 I do feel a little pressure on my side, honestly, of just truck drivers. They don't all get to be here. Right. So I almost feel like I don't want to let them down. Yeah, gotcha. And so today I am Mother Trucker. OK. Should we call you Mother? Should we start with an opening statement that makes it clear that we have not paid you to be here? I mean, every ding video, I mean, you're not a spokesman? Oh, no. Oh, yeah, yeah, we'll start that. We don't know the questions you're going to ask. Yeah, yeah, no, this is great. Let us know when we start firing questions. And when we're on, are we good to go? We've been rolling? Oh, no, this is great. This is great. For anyone that doesn't know who I am, my name is Alex. I've been a truck driver for 10 years and just been interviewing drivers. And they call me the Mother Trucker just because that saying is not something I've made up, but it's just something to say when things go wrong instead of saying the other word. And it's turned into just a lot of truck drivers, they're away from their families, and they don't have an opportunity, and they don't feel like they have a voice. And so because of that, I do everything in my power to try to have a voice for them and do that without having any bias. And so I'm here today as an invitation from Dave and the rest of the family here. Basically, let's keep it honest. I made a video talking about a relationship that I saw in the news article about Night Swift and Embark. And I made some comments about it. And pretty much usually I was like, after that, I'm thinking Night Swift is going to definitely give me a call, right? But it wasn't the call that I thought it would be. It was just an invite to come. And so this is not a sponsored video. The only thing they have given me is they pointed to me where the bathroom has been. And I think the water is free, but you guys could bill me for that as well. But besides that, for everyone watching this, this is not sponsored. This is not paid. They did not try to sponsor, pay, or anything. They just told me they've never opened up their home to potentially a stranger and giving access. So with that, I respect you guys, and I thank you. And there was a lot of questions, and I put them into a few. And I thought that we could answer because there's perceptions about mega-carriers and what they do. And Night Swift gets put into that category. And so there's a couple of elephants in the room that I just wanted to bring up. And have you guys just respond back naturally? And if you say no comment, that's fine. I'm sure in the comments it goes, ooh. We're not known for no comment. Yeah, yeah. No question. But I think it is important for the viewers, my viewers to know definitely who you guys are as well. So I know I'm on your show, and I feel like I'm taking over. But definitely, please introduce yourself so people at home know as well. Good, Dave, do you want to introduce? Sure. Excuse me. Dave Williams, I have been with Night Swift now for going on 31 years. And my main roles here are equipment. I'm the equipment guy. Also, government relations. So I work directly with the federal and the state governments on driver-related issues. So nice to be here. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. So I'm Adam Miller. Been with Night Swift for just over 20 years now. I'm the chief financial officer for our parent company, Night Swift. And I'm also the president of our Swift business. So I have responsibility over the Swift operations. Dave Jackson, I'm the president of Night Transportation. I'm the CEO of Night Swift Transportation Holdings, which is our parent company. And so the three of us have worked together for a couple decades. I've been here almost 23 years. And we've all been on the night side. And we brought on a big sister company a little over five years ago in September of 2017 when Night and Swift merged together. And as a result of that, the night leadership team assumed the night board, really assumed leadership of the combined entity. We have a few other brands that we're very proud of that are also part of the family. Barnon out of Granger, Iowa is one. Abilene Motor Express out of Richmond, Virginia is another. And then more recently, we've added some LTL companies, AAA Cooper out of Dothan, Alabama. Midwest Motor Express out of Bismarck, North Dakota as we've gotten into the LTO world. And there's a few other smaller brands that we've made investments in as well. One thing you'll notice about us is we maintain the independence of the brand. We don't come in and veto the decision of thousands of drivers or in some cases, smaller ones, hundreds of drivers that have decided to drive for that particular brand. We embrace the brand. We help that brand to be hopefully a better version of itself and take advantage of the economies of scale without doing what big companies do almost every time, which is screw things up. So because of that, you see the three of us have a long relationship on the night side, but we can have kind of different responsibilities. And if you look at, so Adam and I were part of this parent company. We try and keep a very thin parent company not to burden all these brands. So we have day jobs. His day jobs happens to be to be the president of the largest truckload carrier in the country. And I get the opportunity to be the president of night. So a little bit about us. It's a little different structure than you normally see with companies that immediately slam their brand and label on top of anything that they buy. No, I think that's great. I appreciate you guys. I definitely respect that. You guys definitely have things to do today besides be here with Alex, this YouTuber guy, right? So I do really appreciate that. Yesterday, they actually gave me an exclusive private tour that at one point we will post out so that you guys can see, you know? I'll kind of give a cliffhanger, you know? Was it a place where it was one building and businesses and a meeting room of phone calls and drivers aren't allowed in or was it a different expectation of just a community, right? And I'll be honest, pretty next level stuff. When they see this video, pretty next level stuff, as far as I could personally see that you guys are trying to be better. I can say that out loud easily. I mean, I've been to a lot of other terminals and most of them don't have the amenities that you have. That's, you know, no one can disagree with that. So, you know, I thought that was really great. Are you gonna show the video when I beat you on one-on-one basketball, or are you gonna... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That did not happen. I'm telling you, just as you said on your video that's now gone viral overnight, you destroyed me in horse. And so, I don't know what it's gonna take to get a rematch at some point in the future, but I think I'd love, maybe we do something for like charity. Like if I can beat you, then we go to, then money goes to our charity. And if we beat, if you beat me, then money goes to your charity. Something like that. Yeah, I think that'd be cool. And I have a chance to earn some self-respect with my children again. Oh, man. Good thing I didn't have their TikToks and numbers and emails because I would have sent them right over. Oh, don't worry, they've already seen it. But one thing I do wanna make about this video that's clear, that basketball court was in the truck driver's lounge. It was not in the executive building. And I just wanna make that clear because I did see a couple of comments and that was just a snippet, but that was for the truck drivers and all the truck drivers have access to that. So, I'm not over here trying to defend Night and Swift, but that would be fair not to say that. I'm glad you pointed that out. We would love to have a basketball court here in this building, but we can't justify that kind of investment here. And so, in fact, none of us have a sign parking spot. So, if we don't get here early, we walk a little further and then at the end of the day, have to try and remember where we parked. And so, that's not, I know that's a first world problem, but that isn't necessarily what people expect at a company or with people that have happened to have a particular title. And so, we come here, we're all one team. That's how we view this. And so, that's what you saw yesterday and hopefully people will get a chance to see it and hopefully they recognize the authenticity of the fact that it's one room, it's one team. It's, we work really, really hard to help our drivers to feel empowered that we're all on one team because this industry just too many times to screw this thing up and thinking that there's like a two-class system or that somehow that one group is different or one group can be the pigeon and one group stuck as the statue. It just doesn't work. That's not how it works. And so, we try and bust that up the best that we can. So. No, I think this, and I think this, the fact that you guys are here with me today, I think this shows that, you know, as a company, you just want to be open and want to just let America know, you know, more of the truth about your company than what people perceive without knowing, right? And so, from that, can we segue? And I have a couple of questions for you guys that you guys have not read. And, you know, again, I've asked my drivers questions. I probably got about 10,000 questions. And so, from the 10,000, I limited the ones that were just being trolls and being trying to be funny or whatever. And I just wanted to ask real questions, you know. So, let's start this out. We're all okay with that? Yeah. You know. Oh, good. Should we start with the elephants in the room? Yeah. Go for it. When you hear of Knight and Swift from a truck driver owner-operative perspective, a lot of them, the first thing they say is, we see that they get into a lot of accidents, right? And so, the question that I have for you is, have you ever heard this perception about the company? And also, how is your training and safety? And what are you really doing to make sure that your drivers are ready for the road? You know? Yeah. Who wants to take the first stab? I'll take a first stab and sure you'll have other, you know, things you wanna clean up here. But, okay, that's certainly a concern. I mean, for us, it's the number one priority is to be a safe fleet, right? And that's safe for our drivers. It's safe for the motor's public that we share the roads with. And I think for us, it's about how we develop a culture around that safety. And so, we make investments. We've invested in cameras that look forward, not into the cab, because we respect the privacy of our driving associates, but we look forward. And I think in many cases, that allows us to see opportunities to coach drivers where they have unsafe behavior that may not have resulted in an accident yet, but because of the behavior we're seeing, we have opportunities to coach them. I think a lot of companies are reactive to safety events where we're being proactive. You know, when we merged with Swift, Swift did not have a great reputation of safety because Swift does train a lot more drivers than really more drivers than anyone in the industry. But as I shared with you yesterday, and I think it might be on your video, we have more million-mile drivers at Swift than any other company as well. And so we do have a very experienced group, but we do have a lot of