Dan Heath: Kathy Lednicky is a long haul truck driver. She's been doing it for seven years now. And she'll tell you it's not an easy job. And one of the hardest parts about it is you're by yourself for long stretches of time.

Kathy Lednicky: I would recommend a cat on the truck, except you have to deal with the litter box. But I would recommend the cat over the dog because you don't have to take the cat out, you know? you have to stop and take a dog out and everything like that.

Dan Heath: Another recommendation, audio books. A good murder mystery can help dull the monotony of long stretches of road.

Kathy Lednicky: When you go across on I-80 in Nebraska, you're a steering wheel holder for the entire drive of Nebraska. There's no turns, there's no hills, there's no nothing, it's just straight and flat.

Dan Heath: And when you get tired of the murder mysteries, give somebody a call.

Kathy Lednicky: I'll get on the phone and talk with my friends and we'll talk for two, three hours on the phone and we'll talk about everything. I mean, I have my friends that I've been friends with now for seven years while I've been driving.

Dan Heath: She used to call her boyfriend Gene and talk with him, but then they got married and Gene, who was a mechanic, decided to become a long haul trucker himself. And now they work as a team in the same truck trading off shifts. They each have their own specialties. What's the most stressful part of your job?

Kathy Lednicky: For me, backing the trailer into a spot is the most stressful part for me. Gene, on the other hand, we call it one shot in it. He can do it without any pull-ups, he is a very good backer.

Dan Heath: So Gene, what's your secret?

Gene Lednicky: I've been back in trailers for as long as I can remember. I guess I have a knack for it, I don't know.

Dan Heath: Imagine spending just about every waking moment with your partner in the cab of a semi-truck. That's a lotta couple time.

Kathy Lednicky: It's either a relationship builder or a breaker.

Gene Lednicky: Yeah, we have our good and bad days, I mean, you know?

Kathy Lednicky: There's no screaming because we're in such a small area, but there are definitely silent times.

Dan Heath: I'm Dan Heath and this is "What It's Like To Be..." In every episode, we walk in the shoes of somebody from a different profession, a professional Santa Claus, a mystery novelist, a PR crisis manager. We wanna know what they do all day at work. Today, we're breaking format to talk with two people, Kathy Lednicky and her husband Gene, about what it's like to be a long-haul truck driver. They're team drivers, which means, they take turns driving the same truck. We'll pick up some fantastic trucker lingo, learn why truckers think as much about parking as driving and find out the most ridiculous cargo they've ever hauled. Stay with us.

Dan Heath: The first thing you need to know about a long haul trucker's day is that it's governed by the clock and not just one of them, there are three.

Kathy Lednicky: A 70-hour work week clock and that's the maximum amount of time we can drive, period. And that's 70 hours. And then you have your 11-hour clock, which is the time you can drive during one shift before you have to have 10 hours down.

Dan Heath: And the third clock is a break clock that makes sure you take a break during those 11 hours of the shift.

Dan Heath: And would a solo driver, like once they hit that 11-hour clock, would they typically sleep in the truck?

Gene Lednicky: Uh-huh.

Kathy Lednicky: That's it. We park in a truck stop and sleep or a rest area. We have a rest area, so we stop in. And you park the truck and you're down for 10 hours. You can't roll the truck.

Gene Lednicky: If you found a place to park, I mean, you know, I guess you could go rent a motel or something like that. We usually don't, but we have beds and TV, microwave, refrigerator. I mean, the truck is set up for us to stay in, so.

Kathy Lednicky: And in our company, we have what's called a Qualcomm and that runs our clocks. And so as soon as the wheels move on the truck above five miles an hour,

Gene Lednicky: Above five miles, yeah.

Kathy Lednicky: then the clocks automatically start. And then to stop the clock, when you stop the truck, you have to physically go on the computer and stop your clock.

Dan Heath: And you can kind of see it counting down, yeah?

Kathy Lednicky: Yes.

Dan Heath: And what happens if you're in danger of going over the 11 hours, what happens?

Kathy Lednicky: It violates you.

Dan Heath: That sounds terrifying. What does that mean?

Kathy Lednicky: It sets an alarm off and the Qualcomm tells you that you are in violation of hours of service.

Dan Heath: And then the police swoop in and black helicopters-

Kathy Lednicky: No.

Gene Lednicky: You just get points against you and they go away after six months. But you can only accumulate so many in a 6-month period.

