trcisrael_mixdown

The hosts discuss various topics including the challenges of leasing through a company, personal experiences with truck breakdowns, and the state of the freight industry. They mention low rejection rates and declining spot load rates, which could impact truckers' finances. They also talk about the importance of saving money and adjusting to unexpected expenses. Overall, they recognize the stability of their dedicated accounts and discuss their strategies for managing their finances. Hey, here we go, another day, another dollar here on Truckin' on a Recap. I am your host, Rich, I'm here with Jim and Jim Rohn and Timmy is out of commission, he's home with a bad sinus infection baby, hopefully he's got somebody up there taking care of him, I know how they can suck. Hey, we've got a good show here for you today, today we're going to discuss why not to lease purchase through a company, that could be nothing but a headache, and yep, you got it, we're going to be talking about a little bit of what's going on in Israel, we're going to give our opinion on that, a little bit of history on Israel and Umat, why are they doing what they're doing over there. Hey, sit back, relax, grab the beverage of your choice, and let's get this baby started, here we go. I beg forgiveness in advance for gastric distress caused by Heineken. All right, we're good. All right. All right. Okay, here we are, another day, another dollar here on the recap. No Tim here today. He's got the ick. He's got the ick, he's got something going on. I don't know. He's got a massive sinus infection. They are painful. It's a never ending headache in the front of your face. Right. I talked to him today, Saturday, talked to him Thursday. He did not sound good. This has been going on for a couple of weeks now, I guess. He's not doing too well. How are you doing? What's up with you? What's new? What's cooking? Fair to middling. I work until they say I shouldn't work anymore. Yeah. You know, last week was weird. I could not pin down what day it was. Really? I swear to Jesus. The week was going on, I'm like, Thursday, Tuesday. I come home, pass out on my couch, eat something terrible and go to bed. Yeah. I'm hoping for a better next week or at least a more clarity of mind. You had a rough week. Your truck broke down. Yeah. Correct? Yeah. It's the kind of breakdown that you really don't expect from a new truck. No. You know what I mean? It's like they made everything out of the worst grade steel ever. Basically, the yoke and the U-joint on my driveshaft just blew apart. I got out of the truck and the driveshaft's lying on the ground. Now, my truck has 60,000 miles on it. It's a Peterbilt. It's supposed to be a better quality truck. I would expect that from an international. Yeah. I talked to Albert later in the day. He had mentioned what happened. I said, well, he's probably home now. Oh, yeah. He's home. He got pissed off enough. It was funny. My wife got a little aggravated with work. I said, are you going to pull a gym? She said, I got to go to work. Jim went home when the tow truck arrived. That was basically for the safety of the motoring public. Yeah. Right. Right. Jim was better off riding his couch that day than he was being out on the road because he was a little pissed off. Yeah. Well, you know, I had some issues, too, last week. I took my tractor in for B service and had an engine light on forever. And I knew what it was. It was the brake retarder sensor, something going on with that, and a wiring harness for that. And they took it in. I guess they didn't have the part. They had it all week. They gave me a day cab to run for the week. So I took it in Monday. Tuesday, I waited for it. They said it was going to be done. It was not done. So that's when they gave me the day cab. And what happened was I went down to Baltimore, and the day cab breaks down. Where do I break down? Right in the middle of Baltimore, I-95, no shoulder on the road. Great place. That was not fun. And, you know, that was the freight liner. And when something goes wrong, they just shut down, and that's it. You can't move. It sucked. It was horrible. Every time a car or truck drove by me, I thought I was going to get freaking whacked. It was horrible. Just fold in that mirror and hope for the best. I didn't even fold it in because I wanted to see if something was coming to freaking whack me. All right. You wanted a preview to your own demise. Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty stressful. But they came and hooked up to me and towed me out of there. Two wreckers because I was loaded. So I'd hate to see that bill for J.B. Hunt. So what did they do? You pulled your tractor out from under and had the other guy hook up to the trailer? Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. It was quite the event, let me tell you. And the ride home was all right. So both of us want to forget last week. Yeah. It was horrible. I even took a PTO day because I was just so aggravated and pissed off. I said, I'm not coming in. You pulled a gin. I did. I pulled a gin. Yeah. So, you know. And how's the freight down there? You pretty busy? Not busy? What's going on there? I think I mentioned this on the last podcast. This is a continuing trend. We're busy, but we're busy due to the fact that we've lost drivers. We've made the account smaller. Right. So I think if we were still running the contingent of drivers that we usually have at our best, we would be screwed as far as freight goes. But I think we're down to like, I'm guesstimating here, 85 drivers. I'd say we're maybe 35 drivers off. Really? Of what we usually have at our top. And as guys are leaving, we're just not replacing them. Now, is that by choice? I think that's a management decision. I think that management for our company went to a dedicated company. And the company we're dedicated to, rather, and said, listen, the freight's not there. And that company said the same thing because they have demands that are structured into our contract. Right. They want us to have X amount of drivers on. Where did he go? Right. Got you. And so they made adjustments according to the economy. It's also a way to keep morale up because you don't see guys getting their walking papers. Right. And you know from experience how turnover is on that account. Yep. Somebody gets pissy and takes a walk, and they're just like, we're not going to replace that guy. Right. Now, are you still getting the miles that you were getting? Yeah. The mileage is pretty good. But bear in mind, I've been there since Christ was a small child. Yeah. So, you know, you have guys like me and other drivers. I've been with the company, it's going to be 18 years. You have another driver that's been with the company for 24. You know, these are the guys that are your regulars. These are the guys that are a proven commodity. Right. And we're going to get our miles. Right. Right. You know, but we've kind of paid our dues in that respect. It makes you wonder, though, the new guys coming in, not getting the miles, how pissed off they're going to be and take that little walk through the gate out the door. I think a lot of guys are coming in, though, without the expectations that I have. My expectation is 500 miles. Right. And borough pay or bridge pay. Right. A lot of guys don't want to work that hard. No, they don't. A lot of guys look at a 350-mile day, and that's great. And, hey, man, I'm happy for that because the more guys that do that, the more room there is for me to pull 500. Right. Exactly. I mean, I even cut back a tiny bit. I got pretty much a steady run down to Columbia, Maryland that I do every day. But if something else comes up, I'll be, excuse me, more than happy to do it, you know. Right. But I do about 450, 500 a day. And, you know, that's good enough for me as far as money goes and the hours worked. And I'm home every day pretty much. And that's the key. You can find that work-life balance. Right. And I also run with the—ever I have this in my—I have this in my mind constantly. There's going to be days when you eat a shit sandwich. Yeah. It is. It is what it is. It is. It is. Just like last week, you know, with both of us breaking down and biting a bullet. It's like I lost some money last week by doing what I did, but not no fault of mine. Or even days when our contracted company doesn't come through with enough freight, you know, I have to take the word of the people in the office and say, hey, man, today sucks. We're going to take care of you tomorrow. Right. And overall, and I'm going back a decade here, they have. Yeah. So there's something to build on there. Yep. Always something going wrong with the company or with your— Equipment. Equipment, something that you have to adjust to. And, you know, a lot of times that's why I say don't spend all the money you make in one shot. Bank some for a rainy day because you never know what's going to happen. You know, we talk about freight and, you know, the volume of freight. Craig Fuller, CEO of Freightways, he goes on to say tender rejection rates, they're at an all-time low. What an all-time low means, measure supply and demand balance. High rejection rates means firms have discretion on what they accept. Low rejection rates mean few loads will accept anything they can get. He says this is the worst since 2008 according to Craig Fuller of Freightways. Trucking spot load rates are crashing right as operating expenses are rising. Weaknesses coming from rapid expansion in capacity from 2021. Volumes do remain stable. According to the Trucking Channel, this downturn in the industry is going to flow into 2024. Plenty of good news there for everyone. Everyone, yeah. Where does that leave us? You know what I mean? Where does that, how does that determine, not to really determine, but how does that, where does that take us as far as financially? Where do we think about that? I think it depends on who we're running for. I mean, especially with Christmas coming up, holidays coming up, how do we spend our money? Where does it go? You know, are we living as large as we did before? Definitely not. We also are lucky enough to run, I'm talking about you and I exclusively. We run for two dedicated accounts that are pretty solid. And why I say that is, you know, something goes wrong in your house, you're running to the local big box hardware store. Right. It is what it is. Appliances, everything, it's right there. For large purchases, small purchases, et cetera. If you need groceries, you're going to try to get your best deal. Where are you going to go? A club of a certain sort, a big box club. There's a certainty in those two business models that other people don't have. Right. We're lucky in that respect, I believe. We are. We are. You know, for who I drive for, they have various commodities, appliances, groceries, home goods, things like that. It's not just one specific thing that they sell. And it makes us pretty plentiful when it comes