened right at the same time as every um uh Tuesday we do a staff uh call because we're we are a global company, so we do a call read everybody on on the same page. And um so that I was there during that time as well. But I did get a walk around and look at a bunch of stuff, even though we weren't able to chat about things, and I saw um like on the front door of the driver's lounge, there is a uh a door dedicated just to entry and exit from that lounge. Yeah, and they had uh some weird things with a deadbolt that I didn't understand. I'm like, this is crazy, I don't like it. I don't know why the previous tenant did what they did. Uh but I was weird. But I saw how you uh got that uh keypad thing on there, and it looks beautiful. Good. I was gonna tell you, I really like that. I'm glad. And I know that was from what I'm saying, that was the most difficult keypad to get, right?

SPEAKER_07 23:19

It was a challenge because there were things we needed a keypad and locked to be able to do that. A regular, like a regular one from Home Depot. Well, yeah, it it wouldn't do it what we wanted it to. Yeah. There's a certain feature on it that the other ones, like the ones that's on the the kitchen door, or sorry, I call it the kitchen, the the the break room door and the office door, uh the that that feature can be defeated really simply like turning a switch. Yeah. And there's a lot of other ones that have a just a button or just a a a mate way to to defeat that and we can't share? And we can't have it defeated because fire code issues. Can I share? Sure. So what we want to be able to do is the the door, the way it works right now is when you open the door and go inside and you release it or lock the door closes, it locks on the outside automatically. Yes. Now you can exit what freely. It doesn't lock from the inside. You can exit freely. Um so the other two, if you turn the switch and there are others on the market where you just push a button, it defeats that's called passage mode, where you can have the outside unlocked all the time. Yeah. Right? And just open the door and come come in. What we don't want to have happen is somebody defeat that and then forget to reset it when they leave so that door be is open 24-7.

SPEAKER_06 24:42

To the burglars.

SPEAKER_07 24:43

To anybody, to burglars, anybody, right? Yeah. So the lock that I ended up finding finally, it has a button on the inside, but requires verification to allow that passage mode to work where it's always unlocked on the outside, which is a feature that we want to have if we're having a function down there. Absolutely. We want to be able to not I gotta enter a code every time I want to come in and out, or you know, most people coming in and out. Or the other option is prop the door open, but you got AC blowing and all that. So this this one actually allows for you can set passage mode, you verify it with a couple of different ways to verify it, and it's it's unlocked all the time. Yeah. And then when you're done, you just reset it back to passage mode on. But you can't accidentally do it, you can't accidentally do it, yeah, not realizing what you're doing.

SPEAKER_02 25:30

And it's a safety thing too. Like we do have we're in a shared lot, so there's four or five other businesses there. And so they may have people coming in and out at at all hours of the morning, and not know which business they're going to. Not either not know which business they're going to, or they're not people we vetted. We don't know who they are, we don't know what their situation is. There is a certain level uh of a person that you have to be to be able to run one of our opera vehicles. So um we know there's security inherently built into that. Uh we can't speak for the other businesses in that area area. So if you come in and it's like, all right, we're gonna be here for a couple hours, we're gonna do some laundry, it's three o'clock in the morning. Hey, well, hey, that's what it's for. That's what we want you to be able to do. Exactly. And uh when you close that door behind you, we want that door to be locked so that if someone comes and tries to get in there behind you, uh, they don't have that option. They won't be able to. And there's nothing you can do to accidentally disable that feature. And again, you can always leave. That was a big thing too. We wanted to make sure we had 100% egress egress, right? Yes. Uh so you can always leave no matter what. There's no like, oh my gosh, I locked the door on me on accident. None of that. You can always get out easily.

SPEAKER_07 26:45

Um and so if you turn that lever, it's gonna unlock and you can go out. Yes. No problem.

SPEAKER_02 26:50

So that was one thing where just getting everything to fit in that mold was not nearly as easy. It wasn't. It took what, three, four weeks to find it? It took a while. Yeah. It was a hot while and it looks good too.

SPEAKER_07 27:03

It actually turns out it turns out that that lock is when I was looking for for the access to the staff area. Yes. And realized that I didn't need that particular style of handle unlock for the staff area. But again, I've been in my research looking for that lock for the staff area, it turns out, oh, hey, it works in this situation.

SPEAKER_02 27:25

So yeah. And it also gets complicated when you're talking about um a deadbolt versus a slam latch or whatever. Yeah, levered lock. So it's been uh it's been interesting. So I looked at it, it looks really good. Um, I know there's one more project we gotta do in there. Um, and that is we're gonna be hanging some cameras. Yep. Um, and uh we got uh that system came in. It here it's a huge box. It's a huge box. I saw that and I was like, just immediate, you know, like that when you've got like oh, we've got a big job ahead of us that's thinking.

SPEAKER_07 28:01

Yeah, I had that immediately when I saw that. Yeah, I I've been avoiding thinking about how we're running wires for that.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

Yeah, that's not gonna be fun.

SPEAKER_07 28:08

Where they're gonna be run. That's I've been avoiding thinking that.

SPEAKER_02 28:11

I am glad that we're doing running wires and and doing that style. You know, anything like that's why Wi-Fi connected or whatever. There's so many like variables where you gotta have Wi-Fi signal, you gotta have whatever, yeah, all this stuff. Yeah, we don't have to have that. We got we're gonna put this on a UPS. So even if power dies, we are gonna have 24-7 uh camera surveillance. So again, just safety, safety, safety in the back of our minds. And um, but that does mean physically pulling wire, pulling the the ends of the wire off, and then twisting those little twisted pairs, putting them in that little connector, and then that's the easy part. Where the wire runs is the hard part. I'm excited about it. I don't know. I don't know because I don't know because the one area that we need to get to to access everything is an office that no one uses. Yep. Oh, I don't have a problem. Drill, baby drill. We'll just we will poke some holes. Oh, one ball cinder block, isn't it? It is.

SPEAKER_07 29:13

I think we can go over that wall. I think. Or there's already penetrations we can use.

SPEAKER_03 29:19

Does it not have a drop ceiling that you can just no?

SPEAKER_07 29:22

No, because it that's that's like the storm wall. Yeah, we'll figure it out.

SPEAKER_02 29:26

Listen, it'll be fun. I've I've listened I I've used a masonry bit. I was gonna say masonary bit and a hammer. Let's go, baby. I just I was having a uh conversation. Uh Brandon, uh, if you were at Expo the last one we had, was it 32, three years ago? He was one of the guys playing guitar. Uh he's done some uh private events for us with the mentors and stuff. He's he's a really cool guy. You'll probably meet him at upcoming functions. He also does some uh handyman carpentry. Carpentry work for us.

SPEAKER_07 29:55

I wouldn't call him handyman. He's he's he's above that. He's above that. He's carpenter, he's carpentry. He's custom installs and builds. Beautiful stuff.

Access Codes, Locks, And Safety Design

SPEAKER_02 30:04

Beautiful stuff. And he uh we were talking about hanging the TV. I showed him my handiwork or whatever because he doesn't necessarily believe that I know how to use a screwdriver, let alone hang a TV and have it look as good as I did. Uh so I was showing him all that and he was like, wow, and we were just talking about the way we did it and everything. And we were talking about that one wall being masonry and hanging the TV there, and he's like, Well, you know, I've done masonry and here's how we did it or whatever. And I'm like, Oh, I I learned how to hang TVs in South Louisiana. Oh, yeah. I learned how to hang TVs at Catholic churches where your wall is uh three, four feet of concrete. I mean, like I've I've snapped masonry bits that were three, four, five feet long. Like that that's that's all all old old hat for me. And um, so yeah, I a cinder block wall. Yeah, we got that. Yeah, no problem. It's not that won't be a concern at all. Um now the landlord, you know, you know we weren't gonna get that street deposit back anyway.

