Why New Semi Trucks Are Breaking Down

Jared Flinn: You're listening to the Boat Floats podcast, your number one resource for everything Bolt freight trucking. Hey guys, Jared Flynn with the Bulk Loads podcast. Got Tyler with me. Tyler: What's going on? Jared Flinn: Let's kick it off with the truck feature. Tyler: Today we have Brett Thompson with MCM Trucking out of Kimberly, Idaho. And Brett's been a member with us since 2024. So just he's pretty. Pretty much new here. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Awesome truck. I love the paint scheme. It looks really. I know the sleeper looks smaller, but it almost looks like that frame is stretched in the back. I mean, I know he's got the. Tyler: That's what I was thinking on there. Yeah. Yeah, it does kind of look stretchy. It's a cool background too though, with the. The rocks in the background there. Jared Flinn: What kind of truck is that? What model? Tyler: I'm not sure. Jared Flinn: All right, well, our listener base is going to have to just type down in the comments what model that is. Tyler: Yeah, let us know in the comments. Jared Flinn: So, yeah, awesome. Well, thank you, Brett, for sharing that and yeah, especially being a new member on the load board. Appreciate that from the great state of Idaho. If you have a picture of a truck, we would love to feature it on there. We feature one every week. It's so cool just to see other setups and other rigs. I was just telling you before we hit the recording, like if you look at some of our most viewed channels, they're pictures of trucks. And if you look at like any of our shorts that we do, it's a picture of a truck. Jared Flinn: It's not a picture of a person. But if you got a cool glider kit, any truck out there, we would love to feature it. We know others in our industry take pride and joy in their equipment and we want to showcase that for others to see. Tyler: Because who doesn't like looking at trucks? I know every, everybody likes to get a truck. Ag equipment, farm equipment, any of that stuff. Yeah, it's all. All neat to look at. Jared Flinn: Well, I want to get right into the show. Today we bring on Justin Sturgill and this one is pretty cool. So Justin, I actually, I heard him on another podcast and I think it was like an equipment podcast or something with tools. And I started looking at it, I was like, wow, this is pretty cool. And this guy was very vocal on this podcast. It was on YouTube and so I looked him up and then he. I found out he's got his own channel, got a huge following. I think 50 or 60,000 subscribers on his channel and he's a bulk loads member. Tyler: Yep. Jared Flinn: He's been on bulk loads. He runs some dump trucks and I think he's got a few in dumps as well. But he's out of the Cincinnati, Ohio area. I loved listening to his content, so I wanted to bring him on and share that with this. This podcast did better than I thought it was when we got into it because sometimes when I ask these guests to come on, it's like, hey, what do you want me to talk about? And I was going kind of him, I was like, honestly, just kind of be real, what's happening, what you're seeing. Explain the dump truck industry to your best of your knowledge, just so people that understand. But we really got into talking about these new trucks and he, on his, some of his other shows, he made some comments about the quality of some of these new semis. He's been, he's toured some of these assembly plans you'll hear in the podcast. Jared Flinn: He's getting ready to tour another one and he just really talks about maybe the reason why the quality has gone down. Tyler: Yeah, yeah, exactly. He. And he has a lot of good moments in the podcast of different aspects of what he's seen just with his experience and stuff. And I think that's primarily what he does on his YouTube channel. It's just, it's, I mean, it's pretty raw, real stuff if you're just him going on there, you know, and either explaining things or just having his thoughts on certain things. And that's why I think he's grown such a big following, is because he doesn't hold back. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Tyler: You know, on any of this stuff. Jared Flinn: We'll put his information down in the show notes, but this is a guy that you'll want to click over to his channel and subscribe as well. He releases. I think he's going to get back to one a week. He does it on Saturday mornings. I think he even does like a live chat or something where he answers questions that people can send in. So he's not bashful in really speaking what he believes in and really to the benefit of our community. So we'll just dissect this later. So with that said, here's my conversation with Justin Sturgill out in Cincinnati, Ohio. Jared Flinn: Justin, thanks for coming on. Justin Sturgill: Oh, thanks for having me. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Well, you're a fellow podcaster, youtuber, man, congrats on your channel. I think just as we speak, almost 65 subscribers. So. Justin Sturgill: Yeah, yeah, it's pretty good. I mean, I took a two year break from YouTube for a while and then, you know, I just started posting videos again just lately just because I've seen a lot more people come on and start posting, but some of the stuff is not very good. So I thought I'd come out of retirement, try it again. Jared Flinn: What, what was the mindset of even starting that? Because I mean that's a, I mean that's a lot. It's a lot of work first off, because we do it as well. But I mean to can you continue to put that content out there? Takes a lot of time and effort. Justin Sturgill: It does. The reason that I wanted to start it was just to share really my life experiences and teach people maybe. I, you know, I'm a pretty crazy guy and I got a lot of bright ideas and I just thought that people might find my life interesting to, you know, how I do things and where I can. Jared Flinn: You're. Yeah. So you're in Cincinnati area? Justin Sturgill: Yes. Ohio. Jared Flinn: Yes. And you guys run a dump truck operation. You guys are fellow boys members, which man we thank you for that. But talk about just kind of the beginnings of that and where you are today. Justin Sturgill: Well, I mean I'm coming up on my 10 year anniversary. My previous job. I had a lot of experience being a mechanic and driving a truck. And when I quit doing that, I didn't know what. I knew I wanted to be in business for myself. Dump trucking was the lowest cost of entry per se. Like you know, starting an estimation company, it costs crazy amount of money. But the dump truck thing, I started with one truck, you know, just me and my wife. Justin Sturgill: And in less than 10 years we've grown it, grown it into a 20 truck fleet and it, you know, it just never stops. You know, like my theory is, is if you're never, if you stay stagnant, your business has a chance of failing. If you're always pushing the envelope and moving forward, I feel that you always are setting new goals and more visions to drive to. And it seems to be bigger. Plus. Plus, you know, I'm saying in the trucking risk, greed takes over after a little bit. Jared Flinn: I was watching some of your videos because you mentioned your wife and so does she have a separate trucking business as well that you. Justin Sturgill: Yes, yes, she has. I have Justice Surgical trucking. We have 15 trucks. She has four right now and then there's like seven more coming between the two of us for next season. But she has her own thing that she does. You know, I'm saying like I kind of manage the people for her and all that stuff. But you know, we work a lot of the Same places. