Why 18-Year-Olds Are Outperforming Veterans Behind the Wheel

0:01This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+.

0:55Malcolm Harris: Ladies and gentlemen, it's the last day of August We're going to end August with a bang. Welcome to a Monday edition of What the Truck. I'm your man, your host, Malcolm Harris, joined by the one and only, the doctor of freight, and my man, Mr. Michael. Vincent. Mike, what's up, boy? How you doing, man? Peace and love to everybody from 146 Media Studios. Hey, it's What the Truck. Texas. Or West. Whatever you want to say. Whatever you want to say, however you want to say it. We're west of half of the country, and we're east of half of the country. That's it. You look good. That's what I'm talking about.

1:36Thanks, brother. So do you, man. I took a shower. I took a shower. You did? Well, it was Sunday yesterday. You had to go Sunday, go to meet and shower yesterday, right?

1:45Malcolm Harris: Yeah. You know, man, I had to just get my life in order and get it together. But, yes, I... Yeah, I hear your nasal, though, man. You getting over your disease or whatever it was? I don't know. It's like, yes, I am. I don't have strep. I don't have the flu. But it's, you know, it's just one of those things where you just got to get through it and take the over-the-counter stuff. How many people said, is it COVID? No, it's not COVID. I can still take it. Do they still ask you? Do people still ask you that? Oh, yeah, all the time. For sure. For sure. People always ask, did you get tested for COVID?

2:22Why? Would it make a difference? No. Would it make any difference in anybody's life if I did or didn't? At this point. No. At this point. Absolutely not.

2:33Malcolm Harris: So, yeah, I'm drinking some electrolyte water and trying to get through it, man. Yeah. Pedialyte. It's not just for kids anymore. No. It's good stuff. It's great stuff. Yeah. It's great stuff. Dude, I got tickets to the Ohio State-Texas game, bro. No, you did not. Yes, I did. Oh, man. I'm like 50 rows up on the 40-yard line. So you're going to go see week one Ohio State and Texas. Do you have a score prediction for that game? Boom, boom, boom. No, man. I just hope they all have fun. You do not believe that. You do not believe that in the least. I just hope they all have fun, bro. That's all. I love it.

3:16Malcolm Harris: I love it. Well, I think it's going to be a good game. I hope so. I'm excited to see it on Saturday. That's going to be a big one. It was a good week zero. Did you watch anything this past weekend? You know, I watched a little bit off and on. I watched Bilicek just be pissed off the whole time. And I watched Virginia manhandle NC State. I knew, I mean, yeah, that was, yeah, a given. Shout out to Chapel Bill as well. Chapel Bill. Chapel Bill. Shout out to Chapelville for showing up and showing out. And it was a good week zero. I really enjoyed week zero. It was all right. Yeah, it was good. No, you know, because my wife is like, who's playing?

4:00Because she's getting into it, right? Yeah. And she has been because I love college football. It's like, look, there's nobody real big playing, but sometimes these are the best games, you know? Yeah, easy. When the Chanticleers are on, it's usually a competitive game. You know what I'm saying? I know what you're saying. Yeah.

4:17Malcolm Harris: I know exactly what you're saying. Love that. some good stuff. It's like going to the lookouts. Lookouts games are better than major leagues. Just because not everybody there is ever going to get to the show and have a drink of coffee. No. You know what I'm saying? No. And so it makes for a better game, in my opinion, a lot of times. You see a lot more effort in these lower tiers because when you're a pro, it's like, well, I'm paid to be here. I kind of made it already. I can kind of phone it in. Whereas. Not Johnny Hustle, dude. i can tell you what these two guys that we're gonna have on the show today they are not gonna phone it in all right because we got no neither one of them are phoning no no we've spoken to one already we're gonna bring him back for part two because i don't think his first one did enough justice all right so the man the myth the legend ed bennon of course svp of sales at premier trailer leasing is going to be in the building all right so we're talking trailer availability of course We're talking basically about 2027, what to expect, and just really getting to chop it up with Ed.

5:17Malcolm Harris: I'm excited to speak with him. Of course, he is the man. And then this guy is the executive director at the Zeta CDL School. He is Mr. Josh Klayman. He's joining us to talk about giving high school students a path to earn their CDL before graduation. We're going to dig into what that program looks like, misconceptions around CDL careers, CDL mills and enforcement, and much more. So between Josh and Ed, listen, this is the fastest 45 minutes of freight plus 10. All right. I got to put that little disclaimer in there. All right. We got some headlines to get to as well. But before we do that, let's get to pay the bills, man.

5:57Malcolm Harris: Gnosis Freight. You guys have been great for the last two months and you guys will continue to be great. We appreciate all you guys have done as our sponsor of the month here at What The Truck. Again, if you're checking carrier websites, copying container data into spreadsheets and chasing updates through email chains, you got to get Gnosis. It is an AI operating system for global logistics, one platform to track every single container. And of course, automate execution and protect your margins across the full container lifecycle. Go get Gnosis. My man, Jake Hoffman, he is the man with the plan.

6:31Malcolm Harris: And guess what? You guys can book a demo with him right now. All you got to do, gnosisfreight.com, book a demo, tell them that the guys at What The Truck sent you. Again, Gnosis Freight, we appreciate you guys for all that y 'all have done for the guys at What The Truck. You guys are fantastic. Yeah. Fantastic. And they make a hell of a good knocky. Yeah, they do. Yeah, they do. Just saying, man. Just saying. Truth. Yeah, they do. Yeah, they do. Are you going to be at F3? I think so. Yeah? Is that happening? I think so. I'm invited, aren't I? Yeah, I think so. I mean, you should be invited, but if you are not invited, you might need to buy a ticket.