SPEAKER_07 31:03

The landlord's not worried about it. The landlord's attitude when we ask to be able to do stuff is yeah, sure, go for it.

SPEAKER_02 31:12

There was something I asked the we have great landlords. I asked them the other day about something, and they were like, why would you ask me? I said it's in the least. And you're like, It's in the least. I think it was the elevator clause. I think it was the elevator clause, yes.

SPEAKER_07 31:29

And when you see our building, you realize it's a one-story building. There is no elevator.

SPEAKER_02 31:33

Yes, oh my gosh, it was uh yeah, we'll be fine.

SPEAKER_07 31:38

They uh they they appreciate our tendency and are happy to accommodate. Yeah, and we are respectful also, though, of our tendency, and we don't we we do our best to stay within the uh the the the boundaries of that tendency.

SPEAKER_02 32:00

I like how you say uh we stay we do our best. We do. We don't accomplish it, but we do our best.

SPEAKER_07 32:06

We do our best. Yeah, there there are times when we go outside of it, not on purpose, but there's a conversation had to say, hey, I recognize that outside the lines a little bit here. Yeah. Here's why, and here's what we're doing to it to take care of that.

SPEAKER_02 32:23

So my question is have there been times where we've been completely within our borders? No. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 32:36

We were within our borders in one area, but outside of our borders in another area.

SPEAKER_02 32:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 32:43

With that was the snow's fault.

SPEAKER_02 32:45

Oh, yeah, that's not fair. Everything's different. Oh, where was I driver the other day? Uh oh man, where was I? Uh I don't remember where it was. I was driving. And um I went, oh, I was driving the the circle in Dublin, the traffic circle in Dublin. We all know what I'm talking about, right? Yep. Yep. And uh I was going to get onto old uh across the river, and the snow bank just made me like shove into the other lane and then back into my lane or whatever, and I'm like, in any other time, this is like giant 10 feet wide lanes, everything's really spacious and comfortable or whatever. Leave a little snow to come through, and it just turns to the Wild Wild West, and people are like, who cares? It does. City Dublin's like, we're not shoveling any more snow. We've it's just got to melt. Yeah. Yeah. It's I it's it's actually been melting pretty fast.

SPEAKER_07 33:43

That rain helped. It has melted really fast. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, our yard is still covered in snow, but we get very little sun in that area. Like the fields across from the shop. Yeah. You couldn't tell it's snowed there. There's no snow on them. Yeah. But there are certain areas we you can you can you can drive out there now and recogn and see where the sun hits and where it doesn't hit, yeah. And know where to plant your plants. Because if you want sun, you don't want to plant in our front yard.

SPEAKER_02 34:09

So, you know, because as the sun, as the year goes on, the sun's gonna get more and more directly over us. Yeah, and right now it's it's a little south of us. Yep. So you can clearly see in our backyard where that's where that shade line is. Because my backyard is um, there's no trees in the dead center of it. It's a big open lawn, which I love. I think it's I think it's actually uh manicured nicely. Annie loves it. Like just having that big because it's all trees around it. Sure. So we have this big, nice lawn that actually looks really nice when it's not uh it's so crazy now that's everything's so wet we're talking about. But you know, in late summer when it becomes a barren, dry land of waste out there and it turns brown. Um but it looks like a really nice lawn for a while. But because of the all the trees on the other side of it, you can see exactly where that tree line hits that that that uh shadow. Yeah. And everything within that tree line is snow, and everything above it is green. And it's actually nice. It's green. It's green, it's actually nice. It looks pretty. Yeah. So we have officially encountered faux spring. Yep.

SPEAKER_05 35:11

Oh, very faux, probably first foe. 60 degrees today. It was beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 35:15

It was nice. I was outside and short sleeves.

SPEAKER_07 35:19

It's beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 35:20

I had my my thinnest, lightest jacket on, and there was a point where I'm like, this might be too much.

SPEAKER_07 35:25

It might be.

SPEAKER_02 35:26

You know? Yeah. Uh until I went and got gas, and then like under the under the gas canopy with a little breeze, I'm like, oh, it's chilly.

SPEAKER_07 35:35

I went outside thinking I was gonna go outside today for just a rest a minute, go to a truck, come back back in, and I put it didn't put a jacket on, and got out there and realized I don't need a jacket. We were actually outside. Mel and I were outside sprinkling uh ice melt around some of the trucks that don't get sun. And I was out there in shirt sleeves sprinkling ice melt, and I was comfortable.

SPEAKER_02 35:55

Go figure. I saw that giant bag of ice melt you'll have. I was like, oh, this would be nice to have at the house. But I know where you can get it. Yeah, yeah. Or you can save big money at Menards, either way. Did we ever find I know we were looking for the stuff that got left over by our previous the people that own the house before us, did we find it? Yeah. Can't find it.

SPEAKER_07 36:23

Interesting. Well the uh the driver's lounge is open for business.

SPEAKER_02 36:30

Nice. Yeah. Very excited. Yeah, I am too. We gotta decide uh when our first official uh uh I believe where I come from in the deep south, we call it a throwdown. What do y'all call them? A day that is in Y. We call it in Los Angeles.

SPEAKER_04 36:46

We always call it a get together.

SPEAKER_02 36:48

Jerry, what'd you call them? You're from You're from the throwdown area, aren't you?

SPEAKER_03 36:53

Yeah. Yeah. That or just get together. You call it a cookout. Cookout. Potluck. Potluck. Oh my god. I was watching an episode.

SPEAKER_07 37:02

Jerry just woke up.

SPEAKER_03 37:04

Boy, that was a quick lifter. Sorry. Ladies and gentlemen, I gotta present to you, Mr. Jerome Barrow. You said that, and I was watching an episode of uh um Golden Girls? Blake. Jesus.

SPEAKER_04 37:22

Anyway, what happened on that episode?

SPEAKER_01 37:27

Clues. Give us clues. Project runway. It would not have existed.

SPEAKER_03 37:34

I was thinking, I was thinking like RuPaul. One of the judges on there was like um describing someone's dress, and he was like, it looks like you would wear that to uh bring a pot dinner. Bring a pot dinner. And I'm like, what the hell is bring a pot dinner? And me and Don's looking at each other like a potluck?

SPEAKER_07 37:54

Like, I guess what the hell is bring a pot dinner? That's one thing we won't have at the shop is bring pot dinner. Yeah, no. No pot. No pots, no pot. No, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:05

And if you do, if you do bring pot, it needs to be cast iron. Yes. Or uh it needs to be metallic, that way it uh works the induction. Yeah, yeah. Instapot. Instapot dinner.

SPEAKER_04 38:16

We got a gas stove.

SPEAKER_02 38:17

Crockpot. Is it a gas stove or electric?

Cameras, Wiring, And Building Constraints

SPEAKER_07 38:19

It is electric. It is. But we don't have it's not accessible. We'd have an accessible. So we have a get together.

SPEAKER_02 38:27

You mentioned it earlier. So we do have a um lounge, not a lounge, a uh break area for staff. For the staff.

SPEAKER_01 38:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:36

And this is separate from the lounge. And this is a place for um the our our people that work in the yard, uh our staff. Our our staff to be able to to, you know, they're out there working on trucks and whatever, and they need to have lunch or meetings or whatever. This is a place for them to hang out. Um, so it's not accessible to drivers um typically. Typically. Now that being said, it is it does have a little bit nicer of a kitchenette set up to it. So when we do bigger events, we will have it accessible because I know some of you are like, well, I'd like to help clean, or I'd like to help make my world famous green beans or whatever. Yeah, we absolutely will have those facilities available.