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Nice. You mentioned earlier, dump trucking business now, I mean, just from my experience with that, I mean it again, it can be one of the, probably the most hard and challenging ones. And I think that's why your channel people subscribe to it so much, some of these fellow dump truckers. Because man, when you look at overall trucking, it's all, I mean there's all these challenges, but when you look at dump trucking, the seasonality of it, the these job sites, again, there's just so many obstacles, I think there are so many uncertainties. But I want you to kind of talk about that and I guess maybe even talk about like where you all focus on and, and how business has been in 2024 and then kind of what are your projections for 2025? Justin Sturgill: Okay. So man, that's a multi part question. So to me, the dump truck business is extremely hard. Okay. Here in Cincinnati we have pretty much a nine month season. Okay. So if you want to, there's a couple different aspects. So in the beginning of my dump trucking career, we focused basically on like infrastructure projects. Justin Sturgill: We did a lot of paving, really, that's all we did, paving and asphalt jobs or working for big general contractors that did infrastructure projects. Jared Flinn: Just ask. Justin Sturgill: And what happens with that is, is that as you expand, let's just say it costs you $100,000 to operate every month. Well, even in December, January, February, March, you need $100,000 to operate. So then what you gotta do is you gotta learn to not put all your eggs in one basket. That's the biggest thing that I can tell people that I think that they get pigeonholed in the dump truck business is that they focus on one customer when they need to focus on 50 customers. If that makes any sense. Yeah, because that's leading into this question. Last year in 2024, the main customer that we work for, business fell off by 75%. Well, when you have 150 trucks in the city that work for the same place, you know, trucks start getting cut off very quickly. Justin Sturgill: So if you, if you have all your eggs in that basket, well, when they tell you, hey, enough's enough, you know, you're upside down. So what I do is I focus on, we do a lot of different things. We, we now are stocking concrete plants, we are now doing sand and gravel trucks. We stock the asphalt plants, we run the asphalt, we do dirt jobs, we do demolition, we do, we haul, you know, fertilizer for like bulk loads. We started doing that this year. We haul a Ton of salt for the dots and landscapers and, you know, all that stuff. So it's really just. I feel like people in the, you know, like in 2024, our business got cut probably by 33%, to be honest. Jared Flinn: The slowdown. I mean, you talk about the COVID money, and I mean, everything, boom, but just recession. That's here. Justin Sturgill: Yeah. Okay, so talk about, like, Covid money. So what happened during COVID that was a historical thing. Okay. And what happened is, is that the states, to keep everything going, they spent a lot of money early. Does that make any sense? So they did projects that were scheduled to go in 23, 24, 25. They jammed them all in basically 2021 to the end of 2022. So they did all these projects and we worked all these people to death, and then now it's slowly kind of started falling off. Justin Sturgill: And also when the interest rate gets so high, private business doesn't build a lot of stuff. And that helps, you know, like when you're building big warehouses or Amazon warehouses or this or that. That helps some of the other stuff, if that makes any sense. Yeah, you know, that keeps it. That keeps it going, if you will. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Justin Sturgill: So when. When you, you know, they spent all this money, we. They worked everybody to death. And then it's just, man, it. It was slow. You know, there was like every highway that we usually do on night shift. Because part of being a dump truck in a season of work is you have to work night shift. You know, last year, you know, two years ago, if I had 100 night shift trucks, we could have worked every one. Justin Sturgill: This year it was three, and it was hit or miss. Might get five days one week, two the next. It was all over the place. Jared Flinn: And that's just very night shift you're talking about. Are those highway jobs? Justin Sturgill: Yes, those are highway. Jared Flinn: So those, like. I mean, there we. There's a bunch going on down here in our area, Springfield, you see them all the time. But these. There's these big general contractors. Obviously, they get. They award these contracts and then they subcontract it. Are they. Jared Flinn: Is it from the GC directly to the trucking company, or is it going through other layers before it comes to you all? As far as getting. Justin Sturgill: It basically goes from, it's kind of set up a little bit different. A lot of the private companies go through a broker because they want to make one phone call and get 50 trucks. The bigger general contractors, like, I don't know, what's the biggest one down by you? Like, here we have John R. Jurgeson, Barrett Paving Materials and another company called Concosing. They all sign up their own trucks, have a dispatcher do all that stuff. Smaller companies use, like a broker service. Okay, so that's like a person with 10 or 12 dump trucks that's been doing it 40 years. And they have all these small customers that call them that may need one or two trucks every now and then, and they run. Justin Sturgill: You know what I'm saying? That's kind of how a lot of that stuff gets. But if it. If you see the people on the side of the highway, 90 of that is direct business relationship with that contractor. Jared Flinn: Okay. Well, I guess, yeah, because that's what I was alluding to because, number one, like, I think it's so similar just to the grain industry. But do some of those big contractors, do they have their own fleet of trucks or is it primarily subbed down? And why not? Justin Sturgill: Well, because dump trucks cost 300 grand. Think about it. A lot of those contractors are union. So now you have to have a union truck driver out there making $52 an hour. You can't. You can't afford to have a truck that cost $300,000 of them. Some days they're running 175 trucks a day. You can't own 175 dump trucks. Justin Sturgill: It's just never going to happen. You couldn't find 175 people to drive them at one place, and then you definitely couldn't afford to keep them running. Jared Flinn: And I totally 100 agree with you. So, like, some of these big companies, because again, when you get on these big jobs where they're going to need, like you said, 150 trucks, there's someone at that GC that's lining up all those individual trucking companies. Justin Sturgill: Yeah, usually two people. Okay? Usually