Dan Heath: Wow! And so the 70 hour clock, I mean, just doing the math here, that means six days you're maxing out your 11-hour clock and you still have a trailing four hours or whatever to spend-

- Right

Dan Heath: on the final day. That's a lot of driving. I mean, does it feel like a lot or do you sort of get used to it?

Gene Lednicky: Oh it does.

- We drive an average around 625 miles a shift.

Dan Heath: Whoa!

Kathy Lednicky: And when I sit in the seat and it's my turn to drive, I say the first 200 miles are the toughest. For some reason I'm fidgety and everything like that. And the last 20 miles are the toughest.

Dan Heath: So you guys are team drivers of course. How common is that in the industry?

Kathy Lednicky: It's preferred in the reefer division because we can get product, for example, produce from Arizona to New Jersey in three days. So it's preferred to have team drivers so that your produce is fresh.

Dan Heath: You're saying all these things that are so obvious to you, and it's like the light bulb is going off over my head. Like of course, you have to move produce really quickly and so you can't afford to have 10 hours of downtime. Gosh, this is fascinating. And and what does reefer mean?

Kathy Lednicky: A reefer is refrigerated. You have a refrigerated trailer, you have your flatbed, which is the ones that everybody sees with cranes and trucks and everything like that.

Gene Lednicky: And they're referred to as skateboards.

Kathy Lednicky: And yeah, they're called skateboards.

Dan Heath: That's what you call them?

Gene Lednicky: Yeah, the CB and so forth, stuff like that.

Dan Heath: Oh, I love that.

Kathy Lednicky: And then you have your car haulers and we call them parking lots.

Dan Heath: Parking lots. This is so good to get truck driver slang.

Kathy Lednicky: And then you have your refrigerated units and they're called reefers. And then you have your dry vans, which look just like the reefer units except they don't have the refrigeration part on it.

Gene Lednicky: And then your tankers, of course.

Kathy Lednicky: And then you have your tankers.

Dan Heath: And so how much time do you have when you're both awake? 'cause I know part of it is you're trading off sleeping hours, but-

Gene Lednicky: It depends on the load. Some, I mean, if we're on a short load, like 600 miles, you know, and then we're gonna have some downtime. We'll try to stay awake with each other, that way we can sleep that night.

Dan Heath: Sleeping in the truck is noisy with the diesel trucks and the reefer units running. One night another truck driver backed into them by accident, messed up their truck and then just took off. Fortunately, their dash cam recorded the whole thing.

Kathy Lednicky: And the gentleman left and said he didn't know that he did damage to our truck. Now how he didn't know, 'cause he cut a big hole in the side of his trailer. So how he didn't know he did damage our truck was unbelievable, but we got him on the dash cam so we were able to go ahead and file the insurance claim that way.

Dan Heath: And is there a camera that points at you on the interior?

Gene Lednicky: Not yet, our company is just...

Kathy Lednicky: Implementing that.

Gene Lednicky: Yeah. And they're saying they're gonna put it in within this next year or so.

Dan Heath: How do you feel about that?

Kathy Lednicky: I personally don't care because when I'm driving I don't mess with my cell phone. My feet are aren't up on the dash, I don't watch TikTok. And these are the things that they're trying to get away from because people are not, you know, following the rules.

Dan Heath: Distracted driving.

- Distracted driving.

- Yeah.

Dan Heath: The most scary thing that I can imagine is a big rig driver watching TikTok.

- And it happens.

- It happens.

Dan Heath: Does that really happen?

- Yes, it does.

Kathy Lednicky: When we pass 'em on the road, you will see on their dash, their cell phones set up on the front of their dash and they'll have TikTok playing.

Dan Heath: Gosh, I didn't think about what a different perspective you all have on the road. Like what have you learned just by being able to observe other drivers?

Kathy Lednicky: By sitting up so high in the truck and being able to look at other drivers, it's gotten to the point where both of us can anticipate exactly what the car in front of us is gonna do really.

Dan Heath: Really?

Kathy Lednicky: And they're gonna cut us off and we're able to slow down. The view from the semi-truck in traffic is incredible.

Dan Heath: I've always wondered what truck drivers think about normal, you know, car drivers? Are we an annoyance or how do you think of us?

Gene Lednicky: It's the same as a semi-truck driver, it just depends on the person, but we call 'em four wheelers.

Dan Heath: Oh, four wheelers?

