Profile For Brett Aquila

Phil asked for his account to be deleted, so it was. No more Phil. He was deported from our community!

Phil, here's the thing. You're acting as if you have some sort of special privilege for living here. We all have ancestors we owe for us being here today. They blessed us with opportunities we didn't earn. They just handed them to us. You too.

So don't act like anyone has to answer to you for being here. You are not the gatekeeper to this land.

And why do you think you can harass people who want to come here? Maybe the rest of us welcome people who want to make a better life for themselves. They'll contribute to our lives and our society in a way that's mutually beneficial. You can speak your mind, but I'd bet you're not in the majority.

I think it's worth looking into resistance bands. I have an assortment, and they now go into the hundreds of pounds of resistance. They weigh nothing; they cost almost nothing; they take up no space; they give you an incredible workout, and you don't have to worry about them flying through the air if you ever have a terrible accident. It's also much easier to move them from truck to truck when it's time to change trucks.

I carried dumbbells back in the day. Today I'd have bands.

Well, he really had no choice

Our old friend Rickipedia thought he had no choice but to get the vax because his doctor wouldn't see him in person unless he did. 30 days later he was dead of a heart attack.

People like to say they didn't have a choice when the truth is they didn't have the discipline to make the right choice.

John, you've made two posts and already none of us want you here.

It was my observation that the administrator of the school I attended only gave personal extra training time to the females in the class. It's just human nature

For you, it comes naturally, so you assume it must come naturally to everyone else. We all think that our way of seeing the world is "normal." So whatever we think, we assume most others think the same way. So you just gave yourself away. You're the type that would chase the pretty ladies and give them extra favors. Don't assume that about others.

We also tend to find what we're looking for. You expected the instructor to treat the ladies better, because that's what you would do, so confirmation bias clouded your judgment when you saw a lady getting help. Maybe she actually needed more help. Maybe she got the same. But you saw exactly what you expected to see.

Poor countries, you know the ones woke people are supposed to care about.

The same people who supposedly care so much about our health these past two years have allowed this to happen their entire lives:

Around 9 million people die every year of hunger and hunger-related diseases. This is more than from AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

....all they had to do was write a check and fix the problem, but they never did. Why do they suddenly care so deeply about our health now?

How many people die of hunger each year?

In case anyone thinks, "Brett bans anyone who disagrees with him," that's not true. I ban people who cause grief around here or make statements that I believe will cause harm.

After banning Chris, he signed up again and posted a statement that asked where I got those numbers from because, as far as he could tell, there had only been 3 deaths from the vaccine. The data is available for anyone to see. His ignorance is dangerous. That's why he's gone.

Here are the stats for the United States alone, and they estimate these numbers to be 4 to 5 times less than reality because of under-reporting. Keep in mind, also, that this system is maintained by the FDA and the CDC, both of whom are desperately trying to sell vaccines, so imagine what the real numbers would be if reported by someone without a conflict of interest:

Established in 1990, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a national early warning system to detect possible safety problems in U.S.-licensed vaccines. VAERS is co-managed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

• 983,756 Adverse Events
• 108,572 Hospitalizations
• 107,860 Urgent Care
• 12,317 Bell's Palsy
• 10,429 Heart Attacks
• 20,560 Myocarditis
• 34,615 Permanently Disabled
• 20,622 Deaths

"100% Safe And Effective" they say.

Here is the link to the data:

Vaers COVID data

Andhe78,

Just get your covid-19 vaccinations. It's really not a big deal. I dunno what it is about truck drivers and their tinfoil hats. They act like the people getting the vaccines are sheep, yet they all baah the same nonsense.

.......aaaand that will be all from Chris. Things got much nicer around here when we got rid of Kerry, so we'll complete our clean sweep of the woke crowd so we can move on.

Best of luck Chris. You're gonna need it. Your woke agenda might be an easy sell to elementary school kids, but as you can see, thinking adults with real-life experience and wisdom see right through your garbage.

Just get your covid-19 vaccinations. It's really not a big deal.

There are over 100,000 deaths globally from the vaccine. Why don't you go knock on the door of a widow who just lost her husband or parents who just lost their child to the vax and let them know you don't think it's a big deal.

You know what's not a big deal? A virus with a 99.8% recovery rate.

I'm a fan of Norway....They treat their criminals well. I might even say they're too forgiving, but if it works, why change it? I don't believe in god, for example

...and there it is.....a lawless and Godless society. Thank you, Chris, for being clear about your aspirations. There is no question who we're dealing with.