SPEAKER_07 39:16

And we have a larger refrigerator in there too. You didn't mention we do have a refrigerator in the driver's lounge area. But we have a larger refrigerator in there if we need to do a big function and have larger dishes. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 39:26

And the the little fridge in the driver's lounge, we will be cleaning it out once a week. So um if you come and uh bring your food in there because you're gonna have a late snack and you just want to throw it in the fridge for a little bit and you forget about it, um, it will get thrown away. We will not be uh keeping that around until you come back and we're not holding food. But if you if you if you I think the thing it'll be really helpful for, it probably the reason we ultimately decide to keep it, I didn't mean to cut, yeah, I'm sorry, is um if you're gonna have your truck into a shop that's gonna be down for three or four days and we know you won't have electricity and you need to like unload a few things out of your fridge, then that that's something, but that's gonna take prior conversation with Vince because we don't want other people taking your food or whatever. So there will be some of that stuff that we can do as well. So it's it's exciting, uh, the things we can do. And there's not a lot of shops where that's gonna happen. Like no, but there are some. But there are some, and we know that.

SPEAKER_07 40:24

So um and we we want to be accommodating to a certain point.

SPEAKER_02 40:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 40:29

What that point is, I don't know. It's we're we it's it's new and we're gonna work through it, and it really is gonna be a case-by-case basis. Sure. So truly reach out to me and we'll figure out what we can and can't do. Yeah. Because again, we do want to be accommodating. We recognize that you invest a lot of of money into the food that you have on your truck because you do have a nice size fridge on your truck. And the last thing you want is that you go grocery shopping, and the next day something happens where you can't keep that food stored. Gotta go to Cat City or a repair. Possibly, right? So reach out to me. We're we want to be accommodating in that way. Certainly.

SPEAKER_05 41:08

So you say you're open. Does that mean I can bring my tractor with my 53-foot trailer and park?

SPEAKER_07 41:16

No.

SPEAKER_05 41:17

Um, does it mean me and two other teams that I'm aware of that are in the area um can all come and hang out for the weekend and park?

SPEAKER_07 41:27

Possibly. Possibly, yeah. So here's the thing with parking. We have less parking now than we did before.

unknown 41:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 41:35

We do not have the ability to have you come in and park your truck for a few days, even and go on home time. Let alone a week or two and you go on home time. We just don't have that space. When we do have space is weekends. Generally speaking, our our neighbor that does the most business closes at 4 p.m. on a Friday. Right. They open at 7 a.m. on Monday morning. Other folks might be stopping to drop a truck there, but chances are there's not gonna be a whole lot of activity between 4 p.m. Mon uh Friday afternoon and 7 a.m. Monday morning. So if you pull in on a weekend and there's a spot to play to park on, you know, you're usually good till Monday morning at 7 a.m. Which there frequently is. On the weekends, it's typically some spaces out there. There's typically guard spaces there. Um, however, 7 a.m. Monday through four o'clock Friday, there's not a whole lot of extra extra space. If you're coming in and you're you need to go to EOW, um sure, you you park there at night and you take it to EOW in the morning. The driver's not just open to you. We just don't have long-term parking available for our trucks.

SPEAKER_06 42:50

Got it.

SPEAKER_07 42:51

We don't have space for trailers, period. We just don't.

SPEAKER_02 42:55

There's I don't even know if you could turn a truck around.

SPEAKER_03 42:58

Not when not when it's you was on the phone with a driver the other day, and she was telling me, Oh, I need to bring back our direct TV box, the old one. And I was like, Oh, okay. And she's like, Well, we're delivering right down the road from there. Can I just swing by and drop it off? And I'm like, Oh, yeah, absolutely, you know, and I'm I'm telling everything, and then all of a sudden I looked in the top right and open phone. You saw the truck number, and I seen the truck number, and I'm like, second thought, no.

SPEAKER_05 43:22

Yeah, we'll send somebody to you.

SPEAKER_03 43:24

I told her, I was like, it's not a big deal, just hold on to it, we'll get it later.

SPEAKER_07 43:27

We have if something like that happens, the Walmart down the road on Stringtown, they have a huge parking lot. Yeah, one of us generally can probably meet them there during business hours, can meet them there and make that swap or pick up for something from them just because that that lot's so huge. Yes, I can't voucher parking in that lot, but if I know they're gonna be there at two o'clock, someone can meet them there at two o'clock and make that swap for them. It's gonna be the easiest way to do it to bring a trailer into into our facility. It's just tight, it's super tight. Especially See with our large our large tractors and a 53-foot trailer. I see RL or FedEx ground pull in there and make a U-turn, they're in a day cab and they're pulling a 25-foot trailer. Yeah. You know, they're not pulling a 53 and they're not an extended sleeper cab. So unfortunately for our tractor friends out there, it's just not the right the best place for that.

Parking Reality And Weekend Exceptions

SPEAKER_02 44:22

But the good news is, because we've had quite a few of our tractors go over to ELW and get work done or go over to um FIDA or something like that. Sure. We do have a couple, like Arc Best is who owns Panthers. Panther is really good about like, hey, I need to drop a trailer for the weekend because we're getting some work done or whatever, and then we'll pick it up Monday morning. They're really good about there's locations around Columbus where you can drop a trailer. They may say drop it at, well, I can't say because there's customer locations, but there's a few places there around town that we know that people teams have dropped trailers and then you just kind of pick them up Monday morning. So you do have that as an option. We have had uh our our our Freightliner dealership as well allow us to drop trailers before um there's they're a lot tighter on their sp on their parking as well, so that's hit or miss. Uh, but but Panther is really good about finding places, drop trailers just temporary, you know, two, three days. So um there are certainly options um for that. But if you've been to uh where we're at, or if you've been to ELW, you know that parking is a long, narrow parking, and there's no turnaround at the end. You get to the end, you're like, oh, I'll be able to make a big U turn there, and there's nothing. You're backing out to the street. Yes. And I mean it's there's been times in straight trucks when it has been packed where it's like, ooh, I'm doing a seven-point turn to get this truck out of here. Yeah, uh, I can't imagine having to do it in a tractor. You know, so I'm excited. I am too. I'm too, I'm too screaming. I really am. I really am. And you know, the Haifel Social page uh that we have. Yeah so if you're a Haifield driver uh social gathering uh page on YouTube, uh YouTube, on Facebook, look it up. Uh you'll be able to uh if you haven't joined it, uh ask to join it. Like in the right now in winter, it's kind of dormant because it's not dormant, dormant. I mean, there are still people asking questions, but there's just not a lot of hanging out because who wants to hang out in negative 10 degree weather? Um, but come springtime, summertime, it gets really busy on those groups and a lot of people try to meet up. Columbus is a hotbed of people meeting up. Oh, yeah. I can easily see that it's gonna be a lot of it's gonna happen around um our shop and around that driver lounge and having those uh uh uh abilities uh to go and and and hang out. So definitely uh keep an eye on that page. And if you haven't joined, join. And if you're like, I want to join, but I'm not a high filled, I'm sorry, it is strictly for Highfield contractors. Um so if you're interested in uh becoming a High Field contractor, feel free to reach out to us at 1833 Highfield.

SPEAKER_03 46:56

That is 1833 493-4353, option one.

SPEAKER_02 47:02

And you'll be able to speak to one of our lovely recruiters, uh, Melissa being one of them. And um you'll uh learn more about the Highfield family and what we're doing. I'm excited. This is a long time coming. We've talked more about this. Uh next week, I'm gonna ask uh Vince to talk a little more about the barbecue space there and what we're doing uh to accommodate that. So excited. But uh goodness because you're so excited. We've got to talk about your history and everything. So uh yeah, it'll be a lot of fun. Um in the meantime, I was thinking the other day, I love California.

