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Rob:
Welcome to our podcast, all about the car, brought to you by Schier Tire and Service. I'm your host Rob Hoffman an auto service specialist with over 46 years of industry experience. On the ride with me today, our regular guest, Bryan Call, a 42 year veteran of the automotive industry. Hello, Bryan.
Bryan:
Hey, Rob. How you doing today?
And Bill Schierl, a guy that's logged a lot of safe Wisconsin miles and always has a lot of great questions. Welcome back, Bill.
Bill:
Thanks Rob. Glad to be on the road today.
Today we have a very special guest on the drive. Tom Senecal, a certified motor vehicle safety specialist. Welcome, Tom.
Tom:
Good morning. Good morning. Welcome. Thank you for having me.
It's good to have all of you here with us on the ride. Today we're gonna learn more about how to operate a commercial vehicle safely in Wisconsin. The rules, the regs. And when does my everyday pickup truck become a commercially rated vehicle? So a lot of good questions, a lot of conversation coming up. You know, when it comes to moving freight, we could go back to the 18 hundreds when it was done by rail and horses, but I promise I won't.
Trucking per se, really took hold during World War I when the need to transport troops and equipment became vital. The next big transportation surge came along with paved roads in the thirties. Life was looking pretty good in trucking. And then you guessed it, the late fifties came around, which brought construction of our interstate highway system linking our major cities across the U.S. And as they say, the rest is history.
Hey Rob, before we get going too far on this, Tom, a couple months ago, I called you up to set up some meetings and stuff and you said, I never call anymore. I don't send cards. You forgot my anniversary...
Where's the love?
Forgot my birthday. Here you go. Here's a card.
Well look at this. We're starting off on a soft note here.
God love you my friend. God love you.
You need a tissue, Tom? .
I need a moment though, Rob.
Yeah, We can give you that moment.
Thank you, Bryan. You're a true kindhearted soul. I can tell you that right now.
Well, Tom, you mean a lot to us and thanks for being here today and everything you've done for us and can continue to do for sure. ,
I can eye witness the exchange of the card.
Do you wanna read the bottom?
New Speaker:
No, I'm okay. I'm alright.
Go ahead, Tom. Let's read this card.
Now. Read the bottom,
Reading the bottom. Happy birthday, happy anniversary. Happy fourth of July . Happy Merry Christmas. Happy Thanksgiving. Happy New Year. Happy. You're good for the next 10 years. You're good,
cross-talk:
Right? Happy, Happy, happy. You don't have to worry about it. Yes,
Yes.
You know, Tom, I've spent a lot of time this year actually on the road doing a lot of traveling across the country. And at times, I swear I'm surrounded by big commercial trucks. There were times this past trip up to New England and back where pretty sure I was the only automobile on the road. I mean, I had the jockey for position with these big rigs. So I think what you do when it comes to commercial safety is a big deal.
It is Rob and, and it's ironical. You mentioned the amount of commercial motor vehicles, semis that are on the highway. And it's really ironic simply because we're still down 850,000 commercial motor vehicle operators today.
Oh my gosh.
Which about 300,000 of them are, are CDL guys in, in the big trucks. And so, but at times, if you drive down through the Chicago area on the toll road or in our major metropolitan areas, you're just petrified by the, the number of big trucks that they're out there. And sometimes yes, you can get sandwiched in amongst them where you, you feel just like you're the only guy. But back when you mentioned the fifties, when we really started to rebuild our, or create this infrastructure we're in now that's office, That's also when we started enforcement on our, on our trucking industry and on commercial motor vehicles, there was some local state laws that were in place in some states, but it really wasn't a lot of, a lot of rules back in those days. And we had speed limit signs. They came in real late in the game. And but trucks didn't go very fast either. You know...
So a lot of trial and error during that time. Right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
I hate to say, but,...
And then we developed a group called the Office of Motor Carriers Federally that ultimately became the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. But let's put it in perspective, a lot of people paid the ultimate price for us to get to where we're at now in terms of regulatory compliance and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, and rules don't get changed, unfortunately, as somebody.
Fatalities.
Yeah. Somebody gives up their life in a major crash or an accident or an event and then we go back to the drawing board and say, Well, maybe we ought to fix this. You know? So I dunno if that specifically answered your question.
Absolutely.
Yeah. But it's been, it's been interesting. It's a ride. And it's getting worse. If I might, back in 1996, we introduced the thing called Map 21, which at the time we passed the congress passed a whole bunch of rules with effective or installed dates 2014 and this way. And those are now coming to fruition. And that was all anticipatory about the fact that truck drivers, that they stayed in the game, they were gonna be that many more years older. And we are right. We have, if you throw out the high and the low, the national average age right now of our many big riggers I or big truck drivers, probably about 62 and a half.
That's the average age?
Average.
Wow.
That's, and that's our long haul guys, you know, that's the guys that stretching their legs and, and they're the, they're the only ones right now that wanna do it. Our younger driver he's, he's not even being counted anymore. He done, We don't wanna do that. I mean, back in the day when we were all children, and there's all of us that got age in this room that probably remember that time, we, we had the radio on the car, the AM radio playing, and, and we looked out the window. We went for a ride. Dad took us for a ride. Well, these young people nowadays, they just grab a hold that smartphone, and they're, and they were watching the Queen's funeral yesterday, and they were right there.
Things really, really changed. Absolutely.
So they don't need to take a big truck for a ride anymore, you know, kind of a thing.
Tom, how long have you been a certified safety specialist? How long have you been doing this?
