Jared Flinn [00:00:18]:
You're listening to the Bolt Floats podcast, your number one resource for everything, bolt freight trucking. Hey, guys. Jared Flynn with the Bulk loads podcast. Got Tyler in here with us.
Tyler Allison [00:00:33]:
What's going on, man?
Jared Flinn [00:00:34]:
We're back together.
Tyler Allison [00:00:35]:
I know it's been a little while.
Jared Flinn [00:00:37]:
I was out, then you were out, and we've had some fill ins, but.
Tyler Allison [00:00:41]:
August is a busy time of year. It just seems like that's whenever everyone kind of waits to go on vacation or take a break from things.
Jared Flinn [00:00:50]:
Well, yeah, we have people, it seems like they come in and we're like, where's so and so? And they got this going on, this vacay or this work. Yeah, it's like everybody scattered out.
Tyler Allison [00:00:58]:
Yeah, I was out in destiny. I think that's the best time of the year to go, is whenever all the kids go back to school. Yeah, that's. The streets are less busy. The traffic is actually, if you don't.
Jared Flinn [00:01:11]:
Mind, you ought to share that picture, the fish that you guys caught. Yeah, that was really cool.
Tyler Allison [00:01:15]:
Yeah, I went with my dad and brother in law's and we went to offshore fishing trip, and we caught quite a bit of mingo is what they call them. But, yeah, it was a ton of fun.
Jared Flinn [00:01:24]:
Yeah, very cool. I was out even the week before I was at the state fair. We'll have Garrett throw up that picture. But many of you all, if you have been a podcast listener, you know that also, I do a children's series of books called Semi Sam, and I was the Missouri State Fair. This is my second year. I get invited up by the beef council. They have an author's day where I get to come up, and I think a lot of people sell them. I give them away books to kids that come through the booth.
Jared Flinn [00:01:50]:
So very humbling and honored experience to go up. And I really love being up there because you get to see. I love Missouri, and you get to see farmers from all four states. And if you know anything about Missouri, we're very diverse in agriculture. We have a lot of crops in the north, we got cattle in the south, cotton over in the southeast, and just a variety of different crops. So it's really cool at the state fair to have those people come by and meet and talk to those farmers.
Tyler Allison [00:02:16]:
Yeah, that's awesome.
Jared Flinn [00:02:17]:
And one thing, I made a post on this last week, but, uh, so many people, there's always a tie to trucking, you know, especially when you deal with farming like it was either my dad drove a truck, my grandpa drove a truck, my uncle drives a truck. So we know that it's a big industry out there and there's always some personal connection to trucking. So, yeah, just wanted to share, share that. And if you want copies of semi Sam, they are available on Amazon. We'll put those links below. But also we have those books here. If you would like a copy, send us a message. Actually, if you want right now, comment below in the comments and just put Semysam in the comments and I promise you we'll send you a free book just as a thank you for listening.
Tyler Allison [00:03:00]:
I'll even make sure some of them get signed by Jared.
Jared Flinn [00:03:02]:
Yeah, absolutely.
Tyler Allison [00:03:03]:
Wilson.
Jared Flinn [00:03:04]:
Cool. We always do a truck feature. Tyler let you kick this one off.
Tyler Allison [00:03:07]:
Today we have Sean Borchers with our JL Industries out of Milford, Pennsylvania. Sean is actually a new bulk loads member this month. So thank you so much, Sean, for using our services. This truck is pretty cool. It's super simple. It's just all black, but it's still, I mean, a sharp looking rig.
Jared Flinn [00:03:28]:
Where's his name? He's gonna get pulled over by Dot. There's no.
Tyler Allison [00:03:34]:
Maybe that's why it looks so clean. It's just, you know, people do like. Yeah, no badges and nothing, but. Uh.
Jared Flinn [00:03:41]:
No, I'm just kidding with you, Sean. But, yeah, I don't. I was like, you always try to see the name where they got it, whether it's on the fuel tank or like, the battery. You know, battery covers, but. Or even on the side of the door. But I don't see it. But, yeah, it's a shoe. Super sharp rig.
Jared Flinn [00:03:54]:
Maybe he just hasn't put it on there. Yeah, he has a new member to bulk list. Maybe he's new in the industry.
Tyler Allison [00:03:59]:
This might go hand in hand with the podcast episode today that we're gonna.
Jared Flinn [00:04:03]:
Absolutely. Yeah. I didn't even think about the transition. Before we get into the podcast, though, Tyler, you wanna talk about. We've been giving away. We've taken this Carhartt initiative. We've had shirt. We've got shirts in backpacks, lunchboxes.
Jared Flinn [00:04:16]:
Man, we know that Carhartt is for the working man and woman out there, especially in agriculture. So, man, we've really aligned our brand with Carhartt and we are giving away a lot of those products. But we have winners of the backpack. I'll let you talk about.
Tyler Allison [00:04:30]:
Yep, the Carhartt backpack winners are. We just have their YouTube handles. So Bo Havilland, 3573 and Delwyn summers, 7883. So we will also go on to that episode and reply back to your comment, but also if you're listening, just email us podcastle oakloads.com with your shift shipping address, and we will get it sent out to you.
Jared Flinn [00:04:56]:
Yeah, perfect. Actually, I think I know both those guys. They look very familiar. So awesome. Well, moving into the show, and, yeah, like Tyler said, talking about Sean borchers. But today we're going to talk about safety. And this is something I know as a listener probably don't want to listen to. It's one of those, like, safety does not, you know, pay the bills.
Jared Flinn [00:05:19]:
Safety does not do this. But believe it or not, if you really look at it, safety obviously is a critical, probably one of the most critical components of businesses. And we're going to shed light on how important it is.
Tyler Allison [00:05:31]:
Yeah. And what I like about this episode is you bring on Barry, who is the director of safety and maintenance for Christensen Trucking, which is a large trucking company. So it's cool to hear his experiences of what a huge trucking company, what all they look at with safety and maintenance.
Jared Flinn [00:05:47]:
Yeah, these are one of those. It's like, it's. It's super important. It's probably not the most entertaining. But Barry, though, this is a great podcast. This guy just, I mean, bleed safety throughout Christensen transportation. If you don't know them, they're just up the road here in Springfield, Stratford, Missouri. They run, I think, 300 ish trucks.
Jared Flinn [00:06:07]:
And Barry is head of their safety program. We've got to meet him. Barry actually has his own podcast, or it's a christian podcast that he promotes safety videos every week. And again, we'll talk about this more about after the episode. But, man, we can never be too safe out there. And believe it or not, safety when it comes to, um, insurance and all these, like, is a critical component. You should be looking at safety just the same that you're looking at driving revenue from that, because, again, if you're making revenue on the front end, but you're paying it out through high premiums and accidents and all that, it's really a wash. So we're going to dissect that in that.
