00:05 Interestingly enough, when I walked into the office to try to get my paperwork signed, more than one of the drivers said, “You’re one of the smartest delivery guys that we’ve seen. You’ve got your own wheels to get out of here.” After not using a tow car for 6 years and using every other form of transportation that all the drivers are familiar with, I realized I’ve got to try a car.

00:32 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.

00:53 Hello everyone and welcome to the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport. Of course, you guys that have joined us each and every week, you know, this is a space where we elevate and celebrate the driver because let’s be real, many times in society, the truck drivers not always viewed in the most positive, highest of lights, but we don’t do that here. We lift them up. We pick the brains of the drivers. We talk about life on the road, off the road, all kinds of things. Hopefully that will be more informative for you, the driver, to have a better trip out there, more successful career in the driveaway space. Now, let me set the scene here. We’re at home, my home on the home studios, and to my right out by the table here on my back deck is a nice tall pint of Guinness. And if you listen in with me right now, you know that I’m a cigar smoker. Hopefully you can hear that. And that’s the cigar being lit right now as we get ready to have another interesting conversation with one of our drivers. And that driver is on the road right now.

01:55 And he’s about to join us. He’s a gentleman by the name of Joshua Dodge. Joshua, where are you right now?

02:01 Hey John, I am actually about to circle around Baltimore, Maryland.

02:06 And Joshua right now, we talked before we got on the show here, is not in a big truck per se. He is in another vehicle. Josh, tell us what you’re driving.

02:17 Yeah, so I’m headed to my uncle’s this evening outside the DC area and I’m in my tow vehicle.

02:24 Now, what is your tow vehicle—

02:26 Currently? I’ve got a Chevy HHR. It’s my second tow vehicle. I started off with a 2006 Saturn View that I bought from another gentleman. He was in his 70s and he was trying to get out of the business and so I bought it sight unseen honestly.

02:44 Now the towbeahhind you dropped. Where did you drop today and when did you get on the road in your Chevy?

02:51 Well, I didn’t drop today but I dropped a couple days ago in Connecticut. I had a school bus. And you were telling me earlier that some of the people when you pulled in with the school bus and your tow behind they were pretty impressed by it.

03:08 Yeah. So the area I was delivering was a school bus an active school bus yard for drivers in that community. Interestingly enough, when I walked into the office to try to get my paperwork signed, more than one of the drivers said, “You’re one of the smartest delivery guys that we’ve seen. You’ve got your own wheels to get out of here.”

03:29 Yeah. And you know, we were talking about this. It’s surprising to you and me as well that more driveaway drivers don’t use the toe behind. I mean, do you find that somewhat surprising?

03:41 Yeah, there’s pros and cons. And so probably a lot of the drivers that haven’t tried one out, they simply don’t understand what the pros might be versus what they perceive the cons to be. And I was the same way when I first started out. And honestly, in my background here, I drove for Norton for six years without a tow car. And now Norton wasn’t necessarily my full-time work at that time. So I wasn’t out on the road like some of the other road warriors we’ve got. But I finally realized that if I was going to continue doing this, I had to try a toe car to see how it impacted things. Did I make more money? Was it easier? What were some of the challenges? And so after not using a toe car for six years and using every other form of transportation that all the drivers are familiar with, Amtrak, planes, Uber, Lyft, rentals, I realized I’ve got to try a car. How much of a difference has the toe behind made to you financially?

04:43 That’s a great question, but it’s really hard to put that into exact numbers because if you really want to talk about pros and cons, you have to look at opportunity costs, you have to look at the value of my time versus sitting on a greyhound simply to dead head halfway across the country type of thing. So, if I gave you a couple of numbers, just general numbers, I bought my car originally for $2,500. It already was set up for towing. I already had all the toe bars to get started. I’ve added some additional equipment along the way, and then I did some immediate repairs to the car. So, let’s just say I was $5,000 in at the outset.

05:30 Now, you could get a lot of rental cars for $5,000, right?

05:35 It’s true. True.

05:36 So there are a significant number of things to look at in the sense of do you make more money? Can it immediately help you make more money? I would say for me that the high value is on safety. The high value is on convenience. The high value is on the fact that I no longer have to wait for an Uber to come and pick me up. I don’t have to wait at the enterprise counter to get a car. Although I’ve got some funny stories about waiting for cars at Enterprise also.

06:09 I’m sure you’ve got a bunch of them. But I was going to ask you on the toe behind. What’s your apparatus like? You were talking about the toe bars there. Is did you have to have it made custom or— Oh, you said it already had it on it.

