00:05 It’ll stick with you the rest of your life. You go, you know, you would say, “Wow, that that that’s really what it’s all about. It’s not about what job you do, what war you’re in, or you know, that is where the human connection and the human emotion is right there. It’s right on display now. Hundreds of people coming out and hugging and kissing and crying and there’s just an avalanche of emotions coming off the plane like that.”

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.

00:52 Hello everyone. Welcome to the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport. And each and every one of you, if you join us here, which we’re glad you do, you know that this is a space where we lift up, we elevate, and celebrate the driver. We had a very intriguing guest last week. He’s back with us this week. That would be Mark Nichols. Mark, how are you?

01:12 Good, John. Good. How you doing today?

01:14 I’m doing well. Can’t complain at all. There’s no reason to. And Mark, thank you for joining us and thanks for spending your time with us for not only one episode, but for two. And if you guys were listening and heard Mark’s fascinating stories from last week, you heard this was a man who became a journalist for a small town newspaper and was able to bridge that into a podcast much later, a podcast that he has, the Mark Nichols podcast that came about during co he started his own podcast. Of course, that was due in large part to his background as a journalist. And you also heard some of the very, very compelling stories of Mark being a ballroom dancer and a ballroom dance instructor. Not only that, he was a dancer, a backup dancer for Dwight Yoakam. Mark, I mean, obviously, you’ve got the personality that mixes in well with a lot of different things.

02:08 I think you could safely say that. Yes. Whether I liked it or not—

02:13 These things kind of fall into you. But let’s go back you know, you’re a truck driver with us now. Seven years you’ve been with Norton Transport. We’re very grateful to have you on board. And let’s talk a little bit about your dispatch team. Rachel Graham is your lead dispatcher and she told me I want to tell on her here a little bit. She said, “Mark is great.” Said, “I’ve never ever had a bad word with Mark Nichols.” I think yeah we get along good. Rachel and I you know being a former dispatcher myself when I work for US Express Rachel I could tell that I would love to work beside her because I know that at the end of the day she’s going to have her stuff done. She, you know, her driver is going to be squared away and, you know, she, you know, that I like working with dispatchers who, you know, just get it done. You know, don’t mess around. You knock it out of the park and move on. That makes it so much easier for the driver because you’re not having to, you know, call several times making sure this is done, that done.

03:18 You just with Rachel, you can say, “Hey, I need to do this.” Rachel does it and there’s never a second thought about it and you know it’s going to get done.

03:28 That’s cool. And I’m sure being a former dispatcher yourself, you know which questions to ask. You kind of expect what’s coming.

03:35 Yeah. I learned Stephanie used to Stephanie Shepard used to be my dispatcher while she smoked up and I could tell when she was having a very busy day or a non busy day cuz you know I would do my check call in the morning say hey listen this is what I’m up to today. This is what I’m going to be doing. Make it quick cuz I bet you’re going to be I bet you’re busy right now and you don’t need you know you don’t need me to be sitting here yapping my mouth all day long just okay. Tell them what they need to know. Get off the phone so they can go back to work.

04:07 I gotta I gotcha. Now, we were talking before we got on the air, actually before ourh first episode, you have served this country and you did so in the Gulf War as you referred to it. You and I are about the same age and many people in our age range refer to it as Gulf War One. Tell us how you how that came about and just kind of walk us through that.

04:31 Sure. When I was 17 years old, I got a little postcard in the mail saying, “Join the National Guard.” And this I was living in Pulaski, Tennessee at the time. Join the National Guard, do your basic training between your junior and senior year of high school and then do your followup AIT training the summer after you at you graduate from high school. So you kind of split that four month training in two increments. You know, two months for basic and two months for your skill training or your AIT training. So, at age 17, I went to Fort Dix, New Jersey after that after I finished my 11th grade year, went through 10 months of basic training. And the reason why I wanted to do it is because I did not want to ride the bus my 12th grade year at school. I get I didn’t have a car. My parents couldn’t afford a car. And when you’re living in Pulaski, Tennessee, the only two jobs are howling hay and sacking groceries.

05:32 And then and neither one of those are going to get me enough money to buy a $1,200 Chevy for my grandparents so I didn’t have to ride the bus my 12th grade year. So, I went to basic training, Fort Dick, New Jersey, shaved my head, marched around, got in good shape, lost a lot of weight, and come back with $1,200 in my pocket that I was able to give my grandmother and grandfather, and they handed me the keys to my Chevette. So, my 12th grade year, I got to drive to school, and I didn’t have to ride a school bus. So, that started my military career.

06:08 Now, this was I think you and I were talking. And it was 85. Between 85 and ‘ 86. Summer of 85, I guess it was.

06:16 Yeah, that would have been a summer of 85 to 86. Yes.