SPEAKER_07 47:37

California's a beautiful state.

SPEAKER_02 47:39

I I love going out there. I just saw that they opened up a huge section of Highway One. Did you see that?

SPEAKER_07 47:45

Oh, that was closed there? That was closed. They just did not see it.

SPEAKER_02 47:48

They just opened it and they were talking about it's open now, you can go drive it, and um it's I I know you have mixed feelings because you Highway One or 101? Highway one. Highway one. Yeah. Right along the specific ocean.

SPEAKER_07 48:00

Which specific ocean is it? Just it's specific. It's all specifically.

SPEAKER_02 48:04

Specifically the Pacific. Oh my goodness. Um, but you've done it before, right? You said you did it on a motorcycle and it was one of the most scenic, beautiful, beautiful, relaxing.

SPEAKER_07 48:13

I wouldn't say relaxing. I would say relaxing. It's it's it's a beautiful drive. It's 35 miles an hour the entire way. Which some folks would be like, oh yeah, you want to go slow, because you want to see everything. Yeah, you once you see the ocean and a cliff, you you've seen it and you want to get moving a little bit faster, especially in a bike where you can enjoy the curves. But when you get behind that RV that's towing a car or a trailer and he's doing 25 miles an hour, there are no turnoffs for hours. So if you travel between Los Angeles and San Francisco, it's a six-hour drive.

SPEAKER_02 48:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 48:53

But not on on on i-5.

SPEAKER_02 48:55

On i-5.

SPEAKER_07 48:57

On 101, it's probably a seven-hour drive.

SPEAKER_02 48:59

I thought you say seven-day.

SPEAKER_07 49:01

Well, that's on Highway One. Oh. On Highway One, it can be an 11, 12-hour drive. Fuel is few and far between. Yeah. And it is expensive. They know. They know. They know what they got. They know what they got. So if you're not prepared and you don't fuel before you hop on Highway One, uh, I'm not sure what gas prices are in California right now. Last time I was there, it was like five bucks a gallon, literally. So I would imagine those places are eight, nine bucks a gallon. Oh, wow. You're paying through the noise truck gas on Highway One.

SPEAKER_02 49:33

Can you imagine one of those big gas-powered RVs? Oh, yeah. Just what you're paying.

SPEAKER_07 49:39

Yeah. So, you know, it's it's a long trip on Highway One, and there are places to turn off and cut back to 101 or I5 are few and far between, but it's a beautiful drive. So for a while, because of the rainstorms and the uh landslides, highway one was closed in certain places. Yeah. South of like Santa Cruz and north of probably like um Santa Barbara-ish. That's a big area, but it was closed there because of landslides. The road washed out. So are you telling me that's been rebuilt and it's back to the city?

SPEAKER_02 50:15

I don't know if it's all I don't know if all of it's built, but there was a section of it that is. Nice. And that's what they were talking about. And it made me think about just my limited experience being out there. And I remember uh driving um through uh San Francisco out uh I think it's I think it's Highway One, and you go past the um Golden Gate Park on your right side, the Pacific Ocean on your left, and then uh you get to the baths, the um what are they? The hot springs. Yes. Uh so it's um sutro baths. That's what it is. Okay, yeah. So we uh the sutro baths are right there. I remember this so vividly because three years ago, four years ago, something like that, uh during COVID, couldn't do anything. So me, dad, Eric, my sister, we all uh jumped in a couple vehicles and we just headed west.

SPEAKER_07 51:12

Can I can I stop you for a second? No. And so why were we you mentioned COVID three years ago? COVID was like five years ago.

SPEAKER_02 51:22

Listen, it's been longer. I'm getting older. Okay. Remember, this is this is my equivalent of just the other day.

SPEAKER_07 51:28

I I okay, fair, fair. You are from the south. Fair.

SPEAKER_02 51:32

So, Jerry, you understand just the other day, right?

SPEAKER_03 51:34

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 51:34

That just the other day, something that happened to me in high school. All right, I'm just saying. So I uh so we head out west and we went and saw a bunch of stuff, and it was had a great trip, but we did uh daddy girl trucking, DGT trucking, Donna Sleezman. She's a great fleet owner with FedEx, custom critical, uh uh and Landstar. If you haven't met her, talk to her, she's a wonderful lady. Uh and uh she lives out in California and she let us park our vehicles there, uh the big vehicles there, and then we jumped in my SUV and we headed down into uh San Francisco and went and drove all around and had a really wonderful time. And we went to the Sutro baths, and um I had to pull up pictures because it was closed. Like it's a national park, but or I think it's national park. Pretty sure it's national. I don't think it's a state park, I think it's national park. And I'm trying to, I I already done the research, I knew about this place, but nobody else did. So I'm showing them pictures. It's this look it up. It's it used to be this massive, I mean, absolutely massive swimming pool, hot, springy kind of area. The tide would come in and actually uh fill everything up, and then it would drain everything out, and then it would bring it back in so the pools were constantly refreshed. They didn't have to worry about any kind of chlorine or anything like that. It was natural salt water. Uh the places were massive. I mean, it's huge, beautiful structure back in like the 1800s. And uh it got rebuilt multiple times over the years. It's burned to the ground, got rebuilt, all this stuff. Well, eventually it got burned to the ground, and they're like, we can't keep doing this, and they quit. And um, so now there is still a building there close to where the the original building was, and it I think it's part maybe was the original building, but you can see the ruins of the old pools and everything. They're still there. Um, and so we went and checked it out, and I've shown them all these pictures of it. It's very cool, and a flock of seagulls flew over us, and it's majestic background, Pacific Ocean. You know, you got the bay, uh, not the Bay Bridge, you got the the Golden Gate there, you got the these bass, it's and you're on a rocky cliff, and it's so cool. And one of those birds shat on me.

SPEAKER_05 53:44

For good luck.

Using Nearby Lots And Trailer Drop Options

SPEAKER_02 53:48

And I'm like, seriously, I'm freaking out. You can't imagine. Like, I just got shot in World War II on the beaches of Normandy, freaking out. And so we had to go back to the vehicle, and Eric it happened like the back of my head, so I couldn't see it. So you don't want to touch it, right? Because you don't want to make a mess. So I had to go, we had to dig out some used tissues or something, and then Eric had to like slowly get it out of my hair and everything, and it was just horrible. Now I had my clothes, so I was able to change shirts, but horrible experience.

SPEAKER_05 54:25

I I had that happen in London, remember.

SPEAKER_02 54:27

And you handled it much better. You handled it much better. Much better.

SPEAKER_05 54:30

You were you are it was a direct hit right to the book.

SPEAKER_02 54:33

I did. It was and I had the pleasure of cleaning it out. Yes, you I will we I look I we looked for the napkins.

SPEAKER_05 54:39

Yeah, those were hard to come by.

SPEAKER_02 54:41

I did reward you with gin.

unknown 54:42

No, you didn't.

SPEAKER_02 54:45

But uh yeah, so that was one of my uh very strong memories.

SPEAKER_05 54:50

So the balance aren't usable anymore?

SPEAKER_02 54:53

No, they're just um they're just like ruins of of rock formations and stuff. Like now the tide just comes in and goes out every time a wave blows through. Oh so they're like people will go down there and walk around and like look at stuff, and I guess you could theoretically jump in them, but it's not safe. I wouldn't recommend doing it. Um and out there in San Francisco, all the surfers and everything, it's that's all their territory now. But it is really cool to see and to to especially if you're there and you also pull up a picture of what was there, it is one of those things where it's like, holy cow. You know, there's a few things in history that I wish I could have seen that we just can't. The Crystal Palace out of Chicago, or the one in France, because they did it, you know, built it multiple places.

