The Bobby Bones Show - Episode 6: Gimme The Asphalt!

Episode Date: June 16, 2020

Just about 200,000 of the estimated 3.5 million truckers on the road today are women - and that number represents a 65% increase over the last decade. Today we catch up with one of them, Ingrid Brown, a 5'2" 50-something grandma who's been driving a rig for over four decades. Calling from the cab of her truck, Ingrid, whose role has been deemed "essential" throughout the Covid-19 crisis, gives us insight into what keeps her happily rolling across the country as she surpasses the 4 million mile mark, looking forward to spending time with her family while simultaneously dreaming about her next journey. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Make every day feel epic in the all-new Hyundai Palisade hybrid. The Palisade hybrid is packed full of features, cutting-edge tech, and up to an EPA estimated 619 miles of range on select trims and class-leading interior space. Seating configurations for 7-8 passengers,

available H-track all-wheel drive, so you can be ready to go anywhere in style. Learn more about the Hyundai Palisade at HyundaiUSA.com. Call 562-314-4.4.4. 4603 for complete details. All right, if you have ever dealt with a traditional home security company, you know the drill. Expensive monthly fees, contracts that lock you in for years, and waiting around for a technician to set everything up. It's a lot.

Well, now they're Simply Safe. They have completely changed the game. Simply Safe has no long-term contracts, no hidden fees, no being trapped. They earn your business by actually keeping you safe, not by locking you in. Setting up is so easy. You customize your system at SimplySafe.com. It ships to your door in a few days. And with the app guided setup, you can have everything installed and armed in under an hour. No technician needed. And it's not just a camera. It's a full ecosystem of sensors, cameras for inside and outside and 24-7 professional monitoring. If there's ever a break in, a fire, or a flood, SimpleSaf's agents are on it immediately. They were also named America's best customer service by newsweek, which honestly tracks. Right now, you can get 50% off your new system by visiting simplysafe.com slash bones.

That's half off at simplysafe.com slash bones. There's no safe like SimplySafe. You're listening to a podcast, so you're doing something else too. Like maybe scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving places you like without thinking you'll get them. Because that's what house hunting has become. But Redfin isn't built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find. and own a home. Redfin agents close twice as many deals as other agents, which means when you

find a place you love, you got a real shot at getting it. Redfin helps turn saved listings into real addresses. Get started at redfin.com. Own the dream. Service opens doors, and at American Military University, it can open doors for the whole family. If you have a loved one who served in the military, you may qualify for reduced tuition. AMU offers flexible online programs designed to fit your schedule so you can keep moving forward wherever life takes you. Learn more at AMU. APUS.

Dot APUS.edu slash military. Open doors to the future for you and your family with the help of American Military University. That's AMU. APUS. This is on the job. This season, we're speaking with folks who are finding their professional strides, in a tumultuous job market and learning how to double down on their skills and their experience to overcome challenges. We'll bring you inspiring stories of people making themselves essential,

an important skill set in any economy. As Americans shut their doors and stay home in the midst of a pandemic, truckers continue to keep the country moving and stocked up on food as they always have. It's tough, demanding work that can keep you on the road for months at a time. But there are a few jobs that come with the freedom and purpose that the open road has to offer. Hello. Hi. How are you doing? Super. I'm fantastic. How are you? This is Ingrid Brown. We hopped on a Zoom call while she was at a rest stop. She was calling from the cab of her truck. I'm actually sitting in the driver's seat and I am in Abingding, Virginia. I just delivered cherries yesterday and they came from Stockton, California. She won't be here long though. She's headed to

Wilkesboro, North Carolina to pick up a load of chickens. To haul those all the way to Arkansas, at least an 11-hour drive. The truck you're driving right now, does it have a name? Peach of mind. Peach of mind. Peach o mind. This truck is like this one of a kind. She's a piece of mind.