06:20 Correct. I purchased this one as it— Well, so the first equipment that I purchased came with the car that was with the Saturn View. My current equipment is actually a Blue Ox setup and so I’ve purchased a couple different toe bar systems that fit with the Blue Ox system.

06:41 Gotcha. Gotcha. Now, you were talking about the money that you can save and the time you can save from the rental aspect and from not waiting on an Uber or a lift and of course not riding a Greyhound from Kansas to California. But what about we’ve talked with other towbeahhind drivers here on the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport and they have al often highlighted you don’t have to stay in a hotel.

07:07 That’s going to vary for every driver. I mean the idea for some drivers that have a tow car is I’m going to either reduce or eliminate how many times I consider going to a hotel by simply sleeping in my car. But if you’re a driver that hasn’t set up your vehicle well and you’re just driving along, you decide, “I’m tired and your only space is to sit in the passenger seat or the driver’s seat to take a nap, are you really resting well?” So, a lot of drivers do have specialized equipment. A lot of drivers have built out a full bed kit, and it’s pretty impressive what some of the drivers actually have done. And that’s part of why I chose a Chevy HHR. It’s got a little longer body design where you can actually flip the seats down, fit a mattress into the back of it, and sleep as well as you would at home potentially.

08:03 Gotcha. Gotcha. We should point out here too on the Six-Figure Trucker, we’ve got Joshua Dodge with us here on the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport. He is not simply holding a phone in his hand. He is on a headset. We want to make that crystal clear. He’s on a headset. He’s on his Bluetooth device right now. And Josh, we wanted to talk about not only the towbehind, but you had a successful career in corporate America. How did you fall into driveaway?

08:30 That’s a big question that we honestly don’t have time to go into you all the way on a podcast. However, I was with the Marriott company. My degree was in hospitality. I spent three and a half years in that industry. And one thing led to another. Eventually, I found myself at a youth program in Texas where they had a program to take students to hike mountains in Colorado to go out to Mexico and build houses. And I became a licensed tour bus driver during that time. So, I got a Class B license. I traveled the country doing things like that. And then again, one thing led to another and I found my way to Norton. It was the first driveaway company that I’d ever heard of.

09:23 Gotcha. Were was the whole concept of driveaway new to you?

09:27 Completely new. I didn’t know anything about driveaway. I’ll tell you, this is part of the funny story for me personally. I was in the Tulsa, Oklahoma area, which a lot of our drivers would know is a busy area for our industry.

09:46 Oh, yeah.

09:47 I was actually looking in the newspaper of all things. So, that tells you a little something about me.

09:54 I was looking in the newspaper at the ads and I saw an ad for bus deliveries. I thought, I can drive a bus. So, I don’t even remember what I did. If I looked online, if I called in. But what I learned was there was a lot more to the driveaway industry than just buses.

10:12 That Class B license has taken you a long ways. And that we should point out here, I mean, as Joshua was unfolding, unpacking his story in driveaway, he is, and we’re very grateful for this, one of our longest tenur drivers at Norton Transport. He’s been with us for 10 years. Joshua, thank you very much.

10:31 Well, thank you. And so obviously if you’ve been doing this for 10 years, there’s got to be a reason you’re still doing it.

10:38 Yeah, definitely true. One of the things that I really value is the flexibility that we’ve got and of course everybody is out here working for money.

10:47 True, true, true. And with the flexibility and the ability to make a good income, which is enhanced in the long if you look at the long ball picture enhanced by having that towbehind vehicle. Wanted to ask you kind of backing into when you were in the hospitality industry, how did that skill set that you developed there translate into driveaway and how has it benefited you?

11:14 I would say it provides me a high level of respect for individuals on both sides of an experience. I can directly relate to people on the other side of the hotel front desk who have had six customers in a row scream at them about something as silly as they saw one little bug run across the room when they live in Florida. Bugs come with Florida. You got to expect it—

11:41 Right? I mean, I can also relate to a cashier at a fast food place who just found out that the to- go order that the customer is certain they put in the app was being made five minutes ago and isn’t there. I can relate to both sides.

12:01 Gotcha. I mean, I’m sure that that would also interplay with the pickup and delivery of trucks because let’s be honest, you don’t know who’s going to be on the other end and what the reception is going to be like.

12:13 Yeah, absolutely.

