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Troy: Alright, hello and welcome, truckers. The date is December 4th and you’re listening to the 43rd episode of Big Rig Banter. I’m your co-host, Troy Diffenderfer.
Lenay: And I’m your favorite co-host, Lenay Ruhl.
Troy: Lenay: How are you doing today?
Lenay: Troy, I’m pretty good. I’m getting excited for some time off around the holidays. How are you?
Troy: I am, I’m pretty good. I may have made a little mistake this weekend.
Lenay: Oh no.
Troy: So, I mean as you know we’re in the process of buying a house. We officially pretty much bought it. We have a couple of details to go through, but for intents and purposes, we did buy the house. But I made the mistake, we were over at my grandparent’s house, just kind of talking and so we’ll officially close on the house December 20th, five days before Christmas.
Lenay: Right, that’s stressful.
Troy: And then I made the mistake of suggesting that we would host Christmas on Christmas at our house that we only will have moved in five days before then.
Lenay: So how did Lydia react to that?
Troy: I made it a point not to look at her when she whipped her head around and glared at me. I just kind of smiled and told my wonderful Grandpa that he’s welcome at our place for Christmas, but she was not happy when we got back in the car, to say the least.
Lenay: Yeah, no kidding. Like who wants to have people over when you just move into a brand new house?
Troy: Yeah but won’t that be like awesome to have your very first Christmas in this new house, we’ll have all our friends and family there.
Lenay: Troy. Are you prepared to cook a full meal for all these people and move all of the furniture into the house, have the entire place decorated, cleaned, and ready to go in five days?
Troy: I mean I feel like as long as the kitchen is moved in then that’s all we need.
Lenay: No, Troy. You don’t understand. When you move into a new house, you know and you like you dream of this moment. Your first house, you want it all set up, you want to be able to like to show your family how great it looks and you know brag about it, not here’s all our boxes piled in the hallway, don’t mind those.
Troy: Well, I feel like I was going to invite you to our Christmas dinner but seeing your attitude now…
Lenay: I think I’ll steer clear of Lydia on that day. As I tell you all the time, Troy, I have dumped people over less. So, you really need to consider Lydia’s feelings before you invite your family.
Troy: She does put up with a lot and I’ll definitely keep you updated on the situation, I’m confident it’s gonna go smoothly, whatever the outcome is.
Lenay: So Christmas is officially at your house?
Troy: That’s to be determined.
Lenay: So, what’s the plan? Fried chicken from the gas station and serve it on paper plates? Is that Christmas dinner?
Troy: I think it’s more about the family than the actual dinner, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
Lenay: Well, you don’t know my family. I show up for the food.
Troy: Alright, alright. But truckers, what do you think? If you invited your whole family over without giving your significant other a heads up for Christmas, how would they react? Let us know using the #BigRigBanter, we definitely want to hear some of your hopefully cheerful holiday stories. That’s for sure. But let’s jump right into things. Lenay’s actually taking the lead on this episode, so let’s hear what she has to say.
Lenay: Alright, so I’m pretty excited to get started. I brought two of my relatives onto the show today who are actually truck drivers and we’re going to chat about CB radios and how they’ve changed over the years. So, let’s first hear from my cousin Dennis.
Alright Dennis, how are you today?
Dennis: I’m good, how are you doing?
Lenay: Pretty good, thanks for coming on the show.
Dennis: You’re welcome.
Lenay: So just for our listeners, why don’t you give them a little background on how long you’ve been a truck driver and what kind of freight you haul and all that stuff?
Dennis: I’ve been driving for 43 years, I’ve been in the 43 years, I recently retired about, well May when my license came due, I didn’t renew my license and that’s why I stopped driving. So I bought my first truck when I was 23 years old, had as many as 4 on the road with drivers, just the last 20 years it’s just one truck, my own, by myself. So got about 2.7 million miles on the road over my lifetime.
Lenay: Wow, that’s crazy.
Dennis: Mostly dry box, 53-foot dry box.