7:15Malcolm Harris: You can buy a ticket by using the promo code TAKE20. Michael Benson is never buying a ticket to the Future of Freight Festival if I'm alive and breathing, man. It's October 27th and 28th. Make sure you guys are here at the Future of Freight Festival. It's going to be one of the biggest events of the year in the freight world. Take 20. That's the code. Appreciate you, Cody, for making that happen. You're going to have what the truck there. You're going to have brake check there. You're going to have so many different folks there. You're going to have the lizard live in full effect. All these different boots and promos that you guys can check out.

7:46Malcolm Harris: Adam Wingfield is going to be in the building. We're going to have, I'm sure TPC is going to be out there, live music. We're going to have rigs out there. The lizard, look at him. That's Craig Fuller. Nobody knows it, but it is, I promise. and then you're also going to have again keynote speeches and much more again october 27th and the 28th dale prax in the building i'm sure he's going to be there too a golf simulator man this b-roll is absolutely outstanding matthew left with the attorney he's going to be in the building as well as the doctor bill look at this look at that guy as well man october 27th and the 28th make sure you get your tickets right now they are on sale and uh you can use again this promo code take 20 uh to get a 20 discount off all right so 27 28 at the signal make sure you get your tickets right now all right now the bills are paid we're good mr vincent we are we are good lights will stay on the lights will stay on at least for the next 45 minutes the lights will stay on for the next 45 minutes listen we got a story to talk about this is a wild one out of Arizona all right So this is crazy.

8:53Malcolm Harris: Of course, we talk about cargo theft a lot here on the show. So I wanted to make this to your attention. All right. So there were two different quote unquote busts that happened on I-40 as well as Interstate 10. You guys can look at these images right here. Arizona, again, police, they recovered 400K in stolen cargo during stops 20 minutes apart. All right. So this is what happened. A stolen load alert. It came through the Coconino County Sheriff's Office where Detective Curtis Peary, he began searching I-44 suspected stolen shipment. All right. So he eventually located the trailer and sent identifying information back to the company for verification.

9:33Malcolm Harris: They verified it. All right. But then they alerted him that there is another stolen load near Phoenix on I-10. All right. So what? Peary contacted the Phoenix Police Department. It was Sergeant Jeffrey Gordon and passed along the information. And then Gordon coordinated with an Arizona state trooper to intercept that second vehicle while Perry's team continued working on the original stolen shipment that was stolen. All right. So this is crazy. How did they figure out how did the first one link? The other one that called said, Hey, I caught this load and said, Hey, we got another one. Can you go get this one down?

10:06Malcolm Harris: Basically what happened? Yes, that is exactly what happened. So they got the call. There wasn't information from the first one. It led to the second. No, no. And they just happened to have another one. It was like, hey, yeah, we just got the stolen load. And he was like, well, actually, there's a second load that was also stolen that we just got made aware of. You guys are closer to it than we are. Go get it. And then they coordinated with the state troopers. So this is crazy, bro. It shows you, like, to me, when I saw this, it's like, all right, man. I mean, we talk about this all the time, whether it's sports, whether it's the workforce, whether it's a marriage.

10:39Malcolm Harris: Number one thing in all those things is what, Mike? Communication, right? communication yeah i don't disagree but i mean you know an accidental hey we accidentally had one here isn't like yeah i mean i think we're stretching a little bit you think it was a little uh lucky charms in the cereal bowl it was a hundred percent lucky charms in the cereal bowl bro 100 and say look communication well you had a phone and you were doing your job and somebody accidentally had some other information it led to something okay great so here's the here's the the thing if you have somebody that can help you and you're on the phone with them ask them

11:19i mean no kidding but here's here's here's what's really important right what's up here's here's what i'm getting to i think i find that part of it funny what i don't find so funny i find pretty serious no is this sergeant jeffrey gordon happened to get is he not a certified fraud compliance officer? This is true. From FreightWave's own school? This is true. This is what I'm saying, man. Phil Brink is out there and FreightWave is making a difference in this and actually getting something done. They're not just reporting and go, hey, look at the headlines. Look how crazy this shit is. They're actually doing something about it, right?

12:01And that's what we're called to do, right? As Christians, my friend, come on. Let's not sit here and talk about it and go, hey, there's, look at that going on. That's messed up. Someone should do something about that. You, baby, do something about it, right? And here's a great example of it, dude. Absolutely. Here's a great example of it. Get it done. That's the important, to me. I make fun of different parts of things because that's what I do. But this is serious in the fact that you're right. Open communications and learning how to figure these things out and what is going on from professionals like Phil Brink and the people at Freight Waves, etc.

12:37And Sergeant Jeffrey Gordon out there in Phoenix, the Phoenix PD. Because look, Indiana was doing this right. We were like, wow, how come Indiana is getting so good? It's getting this right, but nobody else. Because they started training on it, right? Now you got Phoenix out there doing it. Jeffrey Gordon, maybe Arizona and Phoenix, they start to freaking come up. Because you know how much freight goes through that? Oh, so much, man. It's like three and a half shit tons, I think, a day. Somewhere around there. That's a lot of shit tons, isn't it? Well, it's like 47 metric ass loads. It's a lot of freight that goes through there.