12:15 I mean, I would think coming from a professional background in corporate America that would help you to have that that ingrained professionalism out on the road as you deal with all walks of people. I’d like to think that I had a professional mindset before I got into the hospitality industry as well too, but I definitely agree that putting your best foot forward and communicating with the customer, communicating with the office is just best practice.

12:47 Gotcha. Talking about communicating with the office, on your dispatch team, this is a common topic. We talk about the relationship between the driver and the dispatch team. How would you describe it? And what are the advantages and disadvantages that you can make out of that relationship?

13:06 Oh man, the dispatch relationship definitely is important. And in 10 years, I’ve had more dispatchers than I can possibly count at this point. One of the challenges is some of our really great dispatchers after you build a relationship with them, they get promoted into other positions. And so we’ve got to celebrate the successes and the accomplishments. The last time I stopped into the office, actually, I was just talking to one or two of the other dispatchers because I knew one of them had just been reassigned or given the opportunity to step into a new leadership role. And that was something that I didn’t necessarily know was happening until I stopped by the office.

13:52 So just having a little more communication on things that we can celebrate like that and having a clearer picture of what’s happening on the office side of things would go a long way for the drivers to also understand what the dispatch team and what individuals in the office are doing on our benefit. And so honestly that probably ties into my hospitality background again to understand both sides of the experience.

14:22 Gotcha. You know, one thing that is great what you just mentioned there is the fact that you’ve been in the office before. We get to see drivers coming through. Of course, we are located off I-75. We’re the first exit in Georgia. If you’re going southbound and as soon as you cross into Georgia, we’re right there off of the exit. And it’s always great for the whole office to see a driver in person because we interact with them so much in a given day. So many different people are talking with the drivers and to see them in person. And I guess it’s good for you too as you were talking about laying it out there. The benefits of meeting the people that you talk to all the time. And Joshua was recommended to us to be on the Six-Figure Trucker by Thomas Vin, who’s one of our senior dispatchers and leads our second shift.

15:09 Now, was Thomas your first dispatcher?

15:14 That would be pretty impressive, but I’m sure that my very first dispatcher is long gone.

15:19 Gotcha. Now, whose team are you on now?

15:21 I’m on Kelsey’s team.

15:23 Okay. Okay. So, Kelsey is the one you interact with the most.

15:27 Yeah, that’s correct.

15:28 Gotcha. Now, you know, we were talking about this before we got on the air here on the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport. This is a common thing that we hear sometime, but not enough about it. The brotherhood and the sisterhood out there in the driveaway world when you’re on the many roads of this country. Talk a little bit about how that works and how you guys look out for each other on a daily basis. Well, I don’t always run into other drivers on a daily basis, but it is important to be checking in with your dispatcher, specifically checking in with the office. I just texted Kelsey earlier about the location I was in and was asking if there had been anything new that was updated. And unfortunately, at that moment, there wasn’t. But it’s just a constantly changing industry. And I usually feel like 5 minutes after I head out of the location I was at, there will probably be that perfect load that just shows up out of nowhere.

16:30 That’s Murphy being your house guest right there. But—

16:34 It seems that way.

16:35 Yeah. But, you know, we were talking about on the at the fuel stations, the truck stops, and the drop yards across the country, you do run into other drivers, not always from Norton, but from other companies, and you guys have been able to help each other out. Share a story or two with us, where you were in that position.

16:55 Yeah, once one I’ll try to keep it as a quick story because it just immediately came to mind. I was out in California at one of our yards at Moreno Valley and a new driver from another company clearly had no idea what was going on and he was actually unfamiliar with the deaf product and he was asking me do you put this into the fuel tank?

17:23 No. No.

17:23 And those of us with the experience to know about deaf would absolutely say never. Never and never. But unfortunately, what sometimes happens, those of us that are experienced forget that there’s new drivers out there and other people don’t know the things that we know after a few years on the road. That partly comes back to my time in human resources in the past where we were constantly hiring and retraining and developing new employees and new leaders. And so I often have an approach to remind myself this other guy, this other lady doesn’t know the things that you know. So just be patient with them.

18:07 That was a great story you were sharing with us before we got on the air about a rental car and when you want to turn it in and when you do not. You ran into an instance that happened you had something that came up where you helped another guy out who was in a bit of a predicament. Actually, actually, John, it was the exact same guy that I was just referring to with the deaf. He was so green, he just he didn’t even know what he was doing. So, at that location, when you go to the office to get your paperwork taken care of, get keys. Now, something might have changed in between timing. Again, I’ve been around for a little bit and I’ve definitely seen more than one change take place, but you actually had to go to another yard that if you were walking was about a 15minute walk away and then attempt to locate your specific load, possibly in the dark, hunting around in a truck with a hundred identical trucks.

