Are You Prepared For When & Not IF You Are Sued in the Trucking Industry?

Jared Flinn: You're listening to the B Floats podcast, your number one resource for everything bold freight trucking. Hey, guys. Jared Flynn with the Bulk Loads podcast. Got Tyler with me. Tyler: What's going on? Jared Flinn: Thanksgiving week. Tyler: It is Thanksgiving week. Jared Flinn: Is this your one of your favorite weeks or not? Like, what is your holiday? Tyler: It's Christmas. Yeah, my holiday is Christmas. Being a bigger guy, you'd think it's Thanksgiving, but I think Thanksgiving ranks number two is I enjoy all the good food. Jared Flinn: Will you cook? Tyler: So we're having at this house, at our house, we're having the wife's side over and I don't think I will have to cook this year, which I like cooking, actually, so I don't mind to jump in and help out. I am kind of sad we're not doing turkey this year. I heard we're just doing, like ham. I'm a turkey guy, so I like to do turkey. But it'll be a good one. Jared Flinn: Yeah, we. I can remember some really good, great memories. Thanksgiving, when my father was still alive. We had a cook turkey cooking contest. We both smoked turkeys. Tyler: Oh, yeah. Jared Flinn: I actually won. He didn't prepare his and tried to speed it up and then I don't think I've ever deep fried one. Tyler: Yeah. Jared Flinn: Have you? Tyler: Yeah, we have. And it's. I mean, you have to do it very carefully, but they turn out pretty good. Doug Marcello: Yeah. Jared Flinn: So awesome. Well, hopefully you and your family are getting together this Thanksgiving. And I know it's gonna be chaotic times, but man, have fun this week and enjoying time and peace with your family. Wanted to throw up one photo. We actually. Christmas is just around the corner. I don't know about if you all. I think you all do. Jared Flinn: We do family Christmas postcards that we send out. My wife just got these done. I'll have Garrett throw it up, but yeah, this is our family postcard. This was actually down at the river, the farm property we bought this summer. So that background is kind of this river. Tyler: So turned out really good. Jared Flinn: Yeah. So wanted to show that if you ever. If you feel compelled. We get some postcards here from some of our trucking companies. But yeah, if you want to send some here to bulk loads, we will hang those up in the office for the holidays. Tyler: Yeah, we'd love to see them. Yeah. Jared Flinn: Cool. So getting on with the show today, I bring on Doug Marcelo. He's an attorney actually. He's really active on LinkedIn. I've been following him. Larry Hurt on our insurance side recommended I follow him. Reached out to Doug and got him on the show. And man, I love. Jared Flinn: First off, if not, we'll put Doug's link down in the episode notes, but you need to follow him on LinkedIn. He puts a lot of great content out there. He is a trucker, or excuse me, he is an attorney for trucking companies, not the other way around. He works on defending trucking companies in different lawsuits. Litigation goes all over the country. So first off, if you are in a need, reach out. Actually, there's a. One of our members, I think it was last month, reached out looking for one. Jared Flinn: I recommended Doug. I don't know where that ended up, but yeah, if you are looking for an attorney or need help, he is one of those. Puts out a lot of great content. But we're going to bring him on today and he's going to kind of walk through what he does and some of the things he's seen going on will die. We'll discuss those afterwards. Some really, really good points. I really want to point on a couple of those because I'll say this, I'm going to say it afterwards, but like, it's not, I hate to say this, that heaven forbid you ever have an accident out there, but if you are driving, roads are more congested. It's just a matter of time before it happens. Jared Flinn: Maybe it's not your fault, but it's just a matter of happens. But the key is how you deal with those situations. And we're going to unpack that after the episode. Tyler: Yeah. And Doug, I mean, he. It's a great episode. He dives into everything from nuclear verdicts to just kind of creating a response plan and having just an action for whenever these times do pop up. But yeah, it can be a scary situation. Jared Flinn: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So cool. Well, before we get started with Doug, I forgot we always do a truck feature. I'll let you kick that off. Tyler: Yep. Today we have Jeremy Buttrey. He is out of Syn, Missouri, so just right down the road from us. Jared Flinn: The other Lamberts. The original Lamberts. Tyler: Yep. And Jeremy has been a member with us since 2022, so a few years now. Doug Marcello: Yeah. Cool. Tyler: I appreciate Jeremy. Thank you for sending this in. He also shared some kind words. He said that I love the videos and podcasts. It's awesome to see people in the same industry sharing business ideas and industry news. So thanks for sending that in. Jeremy, if you have a truck that wants to be featured on our podcast, social media, anything get a hold of us. You can send it to podcast.com or just send it to us in any of our social channels. Jared Flinn: I just want to say lastly, this is a really cool, just live action. Tyler: Yeah. Jared Flinn: Photo of him getting corn loaded in the back of his hopper. And man, love his truck. Nothing, I mean it's a beautiful truck. Nothing crazy fancier detail. But man, it just looks like an awesome working class truck. Tyler: Yeah, looks comfortable. Big sleeper. Jared Flinn: Very big sleeper, yeah. Cool. Awesome. Well, getting on with the show. Here is my conversation with Doug Marcelo. Doug, thanks for joining Derek. Doug Marcello: Honored to be here. Thank you for having me. Really appreciate it. Jared Flinn: Well, we can probably talk legal, I think for hours on end, I think just because quite frankly there's so much unknown about it. And hopefully you can bring light to that today in this conversation, especially for our audience. But Doug, just to give us a little bit of background, I love that you are currently a CDL holder, right? Doug Marcello: I am. I've had my CDL for about 20 years, Jared. Now here's the deal. The world is better with me in a courtroom than they are with me behind the wheel. So every once in a while I'll have the opportunity, particularly at the truck driving championships when they have the non professional events. But CDL, I've had cases in 35 states around the country. So all I do is defend trucking companies. That's what I've done for about the last 20 years and 25 years, I guess it is now. Doug Marcello: And I've been a defense attorney for 42. Jared Flinn: So was this you got the CDL just to learn more or just to become more of an expert? Doug Marcello: I did. I got it back around 2005 and it was to give me a perspective on terms of what's involved, what the drivers face. Classroom work was a great crash course on the background that we have in trucking regulations and law and then out on the road. And at that time we were using the know manual transmissions. So in terms of, you know, potential issues going around a curve or other issues with regard to driving that may come into play, new respect for, you know, I see that four wheeler coming up behind me that all of a sudden it's right on my tail and I can't see him. So it gave me a whole perspective on it and it's been very great. Grateful to apply it to the cases I have. Jared Flinn: Nice. So just our audience knows, I mean most time when we're thinking attorneys, when it's dealing with trucking, it's usually attorneys. After trucking companies, you're quite the opposite. You're on the defensive side helping represent trucking companies, correct? Doug Marcello: I am. I'm the guy against the Billboard folks. That's exactly right. So, yeah, and this. Jared Flinn: And this is just a question I have. Like, how long ago I've been in trucking Now, I started in 2004, got in the industry, worked for a grain company booking trucks. But like, I guess maybe. Doug, just explain the backdrop. Like, when did this really come to the issue that it is today? Like, I guess I don't remember early on seeing, you know, the billboards going down the highway, these nuclear verdicts. But can you maybe give us a little history of maybe when this started and how it's evolved to what it is today? Doug Marcello: I was just. I had this discussion on Friday with Mark Willis on Road Dog. So I started, like 42 years ago. It had just come into where attorney advertising was permitted because it used to be considered violation of the rules of ethics to advertise. Then there was a Supreme Court case, probably back in the late 70s, early 80s, that said that's a restraint on attorneys. They can advertise. And we started to go from there. A lot of it just seems to have picked up speed, I would say, on a significant amount, probably in the last 20, 25 years, that it's come through and it just multiplies. Doug Marcello: So we get up within the last 10 years where we just see it all over the place, particularly targeting trucks, where they'll have it right on the billboard, hit by a truck, call us. No fee, no recovery, that type of thing. So the advertising has really taken hold on that. Jared Flinn: Yeah. And I guess if I be so frank, when I was younger, I could always remember, I'm wording it here in Missouri and grew up in the St. Louis area. But, like, there was always this. Like, I think it was brown and crouppen, but it was more always just accidents, you heard on the job and all that. But, like, I rarely ever seen it targeting to truckers. But I mean, today, everywhere you go, and I know I'm in the industry, but I was in western Kansas last week, and there's a company, I think it's called the Bull Attorneys. And they have this commercial with this bull riding in this convertible car. Jared Flinn: And if you've been hit. But they're targeting. I think what. Where it caught my attention, they're specifically targeting grain truckers, the audience or customers that we serve in this industry. I mean, like, they're targeting a specific group and. But like, I guess I've never seen it this rampant as it is today. Doug Marcello: And I think where a lot of it came in, Jared, was this. You know, we got back in the early 2000s. And we had what people refer to as the tort crisis, particularly medical malpractice. And medical malpractice used to be where the targets of the billboard attorneys were, the plaintiff attorneys. And what happened is the doctors got together and they said, you know, look, you're going to