13:17Malcolm Harris: I'm curious, man, about this. Why do you think that other states, like these hotter states, for example, I'll give Illinois, obviously California, Florida, to some degree. Why are they not having this sense of urgency when it comes to cargo theft and these trainings like these other states are right now? You know, I'm not 100 % sure. You got these states where freight obviously naturally transits through it. It's transient freight, right? Yeah. And they're checking stuff out. Because, I mean, let's say Arizona's not a huge manufacturing state, but there's massive amounts going in and out of California that travel through Arizona, right?

13:54Indiana's the same thing. Not huge in manufacturing, but you have to get from the East Coast and, you know, Ohio and Pennsylvania and so on to Chicago. And you got to go through Indiana unless you take the long way or go north of the border. So there's natural opportunity to do it. I don't want to say it's political or anything like that, but maybe they're just looking else. Maybe they're just looking elsewhere. I don't know. I don't know. Because there's massive amounts out there. Maybe they're just not convinced yet that it's a big deal. I mean, you have to start somewhere, right? For sure. For sure.

14:29Malcolm Harris: but you would think that there was a lot of different cases in these different States that I just made. Oh, there are, there, there, there probably are a ton and maybe we're just not hearing about them or maybe they're just not, they're not doing anything about it. Cause like you said, there it's happening, right? Shit is happening right this second. It's just, is anybody doing anything about it or not? Or concentrating on it? It doesn't seem like they are. No, I agree with you. I don't know. Maybe Phil can figure that out. Is it happening silently? I don't know. But when you see this type of stuff, you go boom, boom, right?

15:01There's two. And then you say, oh, freight theft is only 0.0025 % of the actual stuff, right? And then you add in the cost, and it's a lot higher when you add in the overall cost. Reproduction, lost time production, shutdown of production lines, all that kind of shit adds up to$7 billion, whatever it is, right? That's where your costs really start to come into the book. But we say it's 0.0034 % because most of it's not ever reported. Well, maybe it's just because most of it's not ever discovered and hits headlines.

15:30Malcolm Harris: Because nobody's doing it. You're making too much sense, Michael. They don't like that. I mean, that's what this says to me, right? It's like, hey, get trained. There's people out there like Phil who can help you. Yeah. Right? And then make an effort. For sure. I don't know. Listen. Maybe the police department should make a percentage of what they recover. So maybe that'd motivate people. I don't know. Follow the money. Follow the money. It's going to follow you. Y 'all can read more on that. of course on fretwaves.com i want to talk about this next one though and and mike yeah take a sip because you're gonna need it because i want an explanation about this one all right so there's ain't nothing wrong with bourbon in the morning bro there's some friction between motive and highway right now all right so let's let's move to this one they have restored the eld data connection between their platforms after a dispute temporarily limited how frequently highway could access eld information from the motive connected carriers all right so what happened is motive they again and limited the API connection between the two platforms that indicated Highway would need to compensate motive for access to carrier data.

16:30Malcolm Harris: Highway then pushed back, saying it doesn't charge for carriers for that access and didn't intend to start doing so just to preserve the integration. During this disruption, Highway said that the reduced data frequency meant it couldn't provide its normal location-based load lock alerts for loads hauled by carriers using motive devices. All right, so the bigger wrinkle in this as well, highway said it can no longer provide its performance guarantee for those loads either so my question to you mr vincent who is in the the wrong here is anybody in the wrong here is highway wrong for how they feel or is motive wrong for kind of cutting off the water a little bit and forcing highways hand that's that's what this sounds like to me no yeah i think am i am i missing it like i don't know i i mean i've read this No, I, I, I, so I recently, um, had a long conversation with Michael Caney, right?

17:26Shout out to Caney, man. Yeah, he's a fantastic guy. Good dude, good brother. Um, yeah, right? I mean, you got Caney and, and, and, and, uh, Jordan, you know, at the helm, uh, running this thing and you got a good company. Um, yeah, no, look, Highway's kicking ass, right? And they're, they're doing some really good stuff. And now they're, now they say, Hey, look, we'll guarantee this shit.

17:48Malcolm Harris: Yeah, for sure. Because I got the band with the DJ. And it seems like somebody over at Motive said, well, huh, we need some of that pie too. Yeah. And then Highway came back and said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We'll just say, look, we're not, and I don't think there's any lie in there, but look, if you're not going to give us the stuff, we legitimately can't back stuff with your information. Yeah. And we're going to have to tell our customers that because we either get rid of guaranteeing it, which was a fantastic thing and a great marketing thing, and it's brilliant because it's kind of like they're an insurance company now, right?

18:25Which, you know, Jordan knows a bit about money and financing, I think. I don't think he knows a thing or two. Well, a thing or two, a thing or two. I don't know. Maybe Triumph Bank. I don't know.

18:39And so, you know, it just became this, hey, this is not like Highway said, look, we're going to strong arm you. It's just, they're like, look, we're in a position where we can't not strong arm you. Yeah. We either shut down our company or we tell people, dude, if they're using motive, I can't do it anymore. You know what I mean? And motive's like, well, yeah, we really can't have that bad press. That's honestly, I don't think there was anything more nefarious than that. No. I really don't. But what it does indicate is something that our boy Charles Gracie is talking about and posted. And it's interesting.