they'll have two people that do it. You know what I'm saying? Jared Flinn: They have a Rolodex or network of these. Are these. I mean, in the Cincinnati area, hey, here's all. Here's a list of all the dump truck companies. Justin Sturgill: Well, yeah, you go there and you sign up. You know what I'm saying? Just like when you get on bulk loads, you have to turn in your insurance and all this crap, and then you become an approved carrier. Then they call you, whether, you know what I'm saying, how they feel like it. Does that make any sense? Like how high you are on the seniority list? What have you done for them in the last 20 minutes? That's how they call you. Jared Flinn: That's it. I Know this can be a loaded question here, but like how do, how do they figure the rates for the trucks on these jobs? Because I just think that can be there. I mean, because you talk a night shift. So there's going to be a premium for that. There's got to be a set of. Justin Sturgill: No, there is. So the big general contractors dictate the rate. Trucking business is the only business in the world that we get told a rate for. And it's absolutely ridiculous. I think. So they tell us a rate, it may be $110. It's hey, if you want to work for us, this is what we're paying, not a dime more. Whether it's Saturday, Sunday, it doesn't make a difference. Justin Sturgill: We pay 110 at night shift. You get guaranteed eight hours and like a 2% premium. So it may go to 112 or 115 or, you know what I'm saying, it's not much, but you get guaranteed eight hours and that's all that they're paying. And they, you know what I'm saying? Like I, I think it's really, that's one thing I do hate about the trucking business is, is that in the trucking business, when people want to start being a trucking business, they don't realize that the margins are so paper thin that you work on a 5 to 7% margin. If you have three or four mistakes, it's over quick. Does that make any sense? It's not like, you know, I mean, look at the freight rates. They're in the toilet, to be honest with you. I don't see it getting better in 2025 because again, we have abundance of trucks. Jared Flinn: You talking about the shippers, the GCS. And I 100% agree because there's some similarities in just over the road, bulk freight. But how's that GC coming up with 110 bucks an hour? Justin Sturgill: I don't know. They fall. It falls out of the air. Yes. Jared Flinn: Okay. And then how do they know the next job is going to be similar or lower or higher or it's all. Justin Sturgill: The same, you know what I'm saying? Like let's just say so when they put in a bid, let's just say to pave this road, it costs them $5,000 an hour to have the paving crew there and they think it's going to cost $10,000 an hour to have 25 trucks on this job in a circle. Okay, so then, you know what I'm saying, they know that when they put in their bid they're charging 150 or 125 for the truck, but they're only giving us 110 or whatever, you know what I'm saying? I always say a lot of these general contractors are built on the back of the broker trucks. It's another way for them to make revenue. We are their escape goat. When, you know, they have a problem on the job, the mix fails. You know, I'm saying this happens. This happens. What they make up on the, on the, on the, I would call it a broker side, the trucking side is sometimes how they save their season. Justin Sturgill: That's how they make money. Yeah, they. They won't admit that to you, but you know what I'm saying, That's really. That. That's what's going on. Because you can see the contract to see what they charge an hour per truck. If you're pretty smart, you can kind of like back channel into and then do some math, you know, and you can kind of see. And most of the time it's 125 to 135 in there per hour per truck. Justin Sturgill: But then they only, you know, they're taking $20 off the rip. Well, think about if you have 50 trucks out there, you're taking 20, $20 an hour, and you're working them 12 hours a day. You know, I'm saying if your mix fails or, you know what I'm saying, something happens. Jared Flinn: It's, you know, so I know there can be discrepancies. You know, in bulk, everything's pretty black and white. You get paid on the tonnage, so, you know, you turn in a ticket, you paid, hey, you know, hold 25 tons x amount per ton. Those job sites, you're getting paid by the hour. How is their oversight on that to make sure? I'm just saying, say one of your trucks is out there, he runs 10 hours, he turns in 10 hours, and the GC comes back, says, no, he only paid eight. Or. And we're only paying him for eight. He only worked eight. Justin Sturgill: They have GPS in your trucks. Jared Flinn: You make sure that you protect yourself, I guess. Justin Sturgill: Well, how you do that is you have GPS units in your trucks, and they also supply GPS units to you. So, like, if you work for Ohio's DOT job, they have to be gps. The trucks have to be GPS monitor, so they'll have an app on the driver's phone that nine times out of ten that doesn't work. And then I have my own GPS system in the truck that tracks the truck wherever it goes. And all I have to do is they have a guy there in billing. We have a great relationship because I'm one of the only contractors that's never lied to me about time. I'll just screenshot where my truck is. You know, I'm saying send him the time after. Justin Sturgill: After we've done that six or seven times. He doesn't question anything we do. And most of the time, they're telling you what hours your truck worked. You know, I'm saying your drivers write down what time they think it is. You know, drivers always pat it. But they, you know what I'm saying? They send you an invoice. If there's a discrepancy, they usually send it to you the next day. If there's a discrepancy, you just go in there and fix it right there. Justin Sturgill: And they fix it. Jared Flinn: Okay. Justin Sturgill: Nine times out of ten, they're. Nine times out of ten, they're fair, you know, but it's. You know, some jobs, when you get tonnage, it is what it is. You know, it's. This is the rate. It's a take it or leave it proposition, too. Jared Flinn: You know, the hourly probably really safeguards the driver because, again, there's so many uncertainties when you're running a asphalt job. I think we had a situation. This is many moons ago. Our factoring company. We were factoring loads for a. A dump truck company. Well, they submitted so many hours that we paid them. Then we went to the gc, and the GC comes back like, no, we're not paying that many hours. Jared Flinn: We don't know where the truth and lies were. We think that it was maybe more on the truck that was padding it more. We ended up taking the short end of the deal. I mean, it was like $25,000 that we ended up, you know, in the short. So, yeah, so I was just. That's why I'm always just wondering, how do you make sure and protect yourself? More importantly, how does carrier protect himself that they're not working a bunch of hours, then all of a sudden, the GC comes back and like, yeah, a. Justin Sturgill: Lot of them use tickets too. You know what I'm saying? Like, they use signed tickets. Like, you know, like, I work for one contractor right now. We use a signed