I've been in safety, probably probably the lion's share of my adult career. I mean, I spent a tour of duty behind the wheel, a big truck haul, petroleum did about 13 years of that. And I was always in part of the petroleum industry, was born into it. My old man was a, my dad was a Phillips 66 jobber way up in Houghton, Michigan back in the day. And so I had, I, I was smelling gasoline coming out of the womb, so to speak, you know? Yeah.
Well, transportation's been, You're, you're game.
Yeah.
And I can recall being a punk kid, maybe age five or six, the TEXACO driver was delivering to a Phillips 66 distributorship, and he was wearing the Eisenhower jacket and the peach cap and a tie. And I thought that was the most impressive thing in the world. I had no idea what he was doing. He just looked...
That's when it started. Right there.
That's when it started for me. And I started driving Tonka toys around on the, on the carpeting and all that kind of stuff. And I always wanted to turn the wheel. And I had, that was an itch that I, I was scratching from day one, but then all of a sudden I took a truck off a cliff one time. But it's that kind of thing that forced me into be leaning towards safety. Back to your original question, you know, how, how did I wind up on this side of the aisle? The way equipment was manufactured then is not the way it's manufactured today. And so it has to be maintained. And, but the pandemic is gonna get blamed for a lot of stuff. We were losing 4,000 truck drivers a day during the pandemic and of course that was millions of years of experience that went down the road. This right now. And we're still gonna, we're still gonna recover now. We just, you know, but I know when this is gonna air. But we were, we're just days away from settling a railroad strike that probably could have happened,
Right.
That they were gonna need another 500,000 truckloads a day to the tune about $2 billion a day expense that we didn't have. We didn't have that. And we still don't have 'em. Right. There's still ships out in the, out in the bays in Long Beach and LA out there and port store. We can't get 'em off loaded. Cause we don't have the drivers. We don't have the drivers.
So Tom, our everyday licensed driver can't just hop into one of these big rigs and go for a drive. There's such thing as a cdl.
Yep.
Let's talk a little bit about the CDL and testing and special licenses. I know there's a lot of different levels of CDL depending on what you're hauling commercially, but what does CDL stand for?
Commercial driver's license.
Okay simple.
Pretty simple. And that whole program changed dramatically. February 7th, 2022 when they introduced the new E L D T, which is the entry level driver training program. When I went and got my back in, in the early sixties, late sixties, I got a commercial dr, not a com, a chauffeur's license. Right. Which was relatively, was relatively simple to get back in those days. And that converted into and back in 19 91, 92, I think it was to the CDL program or commercial driver's license program. But it was still relatively simple at that point. You go to the dmv, you take your, your questions, your q and a's, you pass that, and you were pretty good. I mean then they started to introduce, well you gotta, now you're gonna have do a driver's test. Yeah. You're gonna have to come to dmv, do a driver's test. And they really amp it, I dunno about mid late 90 nineties they introduced that. And now here in 2022, we got the E L D T program. And this is where a young man who wants to obtain a CDL to your question or young woman, they're gonna have to go through classroom training, which is all about the theory side of driving a big truck or a commercial motor vehicle.
That makes sense to me.
It does. It really does. And then there has to be an on-road driving training. And so it's not like it was back where you know, Bryan's sitting over across the table, he's got a cdl, Come on Sandy, I'm gonna take you out and show you how to drive this thing. Well, that's the way it always been, Right? Up until February 7th, 2022. But not now. Now you gotta go through and even if I had, let's say a class B cdl, which is three D, there's multiple classes of, of the cdl, right? There's the Class A, which encompasses everything. The Class B is basically for those trucks that are singled out at 26,001 pounds or greater, which is just a single unit. Class A is for combination vehicles, but it does cover everything else. Class C is for persons who are in specific smaller vehicles that it might be carrying hazardous materials or things along those lines are equal just the weight classification. And so even now, if you wanted to go from a Class B to class A, you gotta go into the E L D T, you gotta do classroom training, you gotta take courses. And I personally, I think it's a terrific thing. It's a fantastic thing.
So if I happen to be listening to this and I have a CDL that I may just hang on to for any particular reason, who do I need to contact to find out about the E L D T?
You're exempt. You're outside of that.
Okay.
Uh for me...
So this is just new people...
Getting a license?
If there's no CDL anymore, I'm gonna get E L D T.
No, No, no. It's still the cdl.
E L D T. It's an an acronym just for the program. It's the entry level driver training part. You gotta go into that now.
Got it.
Okay. So like me, I possess a cdl. I dunno if Bryan, you still do or not.
No, I let her go.
Yep. So we're all in program. Right?
Even if I had lost it five years ago, I still have the option cuz I possessed it before the new rule went into play. Yeah. I can still come back and get it and go around that E L D T program and get on it.
So in order, if I've never had it, I just need to go to an E L D T program.
Somewhere in order to get a cdl.
Right. A motor carrier can self declare as a training organization if they want to, but then they have to meet all the criteria that's outlined. And it's been there for a number of years, but when they come and ask me about it, I say, well, double clutch on it. Think about it because it's a lot of the state of Wisconsin. And the federal government will come in and audit you because you've set yourself up as a training. And the state has already, they've already abolished about a half a dozen or, or might be more training organizations who set themselves up, you know, But...
So an individual has jumped through all the hoops, done all of this, these, all this A, B, C, D,
Speaker 3:
And ready to go rocking it hired by a, a reputable trucking outfit.
How often do they gotta retest? How often do they gotta re-certify?