to freight and keeping busy running a road. Right. You got some guys out there that pull for people, pull for companies that sell one thing and one thing only, and they struggle. They struggle big time. Well, I'm going to throw out there a specific business model. Michael's. Yeah. Okay. So what do you have there? You have basically hobby, crafting. Crafting, yeah. Right. You know, if the ends are barely meeting, are you going to do that? Are you going to go out there? Are you going to go to Michael's or are you going to buy another loaf of bread? Right. You're going to buy something for your house, you know, and, hey, the screen door is about to fall off. You know, put that poster board down. We need something more substantial. Yep. We have been, right now is our busy, we are extremely busy right now. This is my weekend off because I worked last weekend. But right now, today, we have Saturday, we have 20 loads going out. Usually on a Saturday, we have maybe eight. Up until Christmas, we'll be rocking and rolling. We were already warned. Yeah. You know. But come around the new year, I think any and all freight drops off after the holidays. Sure. There's the doldrums there throughout January and into February. February, right up to March, middle of March, a lot of times. That's a rough gimmick right there. No matter who you run for, there's always going to be that, you know, and people aren't working on their homes during the winter for the most part. Yeah. You know, all the major feasting has been done for Thanksgiving and Christmas for the most part. And, you know. Them holidays are rocking on us pretty quick, man. Pretty quick. Santa Claus is coming to town. He certainly is. Baby, you hate Christmas, don't you? I'll fix him. Get off my roof. I just had that replaced. Yeah. So where does the industry stand of now? There's four issues that pretty much determine what's going on right now. Demand. That plummeted. It shifted from goods to services. Normally, we would see demand pop up in the beginning and the end of the years of the year. Not at all in the past two years. Fourth quarter peak into 2024 is projected to be nonexistent. So we don't see no influx in freight coming into 2024. Everybody's watching their wallets because everything is so much more expensive. Right. Everything is so much more expensive. And, by the way, we're going to be moving on to world events, you know, fairly shortly here in the program. But that's going to impact fuel. Yeah. That's going to impact fuel prices, especially if we move aggressively against certain actors in the Middle East. We're going to get into that shortly. Yeah. Supply. From 2020 to 23, the U.S. Department of Transportation has recorded a 33% uptick in truck registration. This doesn't mean that the number of drivers increases. I touched on this a few shows back. It just means that the truck number increased, co-drivers leaving companies to chase the dollar by buying their own trucks. I've researched this quite a bit, and I've even said this before. This is all coming from this Craig Fuller from Driveways here. And I said the same thing. You got guys that are leaving companies, buying their trucks, going out there, and they're not making no money. So they're selling their truck to somebody else, and they're going back to the company that they've started with. And this is where I say, too, they keep saying there's a driver shortage. The turnover rate is high. I don't think the turnover rate is high. I think it's just like a round-robin type of deal. That's what's going on with it. Every driver that I talk to who's a company driver believes that the grass is greener on the operator side. Right. Now, the last trainee that I had went out there and bought not one but two trucks. And he was doing great. Had a straight truck, and he had a tractor. And so he was doing all right. He had his father-in-law driving one, and he was driving the other. Then he lost his gimmick. He lost his account. Yep. Instead of going to the freight boards, there was nothing available on the freight boards. So he came tiptoeing back to where we're at. You ever see Scooby-Doo when they're tiptoeing and you have a little zollophone thing? That's what I envision is him coming up to the orientation like that. I think a lot of the problem is, too, is that you have guys out there. They're looking for the high-end loads, which most are, and you can't blame them. And they want that constantly. Or you have the driver, which I think that a lot of times is probably more accurate. You have the driver that just wants to run a certain lane, 95 corridor, up and down. And he wants to be home every weekend, and it doesn't work like that when you own your own truck. You're not going to make it by doing that. You have to chase the money. Yeah, you have to chase the dollar. It doesn't work like that. I knew a guy, you may have known him, too. He worked for us at the account we were on. Actually, he took over my old sleeper. And he went and he also bought three trucks. He bought two tractors and a box truck. And he just wanted to run up and down 95. He wanted to be home in Connecticut every weekend to be with his wife and his new daughter. And it doesn't work like that when you own your own trucks. You have to run the road, man. And if you don't, you're not going to make that dollar. You also mentioned something interesting there. He didn't go for one. He went for three. Right off the bat. How many of these guys are walking out of a secure situation and over-leveraging themselves? Right. And now it's like, oh, God, what am I going to do? Yeah. Right off the bat, they're doing that. And at least get your feet wet and see what the hell's going on with the lanes that you want to run before you go purchasing three trucks. Right. You know? And I think a lot of the big talk that I hear is just that, big talk. That's what it is. I'm thinking of one particular guy. He's like, I can make this much money as an over-honor operator. I can do this. I can do that. Why don't you? Why don't you then? Go. Go do it. But there's no movement there. Right. I think people do realize that there's a certain safety in being a company driver. Hey, man, money's always alluring. But money usually involves a risk. And it definitely involves work. Always involves risk and work. I'm a firm believer you have to take risks to make any headway in life. I'm a firm believer in that. I mean, I thought about it a while back about getting my own tractor. But, you know, when I sat down and thought about it, you had mentioned this. Do I just really want that shiny tractor, or do I want to make money? Right. What do I want? Do I want that stability? You know, that's it. No, I don't want the shiny tractor. I want the tractor that gets me from A to B and is going to make me money. Cost, driver pay, fuel, equipment, labor, maintenance, insurance. It has all gone up, excluding pay. Yeah. I'm grateful for where I'm at. I mean, I'm making top dollar. Thank God. If I wasn't making top dollar, I'd be hurting. I'd be hurting. And I have zero complaints myself. I think, like I said, I hear a lot of talk. Because you do. Truckers talk. Look, we're two truckers. What are we doing? We're talking. But when I hear truckers talk, I don't hear a lot of gratitude. You don't. What I hear on my account, where I am at, there's an overwhelming sense of gratitude where I'm at. That means you've got a decent group of guys who recognize where their bread is buttered. And it's not just the fact of the money that we make. It's the fact that our manager, he makes sure that we make money. He makes sure if we are slow and we don't have enough loads going out on that account, from that dedicated account, he will find us work. He makes sure of that. He makes sure that we make a minimum amount of money. He knows what we need to make. And everybody is very grateful for the amount of work he puts into it. And he really does. And that right there is a security blanket you're not going to have with that big, shiny tractor outside your house. That's correct. And we were all worried. Man, this guy's moving up the ladder. He's going to all these training seminars and stuff. He's going to be bailing. And when we talk to him, he's not going anywhere. Good. We're on a mission to get the whole account. And that's what we want. We want this other company to fuck out of there. Right. Yeah. And the only thing that's going to do that is performance. If you're able to present it to the company you're contracted to, look at our performance here. Yeah. They're going to give them more responsibility because, you know, they want their freight moved in a competent fashion. Right. There you go. Yeah. Now, we have a guy who I have talked about on this show plenty of times. I hate to talk about him in this aspect, but he's just a total fuck-up, plain and simple. And he just keeps screwing up big time. Oh, he's on your account too? Oh, yeah. This is just like every single week it's something. Every day it is something. Go. Every day it's something. And it's almost to the point where everybody else on the account is going to say something to get rid of this guy because we don't want to lose the account. We don't want to look like assholes to the company we're pulling for. He had been identified as the weak link. Oh, this is not for him. He went out. He screwed up a week before last. It was a Thursday or Friday, ripped the barn door off a trailer. So he had to go out with a trainer. Prior to that, he went out with a trainer. And that trainer had said, and he put it in the documents, that this guy is not safe. He's not safe to be out on the road. Lo and behold, they put him out anyway. But you can't blame our managers for that because the firing does not come from the managers. It comes from corporate. Corporate's in a position where they want to retain as much as possible. Right. The money they've already put into the driver. But this is at the point now where it's a safety issue now because now we went out with another trainer and the trainer specifically said, this occupation is not for this man. It's not for him. When you've got to pull over three times his shit in 150 miles, it's not good. When you have to do 13 pull-ups to put your trailer in a door that you have more than enough room to do and it takes you 45 minutes to do it, that is not good. No. You can't keep that door closed when you're on a three-hour trip. You got issues. This occupation is not for you. It's time to move on. Right. Preferably someplace with a bathroom ever present. Oh, it's bad. It's bad. So hopefully they do something. I don't know. I don't know. But we'll see. Since mid-2022, rates have gone down but are holding stable. They're holding stable. Nothing else is. Expenses aren't holding stable. They're not. That's not necessarily good news if rates are holding stable and nothing else is. Right. You know, we're told, oh, we're the highest paid account in the