Quiet a Troll? Don’t reply!

I've followed this conversation but everyone has made excellent points so I really have had nothing new to offer. I very much appreciate everyone taking the time to explain the logic behind the punishment. I agree with everyone except Chris, but I understand why he believes what he does.

The problem we face in our society today is that they have indoctrinated the younger generations in school with beliefs fully intended to do damage to our society and give free rein to those who intend to do harm. The hard truth, unfortunately, is that it's working very well.

Defund the police? Crime spirals out of control.

Decriminalize stealing? Thieves roam free, unchecked.

Feminize men and masculinize women, while "liberating" women from men? You disintegrate the family unit.

Attack the church? Take away the cornerstone of faith and the guiding light of morals and virtues.

Promote the LGBQ community and "normalize" pedophiles? An even further decline into a confused, psychologically disturbed society.

Eliminate patriotism? You further promote violence and discord by teaching people to attack and hate their own country and its citizens, dismissing everything it stands for and was founded upon.

Promote an upside-down food pyramid? You get a society of fat, weak, sickly diabetics who become lifelong dependents on synthetic medications.

Promote obedience and group-think? It's much easier to control the masses by brainwashing some and sending them out to act as "soldiers of the State" to further control the masses. Use the people against each other.

The result?

You now have young "men" wearing dresses. 75% of our families are no longer nuclear families. They're creating a lawless society where crime, especially violent crime, is spiraling to all-time levels. They have attacked the cornerstones of God, family, and country. Our health in this country is abysmal. Patriotism amongst young people is waning badly. Economically our lower and middle classes are shrinking rapidly under the burden of increasing debt because pay isn't keeping up with inflation.

Folks, if our enemies want to destroy our country, they know they can not do it militarily. So how do you do it? Guerrilla warfare. But not with traditional weapons. Instead, you use the schools to indoctrinate the children. Use computers systems to hack the infrastructure. Use the medical establishment as tyranny to shut down the society and bankrupt the lower and middle classes. You use corrupt politicians to pass laws that further cripple society. Use excessive taxation and inflation to further break down the financial stability of the country and make the lower and middle classes dependent on the government. Use unelected officials in corrupt organizations (NIH, UN, WHO, CDC, etc) to further advance the destruction.

What I love about the answers given to Chris is that none of you blindly stuck up for the driver because you guys are drivers yourselves. Instead, you did the opposite and rightfully held that driver accountable to your own very high professional standards. I respect the hell out of you guys for doing that. In politics, you see Democrats voting with Democrats, Republicans voting with Republicans on almost everything. You guys didn't just "vote" in favor of the truck driver. Instead, you held him accountable. You expect more of him, exactly as you do from yourselves. That is taking fierce responsibility, not only for yourselves but for your peers and your industry. It warms my heart to see that!

I don't know if Chris is here intentionally doing harm or not, but just like the driver in this story, doing harm is still doing harm. Yes, it's worse if it's intentional, but no one gets a free pass for doing harm.

Chris, I recommend you study the mechanisms it takes to create a thriving, stable, free, and fair society. In my book, #1 on that list would be a sense of fierce personal responsibility. #2 would be to empower people to be self-reliant. If a person can not have some level of self-reliance and will not take personal responsibility for the outcome of their own life, they will never be happy in this lifetime. They will live their lives with a victim's mentality, which takes away all of their personal power to make personal decisions and lift their lives to a higher level. They will have no pride. They will have no standards of conduct. They will simply blame, complain, and criticize while bouncing along the bottom in life, begging for handouts, which is exactly what modern "wokeism" is trying to create.....a lawless, helpless, rudderless society of degenerates dependent upon the elites.

Chris, start studying. The rest of you, don't change a thing. You have represented yourselves very, very well here. People can look at our community and see that we promote high standards, fairness, and personal accountability. What an awesome community!

I can't imagine actually cheating on my log because: 1) I don't know how and 2) I'm sure I would get caught and fired.

Those are two excellent reasons for not cheating!

When you're new to trucking, or most anything, it's best to go by the book until you learn the in's and out's. You can get into huge trouble making risky decisions when you're new to anything.

When I drove, we had paper logs. Almost every driver in America cheated every day, but very few of us cheated to maximize our miles. We cheated to have the flexibility to drive or to rest when it made sense to, not when some arbitrary clock said so.