19:10 They’re all Penske trucks. They’re all yellow. They’re all white. Whatever. This guy had already returned his rental car. And I had my rental car still because I had realized from previous experience that if you return your rental car before, you’ve made sure that you know where your truck is and that the truck is operational, you’re setting yourself up for some problems. So in this case, he had already returned his rental car. So he was not with Norton. I will say that. But I told him, “Hey man, I’ll drive you over to the yard and I’ll help you locate your truck.” And again, that’s when I was explaining to him about DEF as a very, very important factor for a brand new driver because I could tell with his level of experience, nobody else had given him a heads up to not put the DEF into the diesel. And that’s very nice of you, very kind of you to help this guy out in on two fronts and the same occasion there.

20:12 And is that something that’s been returned to you? I mean not necessarily for lack of experience, but where you may have been in a pinch, in a jam, somebody was there to help you out.

20:23 Oh yeah, absolutely. So, another similar story. I was picking up at a location in, let’s see, Vancouver, Washington, and just so happened there was another driver who was also picking up at that same yard. And neither one of our trucks would start. It was basically an auction yard. And you never know what’s going to come out of an auction yard. And so, we had to have a service truck come and jump both of our trucks. But he had a rental car and I didn’t. Oh, no. Actually, that was the thing. We both have a rental car because I’ve been out visiting some friends for a couple days and I generally don’t take my toe car out west just because the distances. So, I’m more likely to in the west not have my backup wheels.

21:09 So, in this case, he was going to stay for an extra night and he took me back to the rental office so that I could drop off my car and then he very graciously drove me back to the truck.

21:22 That’s cool. That’s cool. I mean, that it really underscores the brotherhood and sisterhood out there in the driveaway world.

21:28 Definitely. Definitely does.

21:30 Now, we did a little bit of research coming into this episode with Joshua Dodge here on the Six-Figure Trucker, brought to you by Norton Transport. Josh, I don’t know if you’re aware of these stats, but you’ve got some impressive statistics backing you up in your 10-year career here. You have a check-in percentage of 100% and you have an completion percentage of 100%. And in this second quarter of 2024, you have an 80% on-time rate. I would think all of those things obviously speaking are very important to you.

22:03 Yeah, they definitely are. I haven’t heard those specific stats. So, that’s fun to hear.

22:09 Now, let’s talk about the on-time percentage. What do you do? Or does it help you a lot to have that toe behind to make it on time to your next route, your next load, or is it just punctuality that’s built within you?

22:22 Honestly, my opinion is I’ve been on time every time because the truck doesn’t get there until I get there. And so as long as I’ve had a safe delivery and I’ve communicated with the customer, the other details are a little less of the priority to me because protecting the customer’s assets and getting their safety is the goal every time.

22:49 Amen, brother. Amen. Now, you talked about something too that is something we try to hammer home with all the drivers. Communication. Communication with the customers. They always want to hear how far out the truck is, when the truck’s going to be there. How much has that saved you in the past just making that one simple phone call?

23:09 I’m thinking of more than one specific story right now, John. And why I’m laughing is because I don’t want to say anything that comes across critically, but I have more than once had information on my B that wasn’t completely accurate. And so a specific incident shortly after I started with Norton that I recalled, I didn’t call ahead and I follow the GPS. I get to where the address is on my B and it’s an empty lot and I’m like I don’t know where I’m supposed to deliver this thing. So I circle around the lot. I’m trying to find a gate, entrance, the name of an business, anything. Eventually, I end up determining there’s one number missing out of the address on my B and my actual delivery location is seven miles from where I’m at.

24:06 Oh my goodness. Details matter. Details matter.

24:09 Details matter. So, somebody in the office had overlooked the fact that one number was missing in that address, but it really caused me a pain because I ended up missing the Greyhound bus that I was intending to take that evening. And that was before I had the tow car. And so it just highlights if I had had a toe car at that time, I would have just immediately been able to fix my own problem in terms of timing and get on the road as quickly as I could to the next load.

24:44 Right. Right. Well, we apologize for the mistake on our end, but it still underscores the importance of calling ahead.

24:51 It definitely does. Other times, I found the hours of a business are a challenge. I found places that close at 2 o’clock on a Friday afternoon. No driver wants to hear that the delivery location closes at 2 o’clock on Friday.