company. Okay, that's fine and dandy. But prices keep going up. Right. I keep saying, you know, I don't care how much money I'm making right now, it's equivalent to what I made five years ago with inflation and the cost of it. I'm just kind of over that being thrown in my face. You know, I'm sick of hearing that. Well, what you just said is a great thing to throw back into their face, though, about inflation. I mentioned this on the last podcast because it blows my mind that this is true, but inflation indicators do not take into account the two things that go up the fastest, food and fuel. Right. So when you get a percentage of inflation, they're not taking those factors into account, and those are the things that are fucking people on a weekly basis, food and fuel. Yeah. Man, excuse me. But you really can't blame a company for not bumping their rate up sometimes. I mean, they're in the same predicament that we are in. I mean, I'm putting over $450, $500 a day in fuel in my tractor. Multiply that, I think we have over 2,500 tractors within the company, if not more. Oh, the numbers are mind-boggling. Yeah. Multiply that by 2,500, how much money on fuel that they're spending. I mean, for granted, you know, I'm sure they're not paying that top dollar as an owner-operator. Is that the pump? I'm sure they're getting a break. Yeah, there are breaks negotiated into it. That's why we can only go to certain places. Of course they are. But at the same time, it's still a lot of freaking money. Whether you get $100 off of that fill-up or not, it's still a lot of freaking money. It's a lot of money, man. Well, we've talked about it in the past. The company takes on all the risk. Sure. You know what I mean? And you're right. It does suck getting it thrown up in your face, you know, about we're paying you this, you're the top rated, you're making the top earner, you're in the top earner bracket, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They're not wrong. But there's also the fact of, you know, there's certain things you don't preach to certain people. Right. You know what I mean? And just because it's right doesn't mean you say it at that time. Have some tact. So I can see where you'd get sick of hearing that, no matter how true it is. Yeah. It's just mind-boggling the amount of money that is in this industry. It really is. It really is. And, you know, as we talk about this, there's an assault on trucks in California, okay? According to Fox Business, California bans the sale of diesel trucks by 2036. That starts next year. Next year they're going to start diminishing the amount of diesel trucks that are going to be allowed in California. The diesel truck sales or diesel trucks allowed over the border period? Allowed period. Yeah. Good luck with that. I give that about 10 days before they start seeing diminishing stock on their shelves. All right. You know what? You send the ugliest FLD in here blowing black smoke. We need shit on the shelves. Yeah. I mean, it's an issue, but why is an issue? For one, the cost of electric vehicles are going to be through the roof. Think about that. The cost of a basic international sleeper truck is about, what, 125,000? Depending on how it's specced out. Right. It's about 125 grand, something like that. I'm not sure on the cost of these EV tractors, but I do know the batteries just alone are over $70,000. That's insane. That's insane. And the batteries aren't going to last forever. How long are they going to last? I tried researching that. There's no data on that. It's all too new. Right. And that's an issue. Infrastructure. We're not ready for this. Not enough. Not at all. There's not enough charting stations to sustain all of that, especially in California. California's always been the tip of the spear for feel-good, hippy-dippy, you know, bullshit legislation that goes. It doesn't necessarily go the way of the Dodo, but they have to walk back a lot of stuff because realistically, it's not its own entity. California's not its own entity. No. If it wants to be its own manufacturing force where, you know, you got people down in L.A. that need a certain item, well, where do you manufacture that item? Bakersfield. Okay, send an electric truck up there. That's okay. But not everything's manufactured in Bakersfield, right, or San Diego, or San Francisco, or any of those. You could have all the decent wine you want, but still a lot of their product comes from outside of California, and guess what, folks? Most of the rest of the country are realists. Yep. They're going to have major issues out there with a lot of this stuff. Testing and data, yeah, this is not complete yet, like I just said. So how can they really go to reduce emissions without the safety and data, or the statistics, the data that they're supposed to have? A few years ago, maybe two or three years ago, up to now, they're still talking about across the board, across the nation, about getting rid of DEF because it's not really doing what it was supposed to do. God, I hope they do. Considering what I go through every day to put DEF in my truck, I put the tank on the wrong friggin' side. The driving range of these things, there's not enough electric stations throughout the country, in California in general, to produce the amount of electric charging stations to charge these vehicles. There's just not enough. Out in Illinois, there's a company out there that had 36 tractors. He wanted to put his own charging station in at his facility. Somewhere out there in Illinois. I forget what town. Joplin or something like that. Missouri. Missouri. Missouri it was. But they told him, no, because you're going to need, you're going to use more electricity than what Chicago uses to charge your tractors. Here's another question. California's got all these great ideas about electric vehicles only, blah, blah, blah. Do they have a plan for disposal of industrial batteries? That's another issue there. Is that another environmental quagmire that's waiting to rear its ugly head? Right. That's another question there, too. The weight of these things is a huge factor. They'd have to change the rules for shipping, but that's just if they're not going to. Yeah. No. They come right out and said that the payload will decrease, so that will affect revenue. That's great. That'll affect the revenue not only for the driver, but also for the company. My biggest question is here in the Northeast, in the North in general, in the wintertime, how are these batteries going to stay charged? When it gets cold, they're not going to stay charged. Well, when you have a guy living in the truck. Let's assume in the wintertime that you have one of those S-bar heaters. Well, you can't because S-bar runs off the diesel. Mine does. I have an S-bar. So what would you have to do? You'd have to go with an electric heater system. Right. That's going to be a constant draw on the battery, even though the truck is down. If you're stopping for a break even, let's say that you have to pull over because you're tired. This happens. It happens. I remember we talked about your guy who's constantly pulling over. Listen, it does happen to the best of us. I have to close my eyes for a minute. Right. We all do. You pull over to the side of the road on a cold day in your electric vehicle, but you're still going to have electricity running to keep that truck in a safe zone temperature-wise. You're going to be drawing on the batteries. How much is something stupid like that going to affect your range? Right. Something that basic. It's going to affect you. It's going to affect everything. The amount of money you make, everything. It's going to affect how many hours you can run, how far you can run. Oh, yeah. Everything. Everything. How much you can load onto the truck. The governor of this fool's paradise wants to be our next president. Yeah. Yay. Yeah. And he just come back from China. He was over in China shaking hands with that freaking moron over there. What did he do? Buy a house over there? Get residency? What the hell is he doing over there? He's not the president. He's not an international politician. He's a freaking governor of probably one of the worst states in the nation, if not the worst state in the nation. Sorry to say, Courtney, that's my daughter. She lives out there and loves it. But, you know, here it is here. They're Juliet, Illinois. That is, it was 30 tractors that this guy wanted to put charging stations in for, and they told him no. It would use as much electricity with that charging station as the entire city. That's crazy. That's crazy. And you know what's funny, too? They talked about not using all these fossil fuels. You have to burn coal to generate electricity. Yeah. You have to burn coal to produce some of the materials for these batteries. There's nothing clean about these. There's not. Not from the material that's mined for the batteries, not for the battery disposal. No, not for how the electricity is produced to recharge those batteries. None of it's clean. And yet, for some reason, that's why I call it feel good. It's electric. Boogie, boogie, boogie. You know what I mean? Hey, we love the song. We love the song. Don't get us wrong. But it's also, it's not real. It's just not real. This just isn't, it's not conducive to what's got to be done to reduce all of this shit. These emissions, you got to face facts. We live in a society where no matter what you do or how you look at things, you're going to burn emissions. Yeah. Always going to be there from now until the end of time. You know, always. And how's this going to affect lease purchase programs for companies? You know, why shouldn't you sign a lease purchase program? Just excluding the fact that, you know, that some of these companies may go to electric vehicles. Why do the companies have these lease purchase programs? My opinion is it's a way to suck a driver in and keep them. Oh, yeah. And we've actually discussed this before because I was under the impression that all lease purchase programs are basically a scam. And you're like, okay, there's some that are better than others because you've done the research. I just go by what I hear. But for a lot of them, you're right. It's a retention. That's all it is. It's a retention. Stick around, son. Yeah. Yep. There are some companies that if you decide that it is not for you within the first six months, they will let you out of your contract. But most companies will not do that. If you have the money for a down payment, why should you put yourself in a position like that? If you have the money for a down payment to purchase your own tractor to get your own authority, why would you do that? Really quick, going back to the whole environmental impact of electronic or electric vehicles, rather. Diesel has come such a long way in how much cleaner it is. Even going back to, let's say, the 80s or 82, 81, you would see trucks out there rolling coal. You know what I mean? You'd step on that