19:12I'm not sure where his mind goes to this. I think it goes to the side where maybe I don't necessarily agree with him. We all disagree with each other. That's why we get good conversations. We don't always disagree. But it is now whose data is the ELD's data? And who should be allowed to make money off of it? Because that's going to come up, bro. Because here's your first taste of it. Maybe it wasn't anything malicious, but it was there. Where's the money? That was the motivation. Where's the money? So how, as ELD information and data becomes more and more important in fraud theft and fraud detection and, you know, catching nefarious players and all this other kind of stuff, its value goes up and up.

19:50We just saw it. It's a huge value. Now, whose data is it? Who gets to charge for it? That question is going to be raised more and more. It's going to be more and more serious.

19:59Malcolm Harris: No, it is. I'm sure that Charles... Start of a trend. is and that definitely is the start of a trend i'm sure charles is going to get into this more as well as uh here today on freight waves today with julie vandecamp and craig fuller at 12 so definitely be on the lookout for that our final final final headline before we get to ed benham because he is waiting in the bullpen man i get excited to speak with ed um let's go to washington for this one all right i i saw this and i was like okay i need to hear the opinion of michael Vincent, because this is something. All right. The Trump administration is beginning the process of unwinding federal fuel efficiency regulations governing standalone truck engines and other components.

20:42Malcolm Harris: But there is an important distinction here, guys, and I want to make this known. This does not eliminate federal fuel efficiency requirements for commercial trucks. Instead, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is changing its interpretation on how far its authority extends. All right. So the NHTSA says it should regulate the fuel efficiency of the complete vehicle rather than separately regulating components such as engines, transmissions, and tires. All right. So the administration's argument is essentially that the manufacturer should have more freedom to determine how they make an entire truck more efficient.

21:14Malcolm Harris: So this could mean improvements to engines, transmissions, cab design, aerodynamics, tires, and then other vehicle components as well. Mike, is this good? Is this bad? Is this necessary your thoughts on this one this is a question for uh for craig fuller matt matthew left you plead the fifth i well no i'm not i do i ever plead the fifth i will i will never no i will give you my opinion and i reserve the right to correct it based on what smarter people have to say okay but i love that answer by the way uh well i mean it's a truth and i look at it this way because look uh trump never plays chess he or never plays checkers he's always playing chess right he's playing like high level four-dimensional dominoes right i mean he's like professional down in kingston jamaica playing dominoes he rules it right um hey yeah right i mean that's a cultural thing bro it's just facts i learned how to play dominoes from some jamaicans in miami it was fantastic but anyways what i remember through the haze of the red stripe beer But, I mean, he is, right?

22:25So like you said, this is a court argument to limit the jurisdiction of the NHTSA or change its jurisdiction so that Trump can go to the manufacturers and say, you can now make money. That's purely it. It's helping. It's taking regulation away, right, to do this thing, to do that. That's his motivation, right? And I don't 100 % understand the legal because when you explain what this does and what they're arguing, it almost seems to me like it could possibly accidentally expand to now. Not only can they do engines, but they can talk about the, you know, I mean, the shape of the vehicle, the aerodynamics, the skirts, all that kind of crap, right?

23:14Yeah, man. So I don't know if this is, but there's smarter people than me driving this, trying to make this happen. But that's kind of, I haven't thought about it or dug into it too much or asked people their opinions to really start formulating what's really going on here. Because I don't rely on just my own opinions to do this. No. I try and formulate information from other people. I haven't heard enough about it, but it's a bit, I see the motivation. And look, the regulations that were there weren't all bad. It was more perception. I mean, they did reduce a lot of CO2 emissions and that type of stuff.

23:55Now, the argument of whether that's important or not is also something because Trump will say, ah, BS. CO2 emissions don't do anything, right? Well, I don't know if we just pollute willy-nilly just because Trump says it doesn't matter. But you know what I'm saying? So maybe this was more costly, and there was definitely an uptick in costs on the engines and the trucks, et cetera. But the fuel savings and the efficiency were real as well. Just do you want to realize it at the beginning or at the end, right? So it costs you a bit more for the truck, but if you run it for its life cycle, its normal life cycle, it's actually cheaper and more efficient then.

24:30but it's that barrier to entry that hurts because maybe Malcolm Harris doesn't have the money to plunk down 15 ,000 extra just to save this so he gets the cheaper vehicle right that's what I'm

24:40Malcolm Harris: looking for that's what I'm looking for you know what I mean absolutely brother absolutely man you guys can also take this one out in full too uh I want to be mindful of you know Tom and everything like that go check let's do it waves.com and uh make sure you get that that was again our headlines roundup another great way to start a monday off the weekend all right now let's get to our guy man you guys saw this man a couple of weeks ago and he was live in studio right here on this desk with me it's was he on the desk actually he was on the desk man he came in brought me a nice hat and i was feeling good yeah yeah you said you said you were gonna you said you were gonna send me one of those man it's literally fitting i i can point to it it's over here on my desk but uh Keep it, bro.

25:25Malcolm Harris: I'll be there. All right. I got you. And he's going to be here now because coming in the triple box is going to be my man, again, representing Premier Trailer Leasing, none other than their SVP of sales, Mr. Ed Benin. Ed, welcome to Wet the Truck, man. It's good to see you. Hey, appreciate you guys having me back on. What's up, Ed? How are you? Good. Last time you talked about how it wasn't too hot in Texas. I think you sent the jinx out. It's been about 105 ever since. You know, and I'm going to tell you something. That 105, I swear to you on my life, it ain't that bad. But this last two days, the humidity came in, and, boy, it's rough with that humidity.