trainees. And we've put a great focus on ensuring that when our trainees are over the road, they are prepared to handle any event that may come their way. We use simulators to help us through that process. We have a very developed training program with great mentors that are very experienced at helping with that. And we've built this culture around safety's first, and that wasn't always the culture. And so when we look at our DOT preventable accident rate, we would put our rate up against any company, certainly any public company, any private company. I mean, there's some large private fleets out there that hire the most experienced drivers that have predictable routes in the same locations. And our preventable accident rate exceeds there in many cases, or is better than theirs or would rival theirs on any given period of time. And that wasn't the case five years ago. So we've made tremendous strides in improving the safety of our vehicles. And hey, we never rest on it though. I mean, we know we always have opportunities to improve, but we're very proud of the progress that we've made. And we continue to look at other technology that's out there that we believe will improve the lifestyle for our driver, but also the safety of our vehicles. Mm, no, no, I do appreciate that because most people would never say that we weren't doing so great five years ago. So five years ago, it wasn't so great. After the merger, you guys kinda jump back together, it seems. And then, so what was the big switch that made the ratings better? Was there one absolute thing that you just saw that it just clicked and it worked? It's again, taking some of the principles that have always made us safe at night and applying them within the Swift organizations. When I say five years ago, I'm referring more to the Swift performance than night, but taking those principles where it's adult to adult coaching of our drivers, giving them the opportunity to see where their behaviors lead to unsafe activities and creating a higher standard for those that we're hiring, right? Creating a better training program with our mentors. And really, we incentivize our drivers on their safety scores, but also other areas as well, but not letting safety be an afterthought. It was just culturally around this and we aligned safety with operations. In many cases, in a lot of companies, they pit them against each other. It was a collaborative effort that we had to work together to be able to truly change the behavior that we wanted over the road. Yeah, one of the other things that we did was, and hey, whatever side of the aisle you land on with regard to substance abuse or drug use, right? We made a pretty critical decision to change the way that we approached drug testing and we started using hair testing. And if you're familiar with that, in a urine test, basically it lasts for a couple days. With the hair, it lasts for months. And so what we found was, we found individuals that probably shouldn't have been driving for us. Individuals that put others at risk by submitting themselves to drug use. And so by changing that, we changed the SWIFT's driver fleet. We improved the driver fleet. And so all you gotta do is look at one number, really, to see a dramatic improvement. And that's our CSA crash score. And those aren't public, but we can see them. And we know, and they rate you based on one to 100. And prior to the merge, SWIFT was in the bottom 25%, let's say, right? So not doing well. And all you gotta do is look up YouTube for a SWIFT accident and you can find them all over the place, right? But in the last five years, with the things that Adam's talked about, as well as cleaning up the fleet from drug users, SWIFT is now in the top 25%. And so we've seen a dramatic change and it's not just one thing, it's a culture. It's making that a priority. In that investment, you know, every trucking company of size is challenged to hire drivers. But making that change from moving away from just urine tests to hair testing, there were 2,000 drivers that passed the urine test, but did not pass the hair test. In the past, we would have hired them. And hey, we needed that labor when that environment, but we refused to because it wasn't the right thing. And now the problem is those drivers have probably found themselves driving for another carrier who doesn't, you know, hair test. And that's a concern for us. And I think that's one of the things we're pushing in Washington is to allow for hair testing because we do believe it makes our road safer. And to clarify, those 2,000 trucks, those are now open trucks that weren't open before. That hurt. So if we go back to history, that was in 2018. So, because we merged in September and to set up the network to be able to do hair testing and whatnot took a couple of months. And when we instituted hair follicle drug testing to start 2018, 2018 also represented the single best rate and freight demand year we had ever had since deregulation in 1980 in the industry. So there was never a time where the company was more incentivized to fill trucks and to grow trucks over the road. And in 2018, we went backwards 2,000 drivers that in every other respect, including the urine test, deserved to be in a truck or would have otherwise been in a truck. And we refused to do it. And guess what? Our stock price and analyst, they've filleted us over this because every quarter we were losing drivers. And the belief was, okay, now you've merged, now Swift's getting smaller and smaller and shrinking. So we're out there talking to Wall Street, walking them through, hey, just trust us. We're foundationally, we're doing what needs to happen. We're not taking shortcuts. And that was a defining moment I think for the Swift organization that if, and that's an organization that had, they grew to be the largest truckload carrier because they had unbelievable will and determination to grow almost no matter what. And I will tell you that in the Swift organization, prior to our involvement, I think it was common that every conference call ended with a message or every meeting began with a message about safety, but it just didn't show up in the numbers. And so it was not about talking about it. It was about taking actions. Now, this is the piece that scares me the most about that whole fact of those 2,000 drivers that were disqualified. Guess which drug was the number one drug that tested positive? Cocaine. So it wasn't marijuana? No. Marijuana was a distant third after opioids. It was cocaine. Now today, because of the legalization of marijuana, that might look a little bit different. But how could you ever think that you could achieve the highest levels of safety if that was the issue? And the reality is Swift, by making that decision five years ago, Swift has been a leader in this. So Swift was not a laggard. Now, Knight had moved well, well in advance, but there are many, many large carriers that have subsequently moved, or in many cases, some who still have not moved. And so that was a huge piece. The other thing I would say, no, we've talked about this topic, but this is a really important topic, because what's more important than safety? At the end of the day, we could have the best cost per mile, we could be the most efficient, most productive, and if one of our team members doesn't get home with their family, what's it all for? And so we really, really take this serious. Well, there's another side to this. So the technology that we use, the external facing cameras, which in many cases has exonerated drivers, and helped us to understand what really happened when there is an event, that technology also allows us to provide feedback to the driver in real time. And so we've taken a totally different approach than most, which is we empower the driver and we give the driver information, real-time feedback. And so you arrive, if we cut somewhat off on the road or we don't plan an on-ramp just the right way, the heart gets racing, you think about it, but by the end of the day, you maybe have already forgotten about it. Well, if at the end of the day, you had the chance to watch that video clip again and relive that, something happens where it becomes more real and almost in a objective kind of way, we can see what happened and we can learn from that and change. And so what we have noticed is that when you trust and empower the driver who wants to be safe, when you trust them and empower them with information, their safety improves. So we have three key inputs that go into a score and what we notice is when we share that score and occasionally when something triggers a video for them to watch, and occasionally there'll be a video that's so important that requires third-party coaching, but that's the exception. That is not the rule, but when we empower the driver with that information, guess what happens? Their score begins to improve and it begins to improve immediately. And so when we first rolled this out and tested this several years ago, we had a test group of drivers. We gave them the information. We set what we thought was a target number for a, you know, if you get to this number, you get a bonus. Well, really quickly, we went from only a third of the people being there to two thirds were at the bonus. So we lowered the goal. Guess what happened? We moved the middle again and just continued to move the middle. And so in this industry, too many people don't empower the driver enough on this. And so that's what's going on behind the scenes. Now, reality is we're gonna drive 4 million miles today. Hopefully, if we have enough loads, we'll drive 4 million miles today. Is that on average that you guys do 4 million miles? Yeah, it's give or take 4 million miles a day. So, you know, we're gonna see, we're gonna see, you know, we're gonna be filmed more than anybody else or whatever else you want. And of course, once something's on film, it lives forever. But to Adam's point, if you were to go, the last data point I looked at was data through January 9th. And it compared every big brand you could think of in terms of accidents per million miles. For that period of time, we were slightly outdone by one fleet, barely. That fleet was the Walmart private fleet, which is the most experienced, exclusive dedicated fleet in the country. We were second place, barely. And we were twice as good as large carriers whose names I will not mention that you'd be familiar with that don't hire any trainees, that don't do any training. They only hire experienced drivers. You have to appreciate the fact that a majority of the drivers that we bring on do not have experience, they get it through us. And so for us to be irregular route, primarily trainees, and to have the best for hire, carrier, accident per million mile rate, that's something we're very proud of. And that is not something that just randomly happens. So there's been so much effort behind the scenes to make that happen. So yeah, if you can't tell, this is, we're passionate about this. This is... So I wouldn't put words in your mouth, but tell me if you agree with my statement here or not. The perception that Swift per se, crashes in and everything is a perception that was the old perception of Swift. And from that, you guys have been working on being better. And it's kind of like what you say though, it's almost like first impressions are everything. So... It takes time to... Hey, let's move on. Yeah. You'll notice about