ticket process. You know, we have little carbon copy tickets. We fill out our time there. We fill out how many times we went to the dump. We do all this stuff. Justin Sturgill: Their employee supervisor signs off on the ticket, keeps a copy, we keep a copy. At the end of the week, we scan Them in, that's done. Okay? And then they have a rule, no paperwork, no pay. You know, I'm saying a lot of companies do that. Hey, no paperwork. The paperwork screwed up. It's at our discrepancy. You got to eat it. Justin Sturgill: That happens from time to time. Not very much though. Jared Flinn: One last question. When it comes to gcs, I want to move more over to, to just general operations. But you talked about getting in with these and I love that you share this advice. But for those out there, again, you have to, you talked about going around and signing up. But how does someone go about like if they're in a certain city, they see all this asphalt work, bridge work, whatever that requires. Dump trucks. How do they, how do they get in the door so that they could potentially be picked as a hauler for those companies? Justin Sturgill: Okay, so how you get in the door is you got to find out who the main person is to talk to. So you would find out like whatever the general contractor is, Joe Schmo, whatever. And you would, you know, Google their, Google their address. You know, either call in and ask, hey, do you have a dispatcher that handles all your trucking needs? They'll say yes, you transfer over to that guy. You know, you go up there, you know, you gotta, you know, it's, it's politic and shake hands, kiss babies, you know, hug and kiss, you know, tell them how great you're gonna be and then this is a viable lesson. When they first sign you up, you're gonna get the jobs. Now what that means is, is that they're not going to give you the, the grade a good stuff right from the beginning. They're going to call you as a person that hey man, a truck didn't show up today. Justin Sturgill: They're going to call you at 7:15, say how fast can you be to the asphalt plant? And you say, hey man, I'll be there in an hour. You show up in an hour, that's one checkbox before you do. You know, they send you out there where they know your truck's going to get screwed up and it's going to be hard on it. You know, you're going to do on, on site stuff or whatever else you got going on, you know, then they're going to test you out just like anybody else. How reliable are you or is your equipment good? That's another thing that a lot of people don't understand your keep your equipment nice, make sure that no matter what happens, it runs every day. There's no excuses. And then once you do that for a while, you build a relationship, you build a reputation that will, you know, I'm saying it gets very easier. Jared Flinn: Yeah. It's business 101, building that reputation, starting somewhere. Yeah. I told you I'm going to switch to operations. And this is a good segue. You talked about running good equipment. Maybe just because I'm not on the road and seeing all, like, general freight trucks. But, man, when you look at some of these dump truck operations, especially some of these, even locally, I'm almost kind of nervous. Jared Flinn: Some of these trucks you see out there, I'm like, golly, there's some rough. Justin Sturgill: Oh, there's a lot of fender flopper garbage out there. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Like, some of these guys, I'm like, man, I don't know if, like, I'd want that on my job job site. Some of these trucks that pull up and I'm sure there's over the road trucks the same way. Justin Sturgill: But, like, yes, there is. Jared Flinn: I tend to probably see it more on the dump trucks and maybe just because they're parked on the side of the road when you go down the highway and they're on that asphalt job. But it does seem like, man, you can get some really rough equipment operators out there operating. Justin Sturgill: Yes. Now, how you are 100. Right. Okay. That comes back to business philosophy and what you're going to do. Okay. The only reputation that Justin Sergio Trucking has, or my wife's company do Ragozzi has is what our vehicles look like going down the road. That's the only reputation I have. Justin Sturgill: A website's not going to do me any good. Some wham, damn basil thing is not going to do me any good. So the only reputation I have is to keep nice equipment. Okay. And also, it's a pride thing. I mean, I don't want to put somebody out there in some garbage because I know what it was like to drive some garbage. Not a lot of fun. So that comes back to the guy that's owning the equipment. Justin Sturgill: Nine times out of 10, bad business practices, not paying your bills on time, robbing the 5% profit that you do have that you should be reinvesting into your company. You're out, you know what I'm saying? Buying boats, going to the lake, you know what I'm saying? Never working on your equipment all weekend. Also, I've seen this a lot with the trucking business looking facade, looking very easy. We are getting a lot of people that have zero mechanical skills owning trucks. I would not recommend that. I believe that you have to have really strong mechanical skills. You have to be a great problem solver to be in the dump truck business. You have to be, you know, you got to be an innovator, you know what I'm saying? Like, think about how can I take this dump truck business? My philosophy when I came in was, how can I take it from a sleazy type job to where, you know, everybody thinks that they're, you know, to kind of more, you know, upstanding and nice and thinking all the processes out, if that makes any sense. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Justin Sturgill: Also. Also working in mud and dirt and asphalt. That's hard on the truck. After about six years, you better start thinking of a plan of how to get some more, you know, how to rotate your fleet out. Like, we run them here on a 45 to 60 month rotate, I'm saying. And they get 40, 48 months old, you know, out it goes. In another one comes because, you know, you're either gonna buy parts or make a payment. There's no, there's. Justin Sturgill: You can't get away from it. Jared Flinn: That's really good. Justin Sturgill: Yeah, that's what you're doing, you know, because a lot of people. This is, again, comes back to business, Jared, is a lot of people go, oh my God, how do you afford this $5,000 a month payment? And it goes, well, how do you afford not to have it? Is the question I ask. Yes, you have a truck from 19 or from 2005 that you owe it. You don't own a dime in it, but you've stuck $48,000 worth of parts in it this year. And another thing that people forget about is you missed nine weeks worth of work and paid $48,000 worth of parts. Well, that nine weeks worth of work at freaking $4,500 a week, or five grand, sometimes six. Add that into the cost of repair, too. Now you're, now you're up to. Justin Sturgill: You got 88 grand in this thing and it costs 50 to drive a brand new one. I mean, what are your $30,000 to the good people? People have a hard time justifying and doing math. It's really what it is. They, they think that just because they got a day off, that's a thousand or eight