26:09But when there's a decent breeze and it's 105, 107, it really, it's not as bad as 92 degrees in Chattanooga. It just ain't. But this weekend, this is pretty rough. The humidity gets you. But look, we talked about Rutgers last time. Now we got to talk about East Texas, right? Let me tell you something. Ed, you, Ed, I'm talking to everybody else. Ed, he doesn't give up. He's tenacious. He is, what are you, VP of sales? Is that right? Senior VP of sales. Yeah. Don't be happy. Is it senior or senior? depends it all depends gotcha senior senior vp of sales at premier trailer leasing and he is tenacious as hell and here's why check this out from east texas a &m look east texas a &m right this is where you learn your tenacity and your willpower and your in your your intestinal fortitude to make things happen bro so this school the founder of this school when he tried to get accredited, the day they announced it as accreditation, he died of a heart attack.

27:21Never get to see it. Never got to see it. And then like 15 years later in like 1894, the school burns to the ground and then comes back again from it. Then in 1917, there's a cash crunch, as we all might know, and the state's about to shut down this school, but 400 people go out to Austin and say, no, no, no, no, you're not shutting down our school, and they don't. They keep it alive. And you know what it produces? It produces Ed. Like, three years later, 1922, I think you graduated, something like that. Somewhere around there. I thought we had graphics about all this stuff, but I don't know. There it is.

28:06Come on, now. You know we got you fully loaded. We'd never let you go. I knew Cody heavy, man. There's the picture. There's a picture right there. And if you don't know, the guy with the hose spraying Benjamins all over that fire, that's Ed. The guy in the clouds, that's not Ed.

28:24That's the owner. Or not the owner, but the founder. The founder of the university right there. Looking down going, thank you, Ed, for keeping this thing alive, my friend.

28:34Malcolm Harris: There you go. So, Ed, are you ready for this? I'm ready. All right. Let's Stuart. Now, we've been in this weird dynamic when it comes to the market and fleets have gotten used to having equipment options, right? And are we entering a period where that flexibility is abundant or is it starting to disappear? You know, I think it's already, we've already lost that flexibility. If you take a look back over the last several months, you know, we've had different dynamics that have really put a lot of pressure on our market. You guys have covered the supply side kind of flex that we've had with CLDs on the heels of Montgomery Supreme Court ruling.

29:20But going back to April, May, we have inspection week, the service percentages, Amazon Prime Day pull forward, and then the World Cup having 11 host cities overlapping that with the 4th of July. We've really had a huge impact on what what the overall utilization looks like within our space. And that pull forward compounded with where spot rates have been, it's really given a lot of fleets the opportunity to test out what this new market looks like. And with really worries about what the opportunity cost looks like to bring equipment back, we're seeing a much tighter market than I think people even give credit towards.

30:06So let me ask you this in a state of where we're at right now with fraud, et cetera, right? Understanding who has what piece of equipment is essential. We were talking about ELDs, et cetera, but it's that combination of truck, trailer, driver, and do you have the correct paperwork and the correct CDL, all that kind of stuff that's important. But understanding who's got that trailer and who it's assigned to is incredibly important right now, right? How do you solve for that? Because that's becoming an issue, right? This isn't actually your trailer. This is actually somebody else's trailer. Well, yeah, but it came off at least two months ago.

30:49Now it's leased to somebody else, right? How do you solve for that issue? Well, there's a few things there. I think on the carrier side, number one, doing diligence, getting a lot of your paperwork in order, knowing in a tighter market, credit crunch becomes a real component in addition to what trailer availability actually looks like. But from the technology side of things, we covered this my last time on the show, what your tech package looks like, knowing that you have a partner that is willing to work with you to help set up different geo-fencing. we're monitoring this in-house from day to day.

31:27We have hundreds, if not thousands of tow yards that are already geo-fenced. We will reach out to our customer base if any one of the assets becomes available or unavailable as part of that. So just having the resources at your fingertips to be able to flex and take a look at where your equipment is 24-7.

31:51Malcolm Harris: so ed as we're looking into 2027 which i can't believe i feel like it was just january four business days ago and now we're already about to be what in q4 in a little over a month um when it comes to to renting leasing or buying why should folks kind of air more so towards the the rental and lease portion of trailers and instead of the the buying aspect You guys just covered it, going back to the last news segment, the engine regulation and the impact on what that means for CapEx spend going on to the power side of the equation. This could consume a large portion of what CapEx and balance sheet cash looks like going into 27.

32:34So it's a good opportunity to really test the market and not really put your eggs into most expensive peak that we've seen in quite some time on the trailer pricing side of things. So get your utilization in place. Make sure that your contracts are in place. Premier and others can be used as a great gap to be able to leverage the asset, secure what those contracts and loads look like before you make a more longer term commitment to buy on that front. So flexibility is a huge thing. Can you speak to that a little bit as, you know, choosing the right partner, right? Because you want to have the flexibility.

