00:05 How rewarding was it when you had an eight or $10,000 car and you beat somebody that hadn’t won, you know, five times as much?

00:11 Oh my gosh, it was awesome. Yeah. And that that was a talk, too, cuz everybody looked, there’s no way that car can be that fast. And then it would did well, you know. 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.

00:44 Hello everyone and welcome to the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport. And if you join us each and every week, you know that this is a place where we elevate and celebrate drivers. It’s not the easiest job in the world. Certainly is not. But we certainly appreciate and are grateful for the drivers we have at Norton Transport and what they do for us. And if you listen last week, we had Chad Gillespie on. And Chad was telling us many of his stories, how he came to Norton Transport, which is a great story. He was broken down in Kingman, Arizona. And there was another driver broken down in Kingman, Arizona who just happened to be a Norton driver. And Robert Brooks was that driver and introduced him to Norton. And Chad has been with us for four years and three months. Chad, he joins us now. How are you?

01:27 I’m doing great.

01:28 Of course, right now we’re in the very beginning of March when we’re talking to Chad here. It’s cold still in a lot of places, but not in your home of Mississippi. Tell us what the weather was like today.

01:38 Shoot. We were in short sleeves today, so I’m going to guess it was mid70s. Now it’s in the evening so a long sleeve is fine. It won’t be long before it’s blistering hot though.

01:49 Yeah, that Mississippi summer is something to you got to be ready for that.

01:53 Yep. It’s tough.

01:54 Now Chad, you were sharing with us a little bit last week kind of hinted to us that you got into trucking through racing. Is that right?

02:01 I did.

02:02 Tell us how that happened. Well, soon as I got out of high school, I went to work at a auto parts store for a little while and just got the racing bug and kind of pieced me together a race car and would go every once in a while. Went from that to I went into automotive machinist like building engines, the actual machine work of boring the cylinders and reworking the heads, all that kind of stuff. And I did that for quite a few years. And a friend of mine had a racing fuel business and he wanted to go a different route and start a used car place. So I bought the racing fuel business from him and he went on a different direction. But with the racing fuel I had to deliver it. So I had to have a I started out with a old Penske truck. I think it was a 24 foot box truck one that was 26,000 GVWR and I used it for a year or so and then I had to upgrade to a little bit bigger truck. But that’s how I got had to have my CDL with my hazmat endorsement, my tanker endorsement.

02:58 What you were sharing with us last week, you learned a hard lesson about logs during this time frame. Kind of share that story with us.

03:08 Yeah, I when I got my CDL, you didn’t have to go to CDL school. You just had to go take a test. You pass the test, you need to take a driving test. You pass the driving test, you’re ready to go. Pretty much everything I learned from DOT officers on the side of the road or at way station. So I learned everything the hard way.

03:27 And those lessons you’ll remember.

03:29 Yeah, they stick with you. They definitely stick with you. And you wanted to give a shout out to a certain department at Norton. So certainly feel free to do so.

03:37 Yeah, I was lucky the whole time that I had my fuel business. I pretty much stayed within 100 150 air miles. So I didn’t have to run a log book. And honestly, I didn’t know how to do a log book. And when I started with Norton, they kind of coached along and helped me. And I know a lot of drivers don’t like that. Well, here in Mississippi, it hits us 7:00, but it’s 8:00 Eastern time. That alarm says your logs need attention. And it gets under people’s skin. But I’m thankful for it because if you can get along with them, you will never have trouble with a DOT audit of any kind. And if they want to run your logs, let them look, you know, cuz they take care of me. And if—

04:16 That that gives you peace of mind, I’m sure—

04:18 They’re honest mistakes. A couple weeks ago, Carson called me, my dispatcher. She said, I well, I talked to her, said, “My logs need attention.” I couldn’t figure out was what was going on. Well, she looked at it. She said, “Well, you looks like you averaged about 162 miles an hour for 4 hours straight.” Said, “No ways.” Come to find out, I hit a button roll and I put like I, you know, instead of say 120 mi, I went 1120 mi, something like that. It was some little simple mistake, but the log department caught me and ask me to fix it. That’s better than the DOT, you know, catching you with something like that.

04:55 Absolutely. Well, you were a previous race car driver, so maybe it’s possible.