almost five years ago, maybe it was a little less than maybe five years ago, we rolled out a new logo for Swift. You know, a new logo doesn't do everything. But there's been... We're grateful for the growth. We're grateful for many of the things that Swift's done that are unique and that no one else could have done, really. We're grateful for that legacy in history. But Swift is now transferred from being the largest carrier to being one of, in many cases, sometimes for periods of time the safest carrier, and at the same time, being one of the most efficient carriers in terms of what their cost per mile, it's not a business that loses money. They were on pace to lose money when we merged. And Swift now is very successful, which secures the ability to make the kind of investments like you were able to see. And we talked about yesterday, made the kind of investments in the facilities and the amenities for our drivers, continue to buy late model equipment, and to have what we think is the largest ratio of trucks to drive-in trailers in the industry. Collectively, we have 75,000 trailers. That's massive. I think the next closest last I looked is our good friends out of Green Bay, our friends in Orange out of Green Bay who I believe have about 38,000. So, we have 75,000 trailers and the majority of those obviously are from Swift. And that leads to massive efficiency. I mean, that's one of the reasons why at Swift, nine out of every 10 loads involves a trailer pull on at least one end, if not both. And we love that. We love trailer, and our customers love trailer pulls. No one wants to wait around and be live-loaded and live-unloaded. It is so fraught with inefficiency. And so, because Swift is so healthy and successful, not only safe, but profitable and earns a good return for the investment, it allows us to continue to invest and make that a great company, a great job. And frankly, allows us to put technology to play to continue to improve how we train drivers. I don't think there's an organization that brings in more than 10,000 drivers every single year into the industry. And it does so in a way that we're on the line. We pay, we largely cover the cost of any accident. We don't have an insurance policy that just takes over anytime something happens. We take the risk. And so, we're not just about churning. We're not about butts and seats. We're about doing this the right way. And so, the whole industry, I hope, can transition from any old legacy thoughts to an appreciation for the leadership role that Swift has finally stood up to do and to take for this industry to help the industry. No, I think that's great. And I think it's great that we're able to have these conversations. So, for all the listeners, all the mother-truckers at home, just know that, I'm sure they're gonna dodge that question. So, you know. That was a little more than no comment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, you know. Do we still have time? Yeah, I tell you, I tell you. So, segueing from that then, you know, they would say nationally, or bigger fleets, that the turnover rate is over, this would say 92%. You know, what are you doing to keep your drivers happy? You know, I don't know if you want to expose your turnover rate or anything like that. But, you know, are your drivers happy for Nine Swift? I mean, we did the tour yesterday. I saw, you know, to be fair, I saw a lot of plaques of a million miles. So, we can't disregard that you guys have to be doing something definitely right for those drivers to stay. And so, you know, first off, you know, why do you think turnover rate is so high in the trucking industry as a whole? You know, and definitely, you know, how does that, you know, pertain to, you know, Nine Swift as well? Well, you want to take the Nine Swift or the industry question? I could hit the Nine Swift. Let me hit the industry first then and you hit Nine Swift. You know, hey, this is, it's irregular route transportation. I don't think there's a place, I'm pretty convinced in fact, there's not a place in the supply chain that creates more value than this concept of a regular route transportation. So, think about this. Customers never seldom, if ever, have the same amount of product going from one place to the other coming back. If they did, there would be no need for the irregular route for a higher whole industry. So, what that means is what we have to figure out how to do is have a diverse group of customers shotgun us all over the country with different levels of consistency. One week it's five loads, one week it's 50 loads in some cases for some shippers. And then we have to scramble and build a network to find our way back. And which can be difficult because you could have one customer who sends you to that location five times a week, but you've got to have five different customers that get you out of that location and get you back into circulation. So, building a network with the kind of density that it requires is extremely complex. Well, the customer that we have in this business, they're the biggest businesses in the world. The Walmarts, the Targets, the Lowe's, Georgia-Pacifics of the world. They're massive and they're sophisticated. And so they're constantly looking for ways to optimize and lower the cost, which means they're constantly trying to create competition and turn us into a commodity so that they can lower their cost. And so there's naturally all of this churn. So this is all happening behind the scenes which can make the job inconsistent and change before we even get to the fact that for a driver in this industry, you're gonna be away from home, you're gonna sleep in a truck, you're gonna shower in truck stops, and you're not gonna be able to control the variables of load pickup, load delivery times, because we don't even select those. The parcel guys do. UPS and FedEx will tell you when they'll be there. Our customers dictate to us because of some of the reasons I just mentioned. And you can't control exactly what cities you're gonna go to next in that irregular route world. So the ability to try and manage a high quality of life with consistency and predictability can be difficult in any regular route. So you add all of those things into a blender and then you add companies that struggle to really connect to an individual and they start treating them like a truck, like they're a robot. And pretty quickly you can see how communication and trust can break down the variables, the unpredictability and no wonder we have an industry that has a 100% driver turnover. So if you wanna really try and solve this issue, we think you have to do it not only to treat individuals or see people as individuals, treat them as such, certainly not as truck numbers, not as robots, but then begin to address the unpredictability. And it's hard to do that without real scale and size and sophistication. And so we've got different ways to go about this and frankly we have different advantages over maybe just a smaller or even a mid-sized player to try and address some of that uncertainty. And so maybe you can talk about what that results in for us. Yeah. Well, I think about the large carriers, right? And I think what a lot of people, how they would view a large carrier as someone who's centralized a lot of functions, right? You're getting dispatched out of a call center. You're working with someone on different every day. You don't have a relationship. You don't get to see them. There's so many diseconomies of scale that can come with size in this industry. And so the way we've always approached our business at night and really even on the swift business, even prior to the merger is how do we keep this small and intimate where it's a large business but it's really a group of small trucking companies that makes up that large business. And so we have a terminal network. So on the night side it's 30 plus terminals on the swift side, very similar. The average terminal size would be between 100 and 150 trucks depending on the company. So that's something you can get your arms around and you're hiring in the market where you're located. So you have drivers that that's where they call home in many cases. So they get through there on a regular basis. They know they have a driver manager or driver leader that manages 35 drivers. And so they get to know them on a personal level. They know what their preferences are. They know when they need to be home. They should know their birthday, their anniversary. So again, they're treating them like a peer that they need to work with to be successful. And their job is to make sure that they're safe over the road, they're productive. They get a paycheck and they get home when they need to. And that's a difficult model to manage. Cause we can't go out to a floor, say, here's a new policy. Here's what we're doing. Here's a new strategy. Everyone good. Okay, let's move. No, we have to be able to disseminate that information across all these terminals, which is a challenge. There's more cost with having it. You have to have a leader in every terminal, but there's so much value in that. We've found when we open up a new terminal we can hire a different group of drivers who didn't want to work for a terminal in Atlanta, but they'll work for it in Mobile, right? Because that's close to where they live. And that's why we build out this network. And so the result of that is a turnover rate that's significantly lower than the industry average. Now, as Dave mentioned, it really comes down to relationships. That's really where turnover starts. If you have a driver who's over the road, invariably they're gonna run into a challenge. Okay, and sometimes there's a tremendous amount of frustration that comes with that. They don't have a good relationship. They're calling into a call center to someone who doesn't appreciate them or know them personally. In many cases, they just move on, right? Or they didn't even tell them that they're frustrated. They just move on, right? Cause they could get a job the next day if they wanted to, if they're a good quality driver. But when you have that relationship, you have a driver, our ask is, let us help you. Let us address it. Let us work with you. We may not be able to solve every single challenge immediately, but we're gonna work our best to make sure that you are supported over the road. And so that's what we, our terminals embrace that. We support it. I think about our terminal, our corporate headquarters. Don't look at this corporate headquarters. It's our terminal support center. Like we're there to make sure our terminals are positioned to be successful with our drivers. So that's the unique difference. It's hard to replicate, easy to say, but very difficult to replicate. So guess what? It leads to turnover numbers dramatically lower than the 92% that you mentioned. Okay, so you guys are, like I said, you don't have to give me all your industry numbers, but they're lower than the average. I'll give you an example. You know, everybody in our organization has got to be centered around how do we make the driving job better? Right. So one of the things that I do is when we go out to our terminals, I'll go into the drivers lounge and I'll ask, hey, tell me about your truck. Tell me what you like. Tell me what you don't like. And it's kind of funny because the first question I often get is, who's the idiot who spec this truck? And that would be me. His