accelerator, it'd be a jet of black smoke coming out of the stacks. You go into New York City, you look at the buses that were all around town, they'd come away from the curb, they'd leave a cloud of black smoke. So much improvement has happened. I'd like to see, and I'm sure these figures are out there, the emissions difference between a 1985 diesel and a 2023 diesel. Oh, it's got to be drastic. Drastic difference. Meanwhile, we're wringing our hands and pulling our hair over this, and the air in China is brown. Yeah, yeah. But we're the problem. We're the problem. We're the issue. We're spearheading the clean energy. Yeah, right. You're just bringing the planet, poopsie. You know, a lot of guys think, too, when they do these lease purchase programs, too, they have this sense of ownership. But in reality, you really don't. That's an illusion. You really don't have the flexibility. You have to look at it this way. You're still having that payment. You still have to run to make that money to make that payment. And a lot of these payments are anywhere from $900 to some $2,300 a week, a week, not a month, a week. So let's split the difference. Let's go with $1,400 a week. That's probably the average of what somebody's paying now for a lease purchase. You have to run. You have to run 70 hours a week at least. You have to. And if you don't, and if you just imagine if you don't get a load that doesn't pay enough for that day or two days, then what do you do? Imagine you have the flu. Yeah, you get sick or you got to get home for an emergency. Yeah. Now you're fucked. To me, that would be the nightmare. Hey, what are you doing today, driver? I'm parked next to a Walmart because I can't travel 30 feet without having to find a bathroom. Right. I'm not going to be moving for the next two days or so. Yep. Could you imagine the fear? Especially if you're just starting out. When you're starting out, you don't have things in reserve. You don't have money in the bank yet. So bad luck happens to everybody. Believe me. I know. I've been chased by a perpetual cloud for the past 20 years. And that's just it, too. When I was doing the research for myself, when I was thinking about it, in order for me to run for a full year to make money and not be so nervous about breaking down or emergency coming up, I would have to have at least 50 grand in the bank backed up. Yeah. That's the cover. Breakdowns. Tires. Maintenance costs. Fuel. Emergencies, if you have to take a week off. When you think about it, too, you're not getting vacation time. You're not getting a 401k. You're not getting any of that. That's why I don't understand why guys do this. I don't get it. Freedom, man. Freedom. It's not freedom. Come on. It's not freedom. You do a lease purchase, you're still under the thumb. You're still going to have the radar. You're still going to have all the safety shit on your tractor. Yeah, because you have to conform to the standards of that company because it's not your truck. It's not your truck yet. And at the end of your lease, if you make it that far, you still got to have a payoff. You're still going to have a payoff. None of this just makes no sense to me whatsoever. And as far as that, just really quick to touch on that sense of ownership that you're talking about and that sense of freedom that some guys seem to get out of this. Listen, my pickup's parked outside. I've had it for two and a half years. My personal vehicle. That's not my truck. No. That's not my truck until it's paid off. Right. I can't forget that, and that's a pickup truck. Right. The thing that would provide for my home and any other costs that I might have, that would be even more on my mind. I don't understand how some of these loose-purchase guys just don't have ulcers. They're just wringing their hands worrying about the next time they get sick. Right. You know? Right. It's just like a mortgage. This might be my house theoretically, but it's not my house. The bank owns it. And yet I still got to keep the upkeep and maintain it in case I go to sell it, I get the money back. Exactly. You know? And it's the same thing with these tractors, cars, whatever. This is something I just don't—I wouldn't recommend to anybody. Right. I really wouldn't, especially now with the way the economy is and inflation and all of that bullshit. There's definitely better times to look into it than now. But it's like you said earlier, you're not going to make any profit if you don't put out some risk. But some risk is just unwise. Right. Unwarranted. I mean, unwelcome. If you have the revenue in the bank that you have something to fall back on if something goes wrong, then I would say maybe I would think about it and possibly pursue it. But if you don't have that backing, definitely not, because you're just going to put yourself in a bigger pickle, bigger hole. And if you think you're going to get yourself out of a hole by doing these lease purchase programs, it's not going to happen. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why Trucking on the Recap advises you to get a rich wife. Rich wife. Very wealthy. Wealthy. Wealthy. At least knowledgeable anyway. At least knowledgeable. Hey, let's take a five, and we're going to catch a word with our sponsors. Do you have anything else before we take a break? We will head in to the next segment. No, I'm good. All right, we're good. We're going to take a five, and we'll be right back. Hey, do you get frustrated with your weather forecast? Do you get aggravated with your meteorologist? I don't, because the only place I go to is Blame It on the Rain Facebook page. This episode is sponsored by Blame It on the Rain. Blame It on the Rain was created by Anthony Favada in 2015. Anthony studied meteorology in undergrad school. His passion for the weather and his concern for the people he serves definitely shows in the way he gives his forecast. There's no hype, no bullshit. Anthony just tells it like he sees it. Blame It on the Rain is a Facebook weather page that gives the most reliable and accurate weather forecast. I use Blame It on the Rain every day before I head out on the road. As a truck driver, I depend on Blame It on the Rain to let me know what kind of shit I'm heading into. Blame It on the Rain saved my ass more than once. Blame It on the Rain will help you plan your trips, your daily activities, outdoor events, especially how to dress for that football game. Blame It on the Rain is the place to go to for the most accurate and reliable weather forecast. Go to Blame It on the Rain Facebook page and hit that like button to get your weather forecast regularly. I use it every single day. I depend on it. All right, we're back. We're back. We drained the main vein. We got a little hydrated. We're not dehydrated. Now we're going to get into the hot topic that is really burning our ass here, what's going on in Israel, the Middle East over there. A little history here on Hamas, the birthplace of the Jewish people, that kind of stuff. So here's a little history. This is all coming from the Israel Diplomatic Network. The birthplace of the Jewish people is the land of Israel. A significant part of the nation's long history was inactive, of which the first 1,000 years are recorded in the Bible. There, its culture, religious, and national identity was formed. And there, its physical presence has been maintained through the centuries, even after the majority was forced into exile. During the many years of dispersion, the Jewish people never served nor forgot its bond with the land. The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Jewish independence lost 2,000 years earlier, was renewed. Now, what does Hamas believe? What do these people believe? Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine should be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the cause, the circumstances, and the pressures, and no matter how long the occupation lasts, Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea. Basically stating that Israel has no right to a state there. Right. Remember that. From the river to the sea. That's an important phrase right there. What is Hamas and why was it created? Hamas emerged in 1987, important, during the first Palestinian uprising, or Intifada, as in outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestinian branch. The group is committed to armed resistance against Israel and the creation of an Islamic Palestinian state in Israel's place. What say you, Mr. Jim? Here's a little history of the kind of attacks that Israel has gone through and a brief history. When you hear the phrase occupied territories, West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, these are places that you might not know where they came from. Why are these so hotly contested? There was something called the Six-Day War. The Six-Day War happened in 1967. Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Algeria, basically everybody in the area attacked Israel. Israel pushed back and they took more land. Now listen, I don't know of any war where blood and treasure is spilled and land is taken where they're just like, we're going to get that back. Israel took at that point the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Moving on, there was the Yom Kippur War, which happened in October of 1973. Once again, Egypt, Syria, big players in the area, massive militaries, came in and attacked Israel, which is the size of New Jersey, by the way. The Golan Heights, that's where the rest of the occupied territories were taken. Israel pushed back, took more territory as a buffer against these attacks. When you talk about these occupied territories, that's what you're talking about. You're talking about wars that were started by somebody else, that Israel not only repelled them but pushed back even further and secured that land for themselves. All right? Throughout the years, Israel's been attacked by its neighbors since its inception. We're talking 1948 here. So there's nobody in that area, militarily, that you want to mess with less than Israel because they're a proven commodity militarily. And that blends into what's happening right now. Because, because, you said, what say you? You might regret that. 1,400 people were killed when Hamas did an organized terror attack inside of Israel on October 7th. 1,400. People called that Israel's 9-11. Yes, it has been referred to as Israel's 9-11. Right now, and these are the latest figures that I was able to get. These are figures from two days ago. My sources were AP News, Al Jazeera. I felt it important to use Al Jazeera as a source because I don't want to appeal to you. He's getting his stuff from Fox News. No, I'm not. Right now, 9,000 Palestinians are dead due to Israel's response. That sounds horrible. It doesn't sound proportional. It sounds 1,400 versus 9,000 does not sound proportional. But I'd like you to remember before we, you know, get too far into this. According to the 9-11 memorial, let me stop you right there for a minute if I could. Yeah. Okay. 1,400 Israelis got killed on December 7th or October 7th. Right. And how many Palestinians? Since that, considering Israel's response, 9,000. 