- Yeah, the car's-

- Yes, they're called four wheelers.

- a 4-wheeler.

Dan Heath: So we talked to an ocean lifeguard recently and he was telling us like what the warning signs are. Like how do you know somebody is about to get in trouble in the surf? I'm curious what your warning signs are, Like how do you know when there's about to be trouble on the road?

Gene Lednicky: Brake lights

Kathy Lednicky: Yeah, brake lights. We have the CB radio. A lot of trucks now do not run with CB radios. We have a CB radio in our truck and so we'll hear about stuff on the radio before when we're like 20 miles out from it. So we're able to anticipate that.

Dan Heath: That was one of the things I wanted to ask you about is I think for a child of the '70s and '80s, you know, everybody's thinking about BJ and the Bear and have you got your ears on? I wanted to know if CB's were still alive and well. Yeah, what is your handle?

Gene Lednicky: Don't have one no more. I mean, I did when I was a kid, but we had 'em in the cars, you know? But it's all changed now and there's a lot of trucks that do not have 'em and it's not the same. You don't get on there and breaker 1-9 and like it used to be, you know, when everybody's called driver now, that's pretty much-

Kathy Lednicky: Yeah, they don't use handles now. It's like, thank you driver, I appreciate it, driver.

Gene Lednicky: Yeah, it's not the same as it used to be by far.

Dan Heath: Why do you think that is? Why do you think it's changed?

Kathy Lednicky: I think a lot of it has to do with the difference in truck driving and culture. Instead of it being an all-male career, an all-white male career, it has now got women and all kinds of ethnicities in it. And so they come over and that they don't carry on the same culture of the truck drivers of the '70s and '80s.

Dan Heath: So when you're on the CB with another truck driver, like what are you likely to be talking about?

Kathy Lednicky: For example, you'll say, "a full-blown at yardstick 25," which means that there's a-

Gene Lednicky: There's a state trooper at mile marker 25, yeah.

Dan Heath: You call it a full-blown?

- A full-blown.

Dan Heath: I don't even... What's the translation, why that?

Gene Lednicky: Because it's a state trooper. He's bigger than everybody else.

Dan Heath: What else will you talk about?

Kathy Lednicky: If there's some accident on the side of the road or you have a piece of tire in the road, or some debris, or something like that.

Gene Lednicky: Which we call gators.

Kathy Lednicky: Yeah, there's gator skin in the road, which is a tire, you know, piece of tire.

Dan Heath: That is the best, you guys have the best lingo of any professions. What's the most unusual load you've ever carried?

Kathy Lednicky: Which one are you gonna say?

Gene Lednicky: The rats.

Kathy Lednicky: The rats? Yeah, we were both gonna say the rats.

Dan Heath: The rats.

Gene Lednicky: Yes.

Kathy Lednicky: We picked up a load in California that went to Indiana and we backed up and they loaded fresh dead rats. And then we just put the reefer on frozen.

Dan Heath: Wait, did you say fresh dead rats?

- Yes.

- They had just killed them.

Gene Lednicky: Yes, it was like from a testing facility.

Kathy Lednicky: Yeah, it was from a testing facility. And they were going to a pet food company, but they loaded these rats in and they were freshly dead and we put the reefer on frozen and so we froze 'em on the way to Indiana and they got there, but that had to have been the oddest load we've ever carried.

Dan Heath: I don't think you're ever gonna beat that one. Yeah.

- No.

Dan Heath: How many rats would you guess were back there?

Gene Lednicky: Oh gosh.

Kathy Lednicky: There were 32,000 pounds of them.

Dan Heath: 32,000 pounds of frozen dead rats.

Kathy Lednicky: That's it, yeah.

Gene Lednicky: Yeah, it was a little strange. I didn't even wanna get them to get in there and put the load locks in there.

Dan Heath: Wow! This is a strange world we live in. So one of my memories as a kid, when we're going on, you know, family road trips or whatever is, and I don't know how this meme spreads among kids, but it's just like we're somehow born with the knowledge that you can like do the pull your arm gesture and try to get truck drivers to blow their horn.

Gene Lednicky: We love that.

Kathy Lednicky: We love it, we love it.

Dan Heath: So people still do that?

Gene Lednicky: Not as much.

Kathy Lednicky: Not as much, but we got adults that do it. We got kids that do it and we'd love to blow that horn.