05:00 Yeah, that’d be a big rig going that fast for sure.

05:02 Yes, it would be. Now, let’s kind of get go back into the racing there. You started as a young man. What kind of car were you racing at that time?

05:13 My very first one was a 69 Firebird and I didn’t race it, but just a few times and it got rid of it. I still have my car. It’s a 72 Nova, but most of our racing that we did pretty good was with my brother’s car. It’s a 80 model Malibu.

05:29 Okay. And right when they first changed the tires and they started with drag rail, we got in it early and we did pretty good there for a year or two. We could run right up there with some of the fast guys—

05:40 And—

05:41 Everybody else, but the money outran us then.

05:44 Gotcha. Now that Firebird, what did it have under the hood?

05:48 It had a 400.

05:49 400. Okay. What about the your next car before you got to the Monte Carlo?

05:54 The 72 Nova. It started out with a 350 and then that ended up with a big block Chevrolet in it.

06:00 Gotcha. Now you were talking about you started getting in the machining side working on the hardcore part of the engine, the boring.

06:09 How much does that help you now? Obviously you’re in mostly diesel trucks, but having that background of mechanical knowledge—

06:19 It helps out a lot. If there’s a little problem, most of the time I can sort through it, not have to call anybody. And if you do have a breakdown, you have the knowledge to explain to them what’s going on instead of just saying it’s making a clunk sound. You can kind of tell them it’s, you know, sounds like the air compressor or sounds like the governor not shutting off or something like that, you know?

06:39 Yeah. Give them a little more information right up front.

06:42 Right.

06:42 Now, on the racing side drag strip, is that you were in the drag strip side?

06:48 Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Mainly what we did. We tried everything, but mainly drag racing. We where we had our most success. What was your best time? Do you remember your best time?

06:56 Well, this is back before they had good tires. This was on the old BF, good wrench tires. And I think we went 585 in a eighth mile.

07:06 That’s moving. That’s moving.

07:07 Well, that it’s not now, but back then it was a long it was some of the faster times. Those guys now can run in the you know 380s, 390s, you know.

07:18 Wow. It is a—

07:19 Crazy. It’s just technology. But, you know, we were running a, you know, eight or $10,000 car and they’ve got a $200,000 car nowadays. It’s crazy the money that it takes to run fast.

07:31 How much or how rewarding was it when you had an eight or $10,000 car and you beat somebody that had one, you know, five times as much.

07:39 Oh my gosh, it was awesome. It was awesome. Yeah. And that that was a talk, too, cuz everybody looked, there’s no way that car can be that fast. And then it would it just did it did well, you know. Mhm.

07:51 Mhm.

07:52 We really every night at the shop, honestly, we’d crack open up a couple beers and we would think about how we make our car lighter, how to make it better. And since we had already done some round track work round track racing and stuff, we knew how to work the scales, the weight percentages, and that that was our advantage. We spent a lot of times with that car on the scales getting the weight right.

08:14 You had your own research lab, research R&Department there. A lot of think tank. We did.

08:20 We did. And we fabricated a lot of our parts. All of our suspension parts we made oursel.

08:24 I gotcha. Trying to keep that weight down and the horsepower up.

08:28 Yeah. Yeah. And you got to have the weight in the right places. If it’s in the wrong place, it just it’ll work against itself.

08:34 Mhm. Now, you said that you’re you bought the company from a friend of yours and it was not going in the right direction. How long did you own that? I guess it was a fuel delivery business.

08:46 Yeah. Yeah. We bought racing fuel out of Kilgore, Texas to start with and then a few years into it we cut that relationship and I started buying it out of Owens Owensboro in Bowling Green, Kentucky, but let me see. I was in it to about 2019 I think.

09:04 Was there good money in it or was it tough?

09:06 At first it really was. It really was. It was good money and a lot of work, but it got to where like I said, people were just cutting back. They weren’t racing as much when the economy slowed down.

09:18 And then there got to be other people that would hop, you know, throw a couple barrels in the back of their truck and try to go sell them. And I’m trying to operate a big truck with expensive insurance and all that kind of stuff. And it just kind of slowly dried up.

09:31 Yeah, it just wasn’t lining up for you there. Do you miss the racing world?