name's Dave Williams, for anybody who's... So I get an opportunity to listen and to understand what they like and what they don't like. And it's kind of funny because what I found over the years is that there isn't one thing. Everybody's got their own idea of what's important and what's not. And when you talk about perceptions, I think amongst the drivers, there's this perception that there's a bag of money sitting at the Corp of Headquarters that they're unwilling to let go of. But the fact of the matter is, and as I get a chance to talk to these guys, and hey, we're not perfect, believe me. But at the same time, we're rebalancing every day. And the question is, do you want more pay? Do you want better benefits? Do you want better facilities? Do you want nicer trucks? Do you want a leather seat or do you wanna... Yeah. It's nice to have all those things, but if we're gonna be a stable company that you can count on to get a paycheck from every week, we've gotta have good balance. And so for us, it's always measuring the temperature of our drivers and understanding where their priorities are and then having us be able to shift those priorities. And Dave gets great feedback, but we do surveys as well on a regular basis so we can understand what's the sentiment from our drivers and all the equipment that we have. I think he's just reading off of my questions here. I didn't see him. Why is our bank good? For people who are watching this, this used to be a bank, so they don't have a ton of money, I see sitting in here. I don't know where it went. But one thing... You gotta at least acknowledge, this is a 40, probably a 41, 42-year-old campus that was a savings and loan bank that didn't make it out of the 80s. I agree. And so we bought this thing for pennies on the dollar like, I don't know, 10 years ago or something. Yeah. I think that's great. One thing that I will defend that I think listeners at home need to understand is, you know, you go on Facebook Market, you go on Indeed, and you see these four hires, listings, classifies that say, we pay $2,500 a month or a week, $3,500 a week, but it's $10.99. Yeah. And so a lot of people, sometimes they might look at it and say, well, this company here pays $2,500 a week, but you have to understand that $2,500 a week, $10.99 is like getting paid $1,200 bucks after taxes with zero benefits, you know? So I will say that I think that's a perception that people, listeners have wrong, is they see these numbers that these companies say, we pay, you know, $2,700 a week, but that's $10.99. You still have to pay your taxes. You have zero benefits. You have zero everything. So at the end of it, how much do you actually have? So, you know, segue into that. Can I throw one thing in there? Sure. Just this is maybe straddles equipment and turnover. You know, when we hire a driver, we're looking for somebody that wants to establish a career because we're gonna invest in the relationship. There's a time that it takes to build trust and you can't ever take it for granted, but one of the things we'll do is we want them to begin to think about their first million miles with us. And so you see the recognition. Yesterday, you saw the Swift wall. In every one of the night terminals, we have something similar in here. In this building, we have a wall with all of the million milers. And each business finds its own way to commemorate and celebrate that, but there's a lot of benefit that comes along the way, including, you know, the opportunity in some of our businesses for stock restricted shares over time, for a driver to be able to accumulate restricted shares. In one of our businesses, when you hit a million miles, you get a phone call from Dave's group that says, okay, congratulations, you hit a million miles. What color do you want your truck to be? Because here's the thing. And what brand of truck do you want out of Ford? We don't do this everywhere. We don't do this at Swift, but at night, we do other things at Swift, but at night. We do that at Swift. Oh, are we doing it now? Yeah, we do, we do. Well, I didn't know that happened. I actually have a lot more of the night, so. Okay, so I didn't know that it had jumped. I didn't know it had jumped the median like that. I thought I was, I thought I was. It's been years, Dave. I mean, they emailed me about it. Yeah. Now I can talk about it openly. Okay. So here's how we look at this. This might be interesting to maybe two people out there, but the night transportation red is actually CR England red because, and the Knights called the Englands and said, can we use your color red? And it was a shout out to the fact that, guess who, Chester England, CR England was married to. Mod. Night. So there's not a relationship between us and the Englands. The companies aren't connected, but they do go back to Plain City, Utah, way, way back. And so as a shout out when the Knights left Swift blue, they wanted to do red. Well, the trucking company color and the truck color is about as sacred thing as a trucking company has. We feel like if you run a million safe miles with us, you have paid the price. And so if you wanna drive a space gray truck powered to you, if you wanna pink truck, you can do it, but we can't do too many of those because we take a little bit of hit in the resell market. But the point is our drivers, that's the ultimate for us. In addition to cash compensation, restricted shares and some other things that we do with, and they get a whole new wardrobe with a new medallion so that they can be proud with that. But if they choose, they can change the color. Most seem to change the color. And so when you see a purple truck, but it doesn't say lease too, it's not an owner operator. It's just a million miler who may or may not choose to put their million mile medallion on there. But those are little things we do to show that we're serious. This isn't skin deep. This is come in, have a career and we're gonna continue to trust and reward you for your loyalty over time, so. No, I appreciate that, you know? No, this is great. Another question that came up like probably 7,000 times, right? And this is not, again, this is the perception of making carriers and I'm wrapping you guys into this. That's fair. All right, and we talked a little bit about that that's why I thought it was a good segue is, everybody and their mama and trucking believes that the big making carriers are just sitting on a whole bunch of money. And it's like, if they want their drivers happy, why don't they just pay more instead of keeping all that money to themselves, right? That's the, and I know that can be, unless you're business minded, I'm gonna say what I think about that first. Okay, so this is what I think. I own some businesses too, and when you deal with companies like Walmart and Targets, they do not want to pay very well. So to stay competitive and to be able to get those contracts, it is very difficult. So in my opinion, you're not working with percentages on percentages of just profit. We're talking about extremely low margins of profits on some of these things. That's just my thought process. Tell me if I'm wrong, tell me if I'm right. If you think about a regular route track load, we lose money on about half of the whole loads we haul, because the backhaul. So Phoenix to LA pays nothing. We're below our cost per mile to go from Phoenix to LA 350 miles. But to go from LA to Phoenix, we make money. And so the combined, if you do it right, and it doesn't take you too long in between loads, you can pull off a profit. So a regular route transportation is always right on the verge of being a total financial disaster. And so most companies don't earn more than a small single digit return on their investment. Very capital intensive. So we've had free interest rates for monies cost nothing for the last 20 years. So you're gonna see a new day here. The interest is going to really, really eat in to the kind of equipment people can invest in. The age is gonna get older and older. So our goal from the beginning has always been we wanted to have a business. The Knights wanted to develop a business that was not dependent on banks to stay in business. Upper 90% of trucking companies are completely dependent on banks because they do not earn a rate of return that allows them to reinvest into their fleet. And you have to because trucks are, they have a relatively short lifespan and they depreciate like crazy over those first four years. So we live on that first four year part of the curve. It takes a ton of capital if you wanna live in that section. And you have to live in that section if you wanna be as safe. And if you wanna have a truck that doesn't have the kind of downtime or the maintenance cost. And so it's not that you sit on a mountain of cash. It's if you can build a successful business, you can have a business that can grow from a couple of trucks that show up in July of 1990 to today, over 20,000 trucks running on the road in a way that you're not, you develop enough return, you're not dependent on banks. So that's one of the reasons why in on April 10th, 2017, we had a conference call and said, we've just announced a deal we've made with Swift. Knight and Swift are gonna merge and they're gonna merge as equal partners. Even though Swift was four times the size, Knight was had twice the percentage return. And so because of that, on the New York stock exchange, both companies, despite being 25% the size, Knight was the same value as Swift. Approximately $2 billion of market cap value is how Wall Street valued the business. And so you had a company much smaller, but that was self-sufficient in terms of its returns. And so because of that, we were able to grow. And so in an industry that is treated like a commodity, you have to have an appropriate return and you have to have the lowest operating cost, which means you gotta be the most efficient. If you long-term through cycles and seasons want to be a long-term grower, and that's quietly what Knight has demonstrated and now shared with Swift. And Swift does to an even better extent because of its size and scale and it has the return, which has now allowed us to move into things like the LTL market and other markets that can make our business over time less cyclical and continue to bring more synergies to strengthen all of the businesses across the board. So that's, profit's not an evil thing. And if you can't figure out how to do it, you become dependent on people that don't allow you to align your interests where you want them to be, like low driver turnover, safety, high returns, high productivity, those kind of things. I think that's great because there's gonna be a lot of people that want to be fleet owners that are gonna watch this. Because at the end of the day, one thing that I think a lot of people get wrong is you have to have money to help people. And if you're barring against the bank and you're going broke, that's how you see a lot of these companies overnight have to close their doors and now 300, 400 drivers don't have a job. Right, and I would just add, over the last three years, nothing has been more inflationary than driver pay intentionally. And we know this, the market is volatile, right? We know there's cycles that we deal with. My rates were very strong over the last couple of years and we invested more than we ever have in our drivers. We took base pay up, we had sign on bonuses, we aligned incentives