Dan Heath: I was terrified you were gonna say, well, no, the new compliance norms are that you can't blow a horn, you know?

Kathy Lednicky: No.

Gene Lednicky: There's a reason for that. Don't even say that too loud. Seriously, yeah.

Dan Heath: Hey folks, Dan here, we've had a flurry of kind Apple Podcasts reviews recently. Just wanna say a quick thank you to those of you who are taking the time to share your thoughts about the show. So from the last week or two, thank you to BJ Honicutt, AVanLug73, RyanClan, She/Chi, maybe it's short for Chicago. RyanClanChi, JillTron, Joe11117 and Ryan Nordyke. Thanks to all of you. And back to the show.

Dan Heath: Let's talk about your planning. When you're about to start a trip, is there lingo for like your trip, like a point A to point B kind of thing? What do you call it?

Kathy Lednicky: We call our pickup point is a called our 01, and that's the shipper. And then we have our 90, which is our receiver, which is where we end up.

Gene Lednicky: Unless you have multiple stops, then you have an 01, which is your pickup, your 02, which is your first delivery, and then ever how many, and it goes down the line. But your end up point is the 90.

Dan Heath: When you start, do you know basically every turn you're gonna make or is it more improvisational than that?

Kathy Lednicky: We know exactly where we're going and exactly every turn that we're gonna make. For example, right now in Indianapolis, 465, which is the loop in Indianapolis, 465 south is closed. So you have to take 70 straight through. And our GPSs will tell us that 465 is closed, so we know. Let's say we're coming from New Jersey and we're headed to California, we already know that 460, the GPSs have already alerted us that 465 is closed. So we have to take 70 straight through Indianapolis. So everything is a step by step process and you can look down on the GPSs to see each step.

Gene Lednicky: We have to map out everything pretty much and look at it. Plus we have our fuel stops in between.

Dan Heath: So before you start, you know where you're gonna get gas?

Gene Lednicky: Oh yes.

- Oh yes.

Dan Heath: Why do you say it that way? Is it hard to find?

Gene Lednicky: Yeah, we just want the cheapest price on the fuel.

Kathy Lednicky: Exactly.

Gene Lednicky: And get our best, you know?

Kathy Lednicky: The fuel prices matter a lot.

Dan Heath: What does it cost to fill up your truck?

- Anywhere between 6 and 800 right now.

Dan Heath: Whoa!

Gene Lednicky: Yeah, we pay for that, so.

Dan Heath: Wait, what do you mean you pay for it?

Kathy Lednicky: That's out of our pocket.

Dan Heath: Wait, I must have a bad mental model of this work. So they just pay you like a contract fee and then the expenses are yours?

Kathy Lednicky: Okay, now this is how we work it on our truck. Now not all team trucks are this way. I am the owner/operator. When I started with Prime, I started as a lease owner/operator and the lease owner operators pay for all their fuel. They pay a lease price on their truck and I never had health insurance. Now when Gene and I got married and he got on the truck, he became a company driver for Prime and I hired him to drive on our truck. So now we have insurance and we're also, oh go ahead.

Gene Lednicky: No, I purchased the insurance and she gets it through me, and then...

Kathy Lednicky: And then, so we also did something different. We are in the process of purchasing our truck. We'll own it in 10 months. And so we paid about $2,000 a week for the truck.

Dan Heath: Wow! So is that pretty common for the truck drivers to own the trucks?

Kathy Lednicky: Most trucks that you see on the road are leased trucks and they pay a weekly fee to lease that truck.

Dan Heath: So it's almost like a taxi in that sense, like you're leasing the vehicle and they're-

Kathy Lednicky: Exactly.

Dan Heath: Wow! I had no idea.

Kathy Lednicky: But the way it works is with me being the lease operator and hiring Gene to work for our company is that, we have to pay our fuel expenses, we have to pay the truck note, but we get paid by the load.

Dan Heath: Get paid by the load, not by the mile, but by the load.

Kathy Lednicky: Right. For example, a produce load from California to New Jersey runs about six grand.

Dan Heath: Kathy and Gene have been driving long enough that they can pick and choose which loads they decide to take. There are a couple of factors that go into that decision.

Kathy Lednicky: The amount of time that it takes to deliver the load and how much you get paid on the load. We try to do about a thousand dollars a day

Gene Lednicky: Or the weather.

Kathy Lednicky: Or the weather too. In the wintertime, we have to worry about the weather.