33:13You obviously want to have lower costs, but it's also important to have some sort of value, right? I mean, I could find a pretty cheap trailer to rent if I wanted to, but it's not always the cheapest, right? Just because it's a low monthly payment. Can you speak to that a little bit? What is choosing the right partner look like? Absolutely. You know, the quality of equipment that goes a real long way. I think the stability as well, having a partner that continues to reinvest into keeping their equipment fresh. You know, in times like this, there have been a lot of solutions, cheaper type options that have been available out there.

33:50But knowing that you could have late model equipment that really helps on the maintenance side of the equation, that's really important. And taking it a step further, just knowing that you have a partner that's responsive, that's accountable with billing transparency, that really helps put together a bigger equation for what the right partner looks like.

34:16Malcolm Harris: so i want to look ahead because if a fleet owner knows they'll need additional trailers over the next six to 12 months all right what's the game plan uh that you would say uh would prevent them from making the biggest mistake that is kind of in the in the road for them oh well you know with back to school college football and uh fantasy football drafts already in the in the rear view peak season's here. So really taking the time to meet with various different partners, understand what their value proposition looks like, understand what trailer availability looks like, access to availability next year, and getting a lot of the nuisance and administration out of the work.

35:02If you're looking at a big contract that you're bidding on, or you expect to take over in Q1, making sure that, you know, you have not only the access to that equipment, but all the credit side of the house is buttoned up. And that way you can be sure that from an execution risk standpoint, there's really nothing to worry about when that time comes to take over that project. Absolutely.

35:27Malcolm Harris: Ed, where can we get more information about what you and the rest of the team are doing over there at Premier Trailer Leasing? Because you guys are the best in the business man as always you know reach out to us at trailers at premier premier trailer leasing.com you know we're here we got a staff we got our marketing team uh on call waiting waiting to uh you know deliver some answers to those questions ed bennett ladies and gentlemen ed thank you so much but hope to see you down here for f3 if you can make it and uh we we definitely got to see you one-on-one with michael vincent at an open gym i want to see that wow looking forward to that thanks for having me again

36:05Malcolm Harris: what's that all about man yeah i just want to see i want to see you out there man just in case you know that makes you good oh that's messed up bro in the show this guy has the most intriguing story that i've had on a pre-show call in a minute all right i was talking with him and we just really got to yapping it was i mean maybe a 30 minute call if that and uh i saw him and i was like man this is crazy and uh i wanted to bring it to you guys and i think you guys are going to think it's really interesting too um yeah without further delay let's just get to the triple box man the executive director of the zeta school uh cdl school rather this is mr josh clayman josh you're officially on with the truck brother looking good man how's it going what's going on guys i appreciate the invite appreciate you being bro what's up josh don't uh don't invite me back on monday i have nothing else to look forward to this week well there is friday uh i mean in ford but isn't it labor day isn't it like yeah labor day is on monday so we're not gonna have a show a week from today we'll be off of work yes so that's why we brought you on now to just kick it for two straight weeks just boom boom this is double monday because we got josh on today And I agree.

37:25It's interesting. I didn't get to talk to Josh yet. This is my first time. But looking at his background, I'm like, what the hell happened? I'm like looking. I'm looking for that. Where is that angle? Where is that interesting angle? I couldn't find anything like crazy about Josh. Just like this. Cody, we got this here? I think we got it. I don't know if we got it. There it is. Look, this is his career. This is how it happened.

37:56I mean, he's like this investor. He's in banking. He's doing all this investing. He falls down with all this cash and boom, trucks. And now I'm going to produce drivers and all this kind of stuff. How that happened is what's interesting to me, right? Just looking at your career, hold on. That's how it happens, guys. It was so close. The only thing you got wrong is I had absolutely no money when we started. Well, it wasn't your money. No, I'm just kidding. Oh, good point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It happened. He was running out of that bank with some people chasing him, I think, is what occurred. No, no, no, I'm just kidding.

38:31But yeah, the journey into what you're doing there and talking about and getting to the CDL schools is what is really interesting. Because you were like this investing in tech guy, right? And getting into that. And then you saw the issues in trucking and applied tech to those issues, basically, if I'm getting the story right. instead of having tech and then looking for those issues. Is that right? I mean, it's kind of like what I call the right way to do things. It's not data, therefore blockchain, right? Or data, therefore AI. It's here's issues and how do we fix them? Yeah, I mean, we tried putting a CDL school on the blockchain.

39:09We couldn't figure it out. So this is kind of the... I love it. I love it. I love it. But that was exactly it. I was in venture capital for five years and I got bored and jaded with the industry because you, you know, you make an investment and then you wait 10 years twiddling your thumbs to figure out if you're good at your job. And my business partner, who's now my CFO, he and I went out. We wanted to, you know, get back to operating and doing things. Got into the trucking world, bought a trucking company, very naively needed truck drivers and thought, you know, why don't we just start a trucking school?

39:48We had no money, no resources. We had a 300 square foot office that we squeezed like nine people into. And five, six years later, the Zeta Driving School in Kansas City is the largest single location CDL school in the country. Because we were too stupid to say it was a bad idea at the time.

40:09Malcolm Harris: Josh, there was a lady that you met too, right, along the way that had done a bunch in the CDL schools. I forgot her name. That's why I just kind of kept it big. Can you speak to? Yeah, Miss Connie, we were running the trucking company in peak COVID. And that was back when everybody was offering those$50 ,000 sign-on bonuses to drivers. And we had just started the trucking company, so we couldn't afford that. So I went to the general manager of the trucking company and said, hey, we have this idea. Let's start the CDL school. How do we do that? He said, I don't know, but why don't you call the lady who taught me how to get my CDL 30 years ago?