Jared Flinn [00:06:42]:
So with that said, here is my conversation with Barry McGowan of Christensen transportation. Barry, thanks for coming in the studio.
Barry McGowen [00:06:52]:
Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.
Jared Flinn [00:06:53]:
Yeah, well, we connected. I think it was a year ago. You guys are right up the road. Christensen transportation. You're the director of safety and maintenance. But I guess, first off, what is that role? What's really, what is your job?
Barry McGowen [00:07:09]:
You know, I think basically it's just to surround the company with some sort of knowledge to keep us, to keep us going. You know, everybody gets their offshoots and people get going in different directions. And I think the role of safety is to be that, that comforting source that protects everybody looks constantly looking out for the company and the drivers. Because in today's world, it's everybody's in trouble, not just the company. So basically to guard the hen house and make sure we're all good.
Jared Flinn [00:07:44]:
Yeah, I think about this one and it's probably not the most glamorous thing you want to talk about. And a lot of people probably want to avoid this. When you talk about safety, I think of it as having an HR department or a legal department. It's one of those that doesn't really get people excited about, but it's super necessary.
Barry McGowen [00:08:02]:
It is. And in the last couple of years we've tried to change that image. I had people come in like, oh, I'm in the principal's office. What have I done? And I'm like, we're not the principal. We're not the governing body. We try to prefer training department. We're here to train you. We're here to educate you on what we need to do, what we're doing wrong, what we're doing right, and stay focused.
Barry McGowen [00:08:23]:
So we try to promote it as an educational department versus a governing body of, you know, I'm in trouble.
Jared Flinn [00:08:30]:
Yeah. Christensen transportation. Just so our audience knows, talk a little bit about your company, who you all are.
Barry McGowen [00:08:37]:
So Christensen's been in business since 1979. Started as a brokerage. Don Christensen's father Gene started that back in 96, 97. We started adding trucks to the brokerage, saw a need for that. And last year we celebrate our 25th year of that. We're over the road, drive in. We go back and forth between lease purchase and company drivers, depending on the markets and the moods of the drivers and the wants and the needs. But we've been successful at both ends of that.
Barry McGowen [00:09:11]:
And, you know, you kind of gotta, in any market you gotta change with the flow.
Jared Flinn [00:09:15]:
And what areas do you all primarily run here in the US, we're all.
Barry McGowen [00:09:19]:
48 states, but we focus, you know, shipping lanes have changed over the last 1012 years from all the way east coast to west coast. And everybody got smart and put warehouses in the middle of the country. So we're heavily populated in the Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Georgia areas. And then we do some Missouri, Texas, still go out west occasionally, but not as much.
Jared Flinn [00:09:41]:
And then as far as just general freight that you all haul, what areas or industry you all primarily focus on it's spread out.
Barry McGowen [00:09:50]:
You know, in, in times where everything's good, you can do, you can haul whatever you want, but when times get tight like they are now, we kind of resort back to what people need. You know, the food, the pet foods, the tires. We do a lot of tires. We do electronics that come in. So we kind of, we kind of spread it out. Not get too many eggs in one basket, but we also kind of get the stuff that people will. When the money shrinks, they still got to buy it.
Jared Flinn [00:10:17]:
Yeah. So a little bit. A little more necessity, you know, so. Well, let's, let's talk about safety. But I guess I want to say when you, when you're thinking about safety in trucking, super crucial, we know that, man, you got 80,000 pound vehicles running down the road. And I don't have to say this, that, man, it gets, the roads are getting more and more congested. But just from the lens of the industry, you know, the government, there's a lot of regulations out there that they have for companies to be safety. And a lot of times, I guess, and I want these to be your words, but companies need to have a safety program or strategy.
Jared Flinn [00:10:59]:
But talk about that just, I mean, from a macro standpoint, any trucking company out there.
Barry McGowen [00:11:03]:
So any trucking company without safety, and let's break safety down to insurance. Without insurance, you're out of business. Several years ago, insurance quadrupled just for no reason. We've got a lot of litigation out there, a lot of major lawsuits that drive the costs up. And freight rates have not changed over the years. We still make what we did in the seventies. Everything else has gone up, so everything's in pennies. And when you take your, if you let safety get out of hand and your rates go up, you probably go out of business.
Barry McGowen [00:11:40]:
So it's probably the number one thing that we focus on and prioritize on a daily basis is everything is driven from safety down. Dispatch knows that, drivers knows that. Maintenance knows that if it's going to get us in trouble or put us at risk, we're not going to do it because you have too much to lose, and it's, when you find that out, it's too late. So.
Jared Flinn [00:12:04]:
And I assume that was something instilled from the founders.
Barry McGowen [00:12:07]:
It's, it's probably, you know, I do a lot of safety industry related events with, with peers, and I have. Yet everybody talks safety, and everybody says safety is number one and safety is this and that. Christensen. And I was talking to somebody today, Christensen, the owners of Christensen have nothing once veered from that line where they say, Barry, we are never, ever going to overrule safety. No matter how much we think it hurts this or how much we love this driver, it's been here for 20 years. If safety says it's unsafe or something's got to change, that's where it is. And so far, that's kept us going, and that's been the name of the game. So it helps a lot to know that they have your back and that that's a priority, because they understand, like, our company is third and fourth generation truck drivers.
Barry McGowen [00:13:00]:
They know why we have these rules. They're probably the reason we have some of these rules. So they understand the downside. They understand the bad side of when stuff goes bad, and they know that got to always stay vigilant on it.
Jared Flinn [00:13:14]:
So for a young company out there, and they know that safety is going to be critical. They know, for the sustainability of their business, there's got to be a safety program. Can you lay out just, Maclee, what should. How do you start that? Or what should you be really looking at just so you have something bare bone just to work with and, like, what are those buckets all that falls into?
Barry McGowen [00:13:38]:
Yeah. So, you know, nobody's born being a safety director. Nobody's born running a safety department. And the good thing about safety and trucking is we share every single thing we have. We're not recruiters. We're not stealing drivers and protecting this and giving away secrets to the secret recipe. We're sharing safety knowledge among ourselves. And there's a lot of organizations out there to help.
Barry McGowen [00:14:05]:
I have a new person in our department. I sent her this week. She did four days of online with the Missouri Department of Transportation, teaching her everything from hours of service to drug and alcohol clearing houses to maintenance records. There's a lot of free information out there, and it's no different than a driver, a new driver that comes in. And our biggest advice to them is trucking's trucking. Wherever you've been doing, you've been doing the same thing. What you haven't been able to do there is pick up the phone and call and ask for help. And that's what we're here for.