I tried to average 3,200 miles per week, which anyone can do nowadays on electronic logs if conditions work out favorably. The difference is that nowadays you have to cram all of your drive time or rest time into large blocks of time. Most drivers do all of their work in a 14-hour period and get all of their rest in a 10-hour period. I enjoy breaking things up. Drive a couple of hours, take a quick break. Drive a couple more, take a quick nap. Drive a few more, stop and get dinner while you wait for rush hour traffic to clear. Then drive a few more that evening.

I might start my day at 2:00 am and finish at 10:00 pm but I had at least one nap and several breaks along the way. I might only get 4 - 5 hours of sleep and then start a new day, but that was perfect. That's how my body works. I don't sleep 7 - 8 hours straight. I don't think I've done that since I was a baby. Normally I get 5 - 6 hours of sleep at night and take a nap for 1 - 2 hours during the day.

So cheating the logs isn't just about ramping up all the miles you can get. It's often more about gaining some added flexibility in your schedule.

MY MAIN POINT to the o/p .... is that... 'yeah, ELD's 'can' be cheated..... much to the driver's dismay.

Yes, this is true.

Define “cheat” because I’m betting that if we wanted to be 100% “by the book”, everyone here cheats in some way shape or form. Is it a big cheat, probably not but I know folks here will use that elog creep to pull to the fuel island in the morning to get fuel and do their morning pre trip. Is every single minute off on duty activity recorded? Probably not. Stop for fuel and log off duty to creep to a spot to finish that 30 minute break? I’m sure it happens all the time. They’re minutes that add up throughout the day and while insignificant in the grand scheme, you’re still cheating your logs.

Exactly.

There are a ton of gray areas in trucking and many times it isn't even possible to do something 100% legally. For example, when you pick up a very heavy load, you must drive to a scale at a truck stop to see if your weight is legal. Often it is not. You must either get some of the freight taken off the truck or slide the tandems to redistribute the weight. So the driving you did from the shipper to the scale was illegal. But what can you do about it? Nothing. Hope for luck, I guess. That's just the reality of it.

Another: Ask a DOT officer and they will tell you that even brand new trucks coming from the factory do not meet all the DOT's requirements. They can inspect a brand new truck and find violations. Nothing we can do about it.

So yes, there will always be opportunities to bend or break the rules. There are a million rules, and sometimes you must do what it takes to get the job done.

One time I had to make a delivery in Downtown Phoenix at City Hall. To get backed in I had to go the wrong way around the building on one-way streets. The police blocked everything off for me. Is it illegal to go the wrong way on one-way streets? Well, as it turns out, not if the police say it's ok!

Yes, there are ways to cheat the electronic logbook, but obviously not the way we used to do in back in the paper logbook days. Stick to doing things by the book early in your career until you develop a better sense for the gray areas and how to handle them.

I can fully see a bad instructor trying to be super trucker instructor and pulling a hot swap.

Unfortunately, there are some reckless people out there. Back in the day, we're talking decades ago, they did not consider anyone who cared about safety to be a "real man." Remember, hockey goalies didn't use face masks and men who built skyscrapers were not tethered to anything. To this day you'll notice most street skateboarders won't wear a helmet even though they routinely hit their head on steel or concrete. To some people, you're just not a tough guy if you care about safety.

To me, you're not too bright if you beat yourself to death or kill yourself when you could have done something very simple to protect yourself. But hey, we all have our own way of looking at things.

Also, as far as the believability of this story, don't forget Kearsey's trainer actually peed in her drink! She went through medical hell because of that. She had a long list of crazy trainer stories and sadly enough, all of them actually happened.

Knowing the mindset of super truckers, almost anything is possible. "Truth is stranger than fiction"

The teachers are real cool when talking to but I feel like they expected me to already know how to drive a truck and trailer. I'm just curious if you guys went into your first course and already kind of got the hold of things or if your experiences were as overwhelming as mine? I really felt horrible out there, when things were good of course I felt like the king of the road but when a turn would come up or I had to start merging into traffic I knew sh*t was getting real and that he was most likely going to intervene.

Most people are completely overwhelmed early in their training. That's normal. Trucking schools train drivers as quickly as possible. They push you hard. I even did a podcast on this topic:

Episode 5: Why Is Truck Driver Training Done In Such A Rush?

We would all love to take our time and learn things at a comfortable pace, but these schools and companies must turn a profit. The more time they spend training people, the more costly it is. They do not train drivers based on what would make the driver comfortable. They train them quickly and efficiently, which is quite stressful for the student. That's not ideal, but like most things in life there's a fine line between efficient training and insufficient training. Everyone tries to walk that line.