so when the company's winning, our drivers are winning. And we know that at times, rates are gonna come off. We're already feeling that. But we position ourselves where we can invest with drivers but not have to take anything away from our drivers. We've never pulled payback from our drivers when we've hit a tough patch. I mean, because we want our drivers to know that they can count on their paycheck. And we have a strong balance sheet and so we're financially sound, we can weather any type of environment we'll feel. But when the market turns favorably for carriers, the first thing we look at is what can we do for our drivers? That's fair. So this is a long-term career horizon. Could you go out, get paid percentage of revenue, get out there and hustle, live off load boards, put book things? Yeah, I mean, you could have done really well for a while there. But you're not doing well right now. Oh my goodness, 22 has been tough and I'm just saying buckle up, buckle up for the first half of this year. I was gonna ask that, because you guys feel the industry more than a single owner operator. And so like we talked about, when the rates were great, people go out and go rent a dang Penske truck and go and still push a very powerful margin. Right now, I mean, if you bought a new truck last year and you're working the spot market, you're just, you're working for free right now, pretty much. And so one of my questions I was gonna ask you, since you get to feel that first, is when will rates go back? Yeah, well what's interesting is in the over the last 12 months, spot rates have dropped more in that 12 month time period than it has any other cycle we've ever seen. So prior to that 2019, there was about a 20 month period that we saw a similar decline, but this happened not in 20 months, but in 12 months. So it's been precipitous. We just came off of a fourth quarter that was largely defined by most as not having a peak season and that had to do with the fact that there was so much inventory that was already in place from last year or that showed up late last year that they've just kind of held on to. And so that inventory is slowly being burned off and hopefully by the time springs over, we'll be into a little bit more of an ordinary cycle there. But- So you think by this year, the rates- So here, let me just say this though. So that's what's happened with spot rates. Contractual rates have hung in there and they've hung in there in a way different than they ever did prior to the electronic log mandate. And so since 2018, since electronic logs have been mandated, contract rates have been significantly more resilient. And so there's a graph we look at that gets updated every single week and it looks at industry contract rates and industry spot rates. And so we think that a lot of that has to do with trailer pools. The customers have dramatically gravitated to trailer pools and as a result of that, you see in the non-asset-based brokers, they have not been able to generate the kind of volume growth that they normally do to support smaller carriers that are livid on the spot because those guys, like Robyn said, would normally go out and they would load up on a bunch of commitments. They'd win a bunch of business that discounts to the customer and they could keep people moving. Well, that wasn't the case. We don't have their fourth quarter yet, but their third quarter, their rates were down 15% to the customer and yet their growth, I think, was only like a percent and a half in volume. So that's not typical. That it didn't work that way before electronic logs. Well, that's live load, live on load freight. And the shipping community just doesn't have the labor to stop and do it and they can't afford to pay the detention fees that are associated with those and that drivers have to be paid if they're detained. So we've seen that bolster the contract. So there is a little bit of tale of two cities. So while we talk about the difficulty for those chasing spot, it's been particularly brutal to those that can't live in a trailer pool world, which we do and some of the other larger players do. And so the world's changed. I don't know if everybody realizes to the degree that it has. Now that being said, when we can burn off excess inventories, which hopefully is by middle of the year, then we get to a little bit more of an ordinary course. And now what we're dealing with is the variable of an economy that's slowing with higher interest rates, what's going to happen? Are we gonna see unemployment tick up? It's been, it's hung in there and it really hasn't. And so what's the overall economy gonna do? That is I think largely what will determine what the back half of the year is dealing with. Whereas what the industry has felt in 22 and in the first half of this year is largely self-induced by the fact that we moved so much freight in 21 that ordinarily would have probably moved throughout 22. So that's kind of what we see, but it's tough out there for, we see all the signs of small carriers struggling and in many cases giving things up and stopping and moving on because they can't, they can't get through the tough time. A fourth quarter without a peak and first quarter is always the slowest freight season of the year. So which that kind of creates a little bit of a self-correcting mechanism within the industry itself where supply goes down and so there's less to haul for the back half of the year. So I think there's reasons to be optimistic for the back half of the year. Okay, good, that's gonna make a lot of, that's some inside information for all you fleet owners out there. Stick in there, it sounds like possibly you start getting better. So that's great. Since we're on that topic right there, I probably have a question for you then. We talked about 2021 being great, the rates being amazing. And so what were people doing? They were going out and buying trucks. They're buying trucks, the used truck market went crazy. People were trying to buy new trucks. I got friends that own dealerships. They're like, Alex, I'm sorry man, we can get a new truck until 20 and 24 because the slots are all done up. When will inventory come back? Do you think for truck drivers out there? I know the used market is the prices that are starting to come down because like we talked about the spot market rates have gone down significantly. So a lot of people are getting out of the business. So I see a change in that. But the guy that wants to go out to any dealership and go, I would like to buy a new truck, when will inventory come back? Yeah, so I've been doing this for three decades now and I've never seen a market like this. Does he look too young for that? I was gonna say, I feel like he needs... Those are trucking years too by the way. So multiply times seven, it's almost like dog years. I'll be honest, one compliment I'll give you guys for sure is, I don't know what kind of milk you guys are drinking, elephant milk or what, but I see this man over here. He's a specimen over here. President Swift and I go, hey, so... It's goat milk. You're the intern guy, huh? No, I've been running this for 20-something years, three decades and you know. It's goat milk. So whatever elephant smoke you guys are drinking, I would like some of that if I'm a little younger. It's goat, yeah. It's goat, it's goat. So in any case, I've never seen a market like this. It's been highly unusual. It's been compounded by several different issues. Obviously we had semiconductor, I mean, the chip issue that... But it was more than that. It was raw materials. It was a lot of things that contributed. Well, here we are in 2023, several years after the end of the pandemic thinking this should be over. Well, it's not. In fact, in 2023, basically all of the OEMs are on allocation again. And so what's happening is, is there's a fight between the dealers, between the fleets, between the end users, as to who's gonna get that allocation. At the end of the day, we're gonna build less trucks than we otherwise would have if there was no supply chain constraints. Now, good news, bad news. Give it to us, give it to us. So the bad news is, as an end user, you may not get what you want, or as many as you want. The good news is, it really changes the cycle. Because what ends up happening is, traditionally is, when things get really good, we build 300, 350,000 trucks as an industry, and we flood the market. Well, when you understand supply and demand, what that means is, is when you increase supply or capacity, you decrease pricing. So it's a self-inflicted down cycle. Well, in this case, we didn't get a chance to do that. So while some of that demand for our services has decreased, maybe due to overall economic issues, supply hasn't increased as much as it normally would. Translated, that means that the cycle has a chance to be shorter. The down cycle has a chance to be shorter. So that's a good thing. Now, when is it gonna come back? Probably not this year. That's what I'm hearing as well, because I'll have friends that will say, hey, Alex, so I'm their go-to guy, right? Hey, Alex, you know anyone? I'm trying to buy 200 trucks. And then so I reach out to seven of my buddies that own dealerships and they're like, I don't have any allocation slots for 200 trucks. I'm like, so if you don't have allocations for a guy that can afford 200 trucks, what about the guy that's trying to buy one? So would you say it might be a couple of years from now until a guy can probably go into a dealership? On the new side, yes. On the used side, I think there'll be more opportunity. I mean, as an organization, we put off a lot of used trucks every year and we'll sell just ourselves, anywhere from two to 4,000 trucks to the open market every single year. And in the last couple of years, it was interesting because we would be notified that a truck was coming out of service. It'd be sold before it even come off the road. This year, we're starting to see a little more looseness and inventory. Prices are starting to come down. They're still elevated historically. And I would expect them to be slightly elevated until really new trucks start flowing off at a faster clip. Right, because I think the large fleets really help support the used equipment market. And so when the large fleets can't get new trucks, we're gonna run our trucks longer. And so we've aged our fleet as a result. And I think many of our space have done the same thing. And once we have slots available to buy new equipment, we'll probably get younger. And I think that'll help support more inventory in the used equipment market. Yeah, but there's some curveballs coming. I mean, you've got some environmental rules coming with NOx treatment and with CO2 reductions and with zero emissions vehicles that are gonna really throw this industry into a new era that we haven't seen before. So predicting what's gonna happen becomes more and more difficult. And what impact does that have on the used market or the new market and who can afford to even buy a truck? That's gonna be the interesting thing to watch. Oh, I love that because that sets me up for my next question. Federal regulations, EPA are forcing a push for cleaner energy. Is night and swift looking to alternatives like electric, hydrogen or natural gas semi-trucks? And what is your involvement with that? And because honestly, that's no fault to your own because for the listeners at home, you might be biased