Gene Lednicky: Uh-huh.

Dan Heath: Do you have a preference of where it goes in terms of the region?

Kathy Lednicky: It seems lately with the freight prices right now, we've been making better money out west than on the east coast.

Gene Lednicky: The East Coast are usually shorter trips and there's a lot of hills and mountains and stuff, more so than the west coast.

Dan Heath: Hmm. How much is traffic a bane of your existence?

Kathy Lednicky: Oh my gosh. It is so much easier to drive the night shift than the day shift as far as intensity wise and you're having to pay attention to everything because at night, whoever drives the night shift, which is usually Gene, he does better at nights than I do. You're able to make a lot more miles than what you can do in the daytime. And you also plan it so you hit the big cities at nighttime.

Dan Heath: Oh, I was gonna ask about that. Like are you strategizing to make sure you hit the tribe? Yeah.

Kathy Lednicky: You don't wanna hit Atlanta at rush hour. You don't wanna hit Washington DC at rush hour. You definitely don't wanna be in LA. You wanna be in LA at night 'cause rush hour is 24/7 there.

Dan Heath: Because they spend so much time in the truck, they've tried to make it as comfortable as possible. Particularly the captain's chairs, they sit in all day.

Gene Lednicky: We ordered this truck special. So we have the leather, what they call Level 3 seats and we have the leather with the air conditioning, heating seats, the armrest and lumbar support.

Dan Heath: And he says that kind of stuff makes a difference.

Gene Lednicky: We can drive at 65, 600 and something miles. I did 700 one time in that 11 hours, and you're okay. But in our pickup truck, you know, we have a nice pickup truck, but you ride in it for a couple hundred miles and you feel like you've done as many as you've done the semi.

Dan Heath: And they've got a lot of the other conference we're used to, a TV, an air fryer, and of course, beds and closed drawers. But there's one thing that's conspicuously missing.

Dan Heath: Is there a bathroom on the truck?

- No.

- Ooh.

- Yeah.

Dan Heath: So that has to be part of your plans, I expect, huh?

- Yes.

Gene Lednicky: Yeah, there's-

Dan Heath: I mean, do you try-

Gene Lednicky: There's options.

Dan Heath: Do you try to make it... I sort of simultaneously want to know more about that and don't wanna know more about...

Gene Lednicky: Right.

Dan Heath: But how do you plan around that?

Kathy Lednicky: It's more difficult to plan for me than for Gene.

Dan Heath: Because he has a bladder of steel or something, or?

Kathy Lednicky: No, because you guys have it easy. Y'all can pee in bottles.

Dan Heath: Ooh,

Kathy Lednicky: I mean, I don't know how it is,

Dan Heath: the truth comes out.

Kathy Lednicky: in any other way, I need a bathroom.

Dan Heath: And so do you sort of like regulate your liquid intake with that in mind?

Kathy Lednicky: Yes, I do.

Dan Heath: Oh, wow.

Kathy Lednicky: When we're driving we have, for example, our company has what's called a high val load and it's is always the most difficult load to do because for the bathroom incidents, because you have to go the first 200 miles without stopping. And so you have to really watch what you drink 'cause that's four hours. You have to watch what you drink and you can't stop until you get that past that 200-mile mark.

Dan Heath: Mm, that is so interesting. So you have to be like really thoughtful about, you know, I better not have that 16 ounce monster energy drink right now 'cause I can't do anything with it for a long time.

Kathy Lednicky: Exactly, exactly. And we do a lot of stopping for me to use the restroom when we're not on any high val loads or anything like that. We will stop probably about every two hours for me to use the restroom.

Dan Heath: How long are you usually away from home?

- Well, this last time, because we took off all the month of June, this last time we were out for three and a half months.

Dan Heath: Three and a half months. Whoa! And are you working like almost continuously during that time?

- Every day.

- 24/7, there's no weekends or time off, so.

Dan Heath: You worked every day for three and a half months?

Kathy Lednicky: Yes, sir.

Gene Lednicky: Uh-huh, yes sir.

Dan Heath: Whoa!

- We usually about two months.

Kathy Lednicky: The longest we've done it before now has been about two months, but we're planning on making it a monthly thing for us going home.

Dan Heath: Well, I bet it is so unfamiliar that first night when you're at home and like, you know, it's quiet and you know, I mean, is it weird or is it wonderful?

