00:08 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—

00:19 Figures in trucking, and we’ll speak to guys and gals that are already doing so.

00:23 Let’s get to the show. Hello everyone and welcome to the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport and in each and every one of you if you join us each week you know—

00:34 This is a space where we elevate and celebrate the drivers of Norton Transport. We got a very special one joining us this evening here and that’s Jaboris Christian. He’s out on the road. Jaboris, how are you?

00:45 Yeah, I’m doing good man. How you doing?

00:48 I’m doing great. I appreciate you pulling over and taking time to spend some times with us here on the Six-Figure Trucker. Tell us where you are now.

00:56 At the moment I’m parked in Laketon, Kentucky.

01:02 Gotcha. Gotcha. Now, you picked up in Virginia. Is that right? Picked up in Virginia and you’re heading west.

01:08 Yeah. Del. Headed to Thomas City, Colorado.

01:14 Gotcha. To toward the Denver area there.

01:17 Yeah.

01:19 Now, you’re riding you and I were talking about before we started recording here. You’re riding in a brand new truck.

01:26 Yeah, it’s a brand new Volvo. Just picked her up.

01:30 What’s it like? Is it riding good?

01:32 Like a cloud, man. It’s one I call it the Cadillac of the trucking world.

01:39 What kind of mileage MPG do you get on a Volvo?

01:47 Coming through the mountains of West Virginia about 11 miles. About 11 miles to the gallon.

01:55 Yeah, not bad.

01:58 Yeah, that’s pretty good. Pretty good for a long ride there. And you just had to do your reset.

02:02 Yeah, had to do my 34 picked up Friday. I only had about 12 hours left and I got 21 hours trip. So—

02:15 Gotcha. Gotcha. Now, coming from Virginia, what was your path to Lexington? What would that be? What highway did you come out on?

02:25 Started in 74. 77 north over to the 7 64 and I’m on the 64. Well, just pulled off 64. So—

02:37 Okay. You’re right there in Lexington. What’s the weather like out there?

02:41 Well, for the Midwest in the 50s, so I’m good.

02:46 Then they had some snow up in Kentucky. Have you run into any snow? Remnants of it on the way here, but it’s fully it’s bringing where I’m at now. So—

03:02 Okay. Okay. Now you’re a Class B driver, right?

03:08 Correct.

03:10 How long you been on the road? How long have you been driving?

03:13 Started driving 2019, I think I started doing driveaway. So about— Okay.

03:24 Almost—

03:25 Almost seven years.

03:26 Now, have you always been with us or have you worked for some other companies?

03:29 I for a few companies here and there to two years a week.

03:37 Okay. Well, we hope we’re the best that you’ve worked for.

03:40 You know what? They’ve been paying me lately.

03:45 What’s how would you describe driveaway as far as you’ve obviously worked for six or seven companies and you’ve seen the ins and the outs of it. What are the pluses and the minuses for you for driveaway?

03:57 For me, the pros you make on schedule for one, the two you get to travel you see a lot. You ain’t got to me, I’m not into the what I call bumping docks, which is always having to load and unload. My brother, he runs a box truck company, and he tell me stories on how long he got to wait at the receiver, the shipper. So, that’s one of the pros. Another one, like I said, you get to travel in the second country. Maybe a con is the travel aspect of it, which is, you know, how when driveaway, you got to got to figure out how to get to your next load. And the reason I love Norton is because the rental car.

04:54 So, I can get back and forth to my next load with no problem.

04:59 Right. Yeah. We set that up for you.

05:03 Yeah. Yeah. I love it. That’s okay. That’s another pro for it. So—

05:08 Well, that’s good. That’s good. I mean, obviously, if you’ve been doing it for six years, you found some merit, some positive merit in doing it. And wanted to talk about your on-time percentage. You got a pretty good on-time percentage. And what’s your secret? I mean, there’s a lot of variables that can come into play that can make your on-time percentage not desirable. Undesirable on-time percentage of because you and I both know there’s a lot of things you can’t control. But what do you do to control getting there on time?

05:40 Keep the door closed, man.

05:44 What’s that?

05:44 Keep the real I try to keep the wheels turning and keep the door closed.

05:50 I love that. Love that. Love that. Now, you know, we were talking about you had to do your 34-h hour reset. How do you plan that in? You picked up first knowing your 34 hour was coming.

06:02 Yeah.

06:04 How do you try to manage that where you got to work your 34-hour reset in? Let’s say you got a cross country run. How would you approach that?

06:13 Only had to reset a few times in the past few months. So, I’ll check my drive time and if I see that I don’t have enough time to make it to my next destination and if it’s like on mainly on the weekend for me, I try to have it my reset happened again. So I just, you know, get my load, plan my route, and when my 34 is up, I hit the road immediately.

06:49 I gotcha. You got on the road this morning, is that right?

06:52 Yeah. Yeah, I’ve been on the road since about 5:00 this morning.

06:58 Gotcha. You like to get out and get started early.

07:01 Sometimes.

07:04 Sometimes.

07:05 Depends on the day and the night before. Yeah, basically. So, I had enough rent, so I was ready to hit it this morning.

07:13 I got you. What time did you turn in last night?

07:17 Last night maybe about 11:00.

07:23 Okay. Okay. How much sleep do you like to have before you get on the road for a long haul?