hundred thousand dollars that you can never get back. Done, gone, throw it in. You might as well burn it because it ain't coming back. Jared Flinn: I felt really good during this podcast until you just said that maybe it was because of the money. Now I have like a pit in my stomach because, I mean, there's so much truth to what you're saying on the, when you get to the money part of this, the payments and the costs and it seems like that, I mean this is where people get in trouble. Justin Sturgill: That's where they get in trouble. It's because, you know, I'm saying it's $5,000 for 12 months period and you're going to work nine, you know what I'm saying? When these, if the truck gets paid off, think about it, you got to add what, what downtime plus the cost of repairs. When that bubble becomes more than what it cost to own a brand new truck or your profit margins keep going down because cost of repairs plus, you know what I'm saying? Like there's a, I don't know how to explain a figure when that gets too close together. That's how, you know it's time to upgrade. It's time to send this down the road. You take, you know, your 100 grand worth of equity in that, you know what I'm saying? That's what you can then stick in your pocket, you know, or reinvest it into your company or anything like that. Yeah, that makes any sense. Jared Flinn: Talking about equipment specifically, I was watching on one of your videos which we're going to link your channel to this so our subscribers can drop down and get linked and subscribe to you. Yeah, some of the issues, and this has been something here as we're recording this. It's been in the news with some other trucking companies, general truck companies. But. But some issues you had. You said somebody. Some issues with some of these new trucks. Something with Daimler and front end issues. Jared Flinn: Oh yeah, yeah. Justin Sturgill: This. The spring bushings is a complete afterthought. A complete afterthought. You know, like they just. It's going to become a safety issue where one of these is going to break because there is going to be some people out there that aren't maintaining maintenance in their fleet as much. And it beats the spring shackles out of it. I've asked Daimler engineers to come here. I. Justin Sturgill: It falls on deaf ears. You know, I know how to fix it. It's that they don't want to make the parts to fix it. But then realize that every one of them are messed up and they got to fix them. It's going to be a problem. Jared Flinn: There was an article this week again as we're recording. It was about a. It's a local trucking company here in Springfield. But they declared they went chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. But the CEO came on, he was on another podcast and Specifically talked about. One of the issues was. And I can't remember the specific equipment. I thought it was paccar. Jared Flinn: But these issues that they've been having with the manufacturer of these new trucks, creating downtime. And this downtime, you know, like truck gets stranded out on the road because of electronic or computer. And I can't remember specifically what those issues. Justin Sturgill: It's parts availability is what it is. Jared Flinn: But they were blaming a lot on. I mean, the. And maybe he was just pointing figures. So I don't know. You know, I'm still gathering all the facts, but like a lot of their failure or having to file chapter 11, they were really pushing back on the manufacturer. Justin Sturgill: I, I would agree with that. Okay. I don't know. I went earlier this year. I have a good relationship. I'm not here to bash Daimler or pac. Jared Flinn: I'm here to ask manufacturers. But there's something interesting. It just caught my attention. Justin Sturgill: There is. We can. I got a pretty good idea what the issues are. Okay. So I went, what you need to do is go watch an assembly line process. Okay. I went to Cleveland, North Carolina and watched Western Star build trucks in Cleveland, North Carolina. Right. Justin Sturgill: With the service manager, my salesman. They had their, you know, they rolled out the red carpet for us. Beautiful place. And about halfway through it, I thought, you know what? I can't believe these things aren't more fucked up when we get them. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's an amazing process that it took four hours, okay, eight hours to run this truck down the semi line and you could start and drive it off here because we. They have the same people fixing them that I have driving them. You know what I'm saying? It's not like these people. You know, it comes down to people and then it comes down to parts availability. Justin Sturgill: Because what happened was during COVID everything got shut down but all the trucks. There was everybody and their mom buying trucks so that it depleted the parts, cleaning the parts. So when the trucks break, they have. They don't have a back stock of this stuff. They're taking it off the assembly line. And they're not going to do that because as Paccar or you know, Cummins or whatever, they're made to ship them out. You know what I'm saying? I've had some problems with Cummins, with injector issues. They put the wrong injectors in the trucks and it ruined the DPF units. Justin Sturgill: We didn't find it till it was nostalgically out of warranty. So I had a, you Know, fight with Cummins and say no, you put these injectors in here. I didn't order it with these injectors. This was built in a certain thing because I had two trucks, three trucks that had it. They were all built during COVID parts issues. And what they did is they put marine injectors in them and shipped them. And then you know, I'm saying, knew that it would only last so long before, you know what I'm saying. And then all of a sudden there's a revised code. Justin Sturgill: These manufacturers are out here protecting themselves too because they, they don't they not everybody's going to get together and really figure out how really stupid and mistakes that they've made. And also comes down to the government. You know the last regime that was here, all electric, they want to lower emissions. Ain't gonna work. You can't. The technology is not growing fast enough to lower the emissions fast enough the way that they want to do it. So Cummins, Detroit, anybody else that build engines are gonna put some stuff out there that's very bad. Okay. Justin Sturgill: And 2027 regulations, if they don't get rolled back, that's going to be very bad. There's a lot to what that CEO said over the road. Freight companies are going to have problems and it's going to be. That's when the freight rate's going to go back up again. Probably is because it's going to eliminate a lot of the fly by night companies. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Justin Sturgill: If that makes any sense. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Justin Sturgill: Because the emissions controls. Jared Flinn: Yeah. And again it goes back to what you said earlier. Like to be successful you have to know mechanically the operation and I think that's where some of these people get in trouble because again you got to know this truck in and out and what's going on and to know that they put marine injectors on a, on in a Cummins motor or whatever. There's just somebody saying yeah, yeah, well I mean and challenge. Justin Sturgill: Yeah. You can go back and say hey, you know what I'm saying? What's this part number? We can google what that part number, what those injectors come in. You know, I'm saying a little bit of search. I have a great mechanical background. A lot of these trucks, you know, I kept figuring out like why are these three we having the same problems with over and over and over again? There's no difference. Well, you come to find out, you know, you're over fueling, you're you know, suiting them up very quickly. I mean 20,000 miles, these, it would have the DPFS junk, you know, and it's like, something's wrong here. So when they finally fixed it, you know, we got a gallon and a half better mileage in the trucks. Justin Sturgill: I mean, it's just. A lot of that stuff is, like, common sense that I don't think a lot of people understand. You know, I have a computer. I can go out and. You know what I'm saying, Look at what the code is, do some research. So when I take it to the dealership to get fixed, I've already called. I have a great relationship with the service department. Hey, this is what code I got. Justin Sturgill: Look this up. Tell me what you think. Tell me if you got these parts. If not, overnight them. I'm going to nurse the truck together till the weekend. I'll be there on Saturday and Sunday, fix it. Nine times out of 10, it's done. On the weekends, the truck's running. Justin Sturgill: We don't miss any days. You know, you got to be. You got to strategize how to do that. And that's also. I feel like a lot of people don't build relationships with their dealership. They don't. I'm saying you got to nurture that. It's just like doing any other business. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Justin Sturgill: You know, just like getting work. You got to nurture the places that get them fixed. Jared Flinn: Yeah. You can have that relationship. I was the last thing I'll mention. I want to move on to their last subject, and we'll kind of end on that one. But I. I did what everybody else did and bought a new truck during COVID And just recently. It's a Ford pickup. Like, the power steering pump went out on it. Jared Flinn: The truck's got. I mean, doesn't. I don't drive that much. I drive back and forth, just locally, because we take another vehicle, but, like, it's only got 13,000 miles on it. And the power steering pump went out. I'm like, how does a power steering pump go out on a brand new truck? That's because in the dealership. And then they said, oh, yeah, we noticed these coolant lines are leaking. Engine coolant as well. Jared Flinn: And I'm like, this thing's brand spanking new. How is this happening? But I mean, I'm just. I never put two and two together until you said that. These assembly lines that are pushing this stuff out too fast just to get it into production and not really taking the time, like, beforehand. Justin Sturgill: Yeah, yeah. You know, it's amazing. Until you watch an assembly line process, you wouldn't Understand that comment. That was the first comment I made. They're like, justin, what do you think? I'm like, I'm shocking that when they get here, we don't have more goddamn problems than what we got. I was like, that's the only thing I've learned here. I. You know what I'm saying? Because it's like, dude, they got all these people going around, and it's like, oh, it's break time. Justin Sturgill: We stop and then it stops, and then they got to pick right back up. No wonder half the bolts are loose. You know, I'm saying, I got it, you know, I'll fix it. No big deal. You know, but it's just like, that's when you sit there and look at it and you realize that they don't have big warehouses. So as they're putting a hood on. It was only showed up the morning of. Or the engine showed up the morning of. Justin Sturgill: Or the next. The day before. They have it all set of these. You know what I'm saying? In these, like, pods or whatever. And they have these things that go around. It's like a lift and put on. You know, if it gets out of order. I don't know how they do it all, but it's. Justin Sturgill: I was shocked. I'm gonna go look at the. I'm going to the. I'm going to Kenworth to watch my trucks get built this year. I'm gonna go watch the assembly line process again. I want to see how far does it. Jared Flinn: Where's that at? Justin Sturgill: That's in Chillicothe, Ohio. Jared Flinn: Okay. Yeah. Well, that's interesting. A lot of these are kind of right there, fairly close to. To where you guys domicile. So. Justin Sturgill: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, it's amazing. Go look at it. And then you'll be like, Jared, you'll be like, I'll let it slide because it's put together by humans, not robots. There's going to be mistakes. And there's guys designing them that, you know, the accountants and the stock brokers are determining what quality material you get is. And you don't realize that because the engineer says, I need this, and the account. Or the accountant goes, oh, that's really expensive. Justin Sturgill: And then the CEO goes, well, I'm going to get fired if we lose money, so we can't use that. What's your. What's your third choice? That's more economical. That's the one we're going with. There it is. We'll deal with it later. Jared Flinn: I'm liking this. Is so true. I mean, it's 100 accurate. Justin Sturgill: Yeah, you don't know that till you're around really smart business guys that have done that. You know, I'm saying they know all this stuff. And that's, that's where I came from. I came from a different area where, you know, I'm saying I worked with people that this was, it was billionaires. This was their golf game. And you learn a lot by what they say to each other, you know, and how they, how they interact. Like they, you know what I'm saying? They know what's going on. Jared Flinn: Last thing I'll ask. Justin Sturgill: We'll. Jared Flinn: We'll end on this one. I said this earlier and I kind of. I loaded too many questions on you. 20, 25. What do you. What are your thoughts? What are your hopes? You got. Are you bullish, bearish about the market, the opportunities for, for the dump truck. Justin Sturgill: Market with what's going on in Cincinnati? I am very, I don't know, hoped, optimistic. I hope that it gets better. We have a big bridge project being built here. People think that it's going to take a million dump trucks. It's probably not going to take that many. What it's going to take is a lot of resources, so a lot of sand, gravel, things like that. It's a lot of, you know, it's not a lot of like moving dirt and earth, moving equipment. It's not that. Justin Sturgill: I hope that it opens up other opportunities because Cincinnati would start growing as a, as a city that always is making better. I don't want to get it. I don't want to go back to Covid, but I want to go back to 2018, 2019. That was the, the height of dump trucking. It was. There was enough work for everybody. We got paid. It seemed to get paid a lot better because things were less expensive. Justin Sturgill: I want to go back to 2018, 2019, 2020. The beginning of those years. It was, it was great. If we can