Lenay: Okay, cool. So, today we’re gonna talk about CB radios and I’m sure in all that time you’ve seen the use of CB radios change over the years.
Dennis: Well actually I started out, yeah there wasn’t a lot of people, yeah, pretty much they had them, they had them from day one, I guess because we used to play with them there in high school in our pick up trucks before I got into trucking.
Lenay: Yeah.
Dennis: And then I moved into the truck.
Lenay: So, I guess we kind of talked about this earlier but what are some reasons that drivers are not using the CB radio as much?
Dennis: I would guess the biggest reasons are cellphones.
Lenay: Right.
Dennis: It’s just you can reach out farther, you know there’s no, CBs limited to the length of you know mile or two on a normal radio it’s not turned up, where a cellphone you know anytime anywhere pretty much.
Lenay: Right. So before cellphones, I guess the CB radio was kinda like your only way to talk to people or get entertainment other than the radio.
Dennis: Yeah and the radio was even a problem back then because every 50 miles you ran out of the station so you had to find another station so the CB radio if you could find a bunch of guys, a lot more guys talked on the radio back then and everybody seemed to have them and you know if something happened to you you could get information down the road of what was coming ahead of you, you know if you’ve seen a friend or something you could say hi and when you’re running with somebody you can you know talk back and forth with each other, you didn’t have cellphones back then so CB radio was great for that being able to run in a group of guys and be able to chat and talk and keep each other awake and stuff like that.
Lenay: Right. So now with cellphones I mean people are using their radios less, but what are some reasons to keep the radio I guess?
Dennis: Well, the radio, I still run them and I still use them. The biggest things is if you see you’re passing a guy in the truck and you notice something wrong with his truck that he’s not aware of, maybe his side glovebox door is opening, he didn’t close it right, and now he’s driving down the road and it’s flapping open you can see the stuff inside getting ready to fall out so you could you know a lot of times you have to toot your horn because I used to run with like that thing called Squelch, which is what you turn back to only hear people that are right near you, you turn it all the way up and you hear people further away, so if the guy doesn’t answer you can just toot your horn at him and then show him your CB mic and then he’ll turn his on and then you can tell him what’s going on with his truck without it having to do all kinds of hands gestures and stuff and not have him understand what you’re saying.
Lenay: Right.
Dennis: And then a lot of the factories and companies used to use them for dispatch of a docking system you know if you’re waiting to get in the dock they would call you on the CB and tell you what door to go to when it was available and then it would also tell you what you know when you were done being loaded to come on and get your paperwork. The problem with that was and they do it if you’re trying to sleep while you’re being loaded then they’re calling other guys and it’s waking you up and you can’t turn it off because then you’ll miss your call.
Lenay: Right.
Dennis: So they eliminated all that too and now they just call your cellphone.
Lenay: Yeah that’s true. What was your CB handle?
Dennis: Mine was Red Fox.
Lenay: Why?
Dennis: I don’t really know why. I got a radio and someone asked me what my handle was and I was like Red Fox and that was it for 40 some years.
Lenay: Do you think that as technology you know is changing a lot with the trucking industry that the CB radio will eventually die off? I mean that people won’t use them anymore.
Dennis: It has really died off a lot of people don’t have them in their trucks anymore but die off completely, I don’t know if it would ever do that. Now eventually it will because there won’t be any drivers in the trucks, these self-driving trucks will come out. There’s nobody in the truck I’m sure there’s not gonna be a need for a CB but it’s definitely dying off drastically probably in the last five years I didn’t even have a CB in my truck.
Lenay: Alright and once again, that was my cousin Dennis and he talked a lot about how the CB radios are changing over the years but now we’ll switch over to the interview with my cousin Joe and he brought up a lot of really good points about what you should and shouldn’t do on the CB radio as well as how the social aspect of trucking has changed over the years. Joe’s been a truck driver since 1985, let’s hear from Joe. Joe, how are you today?
Joe: Very good.
