What’s good Liquid Trucking and welcome to the Liquid Trucking podcast episode seven right in your face right now. Thank you so much for being here. I am your host, Marcus. As always, click that subscribe button, share this with your fellows drivers, your family members, other staff members at Liquid. That type of stuff helps us out greatly. What are we getting into today? Well, we’ve got a fun one here today for you. Uh The title of our episode today is what makes Liquid Liquid? And uh the short answer that I was given when I posed that question to some people was the people, the people that work at Liquid are what make Liquid Liquid? And I don’t mean that in some like weird finance bro thing where I’m saying it’s Liquid man. You can sell it for money. No. What makes Liquid Trucking? The Liquid Trucking that everybody knows and loves why is it when they see this logo right here on my hat, they know that their product is getting there safe. The customer service is gonna be top notch. The drivers are getting there and getting home safe and everything is going to be as it should be. And the answer to that is again, the people you guys, the ones living listen to this right now are the ones that make liquid liquid. And I’ve got a few great interviews lined up for you today. Uh that I’m really excited about getting to, we’re going to talk to procurement manager, Scott Schultz later in the show, we’re going to talk to a technician named Jimbo Bostic. Some of you might know him as James, but we call him Jimbo here on the show. Uh Both of these guys have great stories. Scott’s has to deal with a lot more about what’s going on in house. Jimbo does a great job in house, but he has an awesome heartwarming story to tell you uh for the holiday season here about his home life and uh some of the kids that he’s helped along the way, I don’t want to spoil too much. So I’ll let Jim, I tell you about that coming up later in the podcast. And we’re also going to talk to uh HR VP of hr excuse me, Jason Eisenman a little bit later as well. Plus, I’ve got some news for you coming up on this podcast as we all know, uh there is a truck driver missing in Iowa and he’s been gone for a while. Now, there’s some suspicious circumstances around story. Uh We will cover it all coming up right around the corner for now. Episode seven is off and rolling again. Make sure you hit that subscribe button. So, you know, when an episode comes out, we’re launching new ones every Wednesday morning at 5 a.m. central. So it’s ready for you when you get on the road bright and early. Welcome to the Gold standard of podcast for the gold standard of Drivers. This is the Liquid Trucking podcast with your host Marcus Bridges. Joining me next here on the Liquid Trucking Podcast is technician Jimbo Bostic Jimbo. Thank you so much for being here, my friend. Now, uh we’re talking today about what makes Liquid Liquid Jimbo. And uh one of the things that we’ve settled on that makes Liquid Liquid is the people. And uh when I was back there for the launch here a couple of weeks ago at the Plattsmouth terminal, uh you and I met, it was nice to get to talk for a little bit in person, but really, uh how I came across your story was in talking to Jason Eisenman and he was really adamant that we get you on the podcast to tell your story. Uh because I understand that you and your wife have uh really put yourselves out there and helped a lot of kids over the course of your marriage. And I’d like to hear a little bit about that. Yes. Uh In 2007, we got our foster care license and we started doing foster care. My first biological son was born February 4th of 2007. And in June we had our first two foster Children move into our home. So we technically went from no kids to three kids within six months. That’s one heck of a transition. I’m sure that, uh, childcare kinda, all of a sudden hits you right in the chops there. That’s something that not a lot of people do is go from 0 to 3. Yeah. I mean, unless you’re having triplet, you know. Right. But, uh, so we did foster care. It, it wasn’t any different than starting with one child versus three. I mean, you still have the same learning curves and, I mean, you just take it one day at a time. My wife, she grew up being a foster sister herself, her mom, my mother-in-law did foster care her whole life and that’s how we got involved with it. Now we did foster care all the way up until, uh, National Adoption Day in 2013, which is in November. And from when we started foster care until we adopted, we had over 45 kids come through my house in that. Yeah. In that span of six years we actually had three biological kids of our own. Like I said, our first one was born in February 2007. His name’s Turner. Our second biological was Riker and he was born in November of 2008. And then our youngest biological daughter is Lillian and she was born March of 2014. So over those six years that we did foster care, we had kids from every nationality. We had kids that didn’t speak any English that we had to call our friends that spoke out of their languages to understand that all they wanted was a glass of milk. So it was a learning curve in 2013. Like I said, when we adopted our first two girls, they were very first