and say, oh, they don't like diesel trucks and that's why they're doing this. I'll be the first to tell you there's a lot of things going on in Congress that they just say, no, we wanna have this dream world of just everybody feeling up with water. Fantasyland. Fantasyland. And so I know a lot of bigger companies like yourself are forced to make some of these decisions. And so are you looking into any of this or have you already started to buy some of this technology electric trucks? The answer is yes. I mean, in order to be a responsible company, we have to know what's going on. We have to know what's coming. Now we're gonna do it in a smart way and we're not gonna go overboard, but at the same time we have to know what's coming. So there's a couple of movements in the markets and especially on Wall Street. One is called ESG. If you haven't heard of it before, then you're gonna hear about it soon. It's environmental, social and governance measures. And basically what a lot of the banks are saying is, hey, look, we can't invest in your company if you don't meet a certain standard. And so we've got to be as a good corporate citizen and hey, it's the right thing to do, right? Also is to improve the way the impact we have on the environment. Well, part of that includes changing how we do business. There's some good things about that and there's some real challenges. I will say bad things, I'll say challenges. And so what we're doing is we're going out and we're testing electric trucks. We got one that we just received. There was a press release yesterday from Kenworth. We're testing hydrogen fuel cells, which is a little further out on the horizon. So is that like companies like Nicola or can we expose any of these companies? You don't have to. In this case, it's been announced, it's Cummins. Okay, yeah, okay. So Cummins is testing. It's not Nicola. It's not Nicola. From a natural gas standpoint, one of the things that's changed is the carbon intensity of natural gas has shifted with dairy gas. Yeah, oh really? So basically it comes in at a much better score and so we're re-looking at natural gas, which kind of we put in the rear view mirror for a while. But the point is, is we've got to know what's coming. Whether it's a good idea or a bad idea, we have to know what kind of impact it's gonna have on our business. Because at one point, especially in certain states like California, you may not have a choice. And so for us, it's a matter of trial and error, knowing ahead of time and being able to act in the best interests of our drivers when it does come or if it does come. And to some degree, to be able to help regulators who sometimes think that there are capabilities with the technology that they might have a sense that it's more capable than what is practical and real. And what we would say is our experience thus far is that the range is woefully short and the cost is incredibly prohibitive. So other than that, outstanding. No, I hear you. Other than the range and the cost. I'll give you an example. And government, I think, I'll give them a benefit of the doubt and say they're well intended, but often miss the mark. And so I'm sitting in the offices of the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, and they got kind of a smile on their face and they're talking about a rule that they wanna put out. And the rule has to do with all these after treatment emissions, which our drivers love, not really. And the warranties that are attached to these things. And so they start to tell me about this rule they have in mind. And the rule basically says that they're gonna demand that the OEMs increase the warranties for those products on all products across the line by substantial amounts. And I looked at them and I thought, and they're expecting me to say, oh, thank you so much. We appreciate you fighting for us. And what I said to them was I said, do you realize that's not free? Yeah. They're gonna actually charge us thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars for that additional warranty. It's not how a free market works. And there was kind of a blank look on their faces. They didn't realize how the market works. And so part of what we do and part of my job is to go up to Washington DC and to the States and to the agencies and to take some of these ideas that they have and help them really understand how the real world works. And again, I think for the most part, they're well-intended, but probably more bad ideas than good ideas. So what I'm hearing is it sounds like, and I'll say it, you guys don't have to say, is truck drivers out there believe that there's not enough infrastructure for these other type of alternatives. And that makes them happy because I mean, people are honestly used to what they're used to, right? Sure. And so I'm not saying that you feel the same way, but from that, that's what I kind of get from that. And also that just like all the truck drivers out there, we definitely don't think the government has a great clue of the laws that they make. And I'm hearing a little bit of that from you. And so I can appreciate that. I do wanna bring something up because you said something off camera that shocked me. I was 100% sure you guys were okay with this. Okay, let's bring up this elephant in the room. They have a bill where they are trying to push because- Who's they? When I say they- Not us. Not you. Congress. Congress as well. So I appreciate that, Dave. Yeah. So Congress has a bill that they're trying to push to allow 18 year old truck drivers to go interstate. And for people that don't know what that is, basically before you're 21, you can't leave your state, right? And so it's one of those things where I was darn sure that Congress wants to make that rule because mega carriers are asking them to lobby for that rule, why so that they could get cheaper labor. And then you guys said something off camera that shocked me. And I might have to private some of the videos that I've made because I've made assumptions that make a carriers want that rule. Can I make a statement that hopefully is as clear as possible? Yeah. 18 year old drivers would be the worst decision in the history of the trucking industry. That makes me so happy. Period. I love that. I love to hear that. And so, and it's, there is nothing good that will come out of that. If you have interest in safety and improving the driving job and appropriately rewarding the professionals that today make the effort to get a CDL and to stay safe over the road. And that's who would lose out on this. That's who would lose. And so I can't see anything good that would come as a result of that. So we are not in favor of that period. I'll tell you a little bit about some of the origins of that bill. But first of all, just to be clear, as from an industry standpoint, we're probably in the minority here. In other words, there are a lot of companies that are pushing for that. And I would say partially because they don't often fully understand how the market works. So why did this come about? Well, what happens is, is that some individuals will point to specific circumstances. For example, if you were in Memphis, Tennessee, and you were to drive 50 miles south, you're now in Mississippi, right? Well, an 18 year old driver can't do that, but they can drive from San Diego to Sacramento, which is much further. And so people point to that and say, well, that's not fair. We should allow for them to not just drive in trustate, but to drive interstate because of these circumstances. Well, that's where it started. And then it just kind of grew. And some people took hold of it and said, well, this is a good chance to solve the driver shortage problem. But as we look at it, it's not a good idea. It's a terrible idea. And for two reasons, one, safety, right? I've got three kids that are in their 20s and my oldest son, when he was 18, he would hand me his video camera and say, hey, Dad, film this. And I knew nothing good was gonna happen because he was gonna do something pretty risky, right? There's just a different idea of risk that happens before we fully... And it's well-documented. It's been shared. It is. It's well-documented. There's been studies and it's foolish. And the unintended consequences could be devastating. So yeah, I mean, hopefully we're crystal clear where we are on that. And I would suppose that many that watch the video may feel the same way. And this is an industry that's very fragmented and it's hard for us to collectively share our voices. And I think to the degree that people hear some of the things that we talk about here and maybe feel the same way, we're looking for ways to be aligned. There's so much more that aligns us with one another as carriers than makes us different or makes us fierce competitors. Dave plays a leadership role in the Truckload Carriers Association. That's focused exclusively on truckload carriers. And still, given the fragmentation and how small the average carrier is, it doesn't represent representation of 80% of the industry. Like some industries that have seven or eight big players, they all get into a room and they represent the whole space. And so I will tell you, we devote time and effort and resources because of our size as a leader in this industry to try to advance things that we think are in the best interest and health of the industry that we serve, not just to serve our own personal interests. The reality is we're such a small piece of such a big industry that there really aren't those opportunities. So we're trying to do the right thing. And so we appreciate what you do. The voice that you give is meaningful. And obviously Washington represents it. I mean, they have your number, they have his number. And so, hey, we look for ways that we can help common sense things that are in the best interest of the industry continue to advance and move forward. And I do think there's a better way to handle it. No, I mean, and one way you can handle it is through an air mile radius. In other words, if the concern is you can go 200 miles within a state, but you can't cross a state line that's 10 miles away, then let's establish an air mile radius restriction. I mean, there's just different ways to do it. And so as we talk about these issues, as we talk about the driving job and what makes the most sense, if we're gonna compete against construction, you know, from a pay standpoint, then we can't do things that are gonna keep us from getting there in terms of increasing that pay. And so it's a constant battle of walking through the trade-offs. The trade-off is, yes, we can have a greater pool of drivers, but we may suffer from, you know, in terms of pay, we may see some safety issues and we're just not willing to compromise. I don't see a way that you don't add more supply and existing driver wages don't go down. That may surprise people to hear us say that, but we're not in favor of driver wages going down. Yeah. And then when you increase that supply, and you're gonna have an impact on your rates. Yeah. And so it would ultimately hurt truck companies who today just think I have X number of trucks without a driver. If we lowered the age, I could run those trucks. It ultimately would hurt their business. You know, it's interesting walking the halls of Congress and talking to senators or congressmen. When they see a flashy lobbyist come in with their slick talk, their eyes glaze over. When they see