Barry McGowen [00:14:40]:
We are here. There's no bad question, especially on safety. Like I said, nobody just wakes up and knows safety policies and knows what they should do. They gotta ask. And safety is the one area where people will share, hands down, any information they have. And a lot of this, you can just google it, you know, give me a dot requirements on a driver file and equipment files. And how long do I have to keep these records? How do I have to do drug and alcohol? How many employers do I have to inquire about their driving history? All that is public information. I don't think there's a one stop shop, but they just need to ask.
Barry McGowen [00:15:20]:
You know, I've got drivers that have come to us, and they have a career path, and they came as a company driver, and they've paid off some lease purchase trucks, and then they've gone out and used that history of payments and been able to obtain financing and buy their own, and then they jump into the world of, I'm gonna get my authority, and I'm gonna be Christensen transportation, but I'm gonna be as Bob Smith trucking, whatever it may be. That's an eye opener. All the permits they have to get, all the forms, all the dot requirements, paying for all this stuff, submitting these things and being accessible, and then proving you're doing what you say you're doing. That's an eye opener. And if I could get those guys to talk to the fleet and say, look, this is real. This is what Barry's been talking about. It's not just Barry. This is what we have to do.
Barry McGowen [00:16:13]:
And when you put them in that position to be the person in charge of guarding and protecting the business, it opens up a light for them, and they take it a whole lot more serious when all their eggs are in their basket and everything they do directly affects themselves, is the same way that I look at it for all 300 hours, drivers directly affecting the other drivers and the organization.
Jared Flinn [00:16:40]:
So I want to kind of practically think about this for. For any size company, but especially that. Maybe that startup company now that has five trucks or ten trucks. It's that founder that started it. Now he's got some drivers. You know, he's maybe gotten someone that's helping him in the office, but how does he make sure to have that safety department? You know, how do they. Because I think, I guess, in my mind, but I want to hear your words. I think, like, you have to.
Jared Flinn [00:17:07]:
I mean, you have to really create your own department, and it may be you in that department as the owner at that time. Maybe you don't have someone full time that you can do it. Maybe it's not your secretary or your bookkeeper, whoever, but you got to have all these records but explain or maybe kind of give your views on how you kind of start that to have a process.
Barry McGowen [00:17:27]:
Well, you know, we talked about getting that information. But I think the key is, and what insurance carriers look at is, and shippers, everybody gets involved in safety. You know, when you get big enough, they want to use your safety stuff to weed you out. They don't want to look at 10,000 bids. They want to just look at safety numbers, whatever it means. So you have to set some policies. And the biggest thing I think is hiring guidelines. Who am I going to hire? How many accidents am I going to allow? What kind of speeding tickets, where do I draw the line? And you get that in writing and it's black and white.
Barry McGowen [00:18:00]:
People come and say, well Barry, this is the third company I've been with. I've got drivers that I've hired at all three of those companies and brought them to different ones, but I've never ever once hired a friend of mine because I got to uphold safety. And I think that's the hardest thing. When you see a small startup, it's like I've got my cousin, I've got my nephew, I've got this. You're going to have to fire that person potentially, and I don't want to do that, you know, because that brother in law is married to my sister. So you can get yourself in a bind. But when you start up as hiring people, you know, hiring people that you wouldn't probably, if they took their name off, you probably wouldn't hire them. So I think that's probably the hardest thing that new people have to understand.
Barry McGowen [00:18:47]:
It's not just adding another truck to the fleet and generating this much more revenue. It's do I take that roll of the dice and jeopardize everything I've got on the other side of the table? And you just can't do that. And that's probably the toughest thing is to get some basic operating rules, put it in writing and live with it and stick with it.
Jared Flinn [00:19:09]:
Yeah, you almost have that living, breathing.
Barry McGowen [00:19:11]:
Document and be upfront. I've had to let go people that have 3 million mile, almost 20 years experience with us and they'll have that accident. That's a disqualifier on my hiring. And I say if I can't hire you with that, I can't keep you with that. It's nothing against you, but that's the deal, because the last thing you want to do is go and have something happen. Somebody requests all your information. They say, well, here's what you said you did and here's what you didn't do. So none of this is real.
Barry McGowen [00:19:40]:
It's all about making money, that's where they want to go to. So you've got, if you're going to set the policy, set them that you can live with and deal with it.
Jared Flinn [00:19:48]:
Yeah, that's good. Hey guys. Jared Flynn, thank you so much for listening to the Bull Clothes podcast. Many of you all may not know, but we started a permitting business and insurance business. We know that many of you are in different stages of your life and we want to simplify and take those friction points away from you. So if you have interest in permitting, allowing a company to take care of your IFTA reporting, all your tax documents, all the back end work that quite frankly I don't like doing and I subcontract out to other people's to do, we want to do for you. So if you get a chance, click the permitting link below and you'll be directed to that. And then on top of that, we also offer commercial truck insurance.
Jared Flinn [00:20:31]:
We represent really good truck insurance markets to give you the most affordable and best price on insurance. So we know insurance rates are climbing. We know every year at renewal times people are sticker shocked to see the renewals. We want to walk you through that process, give you a better experience and hopefully better affordable coverage. So go ahead and click the link below for bulk insurance group. Let us quote your insurance for you. Thank you and God bless. You know, you have your, Christian has a YouTube channel and you put out videos, safety videos which we'll actually put the links, we'll put your link in the podcast episode notes below here.
Jared Flinn [00:21:11]:
But it's pretty cool. Some of these are short videos, 510 minutes. But I like one of the ones I read or was watching. You're talking about that. I think this was a couple months ago. But you're all CSA crash indicator Washington 4% and that mean it was. There's only 4% of companies out there that are at that level. Can you explain a little bit? I mean it sounds like a really, I mean, you guys are in the top bucket for safety ratings.
Barry McGowen [00:21:37]:
That's where we hang our hat. I mean that's what we brag on. That's what gets us. When the insurance companies come around and raise your quadruple your rates, we got a rate reduction. We got people knocking on our door and that's what keeps us going, you know, because that's the first thing that comes up. They, you know, not everybody knows where to look for skeletons in the trucking world, so they go for the easy stuff. What's your CSA scores? What's your crash ratio? What's your hours of service flight? What's your maintenance records like? Are you taking care of business? Are you just trying to make some money and not, not doing what you should be for public safety? Because that's what it's all about. I tell the drivers we're after, we're protecting you, we're protecting me, we're protecting your coworkers, we're protecting your family and we're protecting the public.
