00:05 How much of a difference have you seen in income?

00:07 I’ll say my income is probably doubled.

00:09 It’s got to be a good feeling.

00:11 Oh, absolutely. My kids are going to have a great Christmas.

00:14 That’s fantastic. Fantastic. Welcome to Six-Figure Trucker, the podcast where we share advice on how to be successful in trucking and have fun while doing so. We’ll share stories, news, and advice on how to earn six figures in trucking. And we’ll speak to guys and gals that are already doing so. Let’s get to the show. Hello everyone and welcome to the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport where we come to you each and every week. This is a format where we elevate and celebrate the driver for everything they do, the sacrifices they make on the open road. The time they take away from their families to move the trucks that make Norton Transport go around, make our business happen, and of course for the economy of the country. They’re very valuable, very important cog in the wheel, if you will. And we got a very special guest with us this week. Joining us on the road is Malcolm Williams. Malcolm, how are you?

01:10 I’m good, John. All by yourself? Oh, I can’t complain at all. Can’t complain. I like to say if I were any better, I’d have to sit on my hands to keep from clapping.

01:18 Right on.

01:20 Where are you right now, Malcolm?

01:21 Right now I’m in Cleveland, North Carolina.

01:24 Cleveland, North Carolina. And you’re transporting a truck and you’re joining us. Are you rolling right now or are you parked?

01:31 I’m parked at the moment.

01:33 Okay. And you’re talking to us on your headsets. What kind of headsets you got?

01:36 Right now I’m just rocking some good old oldfashioned AirPods. Oh, okay. Okay. Now, how often do you use those when you’re on the road talking to your wife or friends and family? How often do you are you able to use those AirPods?

01:51 Pretty often. They’re really easil easily accessible, easy to get to, put in, put out.

01:58 I got you. And how important is that when you’re on the road? You guys got those long roads, long runs rather. And in your words, does it get boring sometimes?

02:07 No, I look at the open road as a piece of freedom for me. Have a lot of time to think about situations without the distractions of the normal dayto-day.

02:18 What kind of things are you thinking about when you’re on the open road? What comes across your mind? Are they the is it situations at home, spiritual matters? What kind of things do you talk you think about?

02:28 It’s a healthy mix of both. You know, the things I want for myself and my family moving forward with you know, doing the boom being a boom driver. It could be anything small as to, you know, what I’m going to get my kids for their birthday to do I want to move out of Texas. It’s just a healthy mix of a lot of things. And while I’m on an open road, I don’t, like I said, I don’t have the distraction of day-to-day life that’s slowing me down from, you know, preventing me to process my thoughts and come up with good solutions.

03:04 I gotcha. Now, are you Houston based or where do you live in Texas?

03:08 Right now, I live out of Austin, a little town called Khen, Texas.

03:12 Oh, yeah. That’s a big hood.

03:14 Yeah, that’s a big military town, right?

03:16 Absolutely.

03:17 Fort Hood. Now, speaking of the military, you served our country. Tell us a little bit about that. When you went in, how long you were in?

03:24 Well, I went in the summer of 2011. First duty station. I went to I was in Port Stewart, Georgia.

03:36 Oh, yeah. Down in Hinesville, Georgia.

03:38 Hinesville, Georgia. Yes, sir. You got it.

03:40 That’s hot down there. It’s hot.

03:43 Yeah, buddy. Yeah. But from there I had a deployment to Afghanistan for about nine months. Came back from there went to Germany grapher Germany for about three years and when I finished up there I came back home to Texas.

04:02 I got you—

04:03 At Fort Stewart.

04:04 Back after Fort Stewart. Now Fort Stewart if I’m not mistaken it’s in five counties. I used to live down in Savannah. So that’s why I know a little bit about Fort Stewart. I believe it’s in five counties. Stretches into five counties.

04:15 Yeah, that’s about right.

04:16 That’s a big fort and or a big base rather. Wanted to ask you if you don’t mind what was it like in Afghanistan and when you were there?

04:25 Hot. You get up to about 124 25 degrees. It’s like a hot oven you can’t escape. On top of that, getting shot at and getting morted and blown up is very different way of life out there. Nothing but sand and dirt and mountains. It’s really nothing out there. And you know, every day I look at it as a blessing as I look every day I look at it as a blessing of being here in the United States because I there’s no grass, there’s no trees, there’s no birds. You can’t just get up and go to the corner store whenever you want to. You can’t just go grocery shopping whenever you want to. So it’s a blessing definitely being back in the States.

05:10 I got you. Now, you served eight and a half years in the army. Is that right?

05:15 Yes, sir.