SPEAKER_05 55:39

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 55:39

I'd love to see one of those places, all of them burned to the ground. Um the uh go to Egypt when it was thriving, you know, when they when they built the temples and everything. Right. Yeah um to go to uh the the sutro baths in their prime. Like I'd love to see some of that stuff. And and we just never will be able to. But it's cool that the foundations are there and you can see scale of how big it is and realize like this is massive, massive. Sightseeing. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 56:12

Just look it up, it is a national park.

SPEAKER_02 56:14

It's national park. Okay, yep. And it's it's it's just I don't know. I really like it. Sutro baths, S U T R O baths, like bathtub baths. Um, check it out. It's very fascinating what they built, and to think of how old it is that they built that back then. Um, and then we drove across uh the Golden Gate Bridge, one of my favorite bridges in the world, and went over to um oh, what is it? Uh Mills, Mill, is it Mill Valley? Is it Mill Valley? Just it is Mill Valley, right? Yeah. Just north of uh the bridge. Yep. Went over there and checked that out, which is cool because I almost went to uh grad school in Mill Valley. That was where I was gonna go to grad school.

SPEAKER_07 56:50

We've talked about that before.

SPEAKER_02 56:51

So it's not too late. It's not too late. It's too late.

SPEAKER_05 56:55

So um so you didn't stop near on the Golden Gate Bridge?

SPEAKER_02 56:59

No, no, no, no. We just drove across it and back and uh and and and got to see uh the Golden Gate is have you been on the Golden Gate? Yes, it's magic, right? It is.

SPEAKER_07 57:10

It is, I don't I got a speeding ticket to the Golden Gate one time. Did you really yeah, I was in my my Dodge Charger, and I I got to the other side and I look in review mirror and there's a there was a cop pulling me over. Oh and he's like, Yeah, I got a partner back there on the bridge, and he spotted you doing 55 and a 35. I'm like, really? It's a 35 across the bridge, it's wide open. He's like, Yeah, I got you.

SPEAKER_02 57:38

No, the Gulf Gate, it's it's beautiful. It is magical. It's magical, it's a beautiful bridge. I don't, you know, uh some things that they build, like the uh what's the bridge in um I-71 bridge going through um Cincinnati.

SPEAKER_07 57:54

That's a gorgeous bridge.

SPEAKER_02 57:55

That is a hideous looking piece of structure. It is. It's ugly.

SPEAKER_07 58:02

Like the golden braid gate, the golden gate, it it's gorgeous.

SPEAKER_02 58:07

It's gorgeous. The the the the the way the spans work, the two towers, you've got it's just a it's in the color, everything, it just really, really works. It's a beautiful structure.

SPEAKER_03 58:17

I've never been uh across it, but I've been on a boat and went under it.

SPEAKER_06 58:20

Ooh.

SPEAKER_02 58:21

I've only been across it in a in a personal vehicle. I've never been across it in a in a truck. No, we didn't either.

SPEAKER_07 58:27

Just in a in a vehicle.

SPEAKER_04 58:29

I did in the truck a couple times. Really? Yeah, but we had to deliver or pick up another.

SPEAKER_05 58:36

We did it in the truck once.

SPEAKER_07 58:38

Yeah, not at the golden gate. We did a bay bridge.

SPEAKER_05 58:42

I've done the golden gate, but not with you.

SPEAKER_07 58:44

Right. In a truck?

SPEAKER_05 58:46

In a personal card.

SPEAKER_07 58:48

Okay. If it was in a truck, there's a problem.

SPEAKER_05 58:51

No. So speaking of the Golden Gate Bridge, I read an article from CDL Life. Oh, um, that uh CHP, that's uh California Highway Patrol, was issuing tickets to truckers for parking on the shoulder to do some sightseeing. Uh this specifically, though, was on the Golden Gate Bridge.

SPEAKER_07 59:16

There's a shoulder on the Golden Gate?

SPEAKER_05 59:17

I don't know.

SPEAKER_07 59:17

It wasn't on the bridge in the pictures that she shared with me earlier. No. Okay, it was like uh off on one of the sides, the the ground sides. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_05 59:28

So before after CHP is reminding truckers that sightseeing is not an emergency after a driver made a stop on the shoulder to take in the view from the Golden Gate Bridge. Uh this is on January 18th of this year. Uh CHP specific, this person ticketed a truck driver for making a non-emergency stop on a freeway shoulder in the Bay Area. The driver of the big rig was nowhere near his vehicle after he parked on the shoulder. Uh, he was found almost a mile away. Uh taking in the view of the bay on the Golden Gate Bridge. Wow. Uh use the incident as a reminder to the trucking community that stopping on the shoulder of a freeway is dangerous and permitted only when your vehicle is disabled, when directed to do so by a police, sorry, peace officer, or in case of emergency.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:25

I do see uh so she just sent me the article and I'm looking at it now. I do see it, it looks like it's on the Mill Valley side, so that is not the San Francisco side, that's the opposite side. Yeah. I mean, like, I can see the the handrailing of the bridge like right there. Yeah, it's right there. He literally because again, there is no emergency exit or emergency lanes on the bridge. Uh he like the very first, like, oh, I can pull over. Let me pull over here real quick. That is, I don't think that's where I would have stopped.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:53

So I need to be a mile from your truck.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:56

Well, there are parking areas on both sides of the bridge, um, the San Francisco side and the Mill Valley side, where you can park and you can walk across the bridge. There's a separate pedestrian footpath on the side of the bridge that you can walk on to walk across the bridge. So I guess that's what this driver was doing was he figured, hey, let me uh But there's not there's not truck parking, it's just for car parking. No, it's it's it's car parking. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:23

Well, just I guess make note don't be sightseeing. Use use your viewpoints and rest areas and all the other places.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:33

I get I get you know I get both sides of it. I know I uh I could put it.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:37

Especially if like you've lived out east and you've never seen it before and you're a truck driver now. But it's a right there.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:43

But if you go if you go across, if you go across and you stop right there, if there is an emergency emergency on the bridge, they have no choice but to drive on and get off the bridge, you stopped in the first available emergency spot. Sure. Like you can't do that. That's it's silly. But um, so I don't you know, figure something else out. But I also get so when I was a kid, uh I uh wanted to be published. So as a uh first grader, I I made a few books. Nice. And uh the first one was a how to book uh of how to uh publish a book.

SPEAKER_07 1:02:26

Okay.

California Roads, Highway One, And Trip Planning

SPEAKER_02 1:02:27

Yes, interesting first grade. My second one was how to build a bridge. And my bridge to build was the Golden Gate. So my love for the Golden Gate Bridge goes back a long time. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:41

So I understand that excitement and joy of wanting to pull off and hike in a mile. Yes, and risk a ticket.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:49

Correct. That being said, I have not done that because I am a law-abiding citizen. And because I recognize, like, if I want to go see the Golden Gate Bridge, we're going to stop, get a car, get to a place where it's whatever more convenient. Like, we're going like I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it responsibly.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:09

Can I just say though, even the pictures in this article, again, CDL I've talked about? Look beautiful. They're beautiful pictures. Whoever took the pictures for CHP, they they got the truck framed in the picture with the bridge in the background. Yeah, they're gorgeous pictures. This guy can now take these pictures and save them and look, this is what I did. Absolutely. It cost me$600 something dollars. I don't know what the I'm just saying, you know, but there is that. At my job, because it was a preventable, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:40

Sure, but there's also the whole like what would it have cost to have a professional picture of my truck? Exactly. That's a very, very good point.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:47

No, uh, I just thought it was a kind of a friendly reminder. I know a lot of people this is a new industry, at least with with Highfield. Yeah, you know, it's a new industry, it's the smaller 40-foot straight trucks that we all love, and you can tuck in somewhere, sneak in there, do whatever here, and uh just a reminder that the straight trucks are still a commercial vehicle, and make sure you're doing your due diligence of where you can go, where you can park the beaches, the white sands park, national parks, public parks, state parks, all of those.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:23

San Francisco is a great town to explore. But it's also one of those great towns where if you have a weekend and you're in that area, you stop down in Los Banos. It's a trip, it's a drive from Los Banos to San Francisco to the to the to the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate Bridge is a drive. But there's so much to explore there that you can't do in a straight truck.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:46

Yeah. Can you imagine taking Lombard and a um straight truck?

