00:06 You’re listening to the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport. And thank you for joining us for this brand new drivers of the year series. We hope you enjoy these bonus episodes. And maybe we’ll see you in the winter circle real soon with a fat check in hand. And some of these drivers will be stopping by the office for some festivities, photo ops, and you know that fat check. Now, this is one of course our drivers richly deserve for all they do for Norton Transport. Let’s go.

00:51 Hello everyone and welcome to the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport. And you guys know that listen to us every week. This is a space where we elevate and celebrate the drivers. We lift them up for everything they do for us. Of course, we couldn’t do it without them. They keep this company rolling and we’re very grateful all for all of them. Now, we’ve been doing something here the last six, seven, eight weeks here, bonus episodes for the drivers of the year. And the way the drivers of the year are chosen is by their statistical data, what they do, their on-time percentage, just basically dependability type factors. And now for each dispatch team, we have a CDL driver of the year and a nonCDL driver of the year. And right now we’ve got one of the CDL drivers of the year off of one of the teams and that’s Derek Ambrose who is here in person. Derek, welcome. How did you get here?

01:39 I’m happy to be here. I’m honored to be nominated and chosen as the driver of the year for this team with Amanda and Stephanie.

01:49 Now, making your way through here to the office which is located just off of I-75 at the northernmost exit in Georgia. You were making your way. You were going— You’re going north, right?

02:01 Right. Right. This morning, yes. I was in Chattanooga this weekend. Yeah.

02:06 Okay. So, you’re right here. And where are you headed next?

02:09 I’m headed to Lebanon, Tennessee.

02:11 All right. Now, you go by D. Ambrose.

02:13 That’s right.

02:14 That’s your handle. And you were talking about your gratitude for being chosen from one of the teams here, Amanda Fielding’s team. And wouldn’t you know it, here in the office, Amanda’s joining us now. Amanda, tell us about what kind of process went through your mind as far as picking just one CDL driver off of all the ones you have on your team.

02:33 Okay, so good morning. I choose dependability. I depend on somebody that is always there when I’m needing some loads moved. Derek has been more than grateful to take some hot loads that, you know, we can’t get moved. And he actually booms them together, so he’s moving two at a time for me. So, I appreciate his dependability, his on time, and just willing to do anything that I ask him to do.

03:00 Now, when you guys had the directive to choose some drivers of the year, was it hard to pick one, or did Derek just pop into your mind?

03:07 Oh, he popped into my mind right off the top. Whenever I was asked who, I was like, Derek Ambrose. And I was worried he hasn’t been here long enough since, you know, it is of the year, but he has been here long enough with us. So, we’re good to go. Now, you were talking about it came to mind quickly and you talked about his dependability and you guys had talked about each earlier when we were doing the some of the photo shoots. You guys are just like hand in glove.

03:32 Absolutely. Derek, when we first got Derek, he was a singles driver. He done a little bit okay, but once he started booming, he’s really opened up and I’ve really seen his potential and what he is able to do and what he can do. He’s been amazing. Well, I’m sitting here looking at Derek and he’s got the sparkle in his eyes. So Derek, it must mean a lot to you. I mean, if you can elaborate somewhat about what it means to you to know— Well, let me ask Amanda one quick question. How many drivers do you have on your team?

04:02 We have about between 140 and 150 drivers on our team.

04:06 And we know internally most of those are CDL drivers.

04:09 Yes, sir.

04:10 So, you were chosen out of a large pool of people there to be driver of the year. What does it mean to you to hear it from Amanda and to hear it from the whole team? Because this went through the team. They had feedback on it.

04:23 Yes, they did.

04:24 So, what does it mean to you? I mean, to be chosen as one of those out of 140, 150 drivers.

04:31 I take a lot of pride in it because I know that Amanda’s job isn’t easy. I know what we do, this whole industry, it could be very stressful and a lot of times you don’t know if your dispatch is going to understand what you’re going through. I know, you know, in the beginning I was a company driver and it took me a while to realize that, you know, this company, Amanda, Stephanie they really strive to show that they care, that they understand as much as possible what we’re going through, that they’re going to communicate, that they’re going to improve their communications, and expect the same thing from me, and that we’re just going to continuously just keep on booking loads. And you know, that’s really why I’m here, just to go non-stop when I’m here. And when I’m off, I’ll be off. You know, every now and then I feel like I need a little break to kind of slow down. And, you know, Amanda’s totally cool with that.

05:32 She never makes me feel rushed. She doesn’t push me. You know, she, you know, I just feel like being in this industry, I’m so lucky to have a dispatcher like Amanda because usually dispatchers are nice. Usually they try not to rush you. I’ve been really blessed with a lot of good dispatchers, but to have a dispatcher like Amanda who goes above and beyond to make sure that she’s communicating with you and make sure you have everything you need and explaining everything that I needed, it really worked out to where I would say within two or three weeks from the time I transitioned from singles to boom booming loads that we were off and running. You know, one thing that I heard Derek there picking up on, he said the word understanding. How would you define the relationship between you and Derek as far as being understanding?