Sometimes it depends on the endorsement that they've attached to the cdl. So if I have a hazmat endorsement, I'm gonna re-up that every four years. Just the endorsement itself, the CDL itself lasts for eight years.
Eight years, okay.
Eight years. So it's a window of opportunity. And of course the guy with the hazmat, he's gotta go through TSA qualification, he's gotta get fingerprinted and there's some things and all this stuff is good stuff. I mean.
It sounds like it's too much hassle. And that's why a lot of people aren't coming in because you just can't snap your fingers and get this kind of stuff anymore. You,
Plus there's a, like a health and wellness piece of this too, right? There's a ha is what they call a Fed med Card.
Oh yes. That is that still. Yeah. And I'm glad you brought that up Rob, because you and I were chatting before the show here. That is the single biggest crux and focal point that every motor carrier, what did I say the average age was?
Bryan and Bill:
62.
Right? Just 15 years ago, Maybe even less than that. The mandatory fed med card requirement was two years. Right. If you get, if you go and and pass a D O T medical, they're gonna give you a card that says, this card's good for two years. 10, 15 years ago, 85% of us had the mandatory two year card. Right?
Fast forward, now to 2022 85, maybe 88% of us now have a one year card, which means that I'm unqualified, but qualified by exception. God, it's like one of them fancy play on words kind of thing, right?
Mm-hmm. .
So I'm unqualified by the rule, but yet qualified by the exception in the rule. So the doctor says, Okay, I'm gonna qualify. And normally all of it is having to do with hypertension, right? It has hypertension, high blood pressure. Obviously our nation's truck drivers don't eat well, they don't sleep well. They don't generally fit themselves well. And so that's an eventuality. It just, it's gonna, And we sit sedentary for mile after mile after mile. And so that's gonna happen. And so motor carriers right now that employ truck drivers, I don't care if it's in front. I don't care if we're going from Stevens Point to Stevens Point, that's the biggest thing. Now we get to do. Now the railroad act, I think it was 1798, 1786. What if somewhere back in the 17 hundreds provide motor carriers to leapfrog over a lot of what people, like some HR person might be listening to this, cuz I don't argue with 'em all the time, but they come to apologize to me because when they check it out with their labor law attorneys Yeah, it, it's correct. Motor carriers get to ask certain questions that we don't normally do in other industries. So when I see Bob walking across the parking lot, dragging a gubita where he wasn't doing that yesterday, I'm bolting out there and saying, Bob, what's the problem? What's the matter with you? Cause now he's gonna have to crawl into my big truck there, use a handhold, use three points of contact, get up in that cab. He's only got one foot that's looking like it's normal, where it wasn't yesterday. It was normal. So it's that kind of stuff that, that we're up against right now. And the whole industry is, it's, it's matter of fact, it's at critical ebb right now because
Well I think this leads into one of those conversations that we've had about driverless vehicles.
Driverless transport, transporting of goods that doesn't require the human intervention for all the reasons that you're mentioning, you know.
Well that number, that total, even the total I gave you is probably a little off the mark now. But if we can replace just a hundred thousand point to point trucking distribution little things with no driver in the truck, which we're already doing. We be testing the stuff already.
Exactly.
It's already here.
It's happening.
Yeah. It's already here. Yeah. And then we'll cover that gap a little bit. You know, I mean, when the railroads threatened to go on strike the rail, you don't find a rail track out behind a McDonald's, right?
No.
You, you don't find out buying a Burger King or one of the locations that you fellas have. A truck has to bring the...
Comes by truck. Absolutely.
Truck driver has to bring it there. The days of autonomous vehicles bringing, doing that is probably way, way, way out in the future. Is an autonomous vehicle gonna go into a quarry and, and load gravel and take it and bring it to your house and spot it not No.
That's a video game.
Yeah. Yeah. You know, But are people working on that kind of stuff? You bet they are.
They are.
Yeah. They're working overtime on it. So...
Let's shift gears here just a little bit guys, and let's talk, let's, let's get on the road in our big commercial rig here and let's talk about on the road safety.
Let's go for that, that angle. And we've all seen it going down the road. There's oversized loads, so there's special regulations and licenses I would assume. And there's a lot to be cautious of when you're around those vehicles as a regular everyday driver. And for the drivers of those big rigs, there's pilot cars, chase cars, there's a whole big thing going down the road. What's all that about? You've all seen it, right?
cross talk:
Oh, it, yeah.
It's
Stay back,
Stay back.
Stay back the hundred feet.
Keep clear.
Well, here in Wisconsin and in throughout the Midwest, we manufacture a lot products and things that are used throughout the rest of the nation. I mean, there's a lot of manufacturing and some of these pieces have to be built in whole, you know, and you can't break 'em down
Wind turbine blades.
See those things going down the road.
And how many of those have we put up here in the last 10 years?
So yeah, there's a whole specialty group of people out there. And these individuals are exceptionally well trained. The public at large does, you always have to worry, right? There's always caution. But these guys, they know ex and I, a number of them are my, my clients. And so we spend a lot of time on going through the securement rules, the distribution rules, and how to put these things on the trail. And there's multiple trailers, if you recall.
Mm-Hmm. ,
And there's goosenecks upon goosenecks. And these things are hundreds of feet in the permit system is is critical. We have a number of permit houses here in Wisconsin. We can't get under certain bridges. We have to go around, we have to go on. And the public might get the impression that God, that thing is heavy and it is. But the more rubber tire act tires we put on the ground, we lessen the weight exposure to the highway or to the road. So I mean, it's pilot cars, you're talking about those.