Lenay: Good, thanks for coming on the show for me. So, when we first wanted to do this episode before we realized that you know a lot of people aren’t really on the CB radio anymore and stuff we were talking about you know etiquette when you get on your CB. So what are some things you shouldn’t say when you’re on the radio?
Joe: Well, according to the rule book on CB radios it is illegal to swear on the CB radio.
Lenay: Oh really?
Joe: Yes, but guys go on there and just go at it all the time and I try to stay away from that because I’m thinking and what if some driver has his kid along or if there’s a CB radio in the family car and they’re going somewhere, the truckers driving his family somewhere and you hear these guys trash-talking on the CB. Of course, you can just turn it off but I try not to do that you know at all so I just think it’s good etiquette to talk like you would be talking to your mom or something. Sometimes I get on there and say hey you talk to your mom with that same mouth? Then they say my mom’s dead! So then I won’t know what to say then.
Lenay: I kind of get the feeling and I don’t know maybe and I’m not a truck driver but that you’re kind of a close-knit community, you probably do pass the same trucks especially if you’ve been on the road for a long time, do you feel like the ELDs and like all the regulations where you have to stick to driving within a certain amount of time and everything that impacts like how much of the social interaction you get at truck stop and like when you pull off and stuff like that?
Joe: Oh yeah, yeah definitely because before you could stop or if you see somebody you’re coming out of diner and somebody’s coming in that you know you can stand there and talk for half an hour, 40 minutes, and fudge your logbook to make it fit and work right but now you can’t do that because you’re on the clock, the clock is like a stopwatch and once your day starts you got only so many hours so many hours to go trucking.
Lenay: Sure.
Joe: And you know it took that part, that aspect, away of the socializing with other truckers you know. You stop somewhere to eat you get in there to eat you get back to the truck and get going you know. The only time you had was when you’re taking your 10-hour break, your 10 hours off, then you know you can if you run into somebody then you can talk to them but you know they might not be off on their break, you know there 10-hour break.
Lenay: Right. What’s some advice you would give to a new person starting out in the trucking industry as it is today because I know it has changed a lot and maybe people have a false impression of what that’s like.
Joe: What advice? The best advice you be you better be single.
Lenay: Why do you say that?
Joe: Well, unless you have the right woman, yeah I got the right wife so she can take care of household things and you know mowing the grass, take care of everything at home while I’m out on the road. I mean I usually leave Monday and you don’t get back until Friday or Saturday and I work about six weekends out of the year, where I’ll stay out the whole weekend but I mean there’s other jobs where you’re home every night then too but you’re not going to make as much money as you are if you stay out on the road longer. That’s where you know the better money is for the most part, I mean there might be a few jobs here and there where you can run short and you could get you know a pension and all that too, so it’s I mean there’s a lot of different jobs out there so if you want to go over the road you either better have the right wife or be single.
Lenay: Alright and once again that was Joe, thanks to Joe for coming on the show and for adding that little bit of advice there for anyone who’s considering getting into the trucking industry.
Troy: And once again, a big thanks to both your cousins, Lenay, it’s crazy you have two cousins that are both truckers that you were able to get on the show and provide all this really cool information and insight into the industry and these CB radios.
Lenay: Yeah I have lots of truck drivers in my family so it was fun to get them on the air, we’ll have to bring them back again soon.
Troy: And once again listeners, please leave us a review when you have a chance on any platform you’re using, whether it’s Apple podcast or any other listening outlet, we really appreciate all the reviews and feedback that you can provide.
Lenay: And for anyone listening for the first time, this podcast is powered by AllTruckJobs.com, which is an online job board that allows you to find trucking jobs in all 50 states. If you’re interested in sponsoring this content, there are opportunities for you to get so airtime so reach out to us on our website.
Troy: Alright and once again thank you truckers, I’m your co-host, Troy Diffenderfer.
Lenay: And I’m your favorite co-host, Lenay Ruhl.
Troy: And this has been Big Rig Banter.
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