SPEAKER_07 1:04:50

In a straight truck, I'd love to try. And no, no, I would not. Uh but you know, that's that's one of those times where you you you stop in Los Banos because that's where the nearest truck stops are, really. You rent a car and you get into San Francisco for a day, or you you get a hotel room for the night, and you spend the weekend in San Francisco or Oakland or anywhere up there in the Bay Area. It's just it's just such a beautiful I know people hate California, and I'm from California, and I don't like going back there. I'm going to LA to visit my family in about three weeks. But you know, this is a time where you you go and you just spend some time in the Bay Area in San Francisco and just take in the sights. It's really, it's really cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:29

Absolutely. It's really cool. I, you know, um, yeah, I I know because like especially it seems to me that people don't like uh California because of the pricing and because of the politics. Sure. And I'm I I say if you take both those, throw them out out the window. Yeah, ignore that. I agree. Um, it's beautiful. Gorgeous. It's beautiful. Now that's it's Southern California, not so much. No, I don't agree. Uh San Diego? Yeah, San Diego. San Diego's beautiful. You take when you get down to uh Cornado Island. You take the greater LA area. Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:01

LA, Ontario, that whole thing. San Bernardino, that whole thing, that whole thing. Yes. And you take it and you chuck it out the window. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:07

Oh, and then you just go the rest of it. The rest of it. Yes. Gorgeous.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:10

Gorgeous. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:12

No, I mean, like Hollywood is uh it's way more seedy than what you're led to believe. Way more seedy. You definitely need to be prepared for Hollywood. Uh but it's also really cool. It's also walking down and seeing the stars of the celebrities you've watched. Seeing going to man's uh theater and seeing the uh the the the footprints or handprints of R2D2 and C3PO. Like they're cool things to see. Yeah, yeah, there's things like that that give me goosebumps that are like, wow, this is really cool.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:44

Those are the kind of things though, in my opinion, you see once and you've seen them.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:48

Sure, but if you've never but if you've never seen them, you go to it. You go do it.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:53

Rent the car. Yes. If you get out of that area, don't park on the side of the road. You get up in Northern California, above San Francisco, even up into Reading, Eureka, the Northern California.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:06

That's area I need to that's the area I really want to go explore more and see. Let's go. We Eric and I have been to we've been to San Francisco three or four times now, each for two or three day spans. So I think we spend probably a solid week and a half there. Yeah, sure. And I feel like we've scratched the surface. Yes, you have. Yeah. Barely. Agreed. Barely. And we've had so much. We went to a hardware store one time in the Castro, and it was bananas. It was like a hardware store from the 1820s, and Eric and I were getting our supplies to go gold mining mining. Yeah. Like it was, and it was a legit ace hardware. Yeah. Like it was crazy that it was, and I'm like, we're in the middle of San Francisco. Why is this store here? It doesn't make any sense.

SPEAKER_07 1:07:55

I I live so I grew up in Los Angeles, and then I moved up to Sunnyville, which is just south, south of San Francisco. Yeah. Um, so I I spent a lot of time up there and I've explored the area. Uh Los Angeles, I you know, I lived there for I don't know how many years, 30 something years, 35 years. Um, and I'm just done with it. I've I've done it except for the Getty, but I've done it, I'm done with it. San Francisco, there's so much there to explore and see just by walking down the street. I think it has history, maybe a little more history. So much. It has a ton of history, yeah. You're great. And then once you get above the the bay, above the Golden Gate, there's so much up there to see. You go up into um uh the place where they have all the oysters. I'm drawing a blank on the name of that place right now on the coast. Oyster Bay.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:48

Oh, that's the place. That's the place.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:51

You get into Oyster Bay, you get up into Naples, Sonoma County. Yeah, even if you don't like wine, it's just beautiful up there. You know, great restaurants. Um Eureka. We I used to go up to Eureka with my ex-wife and kids and spend a few days just on the coast. And just there's so much, so much history.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:12

Yeah, I I definitely it's again, it's a place I want to spend more time. Eric and I um well years ago, we were talking about doing this epic road trip through California. Basically, basically uh San Diego to uh Alaska. And we said that the way to do it is you get an RV and you park it in San Diego, and then you fly out there because we're on the East Coast. I mean we're we're Midwest, but we're eastern time zone, might as well be in the East Coast. And so we're like you go out there, you you you do uh San Diego uh two or three times because it takes that long to see everything. And then uh you make the drive up into uh lower Los Angeles, you know, Orange County and enjoy all that because that Orange County's awesome. It's just beach. Orange County's beach. It's beach and it's a vibe.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:05

It is a vibe. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:06

Well, I I see how you don't see it be like being from there, but when you're not from there, it's a vibe. It absolutely is.

SPEAKER_07 1:10:13

I I don't I don't begrudge you that. And I I I would do that trip with you, and as much as I hate R Ving because everything breaks and your phone. And I gotta fix stuff all the time. Yeah, but I wouldn't have to be a big thing. But California's one of the few places you can actually just park on the side of the beach. I get it.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:30

It's fine.

SPEAKER_07 1:10:30

I get it. But I gotta I gotta park on the side of the beach, I gotta go fix the water pump. Yes. Or I gotta fix the I'm gonna stop because I'm gonna be able to get a big thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:38

But aren't you glad but aren't you glad that you have all this experience fixing uh sleepers? So you know how to fix it. I don't want to fix shit on my vacation. I just don't that's that's the joy of camping. I don't want to spend my vacation fixing. So listen, when you are a camper and you tent camp, you have to build everything and then tear it all down. When you are an RVer, you just repair things. That's the difference. You same amount of work, it's just where's your work channeled.

SPEAKER_07 1:11:04

Um so so I I don't want to interrupt because I'm gonna just derail the whole conversation, so I'll let you finish and we'll talk later.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:15

So I think I found some interesting information for points of comparison. Central Park in New York is 843 acres. Yes, and it's huge. It's 1017 acres. It's a point of comparison.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:35

Yeah, yeah. It's friggin' huge. And it's beautiful, and they have and it was did Robert Moses do both? Uh I don't remember if Moses did both or not, but it's it's gorgeous. The old and the old growth trees that are in, oh, it's it's insane. If you even I mean again, I know a lot of people who uh are anti-California, and I understand I understand it. I'm just saying if you take that part away, it's a it's a really cool state. Um boy, it's a hard sell for California, isn't it? We're sponsored today by California Tourism. Exactly. We'd like to thank the California Tourism Board for their uh sponsorship. Uh but no, so I my thought was okay, you do so you do uh Orange Beach, right? Yeah, not Orange Beach. Orange County, that's in Alabama. You do Orange County, and then you bring your truck to the local public storage, and you are not your truck, your RV. RV. You park it there, you go back home, you do your two, three, four, five months of work or whatever, and then it's like, all right, let's go back out to California, and then you do uh northern Los Angeles. So you hit Venice, you hit Santa Monica. Now I love Venice and Santa Monica. If you think about your 1980s, um what is uh that horrible movie that you love with Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer and they're on the beach playing volleyball? Top gun. Top gun. Top gun. Now that I've alienated. Now that I've alienated all the all the people, uh, if you imagine the top guns in the 1980s movies, and you imagine people uh roller skating up and down the boardwalk, and you imagine people on the beach playing volleyball or playing football, or is it football they were playing? That's what it was. Playing football, or you imagine people surfing and all this stuff, and just the leotards, is that the right word? And all that in the neon colors. That's what Venice and Santa Monica look like right now. Yeah, like right now.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:39

It's a vibe, like you said, it's a vibe.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:40

They have they locked into 1982 and they are not letting go.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:45

Good.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:45

And it's so cool, like, especially you know, being a kid seeing all that stuff on TV, then getting out there, and it's like, oh, y'all have changed nothing. Yeah, nothing.