foster placement and their two younger siblings, we ended up adopting all four of them. Well, so now we have seven Children total ranging from age 2421. Soon to be 17 in February, then 1615, 14 and soon to be 10 in March. You’ve got the whole gamut there, man. That’s so cool. Yes. So I have, I have one that has graduated college, one in college. Three boys in high school, one girls in middle school and one girl in elementary school. Oh man, it’s like skittles taste the rainbow man. You got every single uh level of childhood moving through your house right now and over the years, uh it sounds like you’ve had, I mean, I mean, 45 kids. That’s a lot. I’m gonna ask the question that I think is probably on everybody’s mind here. Is it hard for you to welcome the Children in? Get attached to them? Get used to them being in the home and then have them leave. Is that something that’s tough? So, for my wife, it was, for me, it was to a certain extent, I went into the foster parenting part of our life, knowing the reality. And in that what I mean is I knew at any moment that these kids could be ripped from our lives and I built the biggest bond that I could with them. But at the end of the day in the back of your head, at some point, you know that it’s possible unless you’re ready to adopt. And for the longest time, we weren’t ready to adopt. I mean, back when we started doing Fox Care and our first son was born, we were both only 23 years old. So I just turned 40 my wife is 29 plus shipping and handling even at that. But, uh, she’s in her thirties, to be honest with you, we had two girls at one point that were in our foster care and on Christmas Eve, an adoptive family came into our house and took them from our house because they were going to adopt them and they refused to take the Christmas present that we had bought them and they were arguing in our entryway and there’s nothing that you as a foster parent can do. You can just let the caseworker know what’s going on. So that, that was probably the hardest out of the whole time. Like I said, our first two foster placement, daughters and our last two son and daughter are the four that we adopted. They’re all siblings from the same family. They’re Sudanese. They were born here in the States, but they are Sudanese. So we have a uh mixed breed family and you, you get the typical question, you know, how did you adopt? Did you go over to Sudan and adopt? No, you can do it right here. All you have to do is in your own state. Look up foster care. There’s so many kids in the system that are able to be adopted, they need a family. So at the time when we were ready to adopt, we had long talk, we talked with both of our parents, all of our parents, her parents, my parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, pastor at church. I mean, we talk to everybody and when we made it to say yes, I’ll tell you what, I’ll never go back to the way it was before. I’m sure. So what is it? Uh, you know, you say you talked to your family support system and, and the community support system that you have in place there. What was it that finally spurned that decision for you guys to decide to jump into the foster care ring and, and start helping these kids out? Well, the, the foster care in front of it was already and my wife said that that’s what we were gonna do. I mean, I didn’t, I didn’t know anything about it. That was, that was her. And she said, hey, you need to look into this, see if you’re interested. And so I did, I took the classes and it was wonderful. It, when it came to the adoption part is when we had to talk to everybody. And just like, are we doing the right thing at the end of the day? I mean, these kids are ours. There was, there’s no rhyme arena for them to go start fresh in somebody else’s house when we already love them, they are our Children. You’re gonna feel like they were just ripped out of your arms if you let them go to somebody else’s house. And so at the end of the day, that was the ultimate Yeah, we wanna do that. So what’s been the most rewarding part about helping all these kids? Is it just the fact that you can, you can look back on it and say, listen, there’s 45 kids that are, that are better off because we had a part in their life. Is it that you got to make your family bigger and adopt kids that you’ve had in your house for so long? Like what do you, what do you guys really get from this aside from the love that’s in the household? First of all, we used to joke around there used to be a TV, show on TV that my wife used to watch and it was called John and K plus eight. And my wife’s name is Jen and I’m Jim. Jim Bo. And so we always joke Jim and Jen plus 10. It even rhymes. That’s perfect. Yeah. So I grew up as an only child with my parents and then both of my parents remarried and my dad had a couple more Children and they’re my brother and sister and I have a stepbro and my wife has a brother growing up for me. I was the only child at the young age and he didn’t have nobody to play with or do anything with. So I thought it’d be cool, you know, if we had a huge family and who wouldn’t want 20 brothers and sisters, you know? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Man. I listen, I only have one sister and, and her and I are incredibly close and I know that because I’m the little brother that she was probably annoyed with me more often than not as a kid. But I know she wouldn’t trade me for anything except for like brand new Chevy Tahoe. Like, it’d have to be all the options, you know. Um, but, uh, my mom was an only child and, and one of the things that I and my mom was an only child, my dad had four brothers. So it was, there was the difference on, in my family where my mom grew up sort of by herself. My dad always had uh siblings around. And I think that for me anyway, just the love that I feel for my sister. I know that if you’d have given me 567 others, it would have been hectic in the household but man, we would have had fun. Uh and, and what a great upbringing that would have been. So, iii I just hats off to you and your wife Jen for doing this. Now, I wanna turn this kind of, since this is the Liquid Trucking podcast, there’s a little bit of an angle to this. First of all, how long have you been working for Liquid since July 17th of 2023. So I just started a few months ago. Ok. So you probably have a lot of experience with this, but you have had a school year start and come about halfway through. How’s Liquid supported you in, uh in, in fatherhood where you’ve got stuff going on in elementary school? You’ve got junior high high school, maybe you’ve even got a trip that you’ve got to take to college. Um How’s it been working for Liquid and, and juggling all that stuff that fatherhood brings? I really haven’t had to do any of that yet. Let’s say my second week there. Um I actually had a friend of mine pass away in a work accident where he worked. And so I was asked to be a pall bearer and I talked with my supervisor and I said Hey, I know, I just started. I apologize. I have to be this Paul Bearer. How do I do this? I’m, I’m new here. I, I mean, my previous employer, I was there for almost 16 years, so I haven’t had a new job for a long time. I didn’t know how the new things work and everything. So I went to my supervisor and I said I really don’t wanna lose out on pay. Can I work some extra hours? Uh On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, work a few hours on Friday. So I get my four hours for the week and then go to the funeral. And without a hesitation, it was absolutely, that is great for, for being as big as liquid trucking is, it is so small and family oriented. I’ve talked from Gabe Schmidt just a general conversation with him to, I’ve talked with Roger Schmidt at the car show downtown on Plash Main Street and it was just a generic conversation. Introduce myself. It is a big company that is very family oriented with a huge heart for its employees. You know, you’re, you’re definitely not the first one to tell me that. And, um, you know, it, it’s those, those kind of small town or small family values that I think make the company’s heart beat. Uh as, as largely as it does and as loud as it does. Um, it seems like, you know, the, the guy guys in the front office there are mean, or are there just to take care of you guys? Really? I mean, obviously they’ve got all sorts of jobs that they’re responsible for but taking care of their employees, their drivers, their shop guys, everything down the line seems to be a very high priority at liquid trucking. And then that’s exactly how I see it. I mean, I drive 40 to 45 minutes one way to go to work and there’s a million other places closer to my house. And I would rather drive down the blacksmith every day for. That’s awesome, man. Well, I, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you coming on here and, and sharing this story with us Jimbo because uh it’s, it’s a unique story man. It’s not every day that you meet somebody that 45 different kids out there in the world could effectively call dad. Uh, and, and not just because you had a really good time in college. This is the thing that you’ve done out of the kindness of your heart, opened up your home, uh brought these kids in and given them a better life. And then for the ones that joined your family permanently, uh You know, having never met them, I’m sure that they smile from ear to ear and knowing that you and your wife are the ones that they get to spend their upbringing with. And, uh, I, I think I speak for everybody here on the podcast team. When I say just thank you from the bottom of all of our hearts for, for doing something that not everybody can find within themselves to do. You know, I, I don’t have any kids. I, I, I’m, uh, what they consider a dink, my wife and I dual income, no kids. So we’re, we’re dinks, we got a couple of Corgis. Um, and I’ll tell you, I know that I have the love in my heart, but I don’t think I have the ability to be as good of a dad as it would take to, to be a foster parent. And uh for those of you that do have that within yourselves, I just think it’s an amazing service that you provide. Um because it’s not a service as much as it is. You’re just providing the love, you’re providing the care, the support and a warm bed, you know, a hot meal, all those things that go into just having a normal childhood and, and these kids would not have had a normal childhood without you. I, I appreciate that. And, and my