But instead of be a piece of mind, peach of mind. Way to you see her color. She sends me a picture. It's this amazing peach color with teal and white stripes along the sides. It is a very attractive truck. Yeah. And just like most big rigs have a name, the drivers also have nicknames that they're known by over the radio.

Do you have a call name on the radio? I used to go by half pint. I have two, and I used to be skinny and young. But you know what? I, you know, Ingrid. I'm Ingrid. But I'm a truck driver. That's what I do.

Ingrid is from Zionville, North Carolina, right near Boone on the Tennessee border. She's 58, and she's been trucking for over four decades. 41 years in December. I love what I do. I run 48 states. I own my own independence, whole own company, Roland B. And I also drive as a company driver for Flaynor Brothers out of Carthage, Missouri.

Ingrid is one of 3.5 million truckers on the American Highway. About 200,000 of those are women. In the last decade, the amount of women in trucking has increased by 65. And Ingrid is a huge proponent of keeping that number growing. Here's my thing. My steering wheel doesn't know the gender that holds it. And it really doesn't care as long as it gets safely from point A to point B. There are all kinds of different ways you can go about trucking.

Some drivers prefer to specialize in hauling one kind of load, whether it's veggies or lumber. But a lot of truckers like Ingrid become a jack of all trades and know how to haul pretty much anything. So you may see me under a Conestoga, which is a curtain-sided flatbed and hollow machinery and that kind of thing. Sometimes she might be driving a refrigerated trailer used for transporting anything that need to keep cool. These trailers are known in trucker-lingo as reefers. No, I'm not hauling reefers. I'm pulling a refrigerated trailer. And each individual load she picks up comes with its own completely unique set of tasks. Exactly, exactly.

And my biggest one, honestly, is when I load. I have to make sure that it's loaded properly and it's loaded to where it's going to ride across the country. Any product. Dry freight, toilet paper, produce, cows. If the load is something like peaches, she'll make sure that her route avoids any rough roads so the fruit doesn't get bruised before it gets to the market.

And a lot of care goes into hauling her favorite load, cattle, which she constantly checks on, make sure that they're hydrated and takes corners real slow to make sure that they're okay. And I've not met many that haul cows that don't do that. Because you have kids on board. Yeah, you've got the babies on board. You care about them. You take care of them.

And even though she takes extra care of the cows that she hauls, it's pretty clear that she treats all of her loads as precious cargo. Exactly. You don't just shut the doors and drive down the road. Trucking has definitely become its own subculture in the last century. It's got its own language, its own conventions, even its own music. Today, some people call truckers the last of the cowboys, lone rangers roaming the American landscape.

It's a job that attracts a certain kind of person, independent, curious. So, in a lot of ways, Ingrid was born to do this. I had the greatest childhood. I was adventurous, imagine that. My dad owned a construction company, and that's how I got into trucks because I started learning equipment and I always said I'm kind of the other boy that he never had. She's got an older brother. But ever since she was young, when her mother hoped that she would have stayed in frills and dresses, she was much happier playing in the dirt and riding along with her dad on the job.

The philosophy he instilled in her as a kid is something that she still lives by today. He said, you know, there is nothing that you can't do if you want to do it. She wanted to drive big trucks. So at 16 in high school, she got her permit and started driving dump trucks with her dad's company. At 18, she moved on to bigger rigs and was hauling asphalt. I get out of high school and I'm thinking, oh yeah, I'm 18, I'm going to work. I'm going to work. I'm going on the road. He's like, you get an education and then we'll talk.

If you want to truck, you get a school. School was not Ingrid's thing. So she reluctantly went to college and got her degree in engineering. And she eventually got hired to do just that. I was going to build roads. I was going to have a second career. They put me on I-85 in North Carolina. And, you know, I'm doing construction engineering inspection and bridges and all this stuff.

And I kept watching trucks go up the road and down the road. What were you thinking when you saw those trucks driving by? What am I doing? So, Ingrid went trucking. Her first big haul was from North Carolina. all the way to California. That first feeling, it almost is so much adrenaline. I was scared to death.