Gene Lednicky: No, it's a little of both.

Kathy Lednicky: It's both, yeah. It's weird because it's so quiet and it's wonderful to be home because we have, our son is at home and I have a dog and a cat at home, and when we walk in the door, everybody's excited to see us.

Gene Lednicky: And then I get actually some of the bed.

Kathy Lednicky: Yeah. I'm a bit of a bed hog. So it's different be getting out of the single bed and getting into a queen sized bed is, it makes it so much more comfortable, you can stretch out.

Dan Heath: What is it like to get to see more of the country? I mean, I imagine you have crisscrossed, well, let me turn that into a question. How many times have you been back and forth around the country?

Kathy Lednicky: So many that I can't remember. As far as what we see though, we have to remember we're in a 53-foot trailer, so we can only see what we see from the interstate. We see a lot of pretty signs that say Welcome to Mount Rushmore. We've never seen Mount Rushmore.

Gene Lednicky: Yeah, we get close to a lot of things and we know they're right there, but, and we'll try to take the best scenic route to see something, but you know, we've had a couple instances, like we were down in Florida and we were in one of the drop yards and we were able to stay there for the night. And so we called on dispatch and said, "You know what, let's put our PTA, which is our..."

Kathy Lednicky: Availability.

Gene Lednicky: Yeah. And we took off and called Disney World over there and was able to bobtail, which is the truck without the trailer over to Disney World over there at Disneyland, whatever it is. And went to Universal Studios actually.

Dan Heath: Mm. But is it pretty rare for you to be able to take in some sites?

Gene Lednicky: Yes.

Kathy Lednicky: Yes. Because we can't get close to 'em. Like we've been to Williams, Arizona numerous times and have never seen the Grand Canyon.

Dan Heath: Mm. Now why couldn't you stop there?

Kathy Lednicky: Because they don't allow semi-trucks there.

Dan Heath: Okay. So parking is a huge issue for you?

Gene Lednicky: Yes.

Kathy Lednicky: Parking is a huge issue for us. There are so many things we'd like to go to that we can't because there's no place to park.

Gene Lednicky: And it's sad because, you know, you'll see all these trucks and I've seen so many people complaining about it too, that they're parking on the entrance and exit ramps and on the sides of the road and all that. But you know, and you have the clock to deal with, but there's not a lot of places to park it. They wouldn't make extra places to park and so forth, you know? And another sad thing is Walmart, you know, they used to allow you to park in there and stuff like that. Most of them do not anymore.

Dan Heath: Gosh, I was thinking about, you know, the differences between driving a truck and just driving a normal car. And that's gotta be one of the biggest differences is having to constantly be thinking, where am I gonna park this thing?

Gene Lednicky: Yeah, when I got into is she was so paranoid, you know, she's going, "Okay, we're going here, but we're gonna stop way over here before we get there." And I'm like thinking, "Why?" And she's like, "Because all the truck stops are gonna be full further down the road and we're not gonna have a place to park." I'm like, "Ooh, I didn't never thought about that." They fill up kind of early.

Dan Heath: What's the most beautiful scenery you've ever seen from the road?

Kathy Lednicky: Probably that drive that we just took in Oregon, huh?

Gene Lednicky: I don't know, I like it going from Arizona down Interstate 15, that pass we go through over there.

Kathy Lednicky: Oh, on I-15 probably between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas, Nevada.

Gene Lednicky: Mm.

Kathy Lednicky: It's a beautiful canyon that you drive through there.

Gene Lednicky: There's a lot. We do get to see a lot and we get to see a lot of pretty sunrises, and sunsets as well.

Kathy Lednicky: Oh, I'm telling you, that we have more on our cell phones. We have more pictures of sunrises and sunsets of the clouds and everything like that. I'm telling you, that has gotta be the most beautiful time of day to be driving.

Dan Heath: So Kathy, Gene, we always have a lightning round of questions on our show. Let me fire away here.

Gene Lednicky: Oh boy.

Dan Heath: I can't wait to hear the answer to this one. What's a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know and what does it mean?

Gene Lednicky: Lumper.

Dan Heath: What's lumper mean?

Gene Lednicky: It's the person that unloads your truck when you pull into the docks and stuff.

Dan Heath: Mm, the lumper.

Gene Lednicky: And they charge you too, they're called lumper fees.

Dan Heath: And you have to pay that, yeah?