09:38 I thought I would, but I really don’t. I’ve about decided you have enough birthday cake, you’ll get tired of birthday cake, eating it every day. But it, you know, it kept me around racing for a few years after that because when we raced and we were competitive, it was awesome. Best feeling in the world. But when money outruns you and you just can’t, you know, you can’t outthink money a lot of times. But then the racing fuel kept me right there at the racetrack and, you know, in the excitement anyway.

10:08 Now today, are you still a fan of racing? Do you watch Formula 1, NASCAR, that kind of stuff? Yeah, I help somebody’s out every once in a while, talk to them and you know, I don’t watch it so much. If it’s on TV, I’ll watch it, but you know, I’d rather see it in person.

10:25 Gotcha. Well, being there in Mississippi, I’m going to— Have you ever made the trip over to Talladega?

10:30 Yeah. Went to Talladega twice then. Think 1996, I think I went twice. I hadn’t been back since then.

10:38 Everybody always comments about the steepness of that track.

10:42 Yeah. Yeah. From what I understand, if you’re not maintaining 60 mph, the car will just slide down. It can’t stay on it.

10:48 Yeah, I understand. That’s something fascinating there.

10:53 Right.

10:53 Well, on the NASCAR side, do you have a favorite driver that you follow now?

10:58 Not really. I mean, I lost mine back in 2001, but—

11:04 No, I got, you know, Ricky Stenhouse is just right up here from Olive Branch, Mississippi. Mhm.

11:09 I mean, and I actually sold his dad a little bit of racing fuel back before he made it into NASCAR, you know, before Ricky Jr. Did.

11:16 Did you ever have a chance to meet Ricky Jr.?

11:19 No, I met his dad, but I didn’t meet him. He just happened not he wasn’t there when I was there.

11:23 I gotcha. I gotcha. You’re listening to Chad Gillespie here on the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport. Now, Chad’s one of our great drivers and we certainly appreciate everything he does and he’s just sharing some of his background on the racing side and I’m sure you met some characters in the racing side.

11:39 So, Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I met Don Garlits in Washington DC and I think it was 1990 I met him.

11:48 That’s right.

11:48 And then I met him again in Memphis later on when we was at a race in Memphis. So, yeah, I’ve met quite a I know a lot of the street outlaw guys. Gotcha. Now, you’re about to hit the road and we were talking about this last week. Now, what’s your after you get finished with the your road to I mean your load tomorrow, what have you already got your week planned out?

12:12 Yeah, man. I’ve got the best dispatchers in the world, you know. Carson and Courtney, they just they’re awesome. Cuz soon as I deliver this one in Ohio, it’s right around Cincinnati. She’s got me one in Chillicothe going to South Carolina because she knew my other company had me one in North Carolina coming right back to Tupelo within 30 minutes of where I live.

12:36 So, you’re going to get three runs in and be home.

12:39 Yeah. Yeah. And it’s so awesome to have the dispatchers that’ll work with you in two different companies and a lot of people I’ve heard discouraging things that, well, we I can’t get this load and I can’t get that load. They won’t book me out over two or three days. Will you build a relationship with your dispatcher? If they can trust you to get the thing there when you say you’re going to get it there, keep the fenders on it, you know, and don’t have any complaints. Deliver it nice and clean. Dude, the trust bills higher and higher and they’ll give you more slack in your rope. More slack in your rope, you know. Just don’t ever hang yourself. Always keep the dispatcher in the loop. If you have a problem, shoot, let her be the or him where you’re just dispatcher. Let them be the first one to hear. That’s some incredible advice from Chad Gillespie here on the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport. Chad, we certainly appreciate you spending your time with us, sharing your time with us, sharing your knowledge. Honestly, you’ve got a lot of it that you’ve built up over the years. We certainly are grateful for that.

13:36 I appreciate it. Norton’s been good to me. And anybody can find something wrong with any place they work for or with, but I mean, Norton’s my first my favorite. I can’t help it.

13:46 We love to hear that. We always love to keep our drivers happy because they keep us happy and you know it’s a two-way street.

13:52 Yep.

13:53 Chad Gillespie joining us here for two weeks on the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport. Chad, be careful out there on the road and have some good runs and if you ever need to race again, find a safe place to do it.

14:05 Yes, sir. I appreciate it. Have a good day.

14:07 You too. Take care.

14:11 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.