Barry McGowen [00:22:25]:
All that comes into play with every decision. And everybody's got to win in those situations because everybody's at risk in those situations. But the CSA, just like when we bid freight, we go for these top Fortune 500 companies and they've got a 200,000 trucking companies trying to submit bids on 7000 lanes that they run and nobody wants to go through that because they're all pretty similar. Just like recruiting. You can break a pay package down and everybody's within a penny depending on how you want to pay those funds out. It all adds up to about the same thing. And so shippers, they do that too and they look for ways to weed you out and they say, okay, anybody with a CSA rating in this category above this don't even apply. That way they don't have to waste their time.
Barry McGowen [00:23:12]:
They get down, they've weeded out the people and they've got a good group of people to sort through. So it's very important. That's what the public looks at. That's public information. I can go to safer.com, comma type in Christensen transportation or whoever. If I know their motor carrier number or their MC number, dot number or their name, I can pull up basic things. How many Dot accidents have they had? How many injuries have they had? What's their, how many inspections have they had where they find stuff wrong with their equipment or their drivers? So all that's public information. So you know, if you're going to live in a glass house, you better clean your windows.
Barry McGowen [00:23:48]:
So we, we, we focus on that CSA quite a bit.
Jared Flinn [00:23:52]:
Yeah, that's good. Talking about just common issues that, that you all experience or maybe just the industry in general. But when it comes to safety and some of these scores like, like what are just like the things that, that you see that are pretty common out there that happens that, I mean anything can be prevented. I know that. I've always learned that safety, everything can be prevented. But what are those, just those resounding things that, that probably some carriers out there if they just took a little initiative could clean up and really help their safety score. Which helps their insurance.
Barry McGowen [00:24:25]:
So it's pretty simple and which is also the frustrating part of this. So, you know, every, every quarter or so we have the dot will come and say, hey, we're going to do all these roadside inspections for these three days, and we're going to focus on brakes, or we're going to focus on hours of service, or we're going to focus on tires or whatever they focus on. They can't look at everything, so they just pinpoint something. And we go over that. We're like, look, we have services and there's multiple of them around that say, here's a scale coming up here. And they don't build scales overnight. So most of the drivers know every single scale. And on a given day, you may, you may go over two scales.
Barry McGowen [00:25:07]:
So we say, look, you get notified one or 2 miles out on this, and then before you get there, you get a notification again that the scales open. And we've preached to you that this is tire week. So pull over and look at your tires. The last thing I want to do during a national inspection or any day is to pull up on the scale house and have a flat tire. That the scale house guy, just like I look out my window, I can see from 50 yards away they're not, they're not doing anything spectacular. They're looking at your truck as you roll up and, you know, they can see the obvious defects. And that's probably the most frustrating thing for me, is we give them the tools, we beg them. We say, here's what they're after.
Barry McGowen [00:25:49]:
This is going to affect you twice today. You're going to cross the scale, and it's going to take you five minutes to pull over before you get there and walk around your truck. Make sure you're good, and then cross that scale. Or you can spend 5 hours there waiting for somebody from the tire shop to come put a new tire on your trip. So which one really costs you is more effort? Is it the preventive stuff or the after stuff? So it's the stuff that we should do before, just like a pre trip inspection that's gonna save us time and headache in the long run, I guess, in your mind.
Jared Flinn [00:26:22]:
Cause I can hear your frustration, and I get it right there. Like, if you just do this, we're telling you exactly how to do that. But what's the why behind that? Why?
Barry McGowen [00:26:30]:
It's all about safety, you know? So.
Jared Flinn [00:26:32]:
Well, I guess the why of, like, why isn't it getting executed to the fullest if it seems that simple?
Barry McGowen [00:26:39]:
People don't really think it's gonna be them. It's no different than it's not gonna happen to them. It's not gonna happen to them. There's 10 million trucks, and ours are brand new, and our trailers are new, and we've got great scores. And I've been getting. That's the thing is, we put these devices in the truck that says, hey, there's a scale. But, oh, green light. You don't have to go through it.
Barry McGowen [00:26:59]:
And so I would question the drivers when they would have, and I'd say, your logbook. This is back for e logs. And e logs is great. You know, I love it. We dreaded it, but it's great, I'd say. Why was your logbook not current? Well, I've been getting all these green lights. I didn't think I was going to get pulled in. Well, you did, and now look what we've got.
Barry McGowen [00:27:19]:
We've got a mess. So, you know, it's. It. We provide the tools, just use them. That's what they're there. And we do it in the office, too. We've got every tool in the world to track everything, and we still do stuff on. On pencil and paper.
Barry McGowen [00:27:31]:
And so I understand both sides, and it's. It's easy for me to be a Monday morning quarterback and say, this is what you should have done. They can do that to me, too, and I can do that on every load or whatever it is. Anytime you got time to retro reflect on what you should have done, the answer is obvious. But it's just, you know, if anything, it's gonna happen. Act like it's gonna happen. People are like, barry, you live in this crazy world where it's worst case scenario. And I'm like, yes, I have to, because that's what I'm protecting you for.
Barry McGowen [00:28:02]:
And the little things can be the worst case scenario. You know, a flat tire, a blowout, going down the road with somebody beside you can be the worst thing of the day.
Jared Flinn [00:28:10]:
Absolutely.
Barry McGowen [00:28:10]:
It's not just a flat tire. So I live in that world. World. And when you become an independent, you become a small fleet owner. You have to live in that world, too, because that world, it's like being an underwater scuba diver. You run out of air, you're done. Well, in trucking, you don't get a lot of opportunities to mess up either. So, yeah, we have to live in that world.
Jared Flinn [00:28:32]:
Yeah. I guess I almost feel like, again, as an entrepreneur myself, you know, starting a company. But I hear from all these drivers, these guys they. They start the business. Their passion is really, you know, driving that truck, serving those customers. But it seems like that safety just the focus sometimes maybe isn't there. And I want to speak for them, but it's just, it's not one of those. It's like, that's my job is to serve these clients and haul this freight, and that's something we'll just handle.
Barry McGowen [00:28:59]:
You know, it's one of those things where we get comfortable and we think that time makes us better. I've driven this many miles, Barry. You don't have to tell me what to do. I know what I'm doing. Well, in reality, you know, it's like when we put cameras and stuff in and we use cruise control and we preach cruise control for fuel economy, but then the drivers don't want to come off cruise control when they get in traffic because then they got to re enable it and do all this stuff. So we tend to see, and you can watch people drive down the road. They'll get closer and closer to people, hoping they'll get out of the way so they don't have to take it off cruise control. Well, they might not have had an accident, but they've had about 10,000 near misses over those 25 years of driving.
Barry McGowen [00:29:46]:
And so we get this false sense of, I've done everything great. Well, maybe you've been really lucky. So we don't want to be lucky. We want to be great. And the great ones get out. And it's so like the football players, the baseball players, they're doing the. They're doing layups, they're doing, you know, passing drills. They're doing the basics over and over and over.