05:16 What from the your eight and a half years in the army? How does that help you now as a driver? What do you draw from that experience?

05:25 Being able to make good decisions under stressful situations.

05:30 Give us an example. I mean, there’s a lot of stressful situations that can pop up and driveaway. What’s an example where your career in the military has kind of given you something to fall back on and draw from as far as how to handle a stressful situation?

05:46 For instance, what I usually run into is people break checking. When I first started out driving and somebody would brake peck me and you know put my foot almost lock up the rear wheel driving. So—

06:02 That’s cool. Now I wanted to back up just a little bit. You started as a singles driver back in March of this year. Is that right?

06:12 Yes, sir.

06:12 What was singles life like driving single trucks?

06:15 It I mean it wasn’t bad. It was in and out of trucks, you know, sometimes twice a day consistently moving, you know, just trying to make money. It’s a faster moving process than boom driving.

06:30 Yeah. Now, speaking about boom driving, you’ve just recently graduated to a boom driver. This is you’re on your second load now. Boom load.

06:38 Yes, sir.

06:39 Now, do you have a— Was trailer or just a conventional where you can take two at a time?

06:43 Just a conventional where I take two at a time.

06:46 Gotcha. Now, do you have both with you now or have you dropped one already?

06:50 I just finished hooking up. I have both of them with me.

06:53 Gotcha. Now, where are you headed?

06:55 I’m headed down to Valley, Alabama.

06:57 What kind of trucks are you run are you pulling there?

07:00 Actually, I’m driving Western Star. Two Western Star tractors right now. I’ve been biting chopping at the bit to get down and, you know, actually drive a Western Star. So, I’m pretty excited about that.

07:13 That’s Western Star is nice truck. Talk a little bit about I want to kind of circle back to the boom driving. What inspired you or motivated you, I guess I should say, to get into the boom driving?

07:24 The hard work that’s involved with it? The physical touching, the intensity of, you know, it being 100° outside and just not getting in the truck and driving. The boom just it suits me much more because I can get that extra I can get that that extra energy out and then I can get on the road. Like I really enjoy the— What interested me was the hardworking part of booming.

07:52 That’s awesome. That’s great to hear, man. Now, what kind of truck do you have sitting up on top of that trailer?

07:57 I have a 2014 Laramie 1500 sitting on top of the trailer right now.

08:03 And so it’s got plenty of power and torque to pull that trailer once you drop.

08:07 Absolutely. Pull it like a pillow.

08:11 Pull it like a pillow. How long does it take you to get your rig set up? Up the hook to get both of them connected and your truck up on the trailer. How long does it take to hook up a complete set for you?

08:23 About an hour and about an hour.

08:26 Walk us through the process.

08:28 So, first of all, yeah, I grab my trucks, grab my two trucks, and you know, not a lot since I’m grabbing new trucks, not a lot goes into which one I’m going to pull. It’s kind of the first one I grab, which is going to be the tow truck, the one I’mma pull. Then I start in cab. You know, tie the seat belt to the steering wheel. Dump the air suspension. Then I walk around to the front, push my mirrors in. From there, I’ll set my light bar on the back of the tow vehicle on the grill of the truck of the tractor. Mhm.

09:08 Tie it up to the grill, then run my electrical cable underneath the hood, and then back my back the boom trailer onto the back of the tractor. Lay my chains out hook my chains up to the frame. From there, that’s when I’ll actually back my truck on. I’ll grab the three big chains and lock them to the frame. And then I’ll actually roll my truck on to the back of the boom trailer while it’s on the tractor. And I’ll lift the boom trailer up. Then from there, I’ll put on my ratchet straps, tie my tire to the trailer. From there I’ll back it back the pulling the lead tractor, back it on up underneath it, and I’m hooked up and ready to go.

10:04 That sounds like you’ve got that process down, Pat, even after just two runs.

10:09 Yeah, I do. I do. It’s still a lot of work. Little things I can get quicker at, but, you know, it’s all going to come with experience.

10:17 How much training did you have to go through to get that boom outfit set up? Jamie King was guys a rock star. He showed me everything on the first two loads and you know just basically remembering and knowing why certain things go certain ways. It allows you to learn quicker, you know, from a process standpoint.

10:43 Now in reverse about how long does it take to break down that that boom set?

10:48 About 30 minutes. That’s got to be a good feeling once you drop and you’re off into the sunset pulling that trailer behind you.

10:57 Yes, sir.

10:58 Now, let’s talk a little bit about your classifications.

11:02 You’ve been with us for 5 months, but you drove before that before coming to us. Tell us about what you were driving before you got to Norton Transport.