40:51And I call her up and I'm like, hey, you know, we have this idea. We want to start a CDL school. Are you interested? Do you guys have an office? No. Trucks? No. Government approvals? No. Trailers? No. Absolutely nothing. Sounds great. I'll see you on Monday. and squeezed in. We're taking our first students to an abandoned parking lot 45 minutes away. And that's how the school started. Crazy. Tell me something about, so you guys have a strong, you have a really good network for this, right? So you still involved and still have the trucking company, the asset-based trucking company, right? And then you have the CDL school, right?

41:37How important is it to understand or have that connection there? Because, look, 10 ,000-plus schools now shut down and instructors decertified, and you guys are growing and still strong. Is it really – does that relationship help? I mean, because the need or the motivation for the school dictates what the curriculum is and how ethical or let's just leave it at that, what the motivation is for that school. Yeah, in the beginning, it helped us understand why we were building the school. A lot of people, they'll build a school usually just a money grab. They have a CDL. They're looking to make some money.

42:24they'll spin up a school you know weirdly enough before 2022 when we had the the training provider registry come up it was you know people would sometimes start a school you didn't actually need to have anything because anybody can just go and take their cdl 2022 happened you had to you know self-certify which is not a great idea but you had to self-certify that you were a school so we probably had more of these kind of fly-by-night schools pop up that were putting students through um but the big thing was they didn't know what they were teaching they were just teaching to the test we knew hey these guys are coming and driving for us representing our brand you know going on our insurance which is the real problem um and then we could develop our curriculum accordingly we had an interesting call with one of our hiring partners the other day he comes up and says, you know, before the last year or two, we would never partner with schools because we didn't know if they were going to be around in the next year or two.

43:26And we didn't want our name associated with that. Now we're just starting to officially do real partnerships and co-branding with schools because we're actually confident in them. So those are the, those carrier relationships are really what drive the most successful schools forward. If you don't have those, there's really no reason a student should be going to your school.

43:47Malcolm Harris: I want to talk about those students and specifically high school students, because this is kind of a topic of debate. And I want to go to you and get your thought process around it. I mean, what does this look like for a high schooler and the path to getting their CDL? And then once they graduate, if I'm a 17-year-old interested right now in obtaining my CDL, what's that process look like? And do you think it's a good idea? we were very against it as a school up until about a year ago we had no trust we had conversations we had calls about it we thought why you know why are we going to deal with these 18 to 21 year olds because they can't you know they can't leave the state you have the interstate restriction for anybody under the age of 21 is it worth the hassle is it worth the headache and we get a call from Bethany Kelly, who's the real world learning coordinator at Hickman Mills High School in the Kansas City area.

44:43And I didn't even know this was a thing, real world learning. So I was having a conversation with her. She calls us up and says, hey, we have this program. We're preparing our students with these industry recognized credentials, market value assets before they graduate. We want to send them to your school while they're in high school. So they're going to take time out of their high school schedule. So instead of going to English class, they can go and actually get their CDL with you guys. We'll bus them to you. We'll make sure they show up. We're going to track their grades. And I thought, you know what?

45:18We've been against it, but I'm open to it. Let's try it. I told our instructors, hey, we're going to do this pilot program. I thought I was going to have a mutiny on my hands. The instructors at our school were wildly against it. What do we know about training high school kids? We only work with adults. The average age of somebody who comes through our program is 32 years old. We have more 65-year-olds getting their CDL than we have 25-year-olds. Completely against working with these kids, they come in for their first class. The instructors come back to me, these are the greatest kids we have ever taught.

45:56They know how to study. They know how to learn. It's a completely different demographic. And the nice thing is these kids now are graduating high school. They're getting their high school diploma and their CDL license. So they can go out and get a job the second that they graduate high school, which is opening up all of these different career options for them that they didn't traditionally have and is helping the broader industry because now we're getting this much higher caliber of truck driver that we traditionally couldn't get because people were waiting until they burnt out in a different career to come and get their CDL.

46:34Okay, so they're getting their certification to go sit for the test, right? They're not actually walking out with a CDL from your school. They're walking out with a CDL from our school. So we're a third-party testing center. They can, as long as they turn 18, by the time that they need to, as long as they're turning 18 by their senior year when they're doing this program, they're eligible to sit for a CDL exam. We're a third-party testing site. They test right at our school, and they walk out with an actual CDL and can start driving the next day. That's fantastic. Let me ask you, do we have time for another question?

47:14We got a few minutes for sure, Mike.

47:15Malcolm Harris: Go ahead. Okay, cool. So how do you talk to these kids and others about the career with a CDL, right? It's not just over the road. And you're looking at autonomous trucks and all this other kind of stuff. How do you overcome the, well, because it's not a real vision, but, you know, this job's not going to last because there's going to be autonomous trucks everywhere in the next five years. I wish. It's not going to happen. It's not coming close to happening. It's very funny. I'm very against driving. I lived in New York for the last decade. I didn't own a car for 10 years. So whenever I was driving, I'm like, this is such a bizarre thing to me.