07:30 At least 6 hours, man. Six hours. If I know I’m doing my full 11 drive time, yeah, I need at least 6 to seven hours. So—

07:40 I got you. I got you.

07:41 I’m a napper.

07:44 You like to nap?

07:45 Yeah.

07:46 You got a nap coming up later today?

07:48 Yeah, probably after this podcast.

07:52 Okay. Okay, that’s good. That’s good. Now, we established you’re a Class B driver. You’ve been driving for six years. You’ve got a lot of qualifications that we love to see among drivers. You’ve got your right-hand drive qualification, and I guess that’s mostly for garbage trucks.

08:08 Yeah. Specialty units mainly.

08:12 What’s it like driving a right-hand drive?

08:16 I was just telling one of my fellow drivers actually yesterday, kind of scary when you first start out, but I’ve been doing it enough now that I’m used to it. But starting out, you gotta know you are on the right side. So if you like veer here and there, and you got to remember that the left lane is always, you know, constant go, go, go. So, my thing is I try to stick to the white line on the right side. Only drive during the day.

08:50 If I’m right-hand driving, I don’t do a 600 mile trip a day. I might do 450 just to kind of keep you safe.

08:59 Yeah. We always like to say right hand drive, hug the white line.

09:02 Yeah. All the time. Cuz it can be scary, man. But you just got to adjust. Once you adjust to it, it becomes second nature, but it takes a few times. I know with me, it took like three, three trips, but my first one was coming from California all the way to Florida, so I had to get it painted with it.

09:23 Yeah. That’s a long ways. That’s a long ways. You’re listening to Jaboris Christian here. He’s joined us here on the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport. Jaboris, we appreciate you joining us. And we know that you’re a Class B driver, been driving for six years in the driveaway space. And you got your right-hand drive qualifications. Also, your specialty. Tell us what was important to you about getting that qualification.

09:50 Coins. That’s right there.

09:55 But I always like to challenge myself. So kind of bored on moving the normal semi box trucks. And I got introduced with another company running a specialty unit and just decided to kind of like go that route more often. It gives you some type of pride to know that you get be driving those heavy units, man. It’s like it’s not oversized, but it’s a single unit. So, it’s oversized as a single unit.

10:27 Right. Right. You’re in a different piece of equipment you’re driving there. And I’m sure there are a lot of differences between driving what you’re in right now versus a right-hand drive garbage truck.

10:37 Yeah, definitely. Mainly the comfort.

10:40 What are some— What’s that?

10:43 Mainly the comfort.

10:46 Yeah.

10:47 You look like a pretty good sized guy. Do you get kind of crunched up in those garbage trucks—

10:54 All the time? All the time, man.

10:57 I guess it’s just one of those things you just got to cope with.

11:00 Yeah. Yeah. You got to get the job done. Now, with those, I don’t keep the door closed that much because I got to get out, stretch, do me a walk around. You know, you got to keep checking those units to make sure you don’t damage anything. So, yeah. To it though.

11:20 Okay. Now, I saw you also have your CNG qualifications. What’s your take on CNG?

11:28 That’s a heads, man.

11:33 We got a bit sweet relationship.

11:41 B station is a far and few between. So you got to just me personally I try to plan a route but even when you plan it some of the stations are closed and they might not they might show on one locator that is open on another locator is closed. Yeah.

12:02 Yeah. And CNG is kind of a it’s a hot cold thing. I mean, not literally, but it’s like—

12:09 You can make money on the price of CNG when you’re on east of Oklahoma.

12:14 Yeah.

12:14 What you get west of Oklahoma, you get out west Texas. Yeah. It’s the prices go up.

12:20 Four and five dollars a gallon. I actually took one from Phoenix to Washington one time and I used all of my travel incentives on extra fuel. Never again. Yes. Yes.

12:37 That’s important because you know that from experience now from the good and the bad.

12:45 Yeah, definitely. But I love it though, man. It’s a ch— It’s a challenge for me. So, I like knowing the unknown like just going into a new territory and understanding you gonna have some ups and downs in it. So that’s what CNG is for me originally actually. I just took a unit to Phoenix I believe and I was on the 40 Wow, Arizona. It was a station that was supposed to be open. I got there it had been closed since July of this year. I was literally five miles from the next station. Had to get a toe.

13:32 That’s tough.

13:33 Yeah—

13:34 That’s tough, man. What do you like the most about driving? Not just in driveaway, but just driving in general.

13:42 I’m a nature guy, so I like to see the over road, man. Sometimes I stop at like national parks and take a venture off sometimes on the off the highway or what not the highway but the interstate take the back roads you know just to just to see the sceneries.

14:02 Sure. Sure. I mean it’s a free ticket to see America.

14:06 There you go. And in Canada. I go to Canada too. So—

14:09 And Canada.

14:10 Yeah.

14:10 Do you get up to Canada much? Got a window where I go to Canada from like March to about October. After that, no, maybe three trips—

14:20 A year.

14:22 I got you. Gotcha. You’re listening to Jaboris Christian here on the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport. Jaboris, we appreciate you joining us. Be safe out there. And Commerce City is your next destination. You’ll get there what? Tomorrow.

14:36 Hope there’s no bad weather out there, Wayne. Hopefully tomorrow.

14:41 All right. Okay. Well, Jaboris, thank you very much for joining us.

14:45 Appreciate you—

14:45 Having me.

14:47 All right. Be safe out there.

14:50 Black.

14:56 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.