25:07 That’s— Yeah, that’s not fun. Now, I wanted to ask you this question. We were talking about on-time percentage and completion percentage and of course check-in percentage all of which is aided by our app. Now, you’ve been with us for 10 years. You’ve seen the changes, you’ve seen the improvements of the app. What are the benefits you see of it? And do you see any room for improvement?

25:30 Yeah, that’s a really good question. When I first started, there was no app. And so the only thing you could do was call in, speak to the dispatch office, and then cross your fingers hoping that there’s something good nearby. But with the app, you have much more control of your schedule and your timing and your planning. And you really have the ability to communicate with the office more effectively and try to link up loads and make more money and do that more effectively to save time, not be bouncing around all over the place trying to catch a next load when there’s actually one just a couple miles away.

26:12 Right. Right. I mean, that’s always when the dots connect, it’s a beautiful thing for everyone. Now, you were talking we were talking before we got on the air here on the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport. Joshua Dodge is our guest tonight. There’s a thing that you would like to see added to the app and of course, let you elaborate on that and maybe it’s a change we can get implemented quickly here. And what is it that you would like to see as a driver who’s out on the road every day? All right. Well, I definitely hope the decision makers are listening to this. The biggest feature right now that I would like to have in our app is the ability to select a search based on state. And that doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be closest to my location, but that would be potentially nice. But to search by state so that I can eliminate a bunch of the trucks immediately that are on the other side of the country or that are really not relevant to my search at the time because sometimes due to the fact that we have say 300 plus trucks on the load board, who has time to be scrolling through that entire list hunting for a great load when I really want to just focus on those loads.

27:35 That are within my reach. Yeah. In a close proximity. So, if I need to search one state over, that’s no big deal. But just simply being able to search would be a really helpful thing. And I think most of the drivers would probably agree.

27:53 We’ll float that up the ladder. We’ll float that up the chain and see what we can find out about that. And we appreciate you saying that to us. And it’s always we’re we like to stay on the cutting edge. We like to stay at the top of the game and the only way to do that is to get input from the people who deal with it every day. Now Joshua, I want to ask you as we wrap up here talking about driveaway as you close in on your uncle’s house there. What would you say you’ve been in it for 10 years, you moved into the towbeahhind space six years ago. And what would your advice be for someone who may be on the fence about getting into driveaway? I mean, they’ve got to take that that calculated risk of being an independent contractor, being a 1099, and moving in that direction. What would you I mean, if they’re trying to make that decision, what would you say the pros and cons are of being a driveaway driver? That reminds me of when I first came on with Norton actually because when I first applied, it was the very first driveaway company that I had learned of and I did not know very much about independent contracting at the time, but because of some of the previous bus driving that I’d done, I thought I knew about contracting because I had essentially been contracting privately.

29:19 Well, I very quickly learned that in the driveaway industry, there was a lot of things that I didn’t know at the outset. And so, it’s really important for a new driver to ask a lot of questions and to know what their budget is and to know where their big expenses are going to be because as a contracting driver, a lot of those costs come out of pocket and new drivers aren’t necessarily going to know that.

29:47 Yeah. I mean, I know exactly what you’re talking about. I mean, identifying those is something that’s not going to come in the first day, the first week.

29:55 No, it’s definitely not. I lucked out because the very, very first delivery I did was one of those school buses from Tulsa going to the Atlanta area. And again, I had no toe car at the beginning. So, what I also didn’t understand was the distances that you might have to travel to get back to some place else. While I was led to believe that that delivery was actually in Atlanta, it turned out to be about an hour outside of Atlanta where it was going to be much more difficult to get any type of transport back into the city or to another load. Thankfully, another Norton driver had a two vehicle that just like, “Hey, right now that sounds like a better deal than being stuck outside of Atlanta.” That’s for sure.

30:43 Oh, yeah. Anything being anything beats being stuck. And next week, Joshua is going to join us again because you may have heard him talking about in this week’s episode the flexibility that driveaway offers to all drivers. And that’s something that has meant a lot to Joshua because he’s not only a driveaway driver. He’s a Josh of all trades. And we’ll just leave it at this. The flexibility has offered him the ability to chase down his passions. And we will talk with Josh about that next week. Josh, we just want to tell you thank you so much for joining us on the Six-Figure Trucker and also thank you very much for your 10 years of service to Norton Transport.

31:26 Yeah, thank you. All right, Joshua Dodge. We’ll hear from him next week when he talks about his passions that he pursues when he’s not driving a big truck. Thank you very much, Joshua.

31:43 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.