Barry McGowen [00:30:09]:
They don't get that thing where, you know, Alvin Iverson practice. I don't need practice. Well, yeah, you do. Everybody's got to practice, and everybody's got to be focused and do the little things, the pre trips, all the logs, all that stuff every day where something happens.
Jared Flinn [00:30:24]:
Yeah, you mentioned tires earlier. I want to talk about that because one of your episodes, you're talking about tires being one of the largest expenses, and I guess that shocked me. Tires and fuel. But. But talk about that. And you in this podcast or in this episode, you even talked about how just proper maintenance on tires, but even just greasing your fifth wheel to prevent the friction on your tires. And actually, I I never heard that, but I was like, it makes perfect sense.
Barry McGowen [00:30:51]:
Yeah. And so I know on that episode, I kind of. I try to draw these little visuals, and on that one I say, you know, it's like taking sandpaper, putting it together, and you can't twist it if it's in your hands. And that's the same way a fifth wheel, it's putting all the pressure, you know, 40 something thousand pounds of freight, plus the trailer, it's pushing down on a two foot fifth wheel, which is pushing down on a six inch spot on your tire and just twisting that rubber right on off of it. And tires are the biggest expense. Tires should last, you know, drive tires last 400,000 miles, and good steer tires will last 200,000 miles. But we've had them last 75,000 miles, and that's due to being 10% down on air. And people will say, well, I checked my air last week, or I went through the loves tire pass a week ago.
Barry McGowen [00:31:36]:
Well, you also went through New Mexico, and it dropped 40 degrees overnight, and you lost eight pounds of air. And, you know, I rely a lot on our vendors to get information, especially when I have a blowout situation and I send pictures of tires and they're like, that's not, they didn't hit something. That's a low air pressure and that low air pressure. And that's why the dot will shut you down at 20% under your recommended tire inflation, because the heat builds up within about a seven mile radius of where you take off from. That tire with that low pressure builds all that heat and blows the sidewall out. So one thing about tires is they're expensive and they should last a long time. The other is your life is on the line. You know, driving around with, with under inflated steer tires could cost you your life.
Barry McGowen [00:32:21]:
I don't. I don't understand it. They have speed ratings. You know, our tires are max speed, 75 miles an hour. And you see somebody that, well, I go 80. Well, it's not made for that. It's gonna blow out. You're gonna go through the median.
Barry McGowen [00:32:32]:
Either you're gonna get killed, you're gonna kill somebody, and then everybody's life's over. So it's safety is on one side of that. But like I said, on the scales, a low tire pressure, they have lights, they shoot across, they do weigh in motions, and they do heat seeking. So you drive across down the highway, and they don't need to pull you in. They can say axle number three's got a low tire or a flat tire on the inside, drive on that on the trailer, and they pull them over and they're like, wow, how'd you know? Eat. So there's a reason they have all these. And there's a reason, you know, as a company, that we focus on it because other than fuel, tires is biggest expense in trucking. And, you know, you take $5,000 for tires and you wear them out in a year versus three years.
Barry McGowen [00:33:19]:
There's not that much money in the bank to keep putting that on. That's a major expense that should last a long time.
Jared Flinn [00:33:28]:
That's really good. I can see in another episode, but you're constantly analyzing data, and there was another episode you had. It was drive wise, you were looking at this data of trucks that were flagged in, and the reason they were flagged in, and, like, a lot of it had to do with overweights. But talk about that, because, I mean, I don't want to talk about the broader thing of just constantly always looking at these numbers and data. And what's the data telling you from a safety standpoint? But talk about that instance specifically. But then really just looking at this data and the story that it's telling.
Barry McGowen [00:34:02]:
Yeah. So a lot of times, people especially, and I understand people want to tell on themselves, but, you know, when they say, well, I got pulled in for whatever, and I like to look at the root cause, what created this, all these downstream effects. You know, I got a ticket for being in the left lane. Well, because I was speeding. I was speeding because I was passing people. And then I got pulled over, and I got an overweight ticket. And all they write me up for is an overweight ticket. But on the ticket, it says, why was I stopped? Well, it was because of this and this.
Barry McGowen [00:34:34]:
And so we spend a lot of time taken away the. Well, I got stopped because you had a bad tire on the trailer. I picked up Barry. He's like, no, I might have a bad tire. You didn't do a pre trip. I'd gladly put a tire on, but what you got stopped for was speeding in the left lane, and the left lane is prohibited. So let's address that and that. That's what directly affects our CSA numbers that stay with us for two and a half years.
Barry McGowen [00:34:57]:
So, you know, one bad day, the driver can go along down the road somewhere else, but we have to live with it for 30 months. So that's why we focus so hard on finding what did create this problem. Initially, it wasn't a bad tire. It wasn't overweight. It was these other contributing factors that got us stopped to begin with. So, you know, we kind of like it. People say, barry, but at least I know where I stand with you. And I was like, you're right, you do.
Barry McGowen [00:35:24]:
And I'm going to go, and I'm never going to call you in and ask you a question that I probably don't already have the answer to, so just tell me the truth. Because in trucking, I'm dealing with somebody 1500 miles away. I've got to be able to rely on what they tell me. And if they say I didn't do this, I'm going to back them, you know, so I got to trust what you're telling me is the truth. And if you did do it, just tell me that too. Because safety directors have dealt with everything. We just have to know where we stand and then we know how to resolve the problem.
Jared Flinn [00:35:55]:
I bet you've had to, I mean, have those difficult conversations with people, but I guess more importantly, like, you've probably had to put people out of service yourself. And again, when you do that, I mean, it is what it is, but you're essentially putting a husband or wife out of business. It's not that that's not providing for their family.
Barry McGowen [00:36:13]:
It's probably one of the toughest things. You know, nine out of ten days, people in the office, they come by and they say, man, I'd like to have your job. And on that 10th day, when I have to tell that driver that's been with us seven years who wife's been fighting with them, and kids are this and they need money and they've done something that I have to protect the business for. And that's the hardest thing. Cause in my day to day life, I'm happy go lucky. I don't like confrontation. I lose sleep over it. My stomach turns.
Barry McGowen [00:36:45]:
But that's my job and I've got to do it. And they understand, you know, it's not a confrontational thing, it's. Here's what happened. We had this talk. I didn't do this deed. You did. After we told you, don't do this deed. And I know you're upset, but I didn't do it.
Barry McGowen [00:37:03]:
So let's. And in the end they're like, yeah, you're right. So it is tough, because if you've ever been on the other side of that, it really rings home, what they're going through. You're displaced. You gotta find a way home. You don't have a paycheck. Your kids, you come home and they said, why are you home, dad or mom? You know, where's the. Why can't we get this? That's a hard thing to say to them.