Sutro Baths, Golden Gate, And Tickets

SPEAKER_07 1:13:53

Nothing. I spent a lot of time out on Venice Beach playing basketball on the basketball courts. You can't tell by my gorgeous, voluptuous figure now, but we would go out to Venice Beach and play basketball because that was some of the best competition. And it's funny that they had the one court that was closest to the boardwalk that was always full court. Yeah, and that's where the top guns played. That's where if you You wanted to get invited. If you weren't damn near NBA level, yeah, you didn't play the court, and it was always full court. Like when Kobe was bored, he would go there. He would Kobe was a nine nine-month-old, he played that court. And then as as you got further away, there were I think there were four courts total. The other courts were all half court games. There were full courts that you played half courts, yeah, and as you got further away, the the talent level got further away. And so I would play on the fifth court where there was like a little net over a trash can.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:46

And it was sand.

SPEAKER_07 1:14:48

You were dribbling in sand. Exactly. But that's holding wasn't I would go out there a lot and playing to display basketball. And it's still the same. The the gym on the beach is still the same. Still there, yeah. You know, it's still there. Um the beach is so wide that you have volleyball courts on the beach, and you still have the beach if you want to go out in the water. I don't know why you would, because it's dirty and polluted, but it's not nice. And the the bikers along the boardwalk and the skaters, and it it's all still there.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:18

And there's skate parks or skaters guys walking around you know, doing their thing still.

SPEAKER_07 1:15:22

It's like it's funny how we started this conversation, and I was like, stay away from LA. And now I'm like, Yeah, LA's not bad. You can stay out of the traffic, but LA's not bad.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:31

I hear they have some palm trees.

SPEAKER_07 1:15:33

A couple, one or two.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:35

One or two. And if you like airplanes, huh?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:38

They got airplanes, especially in that area. Yeah, they do. Um, so no, the the whole thing, the idea is you you you bring an RV, you do your your tour, and then you stop and you park the RV in a storage place, you pay a couple hundred bucks a month until you can come back, you pick it back up, you move to the next place, and you and you work your way all the way up to Alaska, and it takes you a couple years to do it, right? Or a few years to do it. I thought that would be a lot of fun. It's not happened yet, but it did seem like it'd be a great way to see. Because I want to go up to like, okay, keep in mind when I was a kid, much like Jerry, Free Willy was a big deal to me. You remember Free Willie? Absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:16

We've talked about him before in this show.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:18

Yes. I remember seeing those scenes because those all take place in Washington, Oregon, somewhere in that range. The Pacific Northwest, right? Sure. So seeing all that against the the out, you know, the Pacific Ocean, everything. I still to this day have not seen that.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:35

Oh, you know, you're missing out.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:37

I know. I know. Now I've been to Sa Seattle, I've been to Portland, um, and I've actually I've cruised out of s Seattle, but when you cruise, by the time you're out in the water, it's pitch black. You can't see anything.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:52

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:53

So then you wake up the next morning and you're passing Canada, and then you wake up the next morning after that and you're in the fjords of Alaska. Like, I still haven't seen that Pacific Northwest, the rocks in the ocean and all the stuff that you see. I've not seen that. And it's someplace that I I really want to go visit and see. So I think that's why that trip would be a lot of fun. And so many of our teams have done it. I've seen I see pictures of our teams all the time doing that stuff, and they're like, hey, we just delivered here and look at this. And it's like, that's you can right down the road is where uh Jesse and his mom and or his uh adopted mom and dad lived in Free Willie's not far from there, and you can go see it all. And um, but yeah, no, I I think that'd be uh a really fun thing to do.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:40

So there's a photo that comes up on our Apple TV of the beach with rocks, and I'm like, that's Oregon, that's Brookings. Yeah, and Vince will tap the little button on the remote.

SPEAKER_07 1:17:54

It says Brookings.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:56

First off, he says yes, it is. That's what he says before he confirms it. Uh, but then he confirms it, and I just I think it it it makes me happy that one of the auto-scrolled because normally it's Thailand and Singapore that's a screensaver, yeah. Screensaver. Uh, but when Oregon comes by, I'm like, I've been there.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:14

So Eric and I have two of those. One of them is uh Hawaii, where they do the the uh the helicopter drone, whatever in Hawaii. So we've been to that park. Um, if you didn't see the picture of us with the dinosaur, that's it. Yes, that's it. Remember that? That was that was scary. Um, and then definitely not staged. And then um the other one was Dubai, the marina district. Yeah. So like we can actually see like we stayed in that apartment. That's pretty cool. That's pretty fun. Um, but I see those other pictures and I'm like, I want to go. Or the ones of like Singapore, the ones of uh uh Hong Kong or something like that. I'm like, oh, that looks so amazing. Yeah. Um hopefully later this year, me and Jerry and Eric and Don will be able to uh throw some light on some of the some of those. Uh not to foreshadow, but a little foreshadowing. I'm gonna sprinkle in there. Um sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle. And uh, but no. I I think that's what I love most about this job, this thing that we do is the travel aspect and the seeing the country and the seeing the places. And the for me, the pack the fact that Eric and I drove for as long as we did, we saw every state in this country, we've explored most states in this country, and we've barely scratched the surface. Sure.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:37

Just don't park on the side of the road.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:38

Yeah. Just don't park on the side of the road. That's the most important thing. Or make sure or make sure it's okay if it if you do. Or be ready for the ticket money.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:47

There you go.

SPEAKER_07 1:19:48

There's so much to see out there.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:50

So much to see.

SPEAKER_07 1:19:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:53

Yep. And I see a lot of these people doing truck parking. So parking club. Parking club. Yeah, truck parking club. Yeah. I just got a um, real trucker couple and the Lord's uh D D Expediter. They both are doing some stuff with uh truck parking club.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:09

Truck parking club. I just got a uh email introducing me to a truck parking club uh person. Yeah. So I'm gonna have a chat with them. We'll see what if anything comes with that.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:20

There's some really cool places I've been watching the Samuels tuck in out of.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:24

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:24

Um so if you don't watch their channel, they're uh the real trucker couple.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:31

I think they're the only trucking couple. 2.0?

SPEAKER_05 1:20:34

Are they 2.0 now?

SPEAKER_02 1:20:35

I think something like that.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:36

Maybe just a real trucker couple.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:37

Maybe they're YouTube. I don't know. Branding. What is branding? Yeah, what is branding? Who knows? Just the real trucker couple.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:43

It used to be 2.0, but maybe.