06:19 Now, you and I, we were talking about it at the same age. Of course, at that time, we didn’t really have any thoughts of fighting in a war overseas, but that’s what ended up. You ended up over in a theater overseas where war was going on.

06:32 Yeah. I was able to parlay that part-time National Guard job into actually working as a unit clerk full-time for the Lewisburg, Tennessee National Guard Army. And I was working over there just a little unit clerk Sergeant Ebride. And one day they called and I answered the phone and they say, “We have a roaring bull message or no, excuse me, a gathering bull. Yeah, gathering bull message.” And of course, I knew what that was. Anytime a national guard gets that message that means you are about to be put on active duty servicing is going to be sent to war.

07:16 And of course we were kind of expecting it because we were watching what was going on in the Gulf War at that time during George Bush’s president’s presidency. Sure enough, we got placed on call and then two weeks later we got the roaring bull message that means bring all your guys in. You’re immobilizing. You’re going to war. So we did it. We got mobilized and we got sent over to Saudi Arabia. Yeah. I spent a year in that in the desert. We were there after the war ended. We were still there and cuz we were a service supply unit. And all the equipment that everybody was getting rid of after the war, we were responsible collecting it and disposing of it, burning it or sending it back to the America. And we’ve been there for a year and we didn’t know how long we’re going to be there.

08:05 So they had volunteers from the state of Tennessee National Guard Armies to come and replace us so we could come home. And even though our unit name stayed in Sawa Europe, we come home. And shortly after that, I said, “Well, if I’m going to get out now, I’m not going to regret it cuz I’m not going to have so much time in that I would regret not staying for 20 years and getting a retirement.”

08:28 I got you. What was that like as a young man getting that call?

08:31 We were kind of expecting it. But once we got it I had to, you know, I had to basically call the other guys. I had to call the company commander, the first sergeant. And by the end of the day, all the top guys in the unit were in our office and you know and a lot of them were worried because you know these were you looking at that time you look at 45 50 and we had a 60 year old man in the unit you know and the idea of them going over to Saudi Arabia and going to war was not something they thought they were going to do at that time and so the older guys in our unit had trouble you know and we had some women in our unit too that were had, you know, kids at home and stuff like that and know it was tough on them. It was really me. I was single. I wasn’t married, so it wasn’t that tough on me. I can remember my boss or the warrant officer. I can remember when we were going in the phone rooms and war in the war zone that we had they would have phones where we could call home for free and everything.

09:33 I can remember sitting there watching him. This is a 50-y old man just crying like a baby. Cuz he was so homesick and tired, wanted to be home to his family.

09:44 That that’s the stuff that stuck out in my mind is watching, you know, the older guys that just were hardnosed guys and everything. All of a sudden, I’m watching them cry like babies because they wanted to go home. They were so homesick.

09:56 Wow. Well, I guess that’s a reality of being in a war, even though it was one that was very one-sided. You know the we came out in on top obviously in that one but—

10:06 Wanted to ask you just a couple of other questions related to that but first want to let everybody if they may be joining us late in the program you’re listening to the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport this is Mark Nichols 7-year driver with us Class A driver and he’s telling us some of his stories from his time over in the Gulf War and some of them recollections of things that really stuck in his mind and Mark, I wanted to ask you, you were a young man then. How much did that change you or did it change you for your what would be your future professional life as far as different avenues you took? How much did that change you having that experience behind you?

10:47 It gave me empathy. I guess one of the most profound things coming back from a war is if you’re coming back with a unit like we did and you get to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and you get off the plane and you watch mothers and you watch fathers and you watch married people who may have a spouse at the home and you watch their kids and you see them come together after being, you know, apart for a year and in a dangerous war zone where you don’t really know what’s going on. And you see them finally come together. You know, we see these pictures of World War II where the soldiers coming home and the girls and, you know, the wives and girlfriends greeting them and everything, but if you’re there coming off the plane and, you know, me, a single guy, and I don’t have a wife, I just got my mother who’s waiting on me or my aunt was waiting on me at the time. But if you’re getting off a plane and you see the just emotion that pours out of these people coming together, you know, that have been gone for a year, that right there will give you a profoundness that you it’ll stick with you the rest of your life.

12:03 You got, you know, you would say, “Wow, that that’s, you know, that’s really what it’s all about. It’s not about what job you do, what war you’re in, or, you know, anything else. That that is where the human connection and the human emotion is right there. It’s right on display. You know, it’s hundreds of people coming up hugging and kissing and crying and just, you know, emotions. It’s just avalanche of emotions coming off the plane like that.”