So that's the car that's way out in front of this wide load to give everybody a warning that what's coming is that Right?
And that's based on the size of the load, the category of the load. Right.
So he has to get out there and it seems like it's kind of ridiculous case. You would think, well, why is he not right in front of the truck, you know? But then all of a sudden there's like 50 cars in between him and the vehicle coming up from, it's actually the, the rear, the chase car you would call it. That's really, he has to, he has to keep that position in a specific way. And they're really on the radio all the time giving him the hazards. Right. So the driver is, he's he's responsible for keeping it in lane when he can. Like how, how many, how many loads of trusses have you seen going down the road Right. Where they have to load them, where the high point of the truss is actually hanging over
Over the shoulder.
The side.
The shoulder yes
Absolutely. I always wonder about that. Somebody broken down on the side.
Right. So that has to be flagged and it has to be caution signed and, and everything. And, and our rules are very specific about that. There's not, motor carriers are not in this end of the biz. They get good money, you get good money. I I you you, you would die if you knew what the freight rate is on and moving a piece, just a great big cooler, for example, that goes on a roof somewhere just moving across in the other guy's backyard, maybe a day away. It mega mega and as well should because the investment is there. But there's a lot of thought that goes into it. All the states, there's on the permits when you're working with a permit company, they'll give you all the necessary hows tos or whats, And normally the people in house, they already have somebody on staff that already knows how to work all stuff.
So each state is gonna be different.
So as you cross transcontinental, I don't know if that's even the right phrase, but as you cross over the state lines,
Did he just say transcontinental?
He did say transcontinental.
I mentioned, I mentioned the 1786 and you, you go there
. That sounds really good though. I like that.
It's a very impressive term. Transcontinental.
The organization, not just the driver has to have all of these changes as you cross the lines down.
He's gotta be very familiar with it. And sometimes they get held up at the, at the port of call. And if we go into if you go into a particular state, the Dakotas were one for that. You had to have a particular, you may have had all your permits in line, but if you didn't have this decal on the door, well then they froze you on the state line. And I've had a number of clients that they've tied up a whole day in some cases, you know, on a day time is money...
It gets real expensive.
Oh my God, are you kidding me? It's just phenomenal.
Of course, the the company that's buying this this item, this huge item that's on this truck is paying for all this expense.
They're on ho they're on hook for it.
Absolutely. it gets very expensive. It's a part of the cost.
Uh now you mentioned earlier about being heavy and they are heavy, which brings me to the next question. What are weigh stations all about? A lot of our auto and light truck commuters and drivers wonder as they fly by wondering what's the weigh station? What are they, what are they weighing? What's that intending to do?
All the listeners out there drive, I'm assuming they drive cars and this is all about the car. And tell me you haven't driven over a pothole or a crack in the highway anywhere in...
Always.
Transcontinental United States.
And the long and the short of it is unfortunately the trucking industry, we get the, we get to own a little bit of that because here in the Midwest we got the frost that goes in and outta the ground and they're building the roads far and away better than they have in many years in the past. And we're putting down asphalt underlayment now and the concrete on top of that in some cases, at least on the interstate thoroughfares. But we, we pound the roads a lot. I mean, you know, with our axle separations, our axle spreads and our axle weight distribution on these axles is critical. So that's why the scale house and in Wisconsin, we have 23 of 'em. Right. They're truck scales and weigh stations and they but they're not open a lot. They're,
I noticed that.
They're not.
We got about 480 troopers in the,
Is that a staffing issue then?
Yeah. In the state of Wisconsin, about 109 of them are the lion share of those 109 are motor carrier enforcement guys. And only really, they all are supposed to work to scale at some point in time. They're all supposed to be familiar with it. But you cannot believe some of the responsibility is what we put on upon the state patrol. Those guys got their hands full and, and they had to go through a confidence vote in the state, probably back in the eighties into the nineties maybe even in the two thousands. I mean, because there was a number of agencies that wanted to get rid of those guys, you know. And so we have a number of scale houses that are left abandoned. We just haven't torn 'em down yet. And we've got some super scales, right. You go down into port of call down there in Kenosha, for example.
I mean, we'll bring 'em around back, put 'em in a garage and run 'em right through the ringer. We don't have to get out on a creeper anymore and grip underneath it. But the reason for the scales is to make sure that we a everybody who's coming into our yard, which is the state of Wisconsin from the other guy's backyard, that you're qualified to be here. Right. Secondly, then we're gonna put you on the scale and we wanna make sure the weight on the steer axle and the tandem axles and the rear axles are where they're supposed to be according to the law. You know? And that's all we want. And then we'll let you go.
So the goal of the weigh stations are to save our highways, save the pavement,
Prolong for a number of reasons. And the motorists. The motorists that large. But yeah, the scale house, and, but they're not open all the time. Now the, of these 109, these field, there's a good portion of that 109 guys that are in the motor carrier, they do carry portable scales.
Oh, ok.
In the trunks. Right. So oftentimes you'll see them out where you wouldn't expect them and they'll put the party hats on, pull you over. If all of a sudden you're leaning 20 after six with your truck or something like that, something doesn't look right. Eh, let's take the portables out. I caution the guys all the time and I tell the troopers the same way. Just make sure if you got like the quad axle dump truck guys, for example, they're a quad axle for a reason. They're called that for, they got four axles behind the cab, two of which are lift axles, axles two and three. The officer has to make sure he puts a platform underneath all of those axles to get an accurate rate. And so there, there's a whole methodology to that, but there's just so much out here for them to do. It's just incredible.