end medical care for a lot of particularly small communities, but we're not going to be able to do this. They were having trouble getting insurance. So because of the crisis that occurred within medicine, then there were a lot of tort reforms. Fast forward after that. Doug Marcello: The attorneys are looking, the billboard attorneys are looking like, hey, you know, what's the next pocket, deep pocket we can hit? We got vehicles out there. They're going to have at least 750 if they've got hazmat, a million coverage out there. We know, and now we're going to start to target on those. And that's, I think, when the big shift came to focus on trucking, when the folks in the medical malpractice hardened their target. Jared Flinn: Yeah, that makes sense. Actually, I just had the executive vice president of the OOIDA on the show, and actually I remember him saying the exact same thing that early on it was in the medical field, but when that. When tort reform came, then it switched to wherever you can focus on. Talk about. Well, I guess I'll just ask this question. Let's go into just really protecting your trucking company. I mean, just general if I'm out there, because I think I hear this all the time, and we also have an insurance agency that we write policies and all that. But I think at the end of the day, I've heard these guys say that they are scared to death to get in a wreck and get sued. Jared Flinn: What are some ways today, just practically, people can really. I mean, there's nothing's 100% and things are going to happen. But what are the best ways if you're a small independent owner operator, that you can be protecting yourself? Doug Marcello: Starting point is just what you said. And we're required to by the FMCSA to have the insurance out there. You know, make sure you have the adequate insurance to get out there, at least, I would say, $1 million in it, particularly if you have to. If you have that hazmat. I give a talk on that, Jared, in terms of, I call it the four phases of litigation, going from least to most important, the litigation, the lawsuit itself. But you look at 90 to 95% of these cases get settled. So, you know, it's a matter of that the next one before that is what I call the dark period, the period where the plaintiff attorneys are ginning up the damages. And we got to pierce that, and we talk about how to do that. Doug Marcello: The one before that's accident response to be ready and prepared to respond to the accident. I've got PDF templates of accident response plans, accident reports, things like that. If folks are interested, I'd be glad to email them to them. They're free. When have you ever heard that from an attorney, Jared? But the most important time is now, before the accident happens. And it's like I talked to, interviewed an insurance underwriter several years ago for when we were doing things remotely for an ATA conference. We did videos and I said to him, how do you, as an underwriter, deal with these nuclear verdicts? And he said, it's the same way that we deal with natural disasters on the casualty side is we've got to know that some are going to happen. We just got to be prepared. Doug Marcello: And I think from a trucking perspective, we got to take the same approach that folks in the hurricane areas do. We got a hardener target, be prepared right away in case it happens. But we've got to look and try to identify what are the vulnerabilities, what are the detonators we have there. And I give a presentation this year called death by dogma. There's a lot of things trucking companies do as a matter of course, that everybody's done, that they've done over time. But the problem is, Jared, that these folks who are on the billboards look at those and prey upon them as defects because they're not interested in the accident. The accident many times is secondary. What they're looking for is some type of systemic failure by a trucking company, because what they want to do is to make this an issue, not just about one accident, but to say, jury, you have an opportunity and you need to protect your community. Doug Marcello: And the only way you can do it is by a large verdict, because otherwise this trucking company is going to remain systemically unsafe. You got to send them a message. So look at things like. And I go through a number of things, your manuals, and I just talked to someone today, fairly significant company. You know, manuals are where a lot of the things that the plaintiff attorneys, the billboard folks, will pick out of there and use as examples and try to hold you to a standard that you said in your manual that you might not be able to live up to. A lot of folks think that, you know, well, we gotta put it in the manual, because the manual will prove we're safe. The manual, you're writing a check you might not be able to cash if you don't have a safety culture. Jared Flinn: Oh, that's good. Doug Marcello: The example that I use on this is there was a company put out a letter a couple years ago that said safety is our number one priority. And we see that in a lot of the manuals. The folks who put out that letter, that was Oceangate, the folks who sent that septic tank down to look at the Titanic. And we know, hearings of the last couple weeks. So words don't, you know, don't do it. In fact, they're going