48:01And everybody found it hilarious that I own a driving school, and I'm kind of against driving for the most part. But autonomous vehicles are not going to happen the way people think they're going to happen. I know, you know, when I was in this industry and the problem is everybody who's talking about autonomous, the engineers, the investors, the journalists writing about it, they're not truck drivers. So they don't actually understand what an autonomous truck is for or what a day in the life of a truck driver is. You know, driving 65 miles an hour down the highway, that's 10 percent of a truck driver's job.

48:37Like you can teach a monkey to do that. You don't need to teach autonomous vehicles to do that. It's all other things that go into it that's never going to replace the truck driver. So even if we have autonomous, we're still going to need truck drivers. It's just going to make their life easier. I think best case scenario, it might replace team drivers. So we might get to the point where instead of having team drivers with one guy sleeping, one guy driving, you can have one person doing that whole thing. They start the trip, they go, they can sleep in the bunk for eight hours while the truck drives itself.

49:12That would be great because that's where a huge part of the industry shortage is. But I think best case scenario that we're going to see in the next 10 years or whatever it is, is the only person it's going to replace is the team driver.

49:26Malcolm Harris: so josh given your background with tech right and everything that you've done but also i mean you are what i would call at the epicenter of trucking because you're at the start of a lot of careers and you're funneling a pipeline of different drivers into all these different organizations what does the future look like i mean you just talked about the autonomous aspect but is there anything else that we need to be on the lookout that is not necessarily being discuss that you're just like, hey, this is stupidity if we're not focusing in on this right here, right now. I think the biggest thing that's going to open up the market, you guys talk about all of the different insurance issues, driver shortages, theft, crashes.

50:14And when you think about all of this that's happening, when you put in all of these rules and regulations for the CDL schools, the quality of CDL drivers is getting better. So down the line, all of those issues that you guys cover in all of your podcasts every week, I think a lot of those issues are going to start getting better just because the base of drivers is going to get so much better. So the CDL schools have been cleaned up, are still getting cleaned up, but generally speaking, it is better. And then once you can take drivers and start them at 18 years old, which is kind of counterintuitive.

50:52A lot of people are very against it. But those quality drivers end up being better than the 21-year-olds because it's not a second career for them. You're getting people who you didn't lose to construction or something else. They're treating CDL as their real first career. They're being treated properly. They're being trained better. When you start looking down the line 10, 15, 20 years from now, I think a lot of these issues that we're dealing with are going to start not go away entirely but are going to get a lot better just because the quality of person in the industry has gotten so much better yeah yeah i don't i don't disagree with you i think it's that that because it's a secondary in many cases it is a last it's a last resort type of thing for some of these people or second second job and and that type of stuff when it's the first career, now you're into it because there's so many things that can develop from that.

51:51In the school, you talk about now we can teach these people what it really means to be a driver. If you're one who's not just teaching to the test, speak to that for a minute. What is that extra that someone who's going to go to your school is going to get from you that is that better than just passing a test? So the big thing is the average person who comes to our school is 32 years old, the average income when they apply to our program is$23 ,000 a year. So think of that person as the person that's coming to the school. Chances are, if you're that person, you have a lot of issues going on in your life, right?

52:31You have childcare issues, family issues, tough jobs. You might have debt. You have all these issues that you've decided, hey, I'm going to go to CDL school to fix my life, improve my life significantly. And CDL is one of the only places where in a month you can go from making$23 ,000 a year to making$70 ,000 a year, right? It's one of the most efficient paths out of poverty that there is today. Most people, they'll come to the school and they think, okay, a CDL school, the job is to get a CDL. Our job is to get you a job. So all of the real world learning that we're trying to instill in these students comes from a lot of our hiring partners.

53:13So we work with everything from the big OTR carriers that everybody knows, the J.B. Hunts, the Warners, to all of the what we call like the non-traditional trucking companies, right? The landscaping companies, concrete, construction, tree services, electric contractors, all of these guys who need CDL drivers but are not trucking companies. And that's a great career for a lot of people because it's home daily. It pays just as well. And the career progression in a lot of these places is better or more interesting than a traditional trucking company some of the time. So a big thing that we do is bring in these partners and say, hey, here's a different equipment you can drive, you can work on.

54:01Here's the flatbed that TMC is going to bring in. Here's the garbage truck that Republic or Waste Management is going to bring in. Here are all the different things you can actually do in your career. And once you leave here, we're going to help you find that first job. We're going to make sure it's right for you so you don't leave the industry because that's one of the biggest problems with CDL is more people have a CDL. and don't use it, then there are active drivers right now. And then if you do stay in the industry, what does it actually look like for you 10 years from now?

54:32Malcolm Harris: It's real, Josh. Clayman again, Josh, really appreciate you for being here on What the Truck. We're about to get up out of here. But man, this was one heck of a segment. And just thank you for your time, man. Yeah, it's awesome. It's awesome. Thanks, guys. Yeah, thank you. And thank you guys. Thank you, brother. On What the Truck. A great Monday. Let's get into the road ahead before we get out of here. Mr. Vincent, man, it has been one year of Malcolm Harris on What the Truck as of Wednesday. So we're going to have a big episode to celebrate it. Mr. Rusty Kirby is representing Pilot Flyer, and Jay is going to be on the show.

55:04Malcolm Harris: Nate Vey from Altitude is going to be back on the show. We got truckstop.com in the building with Mr. Sean DeHaan, and then Curtis McBride with NeoVision is going to be here. That's it for us for Michael Vincent and Malcolm Harris. It's peace. He's going to throw up the love. We'll see you on Wednesday. Bye.