Sure.
Not in my, but they're serving summons. They're doing all kinds of things. I mean, they're guys out there and we have a lot of 'em that stuff. We had some to state patrol come to our store, I your stores. Right. And your, your tire centers
Do vehicle inspections after accidents.
Yeah. Inspections. Yeah. Yeah.
Make sure everything is repaired correctly.
We put tires on those cars too.
Yep. .
Yeah. And
Now with the scales isn't one of the other jobs checking the log books?
Well that's yeah, that goes to the reality. I mean, are you compliant to be where you're at at the time you're being stopped? Right. I mean, there's three primary levels of inspection. There's a level one, which is where coming outta the kiosk, if you're at the scale, he might put a pair of cover holes on, he's dragging a creeper or goes into a squad car gets the creeper out, and it's license plate to license plate. That could be 45 minutes to an hour. I mean, and it's just, you're turning the barrel. It's got nothing to do with nothing. It's just all of a sudden it's you're turn. But when you come down the ramp at a scale, and if you're a motor carrier, that DOT number, which we haven't talked about yet,
We will.
Yep. That d o t number is critical to the overall ident of that motor carrier. So he's punching that into his computer in the kiosk and a whole lot of wells, bells and whistles or red lights and orange lights out, they're all popping up on his screen. You get one or two many red lights or just one in particular, you're taking a trip around back if he's got time. If he's got time. And so the driver wonders to himself, How the heck did I get picked outta line here? You got honey, couple of honey wagons in front of me that should look like junk trucks, but yet my polished up vehicles taking a trip around back. Well, the company's record is not that good from a previous safety management, faux pas, you know, so he gets inspected and the second inspection's a level two, Well that's just kind of a walk around, not necessarily a howdy doody thing, but a, a walk around right where they open up doors and they put hands on securement devices and they look at tires and sometimes you might grab a knee with a tire gauge and a tire looks low to him. You might do that. And the last inspection is the level three, which is predominantly the, the driver's credentials, the motor carrier's credentials and the truck's credentials all rolled into one. And that's just a paperwork check. He can do that from inside the kiosk. It doesn't have to come out for that.
So, you know, like in talking about the scales, how does a truck know that they are supposed to stop at a scale when it's open? They see the sign and that they just know that they have to stop.
Say they bolt. Right. Who's monitoring if they just don't stop
Been times I've driven by one and thinking hopefully I wasn't supposed to stop that with my trailer.
Yeah. Well if they see you and, and if you look like you need to be stopped or shoulda stopped they'll come after you. They'll run you to ground.
Mm-hmm. ,
They'll run you to ground. But if he's the, if there's just one guy, like yesterday I passed one, just one trooper that was working the scale and could, could I have scooted by Right. Probably, I don't think he was gonna run, run me to ground. But
He's managing what's in front of him.
There's a specific requirement, right. In almost every state. If you weigh it used to be 8,800 pounds, 8,800 pounds. Now they bumped it to 10,000 pounds. So if you weigh 10, no, it's what you have to weigh. So I have a cube van,, a single axle cube van that has a G B W R of 13 five somewhere after, No, 16. 16. And I don't think I weigh any more than 9,000 pounds, but all my tables and chairs and toys on it when I do safety meetings. Right. So I could pass it up if I would want to, cuz I don't weigh 10. But I never give 'em that opportunity to say, Okay, I got nothing else to do. Here's a cube van blowing the scale, I'm going after 'em. Right. So I go across every single time.
You do.
And I use the mechanic that my G B W R is greater than the 10,000 pounds. I don't have to stop by rule or by law cuz it gross vehicle weight. Right. It's gross vehicle weight.
At the time that you're driving.
At the time that I'm driving. Right. So you talk about a guy with a pickup truck, for example, let's say he's got an F three 50, which by itself has a gross vehicle weight ratin' somewhere between ten eight and 11 eight depending how it's manufactured. Right? Back to, to you with a pull trailer, if you're pulling a trailer, a tandem axle trailer, and let's say it's got a G B W R of, I dunno, 12,000, 14, maybe 16, the trailer's empty. The truck is empty.
No reason to stop.
No reason to stop the weight of the vehicles does not matter now.
But how do you know that?
Well,
How do you know what your, where's your weight?
You gotta go through a scale.
Yeah. That's what I'm thinkin' here.
Well, and the other thing is, is if you are not in commerce, so a lot of guys will pull a skid steer up to the cottage on a Saturday morning. Well, scales open. Do I have to stop? Technically no. People will ask me all the time about, well I got this great big old tandem axle motor home. Okay, it's 45 feet long and I'm pulling a thousand foot yacht. Do I have to stop ? Well, not technically in our state you don't.
Because you're not in commerce ?
Because technically you're not in commerce and in virtually any, any, the other state, you wouldn't have to either accept. Certain states do require recreational vehicles, motor homes to, to stop if they're greater than that weight threshold. You know, in Wisconsin we don't, we got, we only got 109 guys. Right. We we've only got so much exposure to doing so many things.
There's some big motor homes, big coaches.
Big ones. But if we were to stop that, what else are they, They're coming to the state and they spend a lot of money here.
Right. They spend a lot of money. Most states don't poke sharps stick in in the heart and minds of persons recreating in their states because their tourism is a big number.
What about a tour bus full of people?
Nope.
Don't have to.
Tom: Not required to stop.