wife and I, we have our friends that are close friends that our kids call aunts and uncles. So for me to not grow up with any brothers or sisters, I have these friends that my kids get to call uncle and aunt. And I, I also have my brother and sister from my dad. So it takes a village, it really does. Amen to that man. Amen to that. Well, listen, we’re up against the clock here a little bit Jimbo, but I wanna give you the platform. If there’s anything that you wanna say to anybody that’s out there listening, be it, your family, your friends uh or your wife or maybe you wanna say something to the drivers or the other guys at the shop or the dudes in the front office. The floor is yours, Jimbo. Uh Please say whatever you will. Well, first of all, I just wanna say thank you to Liquid Trucking for allowing the opportunity for me to be employed in the shop. I really do appreciate it. It’s a great place to work to the drivers. Keep moving America. Thank you for what you do. So my wife and kids, I love you all from the bottom of my heart and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. That’s technician from Liquid Trucking, Jimbo, Bostic Jimbo. You be safe out there on your drive home and uh thank you again for being here. I’m sure we’ll get you back on the podcast again in the future. Ok. Yes. Thank you so much. Next up here on the Liquid Trucking Podcast, it’s procurement manager and so much more from Liquid Trucking Scott Schultz Scott. Thank you so much for being here today. No problem. So talk to me a little bit about your role within the company, uh procurement manager and so much more it says that’s your full official title. So what’s the role of a procurement manager? Well, procurement manager means uh inventory. So basically I’m connected with all the inventory of all the shops trying to keep my thumb on the pulse of the volume and keeping our prices down and quantities to a minimum. It could be trailer shop, truck shop or up at the bardo shop. Uh also at the Omaha Tank wash too. So, yeah, I deal with all the parts and pieces and prices and what, uh, what comes along with the and so much more a part of that job title, Scott. Well, I, I do have experience in construction and, uh, being able to fix things on the fly. So, you know, if something breaks here at the office instead of calling in a vendor to come fix it, they usually just call on me. So I put in thermostats for furnaces. I put in key door knobs on the, the front of the building. I fix lights, air conditioning. Uh, I install tube heaters in the truck shop instead of paying for those to be installed by a vendor. I’m out there on a scissors lift, taking down the old ones that don’t work anymore and install a new one. So I guess I’m just a Draft Jack of all trade. I got you. Well, that’s, that’s so cool to have somebody like you at the company that they can rely on for stuff. Like that because, uh, if you call in a different vendor for every single one of those things that you just mentioned that can stack up money wise and, uh, obviously they pay you well enough to, uh, to want to get into that type of stuff. Is that something you like to do? Just kind of be always, you know, fixing something. Are you a handyman around the house as well? Oh, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I do all my own work at my house, change my own oil and my vehicles, you know, never have to pay for an oil change. Uh, do electrical work, do plumbing work, all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, I just try to help out where we can save money. My biggest thing is trying to save money wherever we can here, be it with parts or whatever. You know, we, we take bids quotes on coolant prices from, I don’t know, half a dozen different vendors and try and get the lowest price de prices for our yard here. Um, we take quotes on all those brake shoes. We get quotes from all the different vendors and go with the people with the lowest price at when we’re comparing apples to apples, obviously new shoes on new tables. Abex linings. You know, we make sure everybody’s quoting us the exact same thing. Sure. Now, I’ve always wondered with death, does it, does the price of death, uh, fluctuate like the price of fuel does or does it stay pretty consistent, Scott, um before COVID, it was pretty consistent and then when COVID hit, it got a little uh touchy and things skyrocketed since COVID, it still is going up or down every month. I get a new price on what the death will be. Uh We recently started to transport death in our trailers for uh one of our vendors that sells the death. So we’re uh we’re hauling multiple trailer loads of death and uh in bulk uh to their locations and then they go around and sell it to all the individual customers, you know, 300 gallons at a time or whatever their, their tanks will hold. Now, that’s interesting to me because I know that sometimes some of the tanks don’t get all the way empty. There might be a little bit extra left over after uh the customer takes what uh they’re supposed to get if, if you guys have leftover death like that in that situation, is that something that you can uh take and use for the company or you guys have to dispose of that or is that something that doesn’t happen