9,000. Right. Okay. 1,400 and 9,000. Okay. My question is, they're human lives, and it doesn't matter whether they're Palestinian or Israeli. So, when I look at this whole scheme of things, I don't care if it's Palestinian or Israeli. They're human lives. And we're fighting over something that we've been fighting over for thousands of years. Thousands of years. When, when does this come to a halt? Because over thousands of, the past thousands of years, nobody's gaining any headway. It's just human lives are being lost. And that's concerning to me. I have hundreds of concerns with this. Numbers don't mean anything to me. It's just human lives that are being lost. Whether you're Jewish, you're Palestinian, you're Muslim, it doesn't matter to me. They're human lives. And that's where I get upset. When they put a number on lives, it doesn't matter to me. Continue on, my friend. Well, 1400 lives, you have to put it in, I understand what you're saying. I'm trying to do this to put it into context of a versus type of thing. One versus another. Because in any war, there's one versus another. So, they called it Israel's 9-11. Well, 9-11 was very clinical. It was fire from the sky. It was planes coming down. This was personal. Hamas went into neighborhoods, slit throats, raped, bludgeoned, murdered. That is the difference. It is up close and personal. It was hate. It wasn't this clinical hate. It was up close and personal, blood on your hands hate. So, 1400 dead Jewish people, dead Israelis. 9,000 dead Palestinians. And you have the United States who has, I've got to admit, you know, Biden has supported Israel through this. But, when I hear, you know, our Secretary of State Blinken is over there trying to tell them how to manage their war to avoid further civilian deaths. I think I've run some numbers past you on our end. Our 9-11, 2,977 people killed, according to the 9-1-1 memorial. 432,093 civilians killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Pakistan due to our response to those 2,700, or I'm sorry, 2,900 people. Okay? So, if you're going to get 1,400 to 9,000, 2,977 to 432,100 to round up, you know, who the hell are we to tell them how to run their operation? Well, we shouldn't be telling them how to run their operation to begin with. Exactly. We shouldn't be involved at all, period. We have no business being there. I don't believe America has anything to gain by us being there. I agree. We have nothing to gain at all. The only thing that I think that would possibly help America out there is possibly being there, we might be able to get more intel on what's going on with Iran. We might be able to infiltrate their mindset on what their long-term goal is. Iran being a major funder of Hamas, by the way. Major funder. And who's the major funder now of Iran? Us. Us. Yeah, I was waiting for you to say China. No. Or Russia. But it's not. It's us. We have allowed the sanctions that we had against Iran. We have allowed to let them slip. We have allowed to let them sell oil. We have given them back cash, billions, pallets of cash. And we said, well, don't you spend it on anything bad. Yeah, right. It doesn't matter. Exactly. It doesn't matter because they're just going to filter it through some other way. It doesn't matter. You know, I researched where this Golan Heights, who actually, who owns Golan Heights? Is that how you pronounce that? Golan? Golan. Yep. The Golan Heights are a rocky plateau in the Levant region of Western Asia that was captured by Israel from Syria in 1967. A six day war. Yep. 1967. This, this conflict between Israel and the Palestinians have been going on for how long? Well, since, since Israel's inception, 1947, 1948, when, when, when Palestinians found out, you know, we're taking some of your land, we're slam dunking Jewish people in your backyard. Right. So, so what's the issue with the Golan Heights? This, this is one part that I don't understand here. Because it's an, it's an additional piece of land to the original charter of what Israel was supposed to be. In 1948, the Golan Heights didn't belong to Israel, but after they were attacked, they not only pushed back their enemies to the borders, they pushed them beyond the borders and took a claim on that land. Okay. All right. Now I got it. Kind of like the way we got Texas. Right. Okay. Gotcha. Understand. Didn't get that. Are we giving Texas back to Mexico? Yeah, right. Well, you know, we're not going to get into that today. No, we might get red flag. Yeah. We're not going to get into that today, but that's what seems like what, what's going on down there. What's concerning with all of this for me, that's going on over there in Israel. This is, this is turning over in to our country here. With the, the protests at the colleges, even protests down in Washington, D.C., what's concerning is these protests spiring out of control. And I might be getting off your topic here a little bit, but this is what's concerning to me. These, these protests spiring out of control and bringing this war here. And I believe it is already here, not in so much as of firing on one another, but it's here. It's now here. And who's, what I don't get is either is why is our government allowing these people to, to, how do I want to say this? To go along with Hamas on what they're doing. Why aren't they arresting these people? This is supporting a terrorist organization. If they supported them monetarily, I think that there would be a way for them to, to get legally involved. But you get a bunch of stupid kids raising their fists and saying, you know, Palestine free now. Listen, this happened and I'm bringing down the list here of the major universities and not just the locations. Cause there's also, there's been protests in New York, there's been protests in Washington, DC. Those are a different stripe I'm talking about in our universities, Harvard, Yale, George Washington University, New York University, Columbia have all had major protests that are pro-Palestine. And I'm sorry, in this respect, after this happened, if you're protesting pro-Palestine, you're protesting pro-Hamas. That's what, that's what I'm trying to say. That's the takeaway for me too. So can you arrest them? No. Can you stop their shitty opinion? No. It scares me that the opinion has gotten this far though. There's, there seems to be no counter to the narrative in our universities anymore. A lot of these universities now, they're now with all these donors that they've had, are no longer. These donors are pulling their money away from these universities. Cause they don't like the narrative either. Right. Here's something here. Where is it here? I had it and I lost it. Unbelievable. Only me, man. Only me. That sounds like a line when you're in a casino. I had it and I lost it. Yeah. But here's some of the protests that that's going on out there. The Hamas terror attack on Israeli civilians two weeks ago and the subsequent Israeli bombardment of Gaza have Royal College and University campuses across the country from Arizona State to Indiana to George Mason and many more. Jeffrey Brown reports on how protests and debates around free speech are reverberating on campus. Between rain showers Friday on the campus of what? All right, let's stop it right there for a minute. From the river to the sea is a very important phrase. Very. That means drive the Jewish state, drive Israel into the sea. There's no room for them there. That's not an innocent chant. That's a call to violence. That's a call to action. That's a call to exterminate the Jewish people. I agree. That's exactly what it is. That's what that means. From from the river to the sea, from the sea to the river. That river is what river? The Jordan River. Right. I'm not sure. I'm almost 100 percent sure. That's what they mean, because that's the borders. That's the border of Israel. River to the sea. Wipe them out. And that's what they want. So if they're if they're chanting this, this is telling me this is what do we call it? A terroristic threat. Terroristic threat. Now, what's to say there? We had a gentleman out in California that was beaten just because he was Jewish walking down the street. Now, listen, you'll have organizations that will say that there were people that are of Arab descent that suffered violence, too. And I'm sure there are. I'm sure there are. But you're not going to find organized campus groups calling for Arab nations to be wiped out or Muslims to be wiped out. How many groups, period, call for anybody to be wiped out? Not 100 percent. It seems like it seems like Israel is like one of the few places where that kind of sentiment is. It's one of the subjects that that sentiment is allowed. You know what I mean? Like you're not going to you're not going to get as much pushback. Israel's bad. And I'm looking at the picture of these kids and their kids. They're full of mush with their stupid heads. And they're all wearing masks. Go ahead. And it's like it's like they're afraid to commit their entire being to this. It seems it's almost like a place to be. You understand what I mean? As I play more of this, you're going to see what this one chick says. I'm putting a chew in now because I'm getting pissed off. I tried quitting and I've been doing very well. But I'm going to be quitting here shortly. Check the video later. You'll see me tap in a vein for some heroin. We're all pissed off. But listen, listen, listen to this. University in New Jersey. Members of the local chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine stage the latest in a series of demonstrations. After the Hamas attack on Israel, the group issued a statement calling it a quote justified retaliation. And those behind the attack freedom fight. How do you call that justified? How? How do you call that justified? They were killing that they killed. They went into homes. Again, this is not a bomb. This is not something that you're standing five miles away and hit. No. This is you're going into homes and raping. You're supporting somebody that what you just said. You're raping women, killing babies, killing old women, old men. And this was up close and personal. What the frig? How could you support anyone that does that kind of thing? How can you support anybody? And you're also doing it from the safety. And I'm going to say safe. I'm not even going to say relative. The safety of America. And that's my point, too. What if these people went over there into Egypt and did this or Syria and did this? They wouldn't be able to. And if they attempted it, they'd be shot dead more than likely. Exactly. And these pricks got done with this protest. I'm throwing out the air quotes here. And they went back to their comfortable little dorm room. So they're off campus housing and they had a bowl of cereal. And