Barry McGowen [00:37:27]:
And I don't take it lightly, and I don't like people in our office that think I take it lightly or take it lightly themselves because it's not funny. Yes, it's hard on everybody. So, yeah.
Jared Flinn [00:37:39]:
They think you're not out there wanting to do that. Right.
Barry McGowen [00:37:42]:
I don't pick up darts and find names and create issues. But again, that's what I'm hired to do, is protect the company. So we continue.
Jared Flinn [00:37:50]:
Yeah, I spoke about drive wise. There was another, I want to speak just on technology, because, you know, especially today, 2024, there's so many technologies out there, and especially from a safety standpoint, that can improve the safety of these trucks and drivers that are on the road. But there was one that you mentioned, supervision, which I never heard of, but that, that's pretty cool, where you can actually detect if, I mean, it can go and see if a driver, if he's complying on his dot physical. But, I mean, it can get in depth to kind of get you give you more analytics on the driver itself. Right.
Barry McGowen [00:38:24]:
It does, you know, and that's probably the toughest thing, and that's supervision. There's a couple of services that do that, and it get, basically, it notifies you of any change in the status of anybody's license. Do they have a new license? Did they update their medical cardinal? Did they get suspended for failure to pay child support? Did they lose their liability insurance? In some states, you got to have your personal vehicle affects your CDL. If you don't have your insurance on your car paid, they cancel your license till you pay it. Well, that's a big thing in trucking. The problem is a lot of states are doing it by paper, and every county's different. Not every state updates weekly, monthly, whatever they do. So supervision is the way that we have in our drivers stay out for a long time, and they would get mail at home, and they didn't open it, they weren't there, and all of a sudden they got a notice that something was due or going to be canceled, and they don't even know it themselves.
Barry McGowen [00:39:18]:
And they pull over a scale and they say, you're driving on suspended license. And if you look at those CSA numbers, it's called driver fitness. And it's really some of those categories I wish they would change, but. So, driver fitness, you have a zero score. And I found this out the hard way, which is why I have supervision. You have a zero score until you hit your fifth violation, and then they add them all up and you go from a zero to 100, which means a mandatory audit and you're shut down. Right. So we got into supervision to notify us immediately when something changes.
Barry McGowen [00:39:55]:
We can get ahead of it. You know, if I get a driver that gets suspended for whatever reason, we stop them immediately, pull into the truck, stop at the scale house, wherever you at, we're going to fly you home and you're gonna take care of business and we're not gonna move until that is because the last thing we wanna do, even though that could be the safest driver never had an issue. If they get in an accident and we were not supposed to be driving that truck. Cause our license spending, it's on your. We're just guilty. I mean, there's just no defense for some of these things. And, you know, unfortunately, nobody knew about it. We didn't do it on purpose, but.
Barry McGowen [00:40:28]:
So we get these technologies to help us stay compliant as much as we possibly can.
Jared Flinn [00:40:34]:
Are there, I mean, there's, we can go down driver technologies and truck and all that. But like for small fleets out there, any other ones that you'd recommend that? I mean, just come top of your head from a safety standpoint. I know these are all added, I want to say investments not cost, because you're investing to do these to be safe.
Barry McGowen [00:40:52]:
And that's, that's probably the hardest thing is everything's great and we want it. And Christensen is as guilty as anybody of saying we want that. Well, that's cool. We go to these conferences and we see the new, the newest thing we can radar thing we can put on or the speed limiter to tell us when it's do this. Or you can make the truck only go the speed limit of whatever the speed limit is. I mean, there's so many things you can get, but they all come with a monthly fee. And like I said, trucking's pennies and you can monthly fee yourself to death. So you gotta pick and choose what's really good.
Barry McGowen [00:41:27]:
On our trucks, we've got accident mitigation. You know, it's seeing forward radar and side radar and it will take the throttle away, it'll apply the brake if it gets necessary. All that stuff, but all that stuff. And drivers will complain, just. They'll complain about that. They complain about cameras, talking to them, tell them they're doing, you know, put your seatbelt on or you're distracted or not. All of it's real. We have to go through that and verify, train those systems.
Barry McGowen [00:41:58]:
But I always tell them it's only doing stuff that you should have already done. You should have already applied your brakes and backed off. You should have already put interns in on. You should have already had your seatbelt on. You should have already put. Not used your phone, whatever it's telling you, it's just a safe stop. Safe. You know, the good driver said, I put my brake on.
Barry McGowen [00:42:22]:
I don't do this. 80% of our drivers don't need any of that. We've never had issues. We never had issues with stuff, but it's just another tool to help us prevent stuff. It's not. It's expensive, let's put it that way. And not everybody can do it. I understand that you have to pick and choose where your costs are and what your issues are.
Barry McGowen [00:42:46]:
I mean, if you're not experiencing anything, don't, you know, but it will change behavior. And once it helps the drivers, they'll be your biggest promoter of that product.
Jared Flinn [00:42:57]:
Yeah, that's good. You know, we've talked a lot about. I want to kind of switch maybe a little bit of a lighter note. A lot of stuff we've been talking about internally with the company, but you guys do a lot of external events, too. We were talking about the simulator and really getting involved to promote safety across the industry, but. But talk about some of those things that you all do as a company, to even promote it and to really help the industry see how much safer we can be.
Barry McGowen [00:43:26]:
So a lot of the stuff we do, and like I said before, we've got ownership, and we're still small enough. It's still family owned. And they give back when we have profits. They invest in the equipment, they invest in the driver lounges. They give it back in that. And we also have a commitment to community. You know, we want to be little league coaches. We want to promote roadside cleanups.
Barry McGowen [00:43:52]:
We want to go work and load food bags, you know, at the convoy of hope stuff. It's giving back to the community that's taking care of us as well. And in turn, we see a need. I'll move on to the school and the simulator. Truck drivers are aging out. It's getting tougher out there. Traffic is there. It's not what it used to be.
Barry McGowen [00:44:17]:
Where you got in your truck and you drove from east coast to west coast, it's a lot of heavy traffic and loading and unloading. It's a different world, and it's hard to get people in. They don't understand the industry. They don't understand the opportunity. All these people that we've met over the years that have mega fleets and all this stuff, they were one truck operators. That's where they started. And it's just about like any other business. It's hard work and whatever you put into it.
Barry McGowen [00:44:46]:
And trucking's been good. It's been good to me forever. It's been good to a lot of people. And so we try to do what we can to promote new people into the field. And one of the great things that's become of that and through our organizations is this entry level driver training and 18 and up and intrastate drivers that we try to promote more of a. Oh, they used to call it shop class when I went to school. But the votec, the trades, what kind of trades can we get into? Well, in Tennessee, they've allowed us to do that, and we've donated to the local high school, our driving simulator, and we've paid for an instructor's salary to get kids into this class and show them what we do. And it's not just driving.