with death because it’s so valuable? No, you’re exactly right. It does happen. It even happens on the de loads and when those come into our Omaha Tank wash location here and they see that they’ll clean out a tote a 330 gallon tote that we have in the yard here and get that uh super clean because that has to be super clean and meet a certain percentage and then they’ll pour it into that tote and then we’ll have one of our gentlemen here, go over with the tester and test and make sure that it falls within the range and then we’ll seal up that tote and keep it. And then when our tank here on the yard gets low enough, we’ll go ahead and pump off from that tote into our yard’s tote and save money. So, yeah, currently we’re paying about, I think a dollar 63 a gallon this month for, uh, death. So, 300 gallons at a dollar 63 you know, there’s 4, 450 bucks we just saved by somebody’s load, not taking it all. That’s great. So, I, I was, I’m happy to hear that that’s something you could do and that there’s not some type of, you know, stupid red tape or something like that around that one thing because, you know, if they’re going to leave you guys with it, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to use it. It’s a valuable product. Right. Exactly. So, talk to me a little bit about how you came to Liquid. You, you told me Scott that you’ve got all this, um, experience in, in construction and with electrical and plumbing and all that. Uh, what was your career like before you came to Liquid? And and then kind of tell me, you know, how long you’ve been with liquid and everything like that. Well, early in my career, I worked at Great Dane Trailers in Northeast Nebraska, Wayne, Nebraska. I worked there for 21 years in the sales engineering department. So I would uh help with different options that you could buy on these refrigerated trailers. I worked there and then I came down to Council Bluffs and worked at Jim Hawk truck trailers for 4.5 years as their new trailer inventory manager. So now I was buying trailers from the manufacturers and then we would distribute them to our 10 different uh Jim Hawk stores. And then from there, I came to here to liquid trucking. So I’ve been here about 8.5 years now. I came in as the procurement manager and basically Gabe and Josh hired me and they said we have this system here. The TMT system that uh is kind of like a Ferrari, but we only have it in second gear to be able fully, was fully immersed into it and have been working with it ever since then. You know, like I said before tracking inventory, watching quantity levels pricing all that kind of stuff, all the construction stuff you spoke of, that’s just from uh learning it on my own. I di I didn’t go to school for construction or electrical or plumbing or welding or anything like that. This stuff that I’ve learned as I grew kind of sounds to me, uh, a lot like with this software program that you guys were talking about or that you were talking about there that you, you kind of like getting kicked into the pool and, uh, having to learn that stuff, uh, like on the fly. Is that, is that accurate? Yeah. Uh, yeah, I’ll figure it out. Like, I guess you’ll either sink or swim. right? That’s a, that’s a good, a good way to uh to learn something that’s might be a little bit complicated, but doesn’t really give you an opportunity to do anything else other than learn it and uh and get moving. So I, I like that. I’m kind of the same way. Uh Although you have to kick me into the pool, Scott, I’m not one that’ll jump in on my own. I’m a little bit timid to be honest with you. So I’m a jumper or you’re a kicker. There you go. So tell me a little bit about, um, you know, I, I know how you got to Liquid obviously now, but uh talk to me about the company. Why do you like working for Liquid? You’ve been here for a while. You’ve worked for some great companies in the past. Uh You’re driving around on the highway, you see that Great Dane trailer logo everywhere out there. And uh I’ve talked to the guys from Jim Haw before a great group of people over there at, at that sh, or at those shops. And, uh, I’m sure you had a good run there. But what is it about liquid that keeps you with liquid at this point? Oh, like you’ve heard on many of the podcasts, it’s just a great group of people, you know, there’s not a lot of pressure, it’s more, uh, relaxed here, you know, they’re not clock watchers, they’re not watching the clock. and like, oh, he came in at 815 and he left at 430 you know, or your lunch was two hour lunch. You know, they don’t, they don’t worry about that stuff, you know, as long as you’re working and getting your stuff done. Not saying that I come in at 815 and leave at 430. I come in much earlier than that and leave much later than that. But, um, you know, same with our truck shop, mechanics. They don’t go off of the S RT times out there. You know, if, if a, a truck comes in and needs a brake job, if you went into, uh, a Penske or someplace like that, that they would say, ok, that’s a two hour job. Ok, mechanic. You gotta get it done in two hours to get it done in less than two hours. You get a little spiff here. We just say the brakes need to be done and then they work on the brakes and get the