11:10 Prior to Norton, I was doing drive van and reapfer. Basically bumping docks all day. You didn’t have to drive too much and you know that was really it. It really wasn’t a lot of hard work involved. It was pretty easy, pretty simple once you got the hang of back in that trailer, that 53 foot trailer.

11:28 You kind of led me to my next question. How do they compare to each other? Bumping docks versus doing singles and doing boon.

11:35 Well, I’ll tell you from, you know, just this short time of five months of driving, this is a hundred times better. Because, you know, a lot, well, some people can do it, but I know I can’t. I have to be consistently moving. With docking, there’s a lot that can go wrong as far as if you get to a dock and a customer declines the load or, you know, they take forever to take it off take the product off the back of the truck. It’s a lot of sitting and waiting. And I just me myself, I don’t enjoy that. Whereas, you know, with the boom and running singles you actually get a chance to see the better parts of this country. It’s not just, you know, whatever you whatever city that you’re from that you just stay there. With here, I’ve hit all of the lower 48. Well, I say 47. I haven’t been up to Maine. I pretty much been everywhere else in this country.

12:35 This country has a lot which I didn’t get a chance to see because when I was doing when I was bumping docks all day, you know, I kind of only stayed in that area.

12:46 I gotta what’s what are the some of the highlights of the places you’ve seen? What are some of your favorites?

12:52 Oh, Colorado through the mountains. I went there in May, late May. It was late May, early June. And I was going through Colorado. I want to say that 70, Interstate 70. It was still snowing like it was in the middle of the in the middle of winter. They were blocking off traffic, still putting salt down on the roads. The mountains is just a beautiful creation that we have that I would have never gotten to see. Bumping trailers. Utah is pretty beautiful. If you anybody ever get the chance to get up to Washington State, you know, it’s just a warmer Colorado driving up there and it’s just the mountains are breathtaking.

13:46 That’s awesome to hear and that you had the opportunity to get paid to see it.

13:49 Yes, sir.

13:50 Now, you’ve got all your classifications. Run them down for us and why you decided to get as many as you do. Well, the first one that I got was my tanker endorsement. When I first got my license, I got my tanker endorsement. Then I went to get the hazmat like maybe a year later. And then finally, I ended up just getting my doubles and triples. And the reason that I went and got my hazmat and my tanker was that I wanted to haul fuel. But the way some a lot of these companies are set up, you need experience to get into those tankers, you got a waiting period. You just have it’s a lot of stuff that you have to go through in order to get in get inside one of those trucks. And I had everything that I needed, clean driving record. I just didn’t have the experience. And God has a really good way of giving you what you need versus what you think you want.

14:52 And by me being denied on all of those applications of trying to do tanker yeah I just can’t figure out for the life of me why can’t I get these jobs other than the experience. I’m a good I’m a great driver. And then I ran into another Norton driver. His name is Carlos. He’s on the deck inside. But I ran into Carlos. So I just kind of inquired about what he did you know the work involved with you know with the decking portion and he told me that you know it’s very rewarding. You can make a lot of money with it. You’re essentially your own boss. You know nobody’s going to tell you, hey, you need to be up at six o’clock in the morning. You need to be at the job. It’s very free. It’s a very free way of trucking. And you can still make money with it. You’re essentially your own boss.

15:47 Running these two boom loads that you’ve have accomplished so far. You’re on number two now. It is number two you’re on now.

15:56 Yes, sir.

15:57 How much of a difference have you seen in income?

15:59 I’ll say my income is probably doubled.

16:02 That’s got to be a good feeling.

16:03 Oh, absolutely. My kids are going to have a great Christmas.

16:07 That’s fantastic. Fantastic. You’re listening to Malcolm Williams here on the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport. Malcolm, you’ve been with us for 5 months. How much longer do you see yourself doing this? You’re still a pretty young man.

16:19 I’m not leaving anytime, sir. This is where my heart is.

16:22 That is well said and a good place to wrap it up where your heart is. Malcolm, thank you very much for your service to our country and we thank you equally for your service to Norton Transport. Anything you want to leave us with as you are making your way south now? Nothing other than keep trucking.

16:40 All right, that’s a great way to end it there. Keep on trucking. Malcolm Williams here on the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport. Malcolm, thank you very much and most importantly, be safe out there.

16:50 Yes, sir. Thank you for your time.

16:56 Six-Figure Trucker is brought to you by Norton Transport. Norton Transport is a driveaway trucking company that customers can rely on. It offers excellent independent contract driving opportunities to professional, courteous, and qualified drivers that can provide the kind of service we deliver. If you’re interested in learning more about Norton or just want to subscribe to the show, check out Six-FigureTrucker.com. That’s Six-FigureTrucker.com.