Okay. I've never seen 'em at a, at a a weigh station.
Not required stop.
That's a heavy unit there.
They get inspected all the time at their own facilities.
So they go through the buses like a fine tooth comb. And, and I don't care if we had just every seat was full of a person weighing a thousand pounds, they, they'd still be legal, you know?
Well, I think that, that, you know, like something's up and it answers all my questions around the scale system of like, when do I stop? Who stops? Who's supposed to stop? And what, what happens when it's there?
Well, you know, there was a guy the other day, there was a guy the other day, for the most part, he, he had about, he had a pallet of 12 inch block on a single axle trailer. And this thing was just struggling to beat hell. Right. And when I passed him, they were already had him stopped because it just looked like, Stop me, stop me today. And to all the DIY guys that are out there, we had a number of accidents. And so to all the persons out there that on Saturdays that go out with your, your pickup trucks and your pull trailers and you deliver your refuse to the dump or whatever you're doing, you're picking up stuff at the big box stores. Just make sure those safety chains represent. Right. And they're, they're crisscrossed in the back and they're rated right on the chain. Right on the hook. There's, there should be a rating. And because the state they didn't change the law, they reemphasized it in terms of just John Q public going up and down the highway willy nilly, you know, and they have, some of you guys are in the tire business. Right. I saw a guy yesterday, , he was pulling a snowmobile, you know what, what size the really small ones and a snowmobile trailer.
Oh, say seven eights.
Yeah. Oh my God. He was going, he blew past me about 75 miles an hour. And I'm thinking to myself that spindle, that axle just gotta be flaming red. You know what I mean? But it's that kind of stuff. And, and so the scales, if they could be open every day, we'd be slowing down transportation.
Let's put this thing in perspective.
So there's a balance there.
There's a balance.
Yeah. Absolutely.
As with every, all about the car podcast. We always break away halfway through and we're gonna truck our way on this 18 wheeler over to a very interesting Wisconsin destination called the Military Veterans Museum and Education Center. Tom, you might know where this is, as they say, it's in Oshkosh.
Yep, it is.
And this is a, facility that's dedicated, or a museum, I should say, to military history and, very interesting, as I research this. And another thing that I'm putting on my list located in Oshkosh, they're open Friday through Sunday, so kind of a small window, but 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM which gives us a lot of opportunity.
Admission is free. They do accept donations, but admissions is free. And I think what's interesting to me about that is we don't think about, you know, you think about going to the museum and its history of other things, but the military has its own history of what we've been doing. And what was interesting on the website, they had a picture of saddles and that you don't think of like, Oh, the military jets all, you know, like all these things. And it's like, no, the military used to be all on horseback and marching. And how did you get the troop from one place to another? They rode on a horse and buggy or they just walked .
Yeah, the saddle's on displayer from 1859. So we're going way back in time here. There's a lot of big span of time of represented here at this museum.
I often think of all just the material of the uniforms that back in the day that they only had wool or cotton and that the ultra wicking fabrics that we have now. And it's just amazing that the difficulties that just people had to endure to keep our nation protected and to win war.
And I wonder what their patronage is because it's right alongside the highway on on 41.
Yeah. I can't remember seeing it, but and
It's not that old.
Easy to get to.
Well it's relatively new, right.
Yeah. It's not that old. It's not that old.
I know they have some really cool looking vehicles there. As I looked them up. They have a truck called the Brutus Gun Truck built in 1969, so that's bringing us more up closer to the future. And that's, that's actually a replica. But they've done a really nice job with that one. Then they have a mechanical mule that was really interested in that. It looks like a jeep without a body.
So it pretty much does all the same things that Jeep did. But you're sitting right out there on top of a frame in an all-wheel drive vehicle and these are all things on display there.
And it opened in 2016.
Oh, it's very new.
So relatively new.
That's new, fresh.
And I think that, you know, an interesting approach to you, we don't get to see museums that are brand new museums very often.
Well, they get a, they get a heck of a turnout standing room only when, because they're right down the street from the EAA grounds.
Okay,
That makes sense.
On the same side of the highway, you know, just off the frontage road there. And they get a heck of a turnout when those good folks come to town
And you can call ahead for a group tour. And what's interesting here, individual and family tours. So this can really be formatted to whatever size group you bring, bring over. And I gotta believe they do it right.
And I think so much of this is at least my take on the military is that military and I just look at the weaponry and all of the, the automobiles and all of the technology that has come out of the military that we now use regularly. But it all really started based on the military's use. I mean...
GPS comes to mind.
Right. Radar, satellite systems, all of that came out of the military. So a wonderful place to see our history.
Thank you to all that have served. Well, let's hop back in that 18 wheeler we've been talking about and we're gonna get back and talk a little bit about safe practices and some of the things to be aware of as drivers on the road with our commercial trucks. We talked about long trucks earlier. Those real long trucks. Well, some of the regular 18 wheelers are pretty darn long too when you're comparing it to an Audi . So these trucks, when they turn a corner in town, they've gotta use a couple lanes and almost stop traffic at times.
Well, and they do, and it's difficult for them because in order to make that turn, make that delivery, they really have to kind of violate the law. If, if you think about it, because they have to, they have to capture two lanes of traffic that have been lined. I'm supposed to be in this lane, you're supposed to be in that lane. Well, in order for me to get 65 feet of truck and trailer around this corner, I'm gonna have to bend over into your lane, come in the other guys' lane to come back in. So sometimes the really good drivers, they will, they will capture both lanes, but now they've opened themselves up to what's said with affection Granny, good witch sneaking in on the right side. Yep, yep. Right. Looking right at that turn signal flashing in the midships of the trailer. It's flashing on the, on the fender of the tractor and it's flashing on the rear of the trailer, but that never gets seen. So now cuz they're on their own, like a lot of us, we get on our own...