brakes done. Ok. What’s my next job? And they, and it’s just relaxed. It’s not a, a time thing around here. Everything isn’t under the microscope and watched, you know, and how much time you have, it’s just get your work done, you get your work done, which seems like a real smart way to run the company. I mean, if there’s work to be done, which obviously you guys are busy. It’s, it’s always busy in the shop. I know that from talking to some of the techs and I, it’s like, just get it done. Why does it have to be on a, uh, on a time schedule like that? I know exactly what you’re talking about. It’s the same way at, uh, car dealerships. You know, they, you’re getting charged for four hours whether or not it takes them four hours to do it. And I’ve always thought that was a little bit backwards. It seems like, well, what if my break job only takes two hours I’m still paying for four. That seems, uh, like somebody’s getting screwed here and I think it’s me. Yeah, exactly. So, Scott, uh, uh, you know, as we wrap this up here, I just wanna find out a little bit more about you. Um, as far as family life is concerned, you got family at home, you got some kids running around. All my kids are grown and married and I have, uh, two grandkids from each of my Children. So I have six grandchildren. They all live within 30 miles of me. Two of my sons are in construction, own their own businesses. The third one is a deputy sheriff. One of my daughters is a teacher. Another one works at the local courthouse. So, yeah, my wife is retired from teaching and so she substitute, teaches at my grandkids school and gets to see them every day that she works. And so, yeah, I live over there on the other side of the river. I live in God’s country in Iowa and about 20 minutes drive into work. So that’s great. And, you know, with the holidays here around, uh, around the corner, uh, I bet you’re gearing up for a pretty fun Christmas with all those grandkids. Yeah. Yep. We see them often and they have a good relationship with all the kids and grandkids and we are gonna have our celebration, um, New Year’s Eve this year. Very cool. Now, is it, uh, are, are the grandkids getting to that kind of sports age yet? Are they still really young or are you going to, you know, t ball games and, uh, and soccer games and everything like that already? What’s, what’s the ages of your grandkids, uh, between two and seven? Ok. So you’re right in that wheelhouse there. They’re gonna be starting to do a lot of, uh, sporting events and we’re gonna have to divide and conquer. You go, you go to this town. Well, I’ll go to that town and take a video and share it with each other. So, there you go. That’s great. Well, you know, it, it only gets, uh, it only gets harder as it goes on because they start taking them a lot further away. I think once they get older to play these sports, they start joining travel teams and such. So, if you’ve got that divide and conquer mentality already, you’re probably in really good shape looking towards the future Scott. Well, listen, we’re, uh, we’re up against the clock here a little bit. So I wanna give you one more chance, uh, or not one more chance. I want to give you the same chance that I give everybody at the end of these interviews. Um, the floor is yours. You can say anything you want to, anybody that you work with, um, anybody that might be listening, your family at home, anything like that. Uh, you just say your piece and then I’ll let you get back to it, Scott. Well, since I’m involved in, in, give a shout out to the drivers to always remember to charge out your coolant and your oil and your jack shafts that you take from the shop when, when people aren’t around and you need oil and coolant and jack shafts, write those on the board so we can keep our inventory accurate. You don’t need to write down washer fluid. You don’t need to write down windshield wiper blades. Those are shop supplies. You don’t need to write down the, the Arctic flow, the, the treatment, the additive that you put in your fuel. Those are all supplies. So, just, uh, wanna make sure everybody keeps charging out their items. The mechanics charge out their items to their, um, repair orders. I’m doing inventory right now and we’ve, uh, found a lot of discrepancies in the quantity that the computer says we should have compared to the quantity that I counted on the shelf. We’re missing a lot of items. I know that the mechanics aren’t taking them home. I know they’re putting them on trucks and trailers, which is where they obviously need to go, but they’re just not charging them out. So please charge out your parts that you use tires, pumps, ladders, hoses, different things like that. You gotta charge them out to help our job be easier and help the pain be less for the Schmidts when they go to pay for how much inventory they have on hand right now. We currently have about a million dollars worth of inventory between all of our shops. And, uh, that’s a pretty bill to pay when it comes to tax time on how much inventory we have and how much we had last year. So that’s what I wanna say. Got it. And how often do you guys do your inventory audit, Scott? Is that once a year or are you guys doing that? On a quarterly basis. We do the