just get back to that. The workload was manageable. It wasn't like it was during COVID where we just went through 100 employees because we were working them seven days a week and nights, 15 hour days. And it was, it was hard to keep your equipment running during that. During that time, it was hard. Justin Sturgill: Yeah, I went to a lot of people, but I'm optimistic. I want it. I think it'll be okay. I don't know any other place in the country because I'm only focused. I can't focus on what's going on. And where you live or anything like that. But I focused around here. I want to see less trucks. Justin Sturgill: That's the number one thing that I kind of want to see. I have a feeling, you know, if we had another 20, 23, it might eliminate some of the fly by night people. You, you're going to see a lot of. A lot of over the road trucking companies really start to file chapter 11 very soon, you know what I'm saying? I don't know about the, you know, more of the specialty hauling stuff, but over the road freight is. We'll die off. Jared Flinn: Yeah, there's going to be some of that natural churn. And again, I think too, overall, I'm optimistically. Well, I'm optimistic about the future. I think there were some things that were kind of stolen and good, better and different. I think just a new administration. There's a lot of people have all the expectations and I mean, there's just things that people were waiting just before. They just wanted to know a clear vision of what's next. Didn't matter which side, really. Jared Flinn: But hey, we know now. Justin Sturgill: Oh yeah, the bank that I deal with didn't write any loans till from July to November was not loaning people. You know, you had to be. They were, they were very tight on what they were learning after they figured out a direction. And it went the way that a lot of people, I feel like in the trucking, you know, trucking business, very conservative. You know, also look at the landscape. Every other country has went away from less libertarian to more conservative views. Germany, France ousted their person. Germany said, enough with this high, high energy prices, you know what I'm saying? Canada, Trudeau walked out. Justin Sturgill: That's all positive things to say. You know, what United States does controls a lot about what the rest of the world does. So I'm, I'm optimistic on that. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Well, Justin, dude, I have really, really enjoyed this. And I'm not just saying that. I think this was like a very informative one. Like these nuggets that you gave us today, I think are just super valuable. Our subscriber base will. Will love this. But for people that want to learn more about you, they can go right to your YouTube channel. Jared Flinn: We'll put it down below. But if you want to just kind of give that to us over. What is. It's Justin Sturgill. Justin Sturgill: Yeah, it's Justin's surgical trucking. On YouTube, I talk about my dump truck business. I'll. I shoot some videos. I do repair videos. I talk about tools that I buy. Yeah, I'VE talked about, you know, like, how I kind of run my whole operations and I do a podcast on the weekends sometimes. Saturday mornings. Justin Sturgill: Yeah, yeah, Saturday mornings I talk for a couple hours. I answer a lot of people's questions. I'm trying to get into, like, the dump truck business consulting thing because, like, you know, I. I have a lot of information. I don't want to give it away for free because, you know, I learned the hard way. But you know what I'm saying, if people want to learn how to do that, they can get a hold of me. We're going to start doing some more consulting stuff because, I mean, you know, people that have followed my program, it's worked out very well for them. Jared Flinn: Yeah, well, yeah, the proof's in the pudding. And I think sometimes you can't make things free or people won't find it valuable either. And with what you're doing out there, just the free stuff that you're giving out there for people is extremely valuable. So, yeah, highly encourage especially our listeners to tune into you and if they want to take that next step and do some of that consulting. But, hey, Justin, man, again, appreciate you what you're doing out there. I'm sure we'll have you on the show in the. In the future. Yeah, I'll do it again. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Happy 2025. God bless you. Justin Sturgill: All right, thank you. Jared Flinn: A couple things I want to point out that I just found was interesting was really talking about your reputation out there, and we start talking about the quality of equipment, but you really do think about that, and especially probably some of these asphalt jobs where there's a, you know, there's a construction job going on. You're passing that job every day and seeing those dump trucks there. And visually you're seeing the name on the side of those trucks, the quality of that equipment. And he said that. I mean, that's a big part of your reputation. Tyler: Yeah. Jared Flinn: You also got to have good service and perform. But people see that. He said, and I just, I thought that was just so golden. He goes, people are going to see your physical truck more than they'll ever see your website. Tyler: Yep. Yeah, that's interesting to think about. And there was one part in there that he was talking about. Whenever the, the state jobs, you know, they're. They're going through the general contractors or thinking about, you know, which company to call for these certain jobs or whatever. It's. He kind of broke down. Like, they go through. Tyler: They have a certain system of how they do it. But a lot of time they go off a priority based on hey, what did you do for us in the last 20 minutes? And then also, you know, how does your company run? You know, they probably factor in how, how do you, you know, how does your equipment look, are they clean, you know, how do you drivers act? So all that factors into your customer relationship. Jared Flinn: Just two other things I'll point out I thought was interesting was really when you think about trucking as a business and specifically dump truck trucking, it's a nine month season with 12 months of cost and most people realize that but it's always just a good reminder, remember like hey, it's really nine months of running but it's 12 months of payments. And so you have to kind of factor that out. And really talked about, I never heard this, I thought this was interesting because there is a game of, you know, new equipment versus used equipment and how much to invest. And I like just the formula. I never heard that before. But really, you know, 5% of your gross revenue going back into reinvesting into new equipment because again, equipment's going to wear out. Tyler: Yep. Jared Flinn: You know, you got to keep reinvesting in that equipment. So. Tyler: Well, that's what you had that saying of you're either making, you know, a new truck payment or you're paying for, you know, replacement parts on trucks. So. Jared Flinn: Yeah. So. Well, cool. Justin, thanks for coming on the show. Justin. After it was recorded I asked if he would be willing to come to the bulk freight conference and he said yes. Tyler: Awesome. Jared Flinn: So we're going to