to get you in more trouble. One of the other things is have somebody prepared to take the call. You know, when the call comes in, whatever that person writes down is going to be something we're going to have to live with throughout the trial. Doug Marcello: And if they mess it up, we can explain it. But the plaintiff attorney, the billboard folks are going to say, sure, but that's what the driver said before safety and the attorneys got involved. You know, things like, don't take a statement from your driver. Now, that's, you know, foreign to most people, in fact, if not blasphemous. But at the end of the day, the plaintiffs don't give us a statement. The statements of limited evidentiary value. You can only use it if the driver doesn't remember the accident. Many times it could contradict other statements, the police report. Doug Marcello: Incredibility is the primary factor that we have when we go to court because our job is persuasion. Importantly, Jared, in today's world, it's going to be contradicted, or maybe contradicted by the telematics and other electronic data we have. You know, it used to be our units were mechanical devices, they're electronic devices anymore. So we ask a driver who had an unexpected event within an instant, how fast were you going? How long did you put on the brakes? We start with, the ECM is going to tell us all that you're going to have other telematics. Many of the camera systems we'll have up in the upper right hand corner what the speed was at the time. To go through things like that, preventability determinations. It's a major way, if not done right, that you can inadvertently admit yourself into negligence on it. If the company's definition is the same as the definition of negligence. Doug Marcello: And many companies have this, the driver didn't do everything reasonable under the circumstances. Reasonable under the circumstances is the definition of negligence. And courts have Said if you apply that deposition or that definition, find the driver was the accident was preventable. You've in effect admitted your driver's negligence in those circumstances. I was on the ATA task force a few years ago. We tried to develop the preventability so we could achieve the safety goals without undermining in litigation. And we came out with the ata, came out with a booklet in terms of this. We tried to design it so we can meet both needs on that. Doug Marcello: So there's a number of things and a number of other things that you need to do as a company ahead of the accident. Pay attention to telematics. You know, and you know, there are many people and the culprit sometimes, or my own colleagues, defense attorneys out there in the world who say, look, you don't want to need or you don't want to look at that telematics data or you don't want to look at the data because otherwise it'll get used against you in trial. Well, the problem is, Jared, the plaintiff attorneys know where it is. A couple years ago, one of the major billboard organizations gave a seminar entitled A Treasure Trove of Data. So companies, you got to get ahead of it and write your own narrative rather than them write one that you're not going to like. I talked at the American Trucking Association a few years ago. Identify what you have in data. Doug Marcello: You'd be surprised, Jared, how many companies don't know what's out there until after the accident happened. With today's, you know, onboard sensors, telematics, other things that are OEM on the truck that they don't even know or don't use on a day to day basis, once you identify it, analyze it, what data relates to the accidents that you have. You know, if you're running the GW, it's probably hard brakes. If you're out running i80 in Nebraska, it's probably over speeds. But focus on what is it that's going to be the indicator, potential accidents based on the results we have, and then manage it. And then at the end of the day you've got a discipline because in today's world you can't afford to have somebody out there who's going to ignore that and just do what they have on it. Yeah, that's so good. Yeah. Doug Marcello: What was the question, Darren? I started talking 20 minutes ago. Jared Flinn: That was perfect. Doug Marcello: Yeah. Jared Flinn: Having a report and plan, but just having a plan in place because it's not a matter of if, it's just when it happens and having just, I mean just like having A plan if you have it like a tornado or natural disaster, have a plan when, if something happens, how everything is going to, how you're going to respond in all these categories. Doug Marcello: So I use the example. If you're a football coach, your team has the ball in the three yard line, you got seconds to go and you need a touchdown to win. That's not when you're going to start to draw up the play, decide who's going to run the play and then try to find them on the bench to fight and figure out who's going to. It's 3am the phone call comes because they never come during working hours. That's not when you're going to try to figure out how we're going to respond, who we're going to get to respond and how we're going to find them in the middle of the night. And that's why planning ahead of time. Add to that on it, Jared, is the ECM of the individual units. If you're running a Mac Volvo, there's only three or