I talked about how they fought the good fight. Would you like more oat milk? Get the hell out of here. Now, my question here is to how many of these people, these students, if they are all students, obviously they're not all students. No, no. There's outside agitation in that crowd. But they're the ones without the masks, by the way. How many of these people are here legally? How many are here on a visa, on a student visa or a work visa? Take them fucking masks off and let's see your face so we can do facial recognition and see who you are. And if you're here legally or if you're here on a work visa or student visa, and if you are, and you're supporting these bastards, let's find them and get them the hell out of here. Send them back over there. And it's kind of it's not funny at all. But one of the main things you hear about free speech is the yelling fire in a crowded theater because there's limits to free speech. Right. Right. So where is that limit, though? That's my question. And that is the question, especially in a situation like this. Where does it go from your protesting to your encouraging the death of an entire people? Right. You know what I mean? When does it become incumbent upon the university? When does it become threatening, period, to an average American citizen? My question here is, too, if you're here on a work visa or a student visa or whatever, something of that nature, do you still have the freedom of speech that we do as citizens of the United States? Well, that's one of the great things about this country. And sometimes the great things about this country run counter to our sensibilities. When you're on our soil, you have the right to do shit like this. But how far should you be allowed to take it? Again, from the river to the sea is such an important phrase because it leaves no room for doubt what your intentions are. You're calling for the extermination of the Jewish population. That's what you're calling for. Now, luckily, luckily, the Israelis are an unbelievably resilient and tough people. They are. And they have a hell of a military. Oh, yeah. The IDF is nobody to mess with. Right. Right. I don't know. Like I said, my biggest fear is this spilling over here and people starting whipping out weapons and guns and just start firing upon one another and actually becoming a full blown war here. You had discussed earlier the uptick of gun purchases in the Jewish community. And it has gone up. Let's play that clip. All right. Because that's interesting, too, because I think that's based out of California. It is. Who has more onerous gun laws in California? Right. It's rough. Yeah. Now, we have to look at, too, the uptick of the purchase of weapons when the border opened up. So now this uptick is in the amount of guns flowing through our nation now is just freaking insane. And also Jewish people, Jewish Americans, really quick before you play this clip. And I can cite some figures for you. But I did read about this in my research. Jewish Americans are overwhelmingly liberal. So right now they're in a position where they have to fight against the laws that they voted to enact. Right. To protect themselves. Correct. So the same argument that the pro-gun and pro-gun ownership Second Amendment people have been using for years about self-protection. And they pooh-poohed and said, all right, we don't need you to go away. All of a sudden, they're pretty pertinent now. Right. And this leads me to think, who's going to lose the vote in this next election with this? Who's going to lose the Jewish vote? That's an interesting question, because I'll tell you what, Democrats don't turn on their own. No, no. They move in lockstep. And it's one of the reasons why the terrible ideas come to fruition, because everybody's willing to pull the same lever. Right. This is making everything. This is interesting. Let's play this clip. Jewish families say they're seeing a rise in anti-Semitism and fear their loved ones could be targeted. So some of them are arming themselves for their own protection. Taking matters into their own hands literally. Jewish Americans are arming themselves in record numbers. We're having a gun. That's the only way I feel like I will be safe in my house now. This woman did not want to be identified. She has been anti-gun her whole life. That is until now. In the past, it would have never, ever, the thought of never would have crossed my mind. Now, it's not only do I want my husband to figure this issue out, but I think we're all going to be, we're all going to be trained on how to use the gun. Gun store owners say most first-time buyers have been women and are now seeing an uptick in purchases from those who identify as Jewish. Jews are terrified. Russell Stewart is owner of Beverly Hills Guns and says he's never seen anything like it. Never at this kind of uptick. Never at this kind of rate where the phone is ringing literally off the hook, noon and night. We have appointments for weeks now. And it's not just the Jewish community. The FBI has seen an increase in recent reports of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic incidents across the country, highlighting the tensions that the Middle East conflict overseas has raised. The agency released a joint intelligence bulletin days after a six-year-old Muslim boy was stabbed to death in a Chicago suburb because of his Palestinian heritage. Little nuts. Yeah, a little bit. A little bit because that story lines up. By the way, I have to point out, anybody who knows guns who's listening to this podcast will understand why I found this to be funny. That nice lady was talking about how I've always been anti-gun before, but now not only do I want to own one, I want to be trained in one. I want everybody in our family to own one. And while they did that, they showed a picture of a Barrett .50 caliber rifle, which I saw. That was crazy, man. Nobody's buying that shit for home defense. You never know, though. I think my nephew might. He might buy something like that. That's a symptom, in my opinion. This is conspiracy theory nonsense. I apologize. But that, to me, is a good example of our press, our media, taking things to an extreme, trying to make it look ridiculous. They didn't show pictures of handguns. Well, they did show pictures of handguns. They showed pictures of handguns. They showed pictures of rifles. But then all of a sudden, they pull out a military sniper rifle that's .50 caliber. What the hell? I thought that was a dirty thing. That was unnecessary stock footage right there. That's kind of like the media ramping things up a little bit. Exactly. But I was watching this, and I saw the posters of these people on the wall. And I saw a segment a couple days ago where these students were ripping posters off a wall of people that were missing, possibly dead. These were protestors, the Palestinian protestors against Israel. Why the hell would you do that? These people are missing. What was the point of ripping these posters down? Was it a YouTube video where there was almost a physical confrontation because the guy was ripping his stuff down off the pole? Because I saw something similar. That was on, I don't know if it was Fox News or CNN. I think it was CNN that I saw that on. I watch both channels, try to get good perspective on everything. I don't know what the issue was there because when I saw it, I saw it on one of those shitty Reels videos that you see on Facebook. No, I didn't ever give you the whole story. No, it wasn't that. So that was pretty interesting there. I don't know why someone would do that. I don't know. I don't know. But it's crazy here. I just had a text. My load got changed for Monday. That's okay. More money. Oh, really? Okay. But I'll take it. The other thing is with this is with this war over there, that is really concerning. This is my other concern. You have that conflict there. You have a conflict with Ukraine and Russia. By the way, look at that. Look at the backseat that that's taken. I'm going to mention that. How much have you been hearing about that? A tiny bit. And how much money has flowed through there and into the hands of people? The only thing that necessarily shouldn't have it. The only thing that you have heard about Ukraine was the $140 billion that was going to be split between Ukraine and Israel. More money, more money. That was the only thing that you've heard. But you have to look at what's going on in Israel now, right? Look at what's going on in Ukraine and Russia. Then you look at China chomping at the bit for Taiwan. And you know damn well what you have not heard a peep about in quite a while. North Korea is just sitting back and you're waiting. They're waiting for the opportunity to do something. This is, in my opinion, this is a perfect scenario right here for World War III. It's perfect. And also, even on a limited scale, let's assume that this ramps up. Now one of the problems that Israel has always had is that it's surrounded by its enemies. That's the problem. That's been the problem there forever. It's one of the reasons that Israel is a nuclear power. Israel is a nuclear power because they were like, listen, we're surrounded by our enemies. And we got to let them know that we can wipe them off the map. But that's another argument. But the way politically things move in the Middle East, if Israel's traditional enemies get involved and it turns into a shit show. And I hate to limit it to this, but how expensive is gas going to get? I understand how callous that sounds. I really do. But you have to look at it from a realistic perspective. With us in America, we can shake our heads. We can talk about our opinions. We can just, oh my God, why is this happening? We can talk about the ineptitude of our political leaders. But realistically, six months from now, if this turns into a much hotter zone than it is now, how much is it going to cost for us to get to work? How much is it going to cost for us to fuel up our trucks? That's a problem. It's a problem. The thing is, too, with that, gas is going to go up and freight is going to go down. That means we're not going to be running as hard. We're not going to be making the money that we should be making, I think, anyway. And it's all going to turn to a shit show. You're going to see a lot of people, a lot of people claiming bankruptcy here within the next two years. A lot. Especially if this heats up. Oh, yeah. Look, this isn't speculation. This is history. When shit goes down in Israel, historically these players get involved. A lot of attacks on Israel are proxy wars. Right. Like Hamas with Iran. It's the people that fund them. But when it gets hot. It gets hot. It gets hot. And things go up. Prices of everything goes up. Saudi Arabia gets involved. Right. Oh, my God. Saudi Arabia gets involved. We have been on their oil tit for how long? Right. Well, they had said that if one more country in that region gets a nuclear weapon, they're going to have to go and start developing their own nuclear weapon. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's all we need. That's all we need. Well, the good thing about governments in Iran and Saudi Arabia that are just thinly veiled theocracies run by Islamic mullahs and stuff like that. The good news is, is they're remarkably stable. And they think along a very level. I can't even get through that sentence. That's a dangerous thing. It's a very dangerous thing. Who is stable? You're saying? I'm saying they're not stable. I'm being. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. They're not stable. Theocracies are almost never stable. No, no. Iran is the scariest, the scariest player in this whole thing. They're the loudest. They are the loudest. But do they have the balls? That's the question. Saudi Arabia scares me because of how much they control. They do. But I just don't see Saudi Arabia going to bonkers. I really don't. I don't think they don't have the military for one to do anything too significant. What they could do, like you said, with the fuel prices, jack that price of oil up through the fricking ass. Exactly. So what's what's more powerful in that scenario? That's just bullets or worldwide control. Well, well, it's going to come to a point where we have to look at this, too, in this perspective, too. We are in coming up on an election year. And there's no way in fucking hell that Joe Biden can win this next election. There's just no fucking way. It's kind of funny. I said that about the last election. Yeah. No, this one, there's just there's just no way. And if he does, you're going to see mass chaos in the streets. I truly believe that Donald Trump is going to be our next president, without a doubt. I truly believe that. That scares the hell out of me, too, because there's no consensus behind him. Nobody can agree. Nobody can agree to support this guy. Well, not enough people anyway. Well, this is where I got to debate you. I think there is. I think there is plenty of people to support him. I truly believe he's going to win this election. Hands down, it's going to be a landslide. And the reason I say that is, is the economy, the fuel, the oil, the geopolitical nonsense, all of that shit. So when you look at Saudi Arabia and the oil, they can raise it all they want. But once Donald Trump gets in that office, and if you remember that one interview he said, how are we going to fix this economy? What did he say? Drill, baby, drill. And that is going to put the Middle East on standby there. What worries me, though, is the people that when Donald Trump was in office, the never Trumpers, which were Republicans, the same people that voted against him. When we needed, what, two or three votes, the Republicans turned their back on him. They're still in office. They're still there. Sure. So with a with a with a margin and something else that happens in major elections, a lot of times when you have a president that swept in office two years later, you have a shift in the House and Senate. That that's that's pretty standard. You could. So and so to speak, you know what I mean? In in Donald Trump's first two years, I believe he had a majority in the House and Senate. Couldn't get anything done. By the way, the same thing happened to Barack Obama. Yeah, yeah. He had a majority. And I don't recall any of that, but I'm not doubting you. I'm just trying to recall. But it's happened through history where presidents will have a majority in the House and Senate and still can't get a goddamn thing done because they can't form a consensus. It's his own party that's going to screw him over. It's his own party. That's just like, you know, with the rousting of of which we'll call it out of the speaker position. Yeah, his own party fucked him there. Oh, absolutely. You know, how do you get four votes out of your own party? And it only took four votes to get you out. That was that was part of a terrible deal that he made when he was put in place as speaker. Well, he reneged on his deal. Exactly. That was the problem. That was the problem with that whole thing. And my question is with that is not to get off topic here, but is why did he renege on that deal? Something happened where he backed off. And it had to be something significant. You know, now we got the new guy. Right. The who guy. This Mike Johnson. Because everybody who says his name is followed by who? Well, let's let's hear what Mr. Johnson has to say about what's going on here. The dog doesn't like it. That's your answer. Yeah. Here we go. You first up. We welcome the new house speaker, Mr. Mike Johnson. Mike Johnson. I never heard of this guy, to be honest with you. First of all, you're very howdy doody. Come on. Yes, somewhat. A couple of very much. Sir, I want to begin, if you will. There's a back and forth in the White House press room just a little while ago for the life of me. I do not understand the difference between a ceasefire and a pause. OK, but I want you to just hear this back and forth. And that maybe give us a comment. Well, before we get there, we'll play this Peter Doocy thing here. What is the difference between a ceasefire and a freaking pause? I would say that one of them is probably a more formal declaration. It's probably in the verbiage. You know what I mean? A ceasefire is something that both sides agree to. Yeah, exactly. And there's terms and conditions to what a pause. They'll try to couch that as a humanitarian pause to get the Red Cross in there and the Green Sickle or whatever the hell it is over there. Right. To come and help people. That is an admirable goal. But I'm also going to throw it out there to people dying in war. And it is what it is. Yeah. Before I play this, RJ, come here. I want you to give your opinion on what's going on in Israel now. Come on. About what? About the war. You gave your opinion to me the other day in the car, and it was very, very enlightening. What do you think about what's going on over there? Well, I feel that Israel has associations that America doesn't have, that America doesn't know about. And I feel like the Gaza Strip is more—they're trying to start a war with them because they have associations inside of them. That's a good opinion. Good job. Israelis are pretty hardcore about stuff like that. Yeah. Protecting their own interests. Yeah. Good job. Let's play this clip. That's my boy. Let's play this clip from Peter Giussi, this exchange. You're the only guy who asks questions. Okay. Yeah. This is interesting. As you push the Israelis for humanitarian pauses— There it is, humanitarian pauses. Are they just supposed to sit back and let Hamas attack them and attack them and attack them and not fight back? We have been crystal clear that Israel has a right to defend themselves. I mean, my goodness— Pauses mean they can still shoot back. My goodness, Peter, we're giving them security systems almost every day. Are you kidding me? There it is. Are you kidding me? You know, you're giving them security systems, but what good is it doing if they're not going to be able to fight back? Am I right? And he didn't clear—Peter Giussi said, you know, so they could shoot back. There wasn't much of a response to that. No, absolutely not. And that's why—since when does Hamas give an airborne shit about humanitarianism, considering that they hide in the basements of families— Right, the hospitals. —after they pull out terrible— Terrible. That was an interesting thing. Remember the hospital that was destroyed? First thing, Hamas is like, Israelis blew up this hospital. That wasn't it. They blew it up themselves. It lasted about three hours until they're like, yeah, no. The evidence clearly dictated that Moleri and Curley lit off some shit that they didn't know how to operate. Fucking missile went straight up and came straight back down, man. Sorry about that. Let's see what else this prick has to say. Do we advocate pauses by both sides here? Temporary, localized, to be able to get Americans out? To be able to get aid in? You betcha we do. That doesn't mean that we're calling for a general ceasefire. There's a—hang on a second. There's a difference. What's the difference? Again, I think a general ceasefire is a more organized and political thing. But again, you're talking about an enemy here that doesn't necessarily value— There was a time in organized war where a Red Cross on the side of a vehicle was afforded a certain amount of leniency. They stopped it. They're here to take away. That doesn't happen over there. Sorry, folks. No. I mean, they're hiding in hospitals, schools, obviously the tunnels. And the tunnels are massive. Oh, it's a network. Yeah. And let's also talk about the fact that Israel did broadcasts. They dropped flyers basically telling the people, listen, this is going to turn into a shit show. Get out. Get out. Hamas comes in and says, no, don't leave, and threatens violence against some who try to leave. So what are these people supposed to do? They're damned if they move. They're damned if they're not. So they're scared. They're ruled by fear. They stay in place, and they wind up being victims. To me, Hamas told them, hey, don't go anywhere. That sounds like a real trick move on their part. Because Hamas knows what's coming. They know how Israel responds. Sure, they do. But what they're hoping for with this ceasefire slash pause, they're hoping for with the release of hostages. Right now, the hostages held by Hamas is 241 as of yesterday. That's the number I got, too, from multiple sources. Right. So they're hoping for the release of these hostages. Are they going to release all of them? Absolutely not. No. And my other question is what John Kirby just said here with the humanitarian aid to give this pause, this ceasefire, to let humanitarian aid in. I think that's a bunch of bullshit because, for one, where is the humanitarian aid? We know it's not sitting outside of the gate waiting to come in. Where is it? It's going to take a couple days to get there. Two is once it starts coming in, what's to say Hamas isn't going to go there and steal this product? Also, you've got to throw it in there. Who is going to let them in? What country is going to say, OK, we're opening our borders to allow this to happen? Because Palestine is a weird place. There is enough room in all of those countries to accept in Palestinians and absorb them and give them homes and homeland. They're not interested in that shit. They've never been interested in any kind of concessions that Israel has made. There was a concession made in the 1990s. I think it was when Clinton was around. They gave Yasser Arafat everything he wanted, just about almost everything he wanted. So much so that the guy that arranged the peace deal on the Israeli side was assassinated by an Israeli. And it still wasn't enough. Egypt is taking in some Palestinians. They're taking in some refugees. Now, when Europe started taking in refugees, what was the last conflict