I see these drivers sending those truck drivers signals too. That's not good.
You've gotta be sensitive to this.
And so he starts to make his turn and if he didn't look in time to see her, now we're, we're wrinkling up, we got property damage. You know, so it's, it's difficult and, and it's getting even more so because we got, you know, the trucks got at one time they got more compact, more fuel efficient. Now they've gotten bigger. Again, because we have a whole, not all the trucks right day cabs are different from sleeper units, but the sleeper units, I'm here to tell you, if you've ever taken a tour inside one of these things, your first apartment as a, as a new apartment owner never looked as as good as this thing I, my God. Tvs, microwaves, all kinds of things.
So as a commercial driver, I mean you've, these guys have gotta make sure no matter of the size that their equipment is right, They have the right size mirrors, the mirrors are adjusted correctly, da da da da. Lights are operating correctly, loads are secured. I mean really there's gotta be a precheck type inspection, I'm sure before they head into inner city in some cases and are trying to navigate traffic.
We call it the North American walk around pre-trip and post trip inspections. And you would be shocked, you'd be shocked to find out, and my brothers and sisters out there in the trucking industry own it or it needs to be owned. It's, it's just not being done as religiously as it should be. I mean when you go to an airport and you're sitting in a waiting lounge area and you're up against your aircraft, you're about to board, Well, here comes the co-pilot, right? He's out kicking tires, he's sticking his head in the engine cowling. He's got the flashlight. If its after hours and he's looking at all the struts and the rudders and everything, now you have no idea whether or not what he's looking at. But it gives you that warm and fuzzy, well, okay, I'm about to board this plane, this guy's making sure that it's okay. And the motoring public has the same, should have the same expectation of the guys that drive these big trucks, you know, and the guys that are really into this and own their own equipment. Yeah. They're tilting the hood, pulling the sticks, dumping the tires, checking everything, check, check, recheck. And every time they stop, they go to the bathroom, they get something to eat, make a delivery pickup, check, check recheck every single time. You know, because the tow truck industry is really ramped up on how they bill and the rates that they have. And so if they have to recover your truck and if you're outta state, a lot of these guys now are taking the truck to their impound yard until they their checked and either coming from the insurance company or from whatever, a lot of moving parts in the trucking industry. But I wanna circle back to what Bryan talked about before, relative, I think you started on hours of service, hours of service in the, I think the general public knows now there's a lot of attorneys that are advertising on our local TVs, focusing and dialing. I like to call 'em plaintiff's attorneys. They're really dialing, zeroing in on the trucking industry. And they're winning some big cases because some of our motor carriers are yet to get it, to get it. And the number one focus is, was the driver fatigued behind the wheel was he legal to be where he was at at the time of the crash of the impact. Even if it wasn't his fault, if he wasn't supposed to be there because his log book or his electronic logging device has him back at another point in time. Well, okay, the plaintiff's attorney gets to make the case, Well, my client has the right to be fogged in on their day and not be impacted by somebody who's not supposed to be there, kind of a thing. So 14 hour days on an interstate guy, 12 hour days on a intrastate driver if he's using the exempt log. Now...
How about transcontinental ? I'm just kidding.
That word's been converted to interstate. Rob.
There we go.
Interstate.
It doesn't sound as good. Yeah, Sorry, .
So I mean it and it's a tough, tough when we, back in 2017 for those guys, we implemented an electronic logging device system.
So the written in log books really don't exist anymore. Or is that still...
Well, they, they're only out there to maybe a 2%...
2% wow okay.
Ratio. So we gave those guys a predominantly for owner operators and, and cuz very few companies anymore. If your truck manufactured date was at 1999, what specifically with the engine, you may have had a 1999 engine in a 2016 chassis on a kit somehow then if you had the paperwork for it, then you were exempt from the ELD because we couldn't match up the, the PIN system. It didn't have a, that six or nine pin coming off the engine block for us to talk to as an ecm. So.
Well, there's a lot to this.
, they were exempt and they're still being put upon though, because that was referred to years ago as the funny book or the Crayola book, whatever you wanna referred to it as. And, but 2017, what now? Five years we've been on it, the driving, we got the bugs worked outta 'em because obviously it's worked off satellite communication and all that kind of stuff and, and it doesn't work everywhere. I mean, you get up in the picker somewhere, the sticks and, and we lose signal and, and, but that's getting a whole lot better. All the platforms are getting better. The technology's gotten better.
Well, the trucking companies can actually watch these trucks from, you know, when you talk about gps for example, watching they can help control.
The time on and off.
The reason why we're minimizing right now, this supply chain problem is because we have that kind of technology. The dispatcher can sit at a port, he can see the driver, he says he got guy got four hours left in his day. He can see him where he is at on the board. He knows where exactly where he's at. And so when that next phone call comes in from one of you guys looking for a particular load, he still can use that guy for four more hours on his day to get that load picked up and delivered to you. Assuming that's there to be picked up.
Picture, kind of a war map, a bunch of pins on the board.
Well it's a safety and efficiency. I mean that tracking is good on both sides. It is a win-win
9-11 brought a lot that in, brought that into focus.