SPEAKER_07 1:20:45

They've got some cool merch. Do they? No, I I have no idea. I'm just suggesting they're like, oh Steve, we'll see this and make some cool merch. Yes. Just a thought.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:56

I don't know. I'd be using the parking club, which is truck parking club, which I think we, me, I'm gonna raise my hand here, debuted and discovered them from like four mats ago. Yes, maybe three maths ago. I was so excited, they were brand kind of new, but I could see their vision. Yep. Uh their vision looks like it's coming to fruition in leaps and bounds. Uh, and I gotta say, if we were still out over the road, that we most likely would be utilizing parking club, truck parking club.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:28

Yep. I agree with you. I agree with you. And I like how they have it on a as needed basis. So it look, we're not sponsored by them. No, we're not. I'm I'm I'm talking with uh it's starting to start in the early onset conversation with the city. Check them out.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:48

There's a need, right? And they're they're helping to fill that need.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:52

But they're also helping other people who have that vacant space. Like, what are you doing with it? So it's like a win-win.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:59

It's a win-win-win.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:00

It's like a win-win-win, yeah, right? A company creating it, and then you've got the owner of the property, and then people who need that space to park your truck.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:08

Like a Steve Wynn.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:09

It's like a three-win.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:10

No, not like a Steve Wynn. We're gonna leave Steve Wynn out of this. I was listening to a uh podcast about bourbon, and they were interviewing a guy who was who was the founder of a distillery, and I can't think of the name of it, and he's involved with Truck Parking Club now because he recognized that the need as well. And it's just it's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:28

Yeah, yeah. It's amazing. No doubt.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:30

That's pretty cool. Uh, what a good talk tonight, y'all.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:32

It was a lot of fun. We needed this. It's been a hot minute. Uh, those of you don't know, we were supposed to meet last week. We ended up having this is probably delayed a week because of it. I had a severe case of the plague.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:43

Is it still going around nowadays?

SPEAKER_02 1:22:44

I it I guess. Uh you know I got it.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:48

I see a lot of people in my feed. So like friends and whatever acquaintances saying that their family has it, and it's like the worst ever they've seen.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:00

I don't agree with that.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:01

Just really knocking them out.

Seeing SF The Right Way: Rent A Car

SPEAKER_02 1:23:02

So I this is my second, so I had the flu. Uh I I got that influenza bee. What? I need that patch, you know, my Boy Scout patch for the influence of B. Yeah. So um and it was it was bad. I still have a little bit of stuff I'm dealing with. If you hear my voice and you're like, it's not quite right. You're not wrong. But I have survived. And there was a point when I was uh for an entire week, an entire week, an entire week, I had a fever. A week.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:36

For how long?

SPEAKER_02 1:23:37

Your body's not supposed to have a a week.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:39

Crazy.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:41

What week? 103 was the highest I got. I get that's who cares? 104 is if you want to be on the on the list. One of three is like, what are you doing? But how long? A week. Wow. But I lived on Tylenol Advil, took up at the same time every time, four hours on the dot. So I I was bouncing between 100 and 103 the whole time. Wow. For a week. And uh a week, a whole week. Like a whole week. Wow. Actually, a day, like six days, actually. We'll call it a week. No, it was seven days. Sorry, it was seven days. Seven days. It was seven days. Felt terrible. Felt like I got uh hit by that bus and backed up. You feel better now. I do feel better now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm moisturized. That's so um good call. Well, you you should me the uh you know cocoa butter. Cocoa butter, yeah. Yeah. I thought it was the bus? I thought you said it was mother's back to black. The the bus is.

SPEAKER_07 1:24:41

Then I used the wrong thing. No, no, yeah, you're fine. I'm I'm sharing with the folks at home that's cocoa butter.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:46

Okay. So I felt like the bus Melissa was driving, and I got run over and then backed over and then run over and backed over again. Actually, it's not true. It's not true at all. I feel like a bus would have been gentler.

SPEAKER_07 1:24:56

A bus would have been gentler. This was a Mac truck.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:58

She is not Mac truck, gold bulldog. If you know Mac trucks, you know what the gold bulldog means. Dump truck fully loaded out of the quarry. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:08

Like just all the axles down.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:10

All the axles down, full speed. Yep. That's how I felt. It was horrible. Um, but I feel much better now. And uh, but because of that, we did miss a week, so I apologize for that. It's amazing the amount of tape that's on Jerry's floor. I know. And the fact that we still recorded tape, right? Like, I know this looks like a digital soundboard that you see over here. It's not the camera is behind all the things. Yes, behind the camera. Actually, it's not behind the camera, it's it's over in another room on the other side of this wall. They make noise when they're recording. It's like constantly, so we have to have them in a separate room. Yeah, but it's it's all in take.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:48

One of these days we need to do like an overhead shot of Jerry pulling pulling. Splicing it. Splicing.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:54

Yes. Can we do that? Can make that happen sometime. Do a mind.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:58

It's a lot of work. Yeah, you could use the digital stuff for that. It's not that we're against digital, it's just we like the look and the aesthetic of it's just warmer.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:08

It is. It's warmer. I mean, even our soundtrack plays off of off of vinyl. That's right. So, you know. But it's vinyl to cassette. Vinyl to cassette. Yep. That it's amazing the process goes through to make this all happen for you all. From the sound side, if you're listening to the podcast, yeah. From the video side, if you're watching us on YouTube, I mean, we put it out there. You you can get us on all your your podcast apps. Yes. We put it out there on all of them. We're we're podcast app agnostic. My voice is going away. It's you know what's crazy?

SPEAKER_02 1:26:40

So I hear your voice going away. I'm sorry about that. That's my fault. But uh the fact that y'all don't know that we actually record this two and a half weeks before you get it because Jerry has to stamp all of these podcasts into vinyl. Yeah. And then he sends them physically to everybody. Yeah. So like there is like Napster has to get a copy of this vinyl, and they then record it to digital. Right.

SPEAKER_07 1:27:05

And then LimeWire gets Napster's version version of the vinyl, and they gotta do it all too.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:11

And then LimeWire sends it to BearShare. Right. Exactly. And then Bear Share sends it to BitTorrent. Right. And then BitTorrent sends it to uh Spotify. Right. It's it's amazing how that all works out.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:23

Yeah, I was at Barnes and Noble the other day, and there was a huge vinyl section. I think I saw our record there.

SPEAKER_07 1:27:30

Uh Jerry, what'd we forget?

SPEAKER_03 1:27:32

If you're interested in highfield trucking and all that we have to offer over here, please check us out online at highfieldtrucking.com. You can chat live with any of our recruiting agents over there Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. They would love to answer any questions that you may have. You can also reach out to recruiting at 833 Highfield. That's 833 493 4353. Option one. Um, if you have any suggestions or comments about the show or any future topics, suggestions, please send us over an email at the outerbeltpodcast at gmail.com. You can also leave a comment down in the description. We do read all of those and we would love to hear from you. Please like and subscribe if you haven't done so. Uh it really does help us out with the algorithm. And as Vince mentioned earlier, you can check us out on all of your favorite podcast streaming apps.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:23

I like it when you call me a recruiting agent. Recruiting agents I love it. I'm being very respectful here, but I love it. I heard you I'm like Secret Agent Recruiting Girl. Recruiting Secret Recruiting Agent Girl.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:41

I'm gonna go on to that that site where you get business cards for cheap. I won't mention their name because we're not a sponsor we're getting you new business cards on your kind of not be recruiting agents.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:51

I love it. Yeah no I love it. I love recruiting agents what would you call her?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:56

A recruiter. Yeah recruiting sourcing sponsoring uh that is recruiting agent I love it. She's recruiting agent 000 I know right I am double agent agents agents yes recruiting agent 001 yes yes I agree yes I love it Eric make the uh Eric make it so make it make it so I don't know what that is either doesn't matter it doesn't matter engage.

SPEAKER_07 1:29:29

So tell you what folks um as you're out there on the road doing your thing be safe and make good decisions don't leave money on the table.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:37

And keep those rolls attorney good night