over there when Europe started taking in refugees? What was it? I can't think. Oh, my God. Syria. Syria. Syria. But they were taken in the Syrians. And now they're regretting it. Yeah, it's affected their culture terribly. And even with us here at the United States, look at us taking in the refugees from the southern border. It's a shit show. The next podcast, we're going to dedicate that podcast to the southern border. We're going to carefully navigate the southern border. Yeah, that could be like a four-hour freaking podcast, man. I mean, this is all – it's all a shit show as far as what this world is coming to. And it's a scary freaking place right now, let me tell you, in my eyes. You know, just talking to my 11-year-old here. I have three grandchildren. I have another one on the way. And recruiting is down as far as the military goes. Are we going to get to that point where we're going to have to implement a draft to start defending our nation or to defend these other countries where we shouldn't be to begin with? For me, that's scary. It really is. A draft. I wonder how small the pool is of people that will be eligible. Look at the terms of the draft in Vietnam of what was acceptable as far as physical requirements and stuff like that. That's an issue. Could you imagine now? We're all fat. Yeah, and could you imagine somebody with purple hair who identifies as a horse? Those rings waiting in line to do a pull-up? Yeah. The only thing that is, when I look at our military, the only thing that is positive about this is that most of the strikes that we do, the invasions we do on countries, if it comes to that, it's going to be from the air. It's not going to be so much boots on the ground. It's going to be F-16s or what have you flying in there dropping bombs. It's going to be drones doing what they've got to do. The technology is through the roof as far as putting boots on the ground. That will probably be minimalized, to be honest with you. Most of our military now, the things that we do to infiltrate these nations that are against them, whatever we've got to do there is from the air. If we do put boots on the ground for the most part, and I don't think they get the thanks that they deserve, it's usually 16 sets of boots at a time because that's how many people are in a SEAL team unit. They're sending in our elite special forces, small, quick insertions to do something very specific. We have not been taxed with the prospect of doing something large scale since Vietnam, and look what a shit show that was. Now, listen, I understand that you could talk about the war in Iraq and stuff like that, but that's based on a volunteer army. We've never had to press people into service, and when you press people into service, there's always a certain amount of resentment there. Not that people won't perform, not that they're not driven by a love of country or duty or anything like that. I look at, God, I hate to be this guy because it sounds like I should be outside on the front porch shaking my fist at people as they walk by, but when I look at kids now, and I say kids in the sense of 18 to 24, which is usually what the draft is, who fits that criteria now, and who's going to serve even on threat? Canada will have one hell of an explosion in their population if they announce a draft in America. I was going to mention that. You're going to see a lot of people going north. A lot of people going north. And with that piece of shit running that country, he'd probably let them in with no problem. Right, right. And the problem is, too, if it ever does come to a draft, is that we don't have the population that we did back during the Vietnam era. That was all baby boomers. Now we don't have that. Now we have a lot of, sorry to say it, but probably more pussies than men than we did back then. You also had a lot of multi-child homes back then. Right. Like most people had three kids. Most people had, you know what I mean? I myself only have one son. And it scares the hell out of me, the idea of him being drafted and having to fight. And I know his mindset. I know he would, but I also know that he'd question everything he did. Yeah, yeah. And that's another factor of back then versus now. Back then, if you were pressed into service, you didn't really think all that hard about why. No, you just did. You were like a robot. You did. Very robotic. That was the whole point of basic training and breaking a potential soldier down to nothing and building them back up to be a soldier. And you can't even do that now because if you talk to somebody in the military, the arc of basic training has changed. Yeah. And if you have to whip people into shape el quicko to send them off to a firing line, you got to go back to the old school methods. Well, they already reduced the standards. Oh, God. As far as going in. You know, when I went in, you had to run two miles and I think it was 14 minutes. You had to do 42 push-ups in two minutes and 60 sit-ups in two minutes. That's all went down. Well, they also reduced the standard based on gender, too. There's a separate standard for women than there is for men. Oh, there is. That's been. And that's a problem, too, because you want your fighting unit to be a cohesive fighting unit. You want the guy next to you to be able to do what you do. Right. And then with the women wanting to get in a combat role, you should have not reduced their standards. No, you should not. They have to be able, they should be able to pick up a soldier who's fallen, sling him over their shoulder and run. Right. Right. You know, listen, I'm not saying that there's not women that can do it. I'm saying that you don't lower the standard just to bump the numbers. To accommodate somebody. Right. Right. This is something that Donald Trump quoted, and it really resonated with me. This is not a fight between two equal sides. This is a fight between civilization and savagery, between decency and depravity, and between good and evil. It's a great quote. It is. But every quote that he has right now is encapsulated by the fog of the legal matters around him. That's the problem. Is anybody going to listen to that or look at that in a serious take? I'm pretty sure I could check out everything Charlie Manson said and come up with a couple of great quotes from him, too. Right. But people aren't going to see past the fact that it was Charlie Manson. It was Charlie Manson. Correct. Correct. What else you got? You have anything else? What do you think? That's a horrific headache. No. I got nothing going on. I have an ass ache. I have a pain in the ass. He's right there. I have multiple. Believe me, they're all over. Yeah. But yeah, the world is coming to a shit show, and what scares me is World War III. I think it's funny. It is. It's a very dark kind of funny, but I mentioned this last time. Every time we get together, we come to a point in the podcast where we're like, it's all falling apart, man. Yeah. It's all falling apart. Yeah. Where you don't mean to be dim and gloom, but when you look at the facts laid out in front of you, it's hard to come to a different conclusion. It is. And there's only so much you can really dissect and dive into and get into depth before you lose your mind. Yeah. And your hope. Your hope. And you're afraid to say something wrong sometimes because you want to be accurate and you want to be truthful. And I don't want to say anything wrong. Right. I'm sure. I want to be truthful and accurate on the show. That's for damn sure. I would like to also throw out there that cats are inherently selfish and don't really care about anybody. No. They don't. They really don't. By way of the end of my relationship, I inherited a cat because she simply had no room for it in her new residence. Now, I couldn't let the cat go because it's been a part of my life for 12 years, too. Yeah. And so now I have this creature that does not care about anything but itself. Right. And I'm pretty sure that if I died on my couch, it would start eating my face in 27 minutes. So your relationship is done, gone. With a cat? Oh, yeah. Oh, no, no. Yeah. Yeah. That's unfortunately a part of the past and the best of everything to her. And, you know, Mazel Tov. See? I said something. There you go. Yeah. Unfortunately. Let you, Tim, at about 12 years. RJ, go make sure mommy still loves me because we're at 12 years now. Yeah, that's a shame. For the 12-year curse. But, you know, we talk about animals. We got three beasts upstairs. And our newest one, she's got a whole dog down literally to China. One of our flower beds back there. And I think she got down so far she couldn't dig no more. She started another one. He started another one. So they're driving us crazy. They're driving us crazy with the hair and the dander, the dirt, the dust. You know, we go through, I would say, about 75 pounds of dog food a week between the three of them. They're all laps. Yeah. So they're eating big. Yeah. Yeah. They're eating big. I think I have to change the dog food for our oldest dog. We changed it once and he keeps licking his paws and licking the floor. Yeah. That's bad. And that's not good. I think he's allergic to the dog food we changed to. So we're going to have to switch again and find one that he likes. We've also come to the controversial conclusion that all cats are female. Yeah. Even the boy. Could be. Could be. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, we're in limbo here, Jim and I, and we didn't bring this up to Tim yet, but we're thinking about changing the name of the podcast. Anybody has any name that you'd like to submit to us? Send us an email at trucking, truck in on the recap at gmail.com. Give us some suggestions. We're thinking about changing the name, but I don't know. I'm glad I don't check that email. I don't know how people can be. Yeah. I haven't checked it in a while, a couple of days. So I got to get in there and check it. We haven't gotten any emails lately, be honest with you. But that's all I got for this show here. Jim, you got anything else you'd like to add? No, I think I've harped on my cat enough. Okay. All right. Hey, for Jim and Tim and myself, thanks for listening. And we're going to try to be a little bit more consistent on the entertainment. Hey, thanks for listening. And we'll see you on the next one. Appreciate you. Stay safe out there. Hey, thanks for joining us here on trucking on the recap. We hope you have a wonderful week. Hey, we're thinking about changing the name. Let us know what you think. Should we change it? Should we keep it the same? Maybe you have a better name for it. Drop us an email at truckingontherecapatgmail.com. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button if you like the show. Give us a review. It all helps us out. Helps support the show. Hey, we'll see you on the next show. Don't forget, we're dropping a new show every week. Have a great day, and we will see you out on the road. Transcribed by https://otter.ai