06:25 Okay. So, we know we understand what we expect out of each other. He, you know, I expect him and if he commits, I’m not going to make him do anything he doesn’t want to do. But we know, we have an understanding if we commit, we committed. So, we’re going to be on time. We’re going to be, you know, get it there as safely as possible. And he understands from me that whenever he’s asking, “Hey, do you have this? Hey, do you have— He knows that I’m looking for it. He knows I’m working on it. He knows sometimes it doesn’t always work out, but if anything in my power we can get it to work out to where he needs to be, you know, across the United States, we make it happen.”

06:59 Gotcha. And we’re right here now in mid-March when we’re recording this bonus episode here on the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport. And Derek was sharing with us, it’s right there internal to see, you are right now number one on the leaderboard as a driver. And wanted to ask you first, how did you get there? And how does that make you feel to be sitting at number one here in mid-March?

07:24 Now that’s a tough question. I don’t know, man. It’s cool because I remember last quarter I was I think I was number two and number one on and off with another driver. Hopefully he or she hears this one. But it I found out last quarter that it meant a lot to me and then this quarter I’ve been just driving and driving and driving and of course taking two trucks at a time helps because I get a little bit more points. So, but I think my miles are pretty high up there, too. And my clock is usually pretty low at the end of the 34-hour reset.

08:12 So, I know that I’m pushing. I’m doing a good job when I’m here. And yeah, I think that it means a lot to me, you know, to be seen as number one. I know there’s a lot of drivers that drive a lot of miles, you know, just like me. So now Amanda, you I know you got to get back on booking those loads, but you know you had said it came straight to mind to pick out Derek as your drivers of the year or one of your drivers of the year and obviously you’ve got the stats to back it up with him being number one on the leaderboard.

08:46 Yes, absolutely. It takes lots of dedication to be number one. So, I want to, you know, thank Derek for being dedicated, sticking with Norton Transport making his making us his number one as well to make money, to move loads, to, you know, just to be successful in this business. So, and I appreciate everything that he’s doing for us here.

09:08 All right. Thank you, man. And we’ll let you go back out there and continue to be successful. Oh, the knuckle bump. The knuckle bump. Now, Derek, I wanted to ask you just a couple of quick questions here. Mhm.

09:18 How did you get into driving a truck?

09:21 Mhm. Well, first I got my CDL and went through a lot of struggles with getting my CDL just because I had never driven an 18-wheeler before. Never thought about driving trucks and stuff like that. But when I went to the training, I did fail my first test on my driver’s test. I think I missed something on the pre-trip. I mean, it was so much to learn, man. And you know, a lot of people fail it, but guys who really know what they’re doing, they go in there and they pass it like it’s nothing, like, you know, because they have the experience from somewhere. So, I started out driving for like this canning company where I lived in Arizona. And I did that for a few months. And then I saw an opportunity to work for a company that promised to pay you a lot, but the problem was that they often didn’t have the loads for you and they were very unorganized.

10:23 So—

10:24 Yeah, you get paid that much, but if you don’t run the miles, then of course you don’t get paid for the miles. So So I figured out within six weeks that that wasn’t the right place for me. Then I went to a company that pretty reputable called GP Transport. And that was a place where I feel like I really put together all of my company driver tools like learning all the ways to have enough pressure on you to do all the right things. And they were pretty pleasant and that’s why I really enjoyed it. And then so I think I was there for like a year and a half and then I ended up coming to Norton and I think a lot of those things that I learned during those years I’ve just tried to transferred over.

11:17 Gotcha. Now how long have you been with us here at Norton Transport?

11:21 Since July of 23.

11:23 Okay. Okay. So let’s see that’d be about we’re looking at coming up 9 months 10 months right there. You made it a quick ascension to be driver of the year and number one on the leaderboard here. You must have a an inherent good work ethic.

11:39 Yeah, definitely. Well, I could answer that in a lot of ways. I could say I was in the military. I could say I played, you know, college football and or my dad raised me to be a certain way. But I think when I first thought about the honor, I thought that I think a lot of people and this is a lot of truck drivers in general. I honestly I don’t think that a lot of them have, you know, went through times where they had to sleep in their car for a while. And you know, I don’t think many people have. But I definitely did. And when I would say for a good while I was making pretty decent money to take care of everything, but then I went I did go through a tough patch for about 2 or 3 years and I promised myself that I would never let myself go back to that.

12:34 So that that really is the light, you know, to my flame. That’s well put. Well put. You had a lot of motivation there. And we’re being joined with Derek Ambrose. And a lot of you sports fans may know the name Derek Ambrose. He played in the SEC. It’s been a minute, but not too long ago. Tell us about where you played and what you went up against.

12:58 I was a running back at Mississippi State for Sylvester Croom in those years when we knocked Florida off the top 25 and that really was about it. But, I enjoyed my time there even though I had a lot of injuries. We had a great running back Jerious Norwood who played for the Atlanta Falcons for a long time and—

13:18 Me and him have some stories that, you know, of competing, but yeah, I made a little bit of mark at Mississippi State. I always just prided myself on never stopping cuz I feel like, you know, that’s the true definition of success. You know, not so much what you accomplish but never stopping.