a truck driver or someone who's in it in the real world walk in, their ears are wide open. And so I think what we can learn from this is we just need to make sure that we're talking common sense. Our voice is heard, yeah. Those that are actually affected by this are being heard. Yeah. You know, I think that the trucking community would appreciate that you guys, so we'll set the record here. When it comes to wanting to lower wages and having 18 year olds with no experience jumping in the game per se, Nines Whiff doesn't want anything to do with that. Exactly. Correct. And I think that's fair, right? And another thing that's really big in trucking, before we get to our last question, is truck parking, right? So a lot of times, you know, I know again that, you know, a Nines Whiff, you know, you guys are the largest over the road carrier, but what are your thoughts about truck parking and, you know, they invest so much money into so many things, but then when it comes to truck parking, it's almost like you have to get a grant for it, right? What are your thoughts about that for your drivers? Yeah. Well, Dave knows kind of how that works and why over time that happens. Yeah. So really if you look back to some of the struggles that some of the states had financially, the first thing they often do is they say, well, what can we shut down? And so what they did is they started shutting down rest stops. And you notice that some of the rest stops started closing when things got really difficult. What the unintended consequence of that was, we already had a really difficult parking issue and it just got compounded, it got worse. And so as an industry, the American Trucking Associations, the Truckler Carriers Associations and us as a company have gone out and tried to educate Congress about how important this was. And we made a lot of strides during the pandemic because guess what? Everybody realized how important the supply chain was and specifically how important our truck drivers were and how critical it was to take care of them. And so there was a lot of commitments made during that time to help us solve our problems. Well, a couple of years later that has now subsided, at least the crisis has subsided and they're kind of moving along to that other things. And so what we've done is, you've got this recent infrastructure plan that was just passed by the federal government, the Inflation Reduction Act that had a lot of dollars associated with it. We've been up on Capitol Hill fighting for some of those dollars to invest back into our industry to help alleviate this. And believe me, it's not an easy issue because what do you do? Do you go out and build a bunch of parking lots? Well, you kind of need lighting. You kind of want it to be secure. You need bathrooms. And so we've gone about it and said, there's a couple of things that need to happen. One is we need to reopen the rest stops, for sure, okay? Get all the state, the infrastructure's already there. We just need to reopen them. Secondly, we need to look at new facilities. We need to look at beyond truck stops, what else can we do? There's a lot of government land that can be used but it even gets down to the local level. I mean, when you go into an industrial park and there's a big old warehouse with a little bitty parking lot and there's signs all around the building that say no truck parking. What are you expecting? What are you supposed to do? What are you supposed to do? And so one of the things I think we need to do is we need to address that from a local zoning standpoint. In other words, if you're gonna build a warehouse, you gotta have so much truck parking that goes along with that square footage. But that's a hard battle because what you're talking about is city by city, by county, by county, by state, by state. But so there's not a quick fix, but at the same time, it's up in the top three issues right now and we're battling hard. I think another area for us to focus on is just working with our customers. There's gonna be some customers that are very accommodating to our drivers. We have to take a 34 hour break on their property and there's others who don't allow truck parking. And it's like they want the delivery but they don't wanna accommodate our driver. So I think that's working hand in hand with our customers. And many of them want to be a shipper of choice but there's some that haven't taken the necessary steps to really support our drivers. And so that's another area that we can focus on. But again, this is where having a decentralized network where between all of our brands, we have 200 locations across the country. So when our drivers are coming into an area where we have location, we have plenty of space for them to stay overnight and to take their break. And then they'll have the great amenities that we've invested in. Well, that's good. And that's why I like to bring these questions up because I want the truck drivers in America to have a fair analysis of what Knights with cares about and doesn't care about. So it makes me happy that you guys care about truck parking for your truck drivers. Yeah, we would have more spaces than anybody for our own trucks. And we've actually found ways to extend that a little bit to third parties. And we have a business called Iron Maintenance in about 30 of our shops. We do basically wholesale oil changes, tires, because we already have the shop, we already have the labor and we're used to doing very, very efficient oil changes because we know that the value of time in the truckload space. So we have thousands of customers now that come to us that are third party carriers that come to us for a more affordable, less than retail oil change that's super fast. And in some cases, there's opportunities to give them a spot where they can park. And so, we can't totally accommodate the whole world just that. I'm gonna say, don't say that because I'm about to, hey guys, make sure you go here to get a wholesale. Don't just head over, but maybe start having a relationship. I'll tell you another thing, this isn't intended to be a sales pitch, but this might surprise people, but we have over 20,000 trucks that buy insurance through us. And we rolled this program out during the pandemic. And so for the last couple of years, when insurance prices have been crazy, it's been hard to get to, there's a way where if we feel like you're committed to safety, you can be part of an insurance program that we have. And so between Iron Insurance, we call it Iron Insurance, between Iron Insurance, between Iron Maintenance Program, between other carriers who come in and move our trailers in a power-only kind of way through our logistics business. We're finding ways to create win-win solutions with third-party carriers. And so, yeah, we don't have the real estate, we can't replace what the government should have as part of just zoning and development, but we are looking for ways to make it easier to come in and use our trailers, have access to some services at affordable prices, so that everybody wins together. So you'll see that continue to evolve and develop over time. If you pay close attention to our company and kind of what we're after, so. No, that's great, you know. And then, yeah, let's ask the elf in the room question why I'm even here, right? So, you know, I was thinking about this since we've had our tour yesterday, okay? And so, I hear this in the comments a lot. Why have a basketball court? Why have a place for their drivers to game if they're investing in self-driving trucks or technology or what have you? And so I thought about that last night, I go, as a business person, would I invest hundreds and millions of dollars into terminals for drivers if I'm thinking about making a culture without drivers? Because that doesn't make sense for business 101. So I just wanted to say that to begin with. And I thought that was something that I saw yesterday. And so, you know, I just wanna, I just wanted to put that out there. So, I will ask this question now. Making carriers have been investing heavily into self-driving technology. What is nice with relationship with Embark? Okay, so, you know, as Dave talked about, different technologies, whether it's hydrogen fuel cell or electric, you know, we look close. We look to understand. There's nobody who operates a fleet of our size, over 20,000 trucks. There's nobody who consistently buys as many trucks, you know, a few thousand, 4,000 sometimes trucks a year and that is so invested. Nobody has as many over the road full truckload drivers as we do. So these are all key pieces to our business. I would say the fact that we have learned how to recruit, train, employ and help to be successful truckload drivers is our core competitive advantage. That's what we do. So the fact that we have a relationship with a technology company, which is not our strength technology, one should not paint with a broad stroke that we're abandoning a very successful business plan that we're the industry leader of for some newfound pursuit. I would say that it is common that businesses have relationships that don't have identical objectives. So think about our relationship with our customers. You know, when we're negotiating with our customer, their objective is much different than what our objective is and we have to try and find a way to make it work for both of us. And they wanna buy us for as cheap as we can and give us to give them as much capacity and let them hold on to trailers for eternity. And we're on the other side trying to be profitable and trying to be productive and make it a good fit for our drivers. And so, in Bark, I would look at that in a similar fashion. If we're gonna sit here and say we're serious about safety and we're aware of companies that have developed technology that can look out 300 yards in front of a truck and can see every object and measure and identify whether it's a truck, a car, a bicycle, a motorcycle, whether it's on the side of the road or whether it's stopped in the middle of the road that can measure and evaluate what's on the side of those trucks and can see rates of change in front of them. Again, hundreds of yards in front and many seconds in front of what a human being could even process it. I don't know how we don't take interest in learning and understanding that technology. So our relationship with M Bark is, we've met with, I would say, virtually all of the autonomous. They would, of course, have great interest usually in us and wanting to work with us. M Bark was the only company that came in, listened to us, listened to concerns we had, just looking at their technology, not looking at their business model, but looking at their technology. And they listened to us. They came back and they talked about it and they addressed it. And we talked to them further about creating some kind of opportunity where we could put a subset of what they're after. They're after a level four where a driver doesn't have to be in the truck. That is not the technology that we're testing today. And that is not a technology that is out there for commercialized use. We're using components of that with our drivers that have, and that equipment's been put on our trucks so we can learn and understand what can happen. What, how can we continue to improve safety and where is this industry going to go? And so at this stage of the game, if we can find a way to nearly, entirely eliminate