Hey Moe! Really glad to hear from you again!

I have to be honest, one of the reasons I didn’t post my change right away here was how I would be perceived. That being a job hopper or terminal rat etc. maybe I am wrong in that assumption (and after time to pause and reflect I believe I am). My change of carriers was not without given great consideration.

Sounds like you did good, Moe. The big thing we worry about with new drivers is that they often change jobs for the wrong reasons, or blame their company for everything. Often it's the driver who is at fault, simply because they're new to the game and don't understand how things work. They're also not very good at their job yet.

New drivers often come in with false expectations, and when their experience doesn't match those expectations, they blame their company. We all think our logic is solid, so if something doesn't go as expected, it must be someone else screwing up.

You've been around here a long time. You soaked it all in, and you have a much better understanding than the average new driver about how things work. You knew many of the pitfalls and you thought this situation through carefully. Now you're making more than double what you were before, and you're happy with your new company. No one will argue with those results!

I'm glad you're back and that things are going great for ya! To be honest, I'm glad you were concerned about what we would say. I'm glad you took our advice seriously and gave serious consideration to the move you were making. We're not trying to create a "cookie-cutter" career plan that works for everyone in all situations. We're just trying to share what we consider the best practices and the biggest pitfalls to avoid.

The "ideal" situation is to stick with your first company for one full year, but if you gave it 6 months, made a thoughtful move and now you're making double what you were before, then you did great! Congrats!

As for the executives, the free market determines what they make.

Only if you consider the CEO's 12 good friends, who are all on the board of directors, as being a free market. Because that's who determines his salary. And don't forget, most CEOs are on the board of other companies. So they often vote for each other's salaries. It's an insider's club, and we ain't in it. That's not a free market.

Also, if the free market is determining salaries, then you must conclude the free market has determined that CEOs have become increasingly more important than the entire workforce over the past few decades because their salary continues to rise in proportion to the workers. So CEOs and top executives are becoming increasingly important, while workers become increasingly less important? How could that be?

CEOs and top executives do not invent, design, test, build, implement, or maintain anything. They don't have the knowledge or skill set to do the jobs of the people they manage. So how could they become increasingly important compared to the workers, especially in a high-tech economy where they need more and more highly trained, intelligent workers?

Look at NFL teams as an example. Would you argue the coach is becoming more and more important in football? The coach manages the team by choosing the players and calling the plays. The players execute. As far as importance goes, who do you think would be more likely to have some success in football; a team with no coach or a coach with no team?

Now, look at a trucking company as another example. Who do you think would have a better chance at success, a group of truckers without a CEO or a CEO without a group of truckers? Now you could say, "We need both." Well, to some extent, you do. But if you had to put your money on one or the other, who would you pick? It's pretty obvious.

Let's go back to the NFL for a moment. NFL players now have agents and a union. Several decades ago, they did not. Back in the day, NFL players used to have part-time jobs in the offseason because they didn't make enough money to pay their bills. Nowadays, they make millions. Do you think they'd be making millions without agents and a union, or do you think they'd be like the rest of us just working for a normal salary while the upper executives rake in all those millions?

If you're not sure, look at college football. College players make nothing, the universities and the coaches make hundreds of thousands and up to many millions. Why? The NCAA made a rule that says you can't pay a college player. Do you think they would have been able to pass a rule like that if the players had a union? Obviously not!

Here's another thought. You mentioned that higher wages would produce higher costs, which would punish the lower and middle classes. When you pay a CEO $15 million/year, do you think that's driving down costs? Do you think that's helping the lower and middle classes?

Henry Ford famously paid his workers double the going rate, so that they had the money to buy his cars!

What they're doing is siphoning money away from the workers and sending it to upper management and to the corporate bank account in the way of higher corporate profits. To produce a strong, healthy middle class you would want more of that money going to workers, and less of it sitting in corporate bank accounts or being used for stock buybacks.

Let's see......how much damage might we do if the workers got paid a little more? Let me show you a little cash on hand data from some corporations:

15 Companies Stockpile $1 Trillion In Cash

Just 15 non-financial companies in the S&P 500, including mainly tech giants like Apple (AAPL), Google-parent Alphabet (GOOGL) and IBD Long-Term Leader Microsoft (MSFT), are sitting on cash and investments of more than a $1 trillion, says an Investor's Business Daily analysis of updated data from S&P Global Market Intelligence and MarketSmith.