four engineers in the country that Mac Volvo has given the software to download. Doug Marcello: If you're running a Detroit that has a last stop record in it so that if you don't have a hard break, the data will be on there. But as soon as you start to move that unit, you're going to overwrite it. Things need to know ahead of time to anticipate it so that you're ready and can protect the data that can protect you. Jared Flinn: Yeah, that's good. Hey guys, Jared Flynn here. Many of you all may know, may not know, but we started Bulk Insurance Group two years ago and man, it has been growing phenomenally. But I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk more about why we started it. We started Bulk Insurance Group to create an insurance agency, insurance company specifically for bulk carriers. There's no other companies out there that focus on bulk carriers. I had this idea years ago that man, we have a group of carriers different than out there. Jared Flinn: But the problem is insurance companies day they want bulk carriers with general freight, with band freight, with reefer freight and flatbed freight. And we know that bulk carriers are different and insurance should be provided differently to them. So that's why Bulk Insurance Group was created. So I know right now insurance, it's going up, premium is going up. We would love the opportunity to look at your quote and see if we can help you out with that. We know people are sticker shocked at renewal time. Man, give us a chance to look at over I know insurance can be a pain to switch over, man. Let us just see if there's something we can do if there's savings that can be made or maybe policies or different coverages that you don't have or maybe you have and you don't need. Jared Flinn: So, man, reach out to one of our representatives at Bulk Insurance Group. You can go to Bulk Loads. There's an insurance tab. We'll put the links in the notes here below. Thank you and God bless. Can you talk about, and this is maybe old news now, but even like product liability cases, but like this Wabash case and again, I know this was last month or a while back, but like now these attorneys are even going after the actual makers of the manufacturers of the trailers and the equipment, the trucks and all that. Doug Marcello: Yeah, back in the day before I was doing trucking work, I did a lot of products liability defense work. And as tough as it is to defend trucks, the products cases are even tougher. It's basically. Did you put in the market a product that was basically unreasonably unsafe? Strict liability, yes or no? Well, what if the other person, we saw this in the Wabash case. What if the other person did Was your product unsafe and then it becomes into strict liability. And that's what we're seeing it come out now. We saw it in the Wabash case with regard to the ICM bar or the SEC bar rather in the back. You know, I think that's going to open the floodgates, the interactive braking systems, a number of things like that. Doug Marcello: You know, gee, if we made that so it was more sensitive and our braking was shorter, that's going to be an issue on it. There's a number of, number of ways and I. And again, it just shows. People talk about, you know, for a long time they said about the tort problem and then they changed it because a lot of people don't know tort sounds something French like dessert. So they changed it over to lawsuit abuse, which I think is more appropriate. And they talk about the lawsuit of Bruce problem. I think that's soft pedaling. We have a lawsuit abuse crisis right now, particularly in trucking. Doug Marcello: And I think we have to get into and treat it in crisis mode. I don't think we can just treat it as it's a problem. We have seen some gains in tort reform out there in the legislatures, but across the country it's going to be tough, particularly the political makeup. A lot of the states, plus the power of the billboard attorneys, they're Giving large volumes of money to legislative races and to judicial races. I think probably about half of the money given to the winning candidate in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court last time came from plaintiff attorneys on that. So my frustration is we've got 3 million drivers, 8 million people work in trucking. And in today's world, where we have these, you know, you can't even tell who's ahead in political races, we have the throw weight to change this stuff. But I think we need to have the effort and I think we need to have the organization to do it. Doug Marcello: And I think that's where a lot of the trucking organizations can at least get it started. Because with 8 million people, then their families, then their friends and get the word out there, this is what's happening. Because, you know, we're the companies that are moving the economy. We're the life, better the economy. We're providing the jobs, we're supporting the community. We're doing the things that good citizens do that are necessary. There's no reason why we should be preyed upon. If there's an accident and it's our fault, people deserve to be fairly compensated. Doug Marcello: But we've gone and gone beyond that where now we have what I call the casino vacation of litigation. And Jared, I said that very carefully because you squint your eyes