preventable accidents, which this technology can do that. And I'm not talking about take a driver out. I'm talking about there's technology today that may be very close to being commercialized that could eliminate preventable accidents and that can improve the quality of the driving job to have some additional assistance like I have in my personal vehicle. My personal Ford, it tells me when I'm bumping inside and out of the lines. And I'll just tell you, I'm a better driver because of whatever technology Ford has in my car. And my wife's a much better driver as a result of that technology. And that was not. She doesn't watch this. No, that's just because she drives more miles, you know, that's all that that means. I'm not putting that in the beginning of this. Insert clip in the mouth. And so I have the sweetest wife. She is so sweet. So we're determined. So if we have technology companies coming to us and wanting to learn and understand about the industry and we can see technology that has the potential to improve safety and improve the driver job, I don't know why we wouldn't entertain partnerships like what we're doing with Embark. To your point, would we put the focus of and the investment that we have in our drivers if we thought there was some silver bullet out there that would turn the fleet into robots overnight? No, we wouldn't do that. And we wouldn't make all those investments and do the business that we are. So I hope that people can see the seriousness we have to make investments in safety and improving the driver job. And so, you know, we're the only fleet that's been trusted to experiment with this. We have two drivers that we've hand selected that are phenomenal drivers. Both of these drivers are trainers as well. So they're very familiar with the job. They're very familiar with what it would be like with a trainee to have some additional technology helping them behind the wheel. And so these guys are not using autonomous. These guys are not taking a nap. In fact, if they take their hands off the steering wheel, it disengages. And so we're continuing to explore technology. That's what we're doing here. No, that's fair. No, I appreciate that. So my last question is an easy question, but it's one that I will leave you guys all with. All right, in a hypothetical world, if the mother trucker want to go work for night or swift, and he's a new truck driver, he's in your training program now, and he's thinking, this is the place I want to be my home. This is the place I want to work and truck for until the day I die. Will the mother trucker working for night or swift, how many years can you say that he will have an opportunity to do that? 10, 15, 20, 25, a lifetime. You could say what you feel about that, but I get that question a lot is, Alex, I'm thinking about working for night or swift, but you know. So, Alex, I'm 47 years old, just turned 47. Hey, I don't think my wife would let me work less than the 65. She just doesn't want to be around me that much. And so what's that? Almost 20 years, we're gonna be hiring and we're gonna need truck drivers for that entire period. I'm convinced of it. I would bet my career on it. I would say as long as he or she wants to be behind the wheel, that's how long they'll have a career at night and swift. Yeah, here's what I would say and there's probably some misperceptions out there and that's what we do, we try to clear up misperceptions is that some of these technologies that we're looking at whether it be zero emissions technologies or this driving technology, there's limitations, right? It doesn't do everything, it can't do everything and it'll be decades before it can do and not even in every single case. And so what you're seeing is you're gonna see some a splash here and a splash there but the fact of the matter is for decades to come, the driver is still going to be in control of the truck. Now, they may have to do less. You may not have to sit there and constantly keep the truck in the center of the lane. There may be technology to allow you to stay in the center and be able to worry about other things. The job will slowly change but the driver's gonna stay in the truck. I mean, I think when you look at the technology, it has solved the easiest part of the job. When you're on a clear highway in great weather without traffic, right? Now, I think our drivers know that that is not the case in many situations, right? And that's when we need human intervention. That's when we need experience on the road to know how to navigate an accident, know how to navigate weather, right? You know how to navigate law enforcement in certain situations. And you just can't program around that. And so that's why we like the technology to understand how to improve the experience for our drivers but I think of trains. We still have someone operating trains. That is on a track with a schedule but yet you still have not automated that process. We think about airplanes. Man, there's more technology in airplanes than our trucks today. I'm not getting on a plane without a pilot, right? So I think that's the world we're headed down. It's just gonna be such a challenge to try to program around every situation a driver can encounter. Yeah, definitely. And I heard what you said earlier. You said you guys try to always keep it a healthy environment so that you never have to lower the pay. And so one thing that drivers are concerned is as the technology gets better and the truck driver does less, they're feared that the pay will go down. And I remember you telling me earlier in this interview that you guys always try to, if anything, keep the pay the same or exponentially increase it as much as you can. So I mean, you're gonna stick by that, right? Yeah, our goal is to make sure our drivers have a great paycheck, right? And we always try to keep compensation fair. Right, never gonna be the highest. We're certainly not gonna be the lowest. We're gonna be in that top echelon but our goal is to constantly continue to give increases to our drivers depending on where we're at in the market. Our goal is to never bring pay down. And with a predictable quality of life and some consistency, so we build density. Bottom line is for individuals that are willing to go and get a CDL to get experience and to have a clean driving record, that is one of the greatest things an individual can do to assure that they will always be able to provide for themselves and for their families. And there are not enough people that are willing to sometimes get off the couch or to make the sacrifices to get a CDL to pay the price of training with a trainer that might not, you know, you might be Randy Travis and they may be Snoop Dogg and that may not be a good experience but to get through with a trainer, whatever that experience may be and then to take safety as seriously as it should be taken certainly as we tried to take it. And there will be tools, we're convinced there will be tools that will come down the line that will enable and empower drivers that want to do that. They shouldn't feel threatened by that. No one should feel threatened to go that route, that pursuit and to have such a worthy career as being a professional driver with a CDL and a clean driving record. So we take so much joy out of helping to facilitate and see that happen. And that's where we're gonna continue to be focused. I love that, you know, yeah, definitely. I think we're good as at the end of all this is there anything that you would like to leave the viewers with that anything else that you wanna bring up at all, you know, I think we're good, but yeah. Hey, I hope that you have been able to see and you're welcome to, you know, you'll film your own videos. You'll keep filming videos every day and we love what you do for the industry. You've had a chance to come and see us and experience this firsthand. And we'd love to have a relationship and I'm gonna pay closer attention to the comments. Last night I read a bunch of comments about my basketball skills and the fact of why would they even have that if they're not gonna have drivers? I read some of those comments and I just couldn't believe that. So I hope that you'll feel comfortable to talk about what you've seen and how you've felt with us for our drivers that follow you which I know there are many because we ran into several who, they didn't recognize me, some didn't recognize Adam, but they all recognize you. And I love that. Our drivers, I just want you to know we so appreciate you and I'd be crushed if you've heard us talk and you thought, I don't know what company they're talking about because that's not how it feels. I mean, we work really hard. We run this thing decentralized. That's not the easiest way to do it from a corporate perspective but it's the right way to do it if you're gonna connect with individuals. And we're not gonna stop trying to get it right. And so to our drivers, I'm grateful for you to drivers who used to be with us but have left. I hope you're doing well and if they're not treating you as good as they should be, boy, our arms are open to you and to the rest of you out there working hard, we have so much respect for you. And to people who are out there that compete with us, we respect you. There is so much more we have in common than that makes us different. And so we're all in this together. If there's something we can do in our leadership position, we wanna try and help advance it. Oh yeah, and you know, I let all my listeners know and I'm always really honest about this. They didn't push me, pressure me, ask me anything. So, you know, I didn't feel that coming here. You know, I didn't feel a nudge to don't talk about this. Alex, don't talk about that. Yeah, that was off limits. Yeah. You know, you guys let me make up some questions. Just can we have a rematch at some point? I tell you, right? We'll definitely do that. Let's have a rematch. We'll find some and we'll do some for charity or do something like that. But that's really what the channel is about because a lot of people that watch the show work for your company. So it's not like the show is about the people versus mega carriers and big companies. There's a lot of, actually a lot of people that look into videos how to do things are usually new. And so they're looking for more information. So I would not be shocked if a lot of my community are night and swift drivers first getting in and they're thinking, you know, I'll leave people with this, you know, I'm not a recruiter. I'm not telling you to ever go anywhere, but you know, there's nothing wrong with a place giving you an opportunity. And if sometimes your best place is the place that will give you the best opportunity and training and you should be proud of that, you know? And so that's why I say I'm not a recruiter because hey, if you live in Phoenix and you're brand new to the game and you can get some home time and park a truck right next to your house. Hey, Night Swift might be the right place for you, right? So it's just one of those things. It's just what you're looking for and what kind of, you know, culture. But I do want to state that, you know, Night Swift opened their doors to me and just let me film. So, you know, I appreciate you guys for your time. Thanks for making the flight out. I appreciate it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. Oh, thank you. Thank you. No, we're good. I think we're good, right? Yeah, yeah.