This massive cash pile accounts for nearly 40% of the $2.77 trillion held by all the companies in the S&P 500. S&P 500 companies now have enough cash to give $8,320 to every man, woman, and child in the U.S.

Meanwhile, companies are likely to pay out $729 billion in buying back their own stock in 2021, says Silverblatt says. That's up 55% from the paltry $520 billion companies spent buying back stock in 2020. But, it's still less than the record $806 billion spent in 2018.

So you guys believe that paying the workers more would cause prices to go up, but I disagree. Companies are holding trillions of dollars in off-shore bank accounts and spending hundreds of billions to buy back their own shares instead of giving more to the workers so we can spend it on more goods we truly need.

For comparison's sake, if you combine the cash on hand for the S & P companies ($2.77 trillion) and the cash value of their stock buybacks ($729 billion), it amounts to about $3.5 trillion dollars. What is the total value of all products produced in the United States each year (our GDP) - $12 trillion.

So combine the cash on hand and stock buybacks of the largest 500 companies in the U.S. and it equals 30% of our entire GDP! I'd sure love to see some of that go to the workers who are actually producing the goods and services.

Keep something in mind, also. None of this has anything to do with Socialism. Fair pay for workers is not Socialist. I'm not promoting the idea that anyone get paid more than their fair share, nor am I promoting that anyone get money for nothing. I'm just saying that when you create a massive divide between the upper 1% and the rest of us, you hurt the entire economy and especially the lower and middle classes.

But I do have 60 plus years of life in this world, with the ability to see and extrapolate from what I see

Well, I have 50+ years of life in this world with the ability to see and extrapolate from what I see, AND I also have mountains of DATA to back what I'm saying. So that's the difference so far.

I realize a lot of you guys are busy driving and don't have the time to just sit around gathering data sources, but I'm hoping someone can come up with something. You wouldn't catch me trying to sell an economic opinion to people with no data to back it up. In fact, I wouldn't even consider making an argument if I couldn't find any data to back it.

If anyone comes up with anything I'll be excited to see it!

Someone mentioned those top executives deserve more because they're taking more risks. Really? What risks do you think they're taking? Sitting in a boardroom in meetings all day doesn't seem that risky. Knowing you'll get paid a multi-million dollar severance if you get fired for being incompetent doesn't seem that risky.

Are any of you getting a $10 million bonus if you get fired?

They're laughing their asses off at you guys who "don't care what a CEO is making." Do you know what that sounds like when someone who is living paycheck to paycheck while doing all the actual work says they don't mind that the CEO is making 400 times as much? It sounds GREAT is how that sounds to the CEO! How could it get it any better? They get the lion's share of everything, and they get the blessings of those who barely get enough to pay their bills.

By getting rid of the unions, we really taught those CEO's a lesson they'll never forget!

Where is the data, guys? I've heard a million anecdotal tales that all amount to nothing.

"I saw some lazy union workers!"

"My company uses a non-union shop."

Great. Now how about some data to show we're better off without unions? It's economics, folks. If you can't come up with data to back your opinions, you really must question their validity.

Workers are making less than they were several decades ago when adjusted for inflation and CEOs and upper management are making 400 times what they were making back then, and you guys are happy with that? Do you think that's what winning looks like? Because I can assure you that's exactly what winning looks like to the CEOs.

Folks, thank you for pointing out to me that there are lazy union workers. I can assure you I knew that. There are also tons of lazy non-union workers, and tons of people who won't work at all if they can help it. None of this has anything to do with whether unions are helpful or harmful to lower and middle class workers.

We have a lot of smart people here with a lot of strong opinions, but I'm still waiting on that data. Where is the data that says, "See, when we took away the power of the unions the lower and middle classes benefited." Where is that data?

Remember, we're talking money and economics here. There's enough data that it's leaking through the cracks in the sidewalk. You can't avoid it. So if not one of you can point me to any data showing that unions were actually hurting the middle and lower class, I have to wonder why that is.

I also don't like wearing denim or tight materials.

I agree with this.

Wear loose-fitting clothing for driving. I also LOVE Tommy John underwear. It's super expensive, like $26 - $30 per pair, but I've tried tons of different brands and nothing compares.

I also used those wooden beaded seat covers to prevent my clothing from sticking to the cloth seat. If your clothing sticks to the seat and the seat rocks back and forth, it pushes your pants up toward your waist (almost like a wedgie) and squashes the boys. You don't have this problem nearly as bad on leather or vinyl seats, but the cloth seats really grab your clothing.