out there at some of these TV ads, you don't know if they're advertising an attorney or a casino on that. It's just that's where we've come to. And we have got to bring common sense or bring some reason back to what our system is. Jared Flinn: So I didn't have this as a talking point. And you may or may not know the answer to this, though. I mean, are. Are there more trucking accidents today than there were there were 10 years ago or five years ago? Are the case. I mean, are there more? Are they. Are these just bigger nuclear verdict cases? I didn't know if the. If the statistics show. I know we seem like the roadways keep getting busier and busier. Doug Marcello: My recollection, Jared, is that we have been just north of 4,000 large vehicle deaths for a number of years. That number has remained pretty much the same. And I've got that on one of the slides in my presentations. I think the key thing is that we need to look at is accidents and death by vehicle miles. Vehicles, miles traveled. And I think we are probably hovering around the same on that. If anything, I could be wrong, but I thought I read in one of the publications the last couple weeks that things May have come down a tick or two in the last year, but you're right, the nuclear verdicts, the big verdicts, the headlines are getting, you know, disproportionate attention out there. You know, when we win them on the defense side, you know, it's like the song says, stay humble. Doug Marcello: You know, stay humble, act like we've been there, that we don't tear down the goalpost and throw it in the river, you know, so. But you know, when the plaintiffs get these big verdicts, they put them on blast, put them on their website and they go out all over the place. And that's what's, that's what's really given the perception. The problem is for trucking companies is a minefield out there. And one wrong verdict, one big verdict can wipe out the company. And for them and for their insurance companies, many of the times they can't take the risk. So what we are seeing is while we have a number of nuclear verdicts, we have far more nuclear settlements where companies and insurance companies are overpaying because of the risk factor involved in it. Yeah, and understandably so. Jared Flinn: You know, going back, you talk about, you know, you don't hear when defense attorneys win these cases, but specifically talking. Can you share, Doug? I know you may not be able to give exact examples, but some of the cases that you're, you worked on, or working on, some of the. Just examples for our audience to kind of understand the work that you do. Doug Marcello: What I do, like I said, defend trucking companies around the country, I have to get specially admitted outside of Pennsylvania and I've done that in 35 states for cases. But what I'll do is get a case and work through it. If we can get it settled, get it reasonably sett, then it'll close. If it doesn't, we'll go to trial. I've had trials in at least 8 to 10 different states or jurisdictions going on cases, you know, anywhere from, you know, at a two week trial in Watertown, New York, the first two weeks of January. And Jared, for folks who knew Watertown, New York, I'm still whining about that. It's kind of like being in a snow globe that time of year up there for drums up there, the Arctic training center. But a fellow up there won a couple million dollars. Doug Marcello: He had gotten $200,000 advance from a legal lender and we were able to defend it. Got a zero verdict on it, stiff those folks who advanced in the money. You know, another case where we had an accident, admitted it was our Fault person claimed that they had brain injury, wanted a couple million dollars. We had offered him $500,000. The jury came back at $400,000. You know, less than that. It's a matter of taking these things. You know, as our poet laureate of Philadelphia, Meek Mill said, scare money don't make no money. Doug Marcello: So I understand the risk that companies do, but sometimes you got to try them. The after study of smaller verdicts found that over 50% of the payments of $500,000 were from settlements, but only 35% were from verdicts. Jared Flinn: Can you say that one more time? Doug Marcello: More of the payments of the. In their study? Yeah, more than $500,000, more than 50% were in settlements, but I think it was a little more than 35% were in verdicts. You pick your spots, you know, you analyze the risk, you do the analysis. But. But if they're not going to be reasonable, you can't be afraid to try the case on it. Jared Flinn: Yeah, that's really good practicality for our audience and guys listening. You know, when we represent all 48 states in Canada, we have clients up there. But if you are maybe small town, run a small trucking operation, I'm just going to give an example, but I'm in Oklahoma. Can, can you work with companies like that if they are in a situation where they're needing legal help? Doug Marcello: Absolutely. Just, just reach out to me. We can get an arrangement together, work out what I do. A lot of times, particularly if there's an accident somewhere. You know, having done this for the 30 years of trucking I've done, I've got a network of attorneys out there, someone locally. What we do is try to make it seamless so that we take advantage of their local