Gene Lednicky: We pay it and the company reimburses us for the company we're working for, so.

Dan Heath: What phrase or sentence strikes fear in the heart of a long haul trucker?

- White out conditions.

- Yes, ice.

Dan Heath: Ooh.

- Chain up area.

Dan Heath: Chain up.

- Yeah, chain up.

- Chain up area. A chain up is when we put the big chains on the tires.

Dan Heath: Can you do that yourself?

- Yes.

Kathy Lednicky: You have to, yes.

- Yeah, you have to do it yourself.

- Actually have areas before and after a lot of mountain passes that in the winter times or trip planting too. We try to go to different highways to bypass certain areas 'cause of the elevation and the ice and snow and to keep preventing us from being stuck or having to chain up because it's not easy to do it.

Dan Heath: What's a sound specific to your profession that you're likely to hear?

Gene Lednicky: Jakes.

Kathy Lednicky: Jakes. Jake brakes.

Dan Heath: What's that?

Gene Lednicky: When you hear the trucks, like, you know, when they're stopping or something like that.

Dan Heath: You call 'em Jakes?

- Yes, Jake brakes.

- They're called Jake brakes.

- It's a Jake brake.

Dan Heath: Jake brakes, okay.

- Now the newer trucks, like ours-

- Has silent ones.

Gene Lednicky: We have silent ones, so they don't make all that noise. We can actually use 'em 'cause they have signs like in the little towns and stuff. There's no engine brake. No, you know, stuff like that. Ours aren't loud so we can use 'em anytime.

Dan Heath: So 20 years from now, when you're looking back at this time in your life, what do you think you'll remember the most?

Kathy Lednicky: Spending the time with my husband.

Gene Lednicky: Hmm.

Kathy Lednicky: He's gonna come up with something different.

Dan Heath: This is your cue to agree with her Gene.

Gene Lednicky: Yeah, I know. Well, she wouldn't let me pick up a kayak on the side of the road one time.

Kathy Lednicky: Oh my gosh. We're back to the kayak. There was a kayak on the side of the road. We were in North Carolina. It was falling off of somebody's truck and we have no place to put a kayak on the semi. But he wanted to stop and get that kayak so bad. And I have heard about that kayak now for three years.

Gene Lednicky: I had to throw it in, sorry.

Dan Heath: 20 years from now on the front porch, you'll still be saying we should have gotten that kayak, I'm telling you.

Kathy Lednicky: The kayak.

Dan Heath: Kathy and Gene Lednicky are longhaul truck drivers. There were a lot of surprises for me in this episode. I'd always thought of truck driving as the ultimate lone wolf profession. I had no idea there was such a thing as team driving, much less married couple team driving, that blew my mind. Beyond that, it was interesting to hear how many constraints there are on what might seem like a pretty autonomous job. The idea of the cameras pointed at the driver was the one that struck me. I mean, you can understand where this comes from. If there really are drivers out there with their feet up watching TikTok, that's pretty outrageous and the cameras would stop that. But the cameras are like a cost imposed on 95 good apples to monitor and deter the other five bad apples. In that sense, it reminds me a little bit of the forensic accountant episode from last year and how the chance of corporate fraud and embezzlement led to a bunch of compliance hoops that all the rest of us have to jump through. On the flip side, the clock thing struck me as probably a pretty good compromise between freedom and constraint because it's gotta be tempting to a driver with the financial incentives involved to add a 12th or 13th, or 14th hour to the shift, given that it's probably better to draw a line somewhere. And in that sense, these constraints aren't just a limit on the behavior of bad actors. They're also helping to deter good actors from flirting with bad behavior. Monitoring those three clocks, rationing your beverages, keeping tabs on interstate repairs, sleeping in a bunk bed, anticipating the next gas fill up and parking space, and settling into the captain's chair for another 600-mile shift. Folks, that's what it's like to be a long haul truck driver. We've gained a bunch of new listeners in the last month or so. So first of all, glad you're with us and maybe it's worth calling out some of our favorite episodes from the past year. If you do wanna catch up on what you've missed, our listeners, number one favorite episode from a survey we did was the Stadium Beer Vendor episode. One of my favorites is the Welder episode. Such a great personality. And let's do one more. The TV meteorologist episode, what's it like to be a scientist and a local celebrity? So that's a little sampler platter from the back catalog. This episode was produced by Matt Purdy. I'm Dan Heath, take care.