And then you don't want to quit. Her love for dirt as a kid translated directly to trucking. She took lots of jobs where she'd be hauling it all over the place. They call me mud puppy. Now, give me asphalt. Give me dirt. There's so much can be done with it. And there's things that bridges and roads.

There's a way to get that done. get that. Her love for dirt may seem extreme, but she gets pretty romantic when talking about anything that she's hauling. I do. I do. I have this passion because you know what? They mean something to me because they mean something to people. This is the greatest thing I've ever dreamed I could ever do. If you don't have dirt, what are you going to build upon? Everything has a purpose. And you get to bring that to people. A track. More on Ingrid story after the break.

A strong work ethic takes pride in a job well done. Sweets over the details. This is the kind of person you need. Express employment professionals can help. Finding the best people requires more than sorting through applications. You need to conduct a thorough search. Express understands what it takes to hire the right person. It takes real people.

real interviews. Discovering the talents you need. We find good people, matching their skills with the right jobs. At Express, we find people for jobs and companies of all sizes and industries, from the production floor to the front office. Sometimes finding the best new employee really is about who you know. Express knows jobs. Get to know Express. Go to Expresspros.com to find a location near you. Trucking is a way of life as much as it's a job. Just like a long haul from the east to west coast, being a professional driver as a career takes stamina. How many miles? In 40s plus years, I have 4.1 million miles. Four point one million miles? I mean, I have gentlemen and ladies that I've seen up in the sixes. To put that in perspective, Ingrid has driven enough to circle the globe about

164 times. I asked her if she had a goal she was trying to hit, maybe get to $6 million, but she said no. Because you know what? Three years ago, I was diagnosed with melanoma cancer. So I've had a third of my throat out. I've had several surgeries. And here's the thing. I have today.

All that matters is today. That's it. Besides doing this job because she loves it. Her philosophy is it's something that has to be done. And she says a lot of drivers feel the same way. Some do it for the freedom. Some do it because it can be great money. But she says the ones that succeed and enjoy their work

are the ones that recognize the importance of their job. People need you. People need us. But we need them as well. I asked how it felt to be an essential worker in a time where the country especially needs her to keep driving, even when she's realistically putting herself at risk by doing. I would want to do that, whether it's a pandemic, whether the country's closed down, because people have to eat every day.

That's not going to change. That didn't change before. It hasn't changed afterwards. Talking to Ingrid, you might get kind of jealous. There's a sense of purpose in everything she says about a job she's been doing for 40 years. And if you've ever been on a long drive with nothing but the road ahead, that sense of freedom. she does that for a living. She says she remembers the first time

she really felt it. I'll never forget it. I was coming down the road. I was actually coming eastbound. It was the early 90s. She was just outside Fort Worth, Texas on a long haul. It was barely breaking daylight. Barely, barely.

Enough that I could see the white lines to my left. But in my mirror, I could watch them go by. And it was almost like the whole world didn't even exist. The sun was, in front of me it was coming up. But behind me was just that little bit of haze. It was the most peaceful time in my whole career. The whole world just stops.

Nothing bad exists. Nobody has problems. nothing bad in this whole wide world exists. You're just in that spot. You're succeeding. And you know it. You're just, you're, you know, you're accomplishing. That's what it feels like.

Yeah. In my own experience, I've been chasing this feeling for a while. I felt it years ago and I got hooked. So I've tried to make a career where I can work and constantly be moving, exploring. And for the most part, I got there. Before COVID hit, I was traveling the country for months doing radio work. In a new place, whenever I wanted to be, it was about as liberated as I'd ever felt. That feeling is the reason a lot of people get into trucking, too.

You're autonomous, you're free, hand out the window with the open road ahead. A cowboy. It's a romantic way to live. But I've learned that that does not come without a price. there's a lot of time where I really especially if I've been on the road for months I really crave roots stability a home I guess the grass is always greener kind of thing do you feel that yeah sorry this is life this is life I haven't seen my grandbabies uh since before Christmas I was planning on seeing them at the time that the COVID stuff happened.