Barry McGowen [00:45:29]:
We're going to do maintenance. We can teach them dispatch, and we can teach them accounting, whatever they want to do, just something in trucking and to show them the opportunities that they have. Because, you know, when I went in, everybody forced you into college, and there's a lot of people driving truck with college degrees that really didn't understand that that was great. But it doesn't do you a lot of good. Sometimes it's just practical, hands on experience, and you'll find something you like that you can do. And so we spend a lot of time trying to bring people into this, into this business. Whether it's student driver training programs or CDL schools in our fleet, it's a necessary evil to get people in. Everybody wants to hire the old, experienced, non wrecking, perfect driving record guy.
Barry McGowen [00:46:16]:
But that's like, people come to us. Everybody wants our business on insurance, but that's not all out there. So you got to go out somewhere else and start filling that stuff. We find the best way to do it is to. And serve the community is to. Is to train that up, teach them. Teach them what we do from the ground up.
Jared Flinn [00:46:35]:
Yeah, that's so good. I don't want to make an assumption here, like, with your job, like, it can be very intense, I think, in some of these conversations. But just to end here, like, man, I looked at your Facebook page. Do you have a motorcycle? Like, you have to do something to relax. Like, what does relaxation look like for Barry?
Barry McGowen [00:46:55]:
Well, you know, I do have lots of hobbies. You can take motorcycle riding. I've got vehicles I rebuild. I've got, you know, kayaks and stuff, golf, all sports stuff. And I think I would relax if I didn't get so frustrated trying to figure out what I'm going to do on the weekend. You know, what do I do? I walk out. I'm like, oh, God, too many things, too many decisions. But it is a.
Barry McGowen [00:47:18]:
It is a. You've got to have something.
Jared Flinn [00:47:20]:
Yeah, there's something to.
Barry McGowen [00:47:22]:
And, you know, actually, we talk about those videos that. That's my. That's a stress reliever for me because I can sit around and. And that's the thing with. With over the road trucks and irregular route trucking, is I don't get to see these people. They're not home. I can't do safety stuff in the classroom on the weekends like some companies can do. I've got to reach out.
Barry McGowen [00:47:41]:
And what do I reach out on? I reach out typically on what. What's come across my plate today that's driving me nuts. And I do a video, and sometimes I have to say, okay, today's gonna be a happy video. Today's gonna say, hey, thanks. Thanks for doing what you do. I understand it's hard. Sorry about last week's video. But let's.
Barry McGowen [00:47:58]:
Let's really keep an eye on our tire pressures or whatever it is, you know, so that that helps you may have.
Jared Flinn [00:48:05]:
And I'm gonna end it here. But just the last thing. Do you have any good stories of just maybe something that happened, that. That it saved a driver, saved a life because of the safety measures that your organization took? Because I think that's where the buck stops. That's where you tip your head and say all this frustration, all this hard work, all this pressure that we put on as a company, it paid off. In this scenario.
Barry McGowen [00:48:32]:
I've got a lot of those. Probably the best one. We had a driver that was our first or second truck from 1996, and this was the husband wife team. And they've run over. They just returned, retired three days ago. Right. They've run almost 7 million mile accident free driving, ticketless driving. I mean, you couldn't pour a mold and make a better couple drivers.
Jared Flinn [00:48:58]:
Wow.
Barry McGowen [00:48:59]:
And several years ago, he actually got ahead of us in the game. He was a true owner operator, bought his stuff, and he got a truck that had the collision mitigation on it before we had it. And they had changed the lanes in New Mexico. They were doing roadwork, so they changed the striping. And an elderly person was passing them on the left and didn't go with the lane change and went straight in. And their truck braked before they did because it could see them in front. You lose some vision when cars get too close. What I call the no zone.
Barry McGowen [00:49:38]:
Stay out of these areas. I can't see you no matter how hard I try. And that truck braked, and that driver missed him from being run over, probably prevented a fatality, prevented an accident, period. And I was like. And he called and he said, without that thing, this would have been a bad day. And it's things like that that say, see, I told you. I told you this. Was this just one of those, you know, you want to talk prices of stuff? What did that save me? What did that save that driver from explaining the rest of his life of how he didn't know it didn't do it, it was that other person.
Barry McGowen [00:50:16]:
So this. There's little things like that that happen that. That justify everything we go out and buy ten times over.
Jared Flinn [00:50:24]:
Yeah. So good. Well, mayberry, I appreciated this. You know, this is actually out of my realm. Like my whole career trucking, it's always been on the freight side, you know, finding loads and, you know, helping drivers find freight. But safety is one of those that is got to be top priority, equal, probably number one, really. And this has been eye opening to me. And again, for the bulk loads podcast, we want to have these well rounded conversations because we're hoping to not just grow people their business and freight, but every aspect of trucking and helping them from a safety standpoint.
Jared Flinn [00:50:57]:
So, man, I want to thank you for coming on. Again, we're going to put Barry's information in the show notes below so you can go. And actually, we'll put a link right to their YouTube channel. We'll put his contact information on there as well. If you wanted to reach out. And, man, I'm sure you'd be glad to help other companies out there.
Barry McGowen [00:51:12]:
Absolutely.
Jared Flinn [00:51:13]:
This is just one of those. It's like, there's no competition or it's not going to hurt your company to help another company from a safety standpoint. So, man, thank you very much for coming on. God bless you.
Barry McGowen [00:51:23]:
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Jared Flinn [00:51:24]:
Tyler. I don't know if we need to dissect this bullet for bullet. I think Barry brought up just some great points that it doesn't matter what size you are in the industry, you can create an efficient and effective safety program. There's a lot of tools out there. Actually, our permitting division, that Tanner Batten, which he was on a couple podcasts ago, they do a lot of this, and we can help you create that. And actually, we are in the works. We actually moved Adam Tate on our insurance side. He came, he was a safety director for a large trucking company, moved into insurance, but we are building out a safety program.
Jared Flinn [00:51:59]:
We just know that, man. We're all in. We're going to go all in on helping small fleets really develop a better safety program because we know that it's going to be more effective for them in the long run, both maintaining their business, but limiting accidents, better insurance premiums, and at the end of the day, more money in your pocket.
Barry McGowen [00:52:17]:
Yeah.
Tyler Allison [00:52:17]:
We'll drop the permitting link below and also the number of how to reach Tanner and the team. I would say even if you have questions, just like, how do you. How do I even start? Or you just have questions that Tanner can answer, we're not going to charge you for any of that. We want you to call and we want to help you and provide that information.
Jared Flinn [00:52:35]:
Yeah. So reach out to Tanner also, Barry said, and we'll put his links in there. But, you know, he works for Christensen, but he's happy to talk to anybody about safety because he knows that it's like, it's nothing you're competing against other people on this is something that's super important.