Uh specifically on the hazmat side. And we, we have to identify where all that stuff is on any one given day. And, and the trucking industry has just been so far and advanced. I mean, they're just so far advanced that the backbone of the whole industry, they're a spinal column is, is the independent contractor, so to speak. It's not the, it's not the bigs. I mean, they're the ribs, but the spinal cord are the guy that owns that one truck who's making that delivery to Podunk. And he does it consistently and he's good at it and, but he's in his sixties now, you know,
So you know what, we mentioned this earlier about the DOT number and what that means and things that, can we talk a little bit about where I cross? I mean all of it kind of wraps together. Where does my vehicle and what do I need to be doing that I become a commercial vehicle versus just recreational and what are the fine lines there that I should be having?
So when do you have to have that DOT number?
Right? You know, like we're talking about the trucking industry, but there's a lot of vehicle in the commercial side that the landscaper, the guy who I've hired this guy, he's coming and cutting my lawn. He hauls a lawn mower behind him. Should I be looking and saying, does he have a DOT number?
Well, the key and you said you hired this guy, right? You hired him, meaning he's in commerce, you're about to exchange and pay him money for the service he's providing that puts him in commerce. If he's coming over cutting your grass using a commercial motor vehicle, hell, it could be a CDL rated commercial motor vehicle. He's unregulated. He's unregulated because he's coming over to cut your grass as a, as a good Samaritan. He's doing you a favor. Right? But if you promised him a pizza, a dinner or something, that's still classified as a certain level of commerce, right? So commerce, that's all we're looking to do, is in where it gets, it gets dicey, right? Is that we have a lot of persons listening that they'll race cars, they'll go to rodeos with horses they go to regattas with boats, right? And we got trucking companies that will take the horses, take the boats and relocate 'em for you. But if you're gonna do it yourself, all these companies are requiring going to the feds with, okay, now they're in the trucking business because that guy with his race car, he's gonna go over and win a first prize.
Say I go and compete, but I don't win. Right? I'm still competing for money.
He's in commerce. You, that's a form of being in commerce. And if you were just going over a bunch of guys, got some dune buggies together, let's just go run the beach. Let's just have some fun, we'll have some brewskies on the beach, have a big bonfire. We're just doing recreationally. No big deal. Right?
But once you enter a race...
Right, doesn't mean you're not gonna get stopped. Right. You're gonna have to testify that. And I, I shared, we, we have some scales in the state where periodically we'll stop John Q Public and Jane Doe with the kids. And I think I told you the story. There was a guy with a great big cigar boat coming back from Minnesota and he got pulled into the scale and the officer was just a howdy doody thing. How are we doing? Sir? Guy was a little animated. He happened to be a client of mine. He was mad that he got stopped. Well, we're just doing, we're just doing a, a program here where we're trying to educate the public and where you coming from, sir? Well, he said, Mancato, Minnesota. What were you doing over there, sir? Well, we were, we had a boat regatta, and you can see the big cigar go back there and they calmed down. They were talking like, like intelligent people and mean Hey Martha. He leaned in the backseat, told his daughter to show the officer what they won. Well, she pulled up a big plastic silver cup or whatever it was, and a $500 check was sitting in it. That's when the mood changed. He explained to him why he had to have a DOT number. Why coming across state lines. He had to be have a fed med card. He had to do our, he had to reconcile hours of service. The guy was flabbergasted. He's in his shorts pants and his, his toe heads and his wife beater shirt and needs to be...
Would've never guessed that,
Would've never guessed that.
Yeah. No.
He's being, he's being put upon by, and it, it was just educational. He just, and he kept why, why, why officer? Well because we have trucking companies that will relocate your boat for you over there and they're having to put up with all these rules. They're just wanting you to do the same thing they're doing. That's all, That's all they want you to do. And the hours of service is the biggest. It's always been a bone of contention because trucking is not a perfect science.
And that's when you're saying trucking, even organizations moving inventory or just people moving inventory?
That is all falls under that.
I had a client of mine who asked the receptionist up front, lovely lady, if she would go and collect a couple of dozen donuts for the meeting that was about to take place an hour from now, she got in the F three 50 pickup truck, which was the boss's truck, and she made an errant lane change and got stopped. So the officer who happened to be one of 45 cvsa inspectors in the state of Wisconsin, in addition to the 109 guys we already got, or it could be more or less now, but she explained what she was doing. So he gigged her for not having a DOT number on the truck because she was in commerce under dispatch by the owner to go get the donuts.
This is a perfect storm or not a perfect storm, however you wanna look at it,
, but he just probably having a bad day. Most officers say, Hey, come on. You know, let's,
Right. There's a balance there. But I think it's a good example of what we're doing and how we need to think about things. And that if I've just started, as you said, the backbone, the independent 18 wheeler is very different from an, and I don't think about the same guy or a woman who opens a business and says, Oh, I just on the weekend when I get some extra cash by mowing lawn or going in doing some handyman repairs around people's homes and I have my toolkit and everything else in my pickup and I just go around and do it and I have not gotten my DOT.
Yep. And that's very good point that you're making. So if you're out there listening with an HD 2,500 and you're just using your pickup for the things you're talking about,
Right,
You're unregulated,
If you've got an HD 3,500 or if you've got a F three 50, now you are regulated because the gross vehicle weight rating on that vehicle makes a determination as to whether or not you're a commercial motor vehicle. If you're in commerce. Now, if you're that handyman and just cash is changing hands, you're still in commerce,
Right
And so when you wreck and when you bump into that Bible school bus full of kids, they're gonna go out and solicit and retain a
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