knowledge and their ability to be there in person. You know, I'll come in maybe for the depositions, but in today's world, with zoom, a lot of that we can do remotely on it and a lot of assistance we can do. So yes, glad to help it. Doug Marcello: And I've got that going on right now with a lot of cases. Jared Flinn: Perfect. Well, for those listening, we'll put Doug's information in the show notes below. So you should be able to click down there and be directed right to his. All of his contact information and his website. And yeah, I think just to go back to the beginning, I think it's just, it's one of those, if you're in business, you have to be prepared for this. I had to endure this myself. Not, not necessarily in trucking, but in a lawsuit four Years ago. It was one of the most stressful times of my life. Jared Flinn: But I learned a lot about the legal system and actually it gave me confidence. And it's like one of those. I think there's a fear of the unknown and I think having someone with expertise like you, that can walk someone through that I think is just. And especially someone that's seen this hundreds, if not thousands of times. Doug Marcello: One of the big things also that we do is that I do is to get on it right after the accident. We have a company that's got 5,000 units around the world, around the country. Anytime they're in an accident, they reach out to us. We'll call the driver, talk to him as protected by attorney client privilege. Myself or one of my other attorneys, tell them, hey, look, it's our fault. Get a check out there, you know, let's get it settled. Because it's only going to get worse. Doesn't get better with time. Doug Marcello: They'll, you know, if they go to a billboard, attorneys get their car fixed, get. If not, you know, if it's not our fault, how do we defend it? Let's get out and look for, for intersection cameras, zoom or ring doorbells. Jared out there, you know, in today's YouTube society, you know, but we got to get on it and get out there. You know, we can rue our fate with all those billboard attorneys, but we have an advantage none of them have that's immediacy. And if we don't get on it, if we don't get out there and after it, we've squandered our greatest advantage on it. And that's what we have to do on that. And for us to do that for those folks, I don't even know if it's cost them $200 an accident for us to do it, but it gives us initial triage, it protects what the driver says with attorney client privilege. And we know where to go from, get some direction on it so we get ahead of it. Jared Flinn: Yeah, that is so good. Being just immediate action taking, being proactive and getting tasted so well. Doug, I can't thank you now for taking the time today and coming on the bulkless podcast and sharing these. These are not the glamorous ones and our audience, they probably, I'd be honest with you, rather seeing talking about, you know, long nose Pete's and shiny trucks and like equipment stuff. But this is one of those that it's all part of business and you have to be prepared. And that's why we want guests like you coming on this show, educating our clients if when situations like this happen, they have the direction to go. So thank you so much for coming on the Bulkless podcast. God bless you. Doug Marcello: Thank you for having me. Honored to be here. Thank you. Jared Flinn: Jerry, a couple things I want to point out. I said this in the beginning, but, you know, last week we had Louis Pugh on with Oida and we talked about this tort reform where these, like, I just. Things you just can't believe happened now, where it's not even the driver's fault and now they're suing the equipment manufacturer. It just gone. Like how things like. And I think we can all say this just like, you hear stuff or see this and just like, what the heck? How is this happening? This doesn't even seem real. But that's another thing Doug's working on. But more than anything, I just want to center around, like, if you don't have an action plan in place and it doesn't matter how, what size business you are, you need to have a plan in place. Jared Flinn: If that happens. Doug said in the show he's got free resources. We'll put the link below that you can actually get a resource with steps to take when you are involved in an accident. If that happens. Tyler: Yeah. As we said before, it's Thanksgiving week, and I'm super thankful that we have these guys that have a passion for defending truckers, and we have these guys on our side instead of all the billboards you see against truckers and trying to go after trucking companies. So I'm thankful for guys like Doug in. In this industry as a whole that they're fighting. Louie going to, you know, Washington, D.C. and fighting. So I'm very thankful for. For those guys having this passion. Jared Flinn: I just want to say this resource, it's a free resource coming from an attorney. You don't hear that out of the same mouth. Tyler: I'm sure there's no hidden costs or. Okay. Jared Flinn: Speaking of, we're going to have. We're going to try to get Doug to our conference. Bulk freight conference. We got to keep mentioning that it's coming up. It's getting closer and closer. Just five months away. Tyler: Yeah. And Doug is one of these guys that I think he'll be able to hit and talk to all