Tyler Allison [00:52:49]:
I think everybody wins.
Jared Flinn [00:52:50]:
Whenever you can be safer out there and you can save one life, man. We've done our job. Safer out there on the roadways.
Tyler Allison [00:52:57]:
Whenever I was actually going to Destin, you know, I always look at every. Every truck that I pass on the road, and I keep seeing, it seems like more and more, especially down south, like, all these trucks and bigger trucking companies, they have all these cameras hanging out the sides of their rig, watching the lanes. And it's kind of sad that we have to get to that point, but I think with all these nuclear verdicts and all that, like, everybody has kind of has stepped up their game, which I think is much needed to protect themselves, but also to protect the entire company.
Jared Flinn [00:53:29]:
Yeah. So plan of action, really look into how, if you don't have a safety program, how do you start building one? And again, it's not. If you're small, you don't have to hire a full time person. That's all. But you can do this where you can kind of start developing a plan. We want to help you with that. I think Barry can help as well with that.
Tyler Allison [00:53:45]:
Awesome.
Barry McGowen [00:53:46]:
Cool.
Jared Flinn [00:53:46]:
Well, a couple of things before we get out of here, man. I just want to say this. I'm not going to get into politics, but you know, last week was the DNC, the Republican. I know there's a lot of people out there, and there's uncertainty about what's going on in the political landscape, who's going to win and what the direction of the country is going to be. And actually, one of our pastors at church, he read this, and I just, I'm going to reshare this. But Benjamin Franklin, one of our forefathers, it was actually, this was a speech that he gave, or it's an excerpt from one of those speeches that he gave at the constitutional convention in 1787. And if you look back in the history, like, the constitution was not almost going to happen. There was so much division on how this thing should be written, what should happen.
Jared Flinn [00:54:34]:
You know, we think that these guys just got together, they drafted this document. Everybody signed off on it. But there was a lot of debate on whether this was going to work or not. And this is something that Ben Franklin said, and I just want to read this to you, and I'm sure you can find this online as well. But this was this. Think about this. There was all this debating going on, all these stones thrown back and forth through these different parties. And Benjamin Franklin got up and he said this.
Jared Flinn [00:54:59]:
He said, I have lived Commissar a long time, and the longer that I live, I have more convincing proof that I see this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without its notice, it is probable that an empire cannot rise without God's aid. We have been assured, sir, that in sacred writings that, and this is an excerpt from the Lord, that the Lord may build the labor in vain that build it. And he says, I firmly believe this, that I also believe that without his God's concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel, that we shall be divided by our little partial local interest, our projects will be confounded, and that we ourselves shall be a reproach and by word down to future age. And at what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance despair of an establishing governments by human wisdom and leave it to chance by war and conquest. And then this is the last thing he says. He says, I therefore beg leave to move, and henceforth prayers imploring the assistance from heaven and its blessings on our deliberations be held in this assembly every morning, that we proceed in this business and that one or more of the clergy of this city may be requested to officiate in that service. So I say all this, that we know that despite everything that's going on, that God is in control.
Jared Flinn [00:56:35]:
And we need to put him at the forefront when we're thinking about these decisions. We need to put him to know that he is in control. And ultimately, now, we still have to do our part. We still have to vote out there and make decisions. But I think when we can be so worried, like this is something that whatever almost 250 years ago was still being addressed. And again, I think that's why we have, and this is my personal belief, why we have been such a prosperous nation, because we had God at the center of this and we have been blessed for that. And I think as we continue on at every election and as our country evolves and we become more diverse and everything else that, man, we got to keep this at the center.
Tyler Allison [00:57:15]:
Yeah, that's great. Every time I start thinking about the election and what's coming in November and start getting worried and anxiety, this is something that I always try to remember. And whenever I sit down in prayer and talk with God, it always gives me peace because I know there is a greater plan in place, and I know at the end of the day, you know, where I'm going and what the, what their overall mission is. So I will say that if anybody has anxiety or worry or, you know, starts thinking of what's coming, anything, just lean on God and put your faith in him.
Jared Flinn [00:57:49]:
So anyways, thank you for letting me share that. As you all know, at the very end, we do ask for prayer request, or we make that voluntary, something you don't have to do. But we know that, man, when we petition our prayers to God, he answered those. Maybe not in the same shape or fashion we want him to. But we know that the more that we can pray for others out there, sometimes it just makes us think less about ourselves. And I think that's one thing, man, where we can put others in our prayers and stop thinking about our worries and all that. But if you have a prayer request out there, man, we would be honored to take that and pray. You can send prayer requests to prayer oakloads.com or reach us however you want.
Jared Flinn [00:58:28]:
Social media, we don't reshare or blast this out to everybody, but we want to make sure and pray for you. So, man, if you don't mind, at this time, if you want to send us a prayer request, prayer oakloads.com we would love to pray for you or anyone that you have prayers for.
Tyler Allison [00:58:42]:
Yep.
Jared Flinn [00:58:42]:
So awesome. Well, as we always do, at the end of the podcast. I just want to close us in prayer.
Tyler Allison [00:58:47]:
Awesome.
Jared Flinn [00:58:47]:
So. So, Father God, Lord, we love you. And Lord, we know that these are uncertain times. Lord, that we know that you know the next couple months are going to be challenging, Lord, but we pray that you are at the center and forefront. We know that you are. We know that you are with us through everything that we do. Lord, that I also pray that our people, that we inspire and affecting this industry, Lord, that they can be a light for others out there, Lord, that they can share your truth and light with others. Lord, we pray for our industry.
Jared Flinn [00:59:23]:
We pray for our farmers, truckers and their families. And Lord, we pray that you just be with them through this time. Lord, we pray over this business. We pray over our employees, and we thank you so much for this industry that we get to serve. Thank you so much in your heavenly and precious name, amen. Thank you as always for listening to the bulk loads podcast. Don't forget, if you haven't, you can hit the little subscribe button down here in the left hand corner. That way you don't miss an episode.
Jared Flinn [00:59:49]:
Joe has been creating some phenomenal videos on our YouTube channel, so really want you to go there if you're not on YouTube. Check that out. Really, really cool stuff he's doing, man, some of these videos are just been viral and I think it just. Man, he is an artist. So man, check out those videos on YouTube. And we also have ways that we want to feature you. I'm not going to talk in great detail, but definitely get on there. We'd love to feature you as well.
Tyler Allison [01:00:12]:
You also want to get notified of all the podcasts that come out. Jared, we've got some exciting episodes coming out in the next few weeks.
Jared Flinn [01:00:18]:
Really, really cool one. So thank you as always for listening to bulk Loads podcast. And God.