12:32 Well, well said, Mark. You’re listening to Mark Nichols here on the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport. As you listened in on his story last week, you know that he was a journalist, worked for a small town paper in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, and also ballroom dance instructor, backup dancer for Dwight Yoakam, and of course a driveaway truck driver. What led you to becoming a driver? How did that come about? What was that transition in your life there? I was working as a dispatcher for the Family Dollar account in South Carolina. The dispatcher that worked next to me in the desk next to me, he was doing part-time driveaway. His wife was in court in chiropractor school and he was having to basically fund the you know the house the whole bills and everything else off his income until she got out of school.

13:32 So he was doing dispatching five days a week. He would fly out of Spartanburg South or Greenville, South Carolina on Friday evening, fly up to Chicago, take the train over to Elkhart and get an RV and deliver it Monday morning, fly back, and he would be at his nighttime shield with the US Express on Monday night.

14:00 So, he was driving all weekend.

14:01 Yeah, he was driving all weekend. And that was his schedule for a long time. And he would tell me about this driveaway. And I really didn’t know much about it, but then he would say, “Yeah, you can pick your own load. You get a load board, do what you, you know, do the load you want to do. You’re you know, you’re a contractor.” And at the time I was just like over I was just really tired of being a dispatcher because if you ever you’ve ever been a dispatcher for Family Dollar or Dollar T job because you got a lot of drivers who really don’t want to do the job and they’re always late for you know you’re just putting out fires all day long. And I didn’t want to do I didn’t want to do that forever. So, he taught me how to get in the driveaway business and I started out with quality driveaway and ended up with Norton Transport.

14:49 Now, not asking you to brag on our company, you can be completely transparent. What’s it been like not to name the other companies you’ve been with, what’s the comparison between the two, working for Norton, working for the other one?

15:02 The big difference is Mr. Norton used to do our job. He knows what the dispatch or excuse me the drivers are going through. He knows what it’s like to accept a load. He knows what it’s like to try to make a profit on a load. He knows about dead head and deadhead cost. He understands everything in the game that we have to play to deliver the product, make the company some money, and make ourselves some money. And unlike these other companies out there, Quality Bennett and all the rest of them, they don’t understand that concept, Mr. Norton understands it very well. And the fact that he will schedule you a rental car or get you a plane ticket and even, you know, maybe give you a little credit towards those purchases. He makes it where you can get out there and keep running and you don’t, you know, you’re not worried about can I get to this next load. He’s going to help you. And that is the difference maker because all the other companies you’re out there on your own.

16:07 When I first started with quality, I can remember delivering a load. And I know I would have to take four or five different modes of transportation to get to my next load, including city buses, Greyhound buses. I mean it and you didn’t have Uber back in those days. So getting that last mile, you know, from your pick up and your drive—

16:28 Was tricky.

16:29 It was a challenge—

16:31 I’m sure.

16:31 Yeah. And Mr. Norton understands that. And he’s he makes it easy for you to move out there. And if you can’t move efficiently and this kind of work, you’re not going to make any money—

16:43 Right?

16:44 And Mr. Norton understands that. He makes sure his drivers can move efficiently and you can make a profit and that’s why I’m with Norton. You know I there’s just no I mean there’s no other comparison because of that one simple fact. He’s done this job. He understands it and he’s going to make sure that his drivers can get out there and move to make the county money and themselves money. That that is the difference maker. That’s well said right there, Mark, because Calvin Norton he does understand drivers as a truck driver, still drives to this day, has his CDL license, and if need be, he will get behind the wheel. And that’s something that comes down this the pipeline from Calvin. I mean, through the company, the importance of taking care of the drivers and Mark, we think you have been doing a good job taking care of us. And we certainly appreciate you joining us on the show on the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport. And the last question I wanted to ask you, we’re in the coming up on the last part of January.

17:52 As an experienced driver, what advice would you give to other drivers as it pertains to not just cold weather, but I mean, if you get a load, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, you’re going to be sub-zero temperatures there and driving in bad weather whether it be ice or snow. What’s your advice for those drivers?

18:13 You got a phone, it’s got weather reports on it, and like I think I was talking to you once before, you got to do your homework. Nobody’s going to do it for you. When you pick up a load, check the weather, check how you going to get in, how you going to get out. You can now on your phones, you can look at the road conditions. And when it comes to driving in cold weather, always remember, you can drive on a road that has no snow. You can drive okay on a road that has snow, but you cannot drive on a road that has ice. Ice will win every time. Sometimes you have to get off the road with an advice.

18:53 Absolutely. Great words of advice from Mark Nichols here on the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport. Mark, we really appreciate you being on the program with us and sharing that advice, sharing your stories, personal stories and those overseas in the Gulf War and everything you learned from that and everything you shared with us last week. We certainly appreciate you.

19:15 Thank you, John. I appreciate it.

19:19 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.