bring him on. Tyler's going to head that up. I don't know if it's going to be a specific speaker or a panel but he has got a lot of information and willing to share it out there. So bulk freight conference coming up here just within a couple months, April 16th through the 18th. Website bulk freight conference.com. you can see the link below. We are getting, we're getting out of the wire here. So get your tickets. Jared Flinn: Now a couple things people have asked me and just want to address these. The hotel, we have discounts for the hotel once you purchase tickets. They're down there in the link, right? Tyler: Yep. Yeah. So yeah, you can go down below or you can go to the bullfreyconference.com and there's a link on there that says hotel. It'll bring it to you. If you use that link the hotel rooms will automatically be discounted there. Jared Flinn: I think it's 159. Tyler: Yep. Jared Flinn: And this is at a Hilton which. Tyler: Is about half off. Jared Flinn: Yeah, about half off the cost. Another thing another person asked was about the meals. Pretty much every meal is covered. Justin Sturgill: Correct. Jared Flinn: From the time you get there. Wednesday we'll do kind of a light appetizer. Right. It'll be a meal. But all day Thursday, each meal will cover. Friday before you head out, we'll have meals as well. So your meals are covered as well. We really looked at this and I just want to say, you know, most conferences I've been to all freight waves and these different tech conferences, most times you pay 1500 $2000 for a two day event. Tyler: Yeah. Jared Flinn: What we've decided to do is we're fronting the cost of all this and we're bringing this really down to $250. So think about this. You're going to a conference that would normally cost 1500-2000 dollars for only 250 bucks. And really we do this because we want you there. It just, I mean it doesn't even cover our cost. But we want it, we don't want there to be a friction point on coming. So again, think about it dude, like all your meals are going to be covered. A discount on the rooms. Jared Flinn: This is going to be again, if you were to do this anywhere else, you'd probably be paying three or four times the price. Get your tickets booked now. We want to see you there. Tyler: Yeah. And a lot of I want to address another thing is to a lot of people have at called in, emailed, asked us like hey, I'm gonna be coming to it. I'm gonna, you know, attend every session. But my wife, you know, she may be, she wants to come with me or wife and kids or whatever but they just want to attend, you know, for the meals or you know, they're not going to attend the whole thing. Let us know if that's the case. And we have special offers for spouses or kids or whatever to where they can still go enjoy, you know, some of the conference or whatever. But it's a discounted price so they can still attend but you know, not the whole thing. Jared Flinn: Show trucks are going to be there. We just confirmed another trailer manufacturer going to have their hopper trailer in there. Things going to be wild. You're going to have FOMO if you do not come. So make sure and get it. The links below, reach out if you have any questions. We want to see there. Tyler: Yep. Jared Flinn: Anything else before we close out of here? Tyler: I don't think so. Jared Flinn: You know, 20, 25, we're off to a start. Sometimes I think I just want to express this. I Get a little bit of anxiety because it's a new year. We want to hit the ground running. We know that we're setting goals and all that. And I don't know if you feel that same way as well, but it also prints a lot of anxiety for me as a business owner. I know this. The market still isn't where it was even back in 21:22. Jared Flinn: Justin Sturgill talked on this show like he really wished rates would go back to like 2017, 18 where it was, you know, it wasn't the 21, 22 top of the rates, but it was a good market for them to be running and profitable as well. We know the market's not there today, so that is creating a lot of anxiety, stress, tension for business owners out there trying to figure out where the market's going to be. We want to pray for you out there. We've had numerous this week. Seemed like there was a big uptick in prayer requests and just everything from their businesses to health to problems they're facing. So I want to just say this. If you have a prayer out there, we want to pray for you. It's as easy as saying a prayer to prayerbolkloads.com send us a message. Jared Flinn: It's anonymous. We don't share with anybody. It stays internal in our office. We take it very serious about that. And I just want to say I am there with you. Like there's been some like recently just anxiety that I've had just starting the new season off, making sure everybody's else firing and go when things, things move slow when it's winter time or you don't meet expectations. It just creates that tension, anxiety. So just I feel your pain out there. Jared Flinn: We're right there with you. So man, we want to be praying with you as well. Tyler: Yep, exactly. Jared Flinn: Awesome. Well, all as we do every episode, I'm going to close this out in in prayer. Father God, we thank you for this new year. Lord, we thank you for the blessings that you've given us. And we know that it's you and only you that is controlled, in control of the situation, control of our industry. Lord, that we are stewards of of you and stewarding these gifts for you. Lord, we just pray over our members. Lord, we pray over these next few months in the season as we get ready for the conference. Jared Flinn: Lord, we just pray for blessings on our community of trucking companies, brokerages and shippers. Lord, we pray with anxiety. Lord, that we pray that we center to you, Lord, that we put you on the throne and not our spirit ourselves, Lord, that we don't have that anxiety, Lord, to know that you are ultimately in control and will always be in control, Lord. And we thank you for that, Lord. Just a special prayer out there for our families and our children as well, in your heavenly and precious name. Justin Sturgill: Amen. Jared Flinn: Again, thank you for watching to the Bulk Loads podcast. This year's off to a good start. We're going to be out there doing videos. One thing I want to mention, if you would ever like to be featured in a video that we've done, we just released the Earl Martin one. We got another one coming up soon. I think we got four or five stacked. Um, but we have a form to fill out that we'd love to send you, put you on the calendar to come out and visit you. I personally like to do it. Jared Flinn: I love the video, but I love meeting people that I've never met before. I'm a per people person, so I love going and seeing new areas, learning much more about. Especially if you've been on Bulklets for a while, I would love to meet you. So reach out to us as well. If you haven't yet, make sure to subscribe to this channel. That way you don't miss an episode. And please share with a friend. That way other people can benefit. Jared Flinn: We're all about strengthening his community, helping people and serving those that serve us. So man, it would be a huge thank you from us if you could do that as well. Thank you as always and God bless.