Sorry. That's okay. They're my world. We FaceTime all the time. It's still not the same. You set your priorities. And sometimes you miss some of those. But you make sure that they're in this industry with you enough

to understand. Ingrid also has an 88-year-old mother. She has two daughters of her own. She knows she has to keep doing her job, but she also knows in doing so, she won't risk carrying COVID back to her family. Recently, she was at a truck stop and called her grandkids to check in.

My grandson was standing there on FaceTime and said, Grandma, when are you coming to see us? Grandma, it's been too long. And my granddaughter, my four-year-old granddaughter, literally turned around and looked at him and said, Layton. Grammy's delivering food to other people.

How does that feel for you to hear? They get it. You know, I missed her birthday. I missed his birthday. And it is what it is for the fact of the situation in the country. But we make the best of it

just like everybody else is doing the same thing. We all want a job that puts food on the table. We want a job that we can be good at. But maybe more than anything, deep down, we want work that makes us happy and gives us purpose, being the person that does what needs to be done. People will always have to eat. And whether or not it's a time of crisis, if you're the person making that happen like Ingrid, at the end of the day, you can be sure that you are essential. And when a four-year-old says, Grammy's taking food to other people, that's pretty strong.

all. That must keep you going. Every day. For On the Job, I'm Otis Gray. Thanks for listening to On The Job, brought to you by Express Employment Professionals. To see pictures of Ingrid's truck, peach of mind, go to expresspros.com slash podcast. This season of On The Job is produced by Audiation and Red Seat Ventures. The episodes were written and produced by me, Otis Gray. Our executive producer is Sandy Smollens.

The show is mixed by Matt Noble for Audiation Studios. at the loft in Bronxville, New York. Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Mont Pleasure. Find us on IHeart Radio and Apple Podcasts. If you liked what you heard, please consider rating or reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. We'll see you next time for more inspiring stories

about making yourself essential as you discover your life's work. All right, if you have ever dealt with a traditional home security company, you know the drill. Expensive monthly fees, contracts that lock you in for years and waiting around for a technician to set everything up. It's a lot. Well, now they're SimplySafe. They have completely changed the game. SimplySafe has no long-term contracts, no hidden fees, no being trapped. They earn your business by

actually keeping you safe, not by locking you in. Setting up is so easy. You customize your system at SimplySafe.com. It ships to your door in a few days, and with the app guided setup, you can have everything installed and armed in under an hour. No technician needed. And it's not just a camera. It's a full ecosystem of sensors, cameras for inside and outside, and 24-7 professional monitoring. If there's ever a break-in, a fire, or a flood, SimpliSafe's agents are on it immediately. They were also named America's best customer service by Newsweek, which honestly tracks. Right now, you can get 50% off your new system by visiting Simplysafe.com slash bones. That's half off at Simplysafe.com slash bones. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.

Service opens doors and at American military university it can open doors for the whole family if you have a loved one who served in the military you may qualify for reduced tuition AMU offers flexible online programs designed to fit your schedule so you can keep moving forward wherever life takes you

learn more at AMU dot APUS dot EDU slash military open doors to the future for you and your family with the help of American military university That's AMU. APUS.edu. Air Tasker handles your never-ending to-do list. Pick up the cat, get nails done, yard work, taxes.

Local taskers can do all that. Visit Airtasker.com or download the app. Air Tasker, get anything done. What if your soda actually did something for you? Introducing Skypop protein soda with 10 grams of complete protein. zero sugar and 45 calories, Skypop protein soda offers four delicious flavors with big taste and real benefits. Light, refreshing, and ready for wherever your day takes you. It's anytime protein that helps you reach higher. Skypop protein soda, reach for the sky. Get your Skypop protein soda now at Target or Ralph's.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.