parties, whether you're a shipping company, broker, carrier company, you want to know if you ever have to go through a lawsuit, you want to know the information. So I'm excited to see if we can get Doug there and have a session. If you go to bulkfreight, conference.com. you can get your conference tickets right now and you can also book your hotel rooms. Jared Flinn: It is selling up. It is selling out fast. Yeah, I just saw that. Tyler: Hotel rooms are booking up quickly. So we want to be sure to let everybody know and mention it everywhere possible. That way people don't miss out. And we want you to have the chance to book your hotel room. The 50% off hotel rooms. As I said before, the hotel has a steakhouse like that's that seals it for me. But yeah, we want you there. We want to see you at the conference. Tyler: Definitely. Let us know if you, you plan to be there or you need help getting your tickets or anything like that. You want to know what there is to do in Branson. It's on the Branson landing, so you can bring the whole family. It's going to be a really good time. Jared Flinn: If you have any questions, reach out to us regardless. But you can just pop down in the episode notes and just send a question. We'll answer that. You don't want to miss the conference. Another thing we. Joe just dropped another video. It's actually live on our YouTube channel, John Pocock. This was one that we went out a couple months ago and recorded. Jared Flinn: It's a 45 minute episode, but it is, it has so much information in there. You have to find the time and listen to it. Tyler: Yeah. Oh my gosh. John is a busy guy. Just his story and his companies that he has going on, it's inspiring. Yeah, it's an amazing video. I was talking to Joe. Joe said that he has 15 hours of footage from that trip and so he was able to kind of shrink it down into a 45 minute segment that really captured all of it. And I think he getting ready to release another video on the whole potato harvesting side. Tyler: So definitely you want to go to our YouTube channel if you're not already there and subscribe. That way you can get notified whenever these videos drop. Jared Flinn: Yeah, they're cool videos. They really, I mean very little bit about bulk loads, but it's really about these companies and that's the way we're making these videos. But just the information, knowledge, wisdom that you're going to get out of it, you can apply to your business. Go out, watch the John Pocock video. It's in the episode notes below. If you want to click on it. Tyler: And on that, if you want to be one of these companies that are featured, we have a form in the description that you can click on. You can fill it out. Let us know when A good time to come out. We want to just capture your company and highlight your company, what you do in your operation. We have a solid list for 20, 25 set up. You're talking to a big cattle company with a trucking company. So that one. Yeah, that one's going to be really good. Tyler: So drop down below, fill out the form, let us know it's totally free. We cover the cost of traveling out to you. All we just need is a little bit of your time. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Usually half a day. We get it knocked out. So, yeah, reach out to us there. So awesome. Well, I think that's it for this episode. One thing we always want to mention is we do have a prayer line. It's Prayerolkloads.com we're getting a season of the holidays, which can be joyous for a lot, but we know that it can be a struggle and depression and all that. Jared Flinn: We know that people out there that have lost loved ones, ones, Holidays, functions sometimes aren't the best gatherings. We want to be a resource and pray for you. If you have a prayer request, just send it to prayerolcloads.com. we consider that an honor to pray over those prayer requests. I saw one just come in yesterday or today and man, thank you for sending that. And we already have people praying over that. Yeah, so cool. Tyler, you want to close this out? Tyler: I will. Lord, we come to you today just to thank you and praise you. Lord, we're just so thankful for this week, Lord. It's really time to remind us what we're thankful for. And, Lord, we're all thankful for your salvation or our salvation, and you send your son to die on the cross. Lord, we ask that during this time. Lord, we know there's a lot of families that can't be together in this time, so we ask that you just be with them and remind them that they are not alone. Lord, we ask that you just be with all of the truckers on the road this week. Tyler: And we ask that anybody that is going through any kind of hardships, financial hardships, relationships, anything like that, Lord, remind them that you are with them. Lord, I lift up this industry to you, anybody involved. Lord, we ask that you just bless them. Amen. Jared Flinn: Amen. Thank you, Tyler, as always, we thank you for listening to the Bulk Loads podcast. If you know someone that can benefit from this, maybe some of the free resources that Doug has, man, simply share this on your social media or text us to whoever can find out. That's just a quick thank you from us and we want to be able to bless those out there that can get a hold of this podcast. So as always, Happy Thanksgiving and God bless.