inventory once a year, we are gonna start doing some cycle counts, maybe every, uh, uh, three or six months to try and keep the inventory more accurate. Instead of waiting until that 12th month when everything is way out of whack, we’re gonna try and maybe do it every three or six months. Yes, that’s it. Got it. Well, uh, maybe when you guys come to around to your next uh one that you’re gonna do just your count. Uh We can have you back on the podcast here and deliver some more of those reminders because I know that that type of thing is very important and it’s a, it’s important in a way that uh the common employee, the driver that the shop guys that are responsible for charging that stuff out probably don’t see because they don’t have to sign that big check that goes to uh to Uncle Sam the end of the year, like the Schmidts do so important stuff that we can definitely get into a little bit deeper the next time we have you on Scott. Uh I really appreciate the time that you’ve taken here and your uh your flexibility with your schedule. Uh This has gone great. So thanks for being here and uh we’ll get you back on again in the future. All right. All right, thanks Marcus. Have a great day. You too. That’s Scott Schultz Procurement manager and so much more from liquid trucking. All right. It’s time for us to get to a little breaking news here on the Liquid Trucking Podcast. A truck driver in Wall Lake is still missing. Two weeks after investigators found his semi truck abandoned in the middle of the road. David Schultz was carrying a load of pigs to a hog buying station in Sack City. However, the Sack County Sheriff’s office says he never made it to that location. The office released key information in the case this weekend saying Schultz hasn’t legally gone through any US border crossings. Schultz’s family is looking for answers and asking anyone who has any information to come forward for the last two weeks. Officials and dozens of volunteers have searched more than 100,000 acres looking for Schultz. They kind of switched gears. Now they’ve searched over 100,000 acres and, um, kind of getting to believe that he’s not in the area. Schultz’s wife says she can’t believe the amount of people who have reached out with prayers and donations. Now, for those of you that have been following this story, it’s obviously been going on for a while now. Um, it’s not something that’s new. Obviously, this happened actually back in November when he actually went missing and I’m gonna read you, uh, some excerpts from the release from the Sack County Sheriff’s office here in just a moment. Um, but really important to know that, uh, this is an ongoing story, there are a lot of theories floating around the internet and as somebody who takes a liking to listening to True Crime podcasts and watching the documentaries and everything like that in my spare time, um, I’ll just say that a lot of you might have opinions on what might have happened to this guy that have no substance behind them. As far as you don’t have any reason to believe this. You haven’t seen evidence that makes you believe this. You just believe it because it’s what you believe and that’s totally fine. Everybody’s entitled to their opinion. Uh, but one thing with these cases that, that really stands out to me is that a lot of times the internet sleuths, the true crime detectives that have never actually been a detective a day in their lives, uh, they muddy the waters with stuff like this because there’s a lot of people out helping, uh, the Sack county sheriff’s office, a lot of other, uh, law enforcement divisions here assisting in this case and the more mud that we throw into the water while they’re trying to figure out what happened to David Schultz, uh, makes it tougher for them to weed through. So, if you have your opinions, talk about it, you know, the best thing we can do is talk about this but maybe stay off the forums, maybe don’t be throwing unsubstantiated, uh, uh, rumors up there and trying to just guess as to what might have happened to him. I, I know that that type of stuff can be really fun and maybe it’s, maybe there’s a time and a place for it, you know, with your friends or whatever the case may be. But as far as seriously helping the investigation, I think there’s a whole different side of this that we have to look at. We are a podcast that’s, uh, for a trucking fleet. That trucking fleet happens to make its headquarters in Plattsmouth Nebraska, which is not very far away from where this guy went missing. Um That was over uh just across the border in the state of Iowa. And I’m gonna give you a bunch of info right now as far as where he was. And while I’m reading you through this, I want you to think if you were in the area back during this time frame, just think for a minute. If there was anything that you saw that was out of the ordinary, maybe you saw David Schultz Drive by, maybe you were at the truck stop, he was at, you could help solve this case. You just have to remember exactly what it was that you saw or what you experienced. And maybe I’m just throwing this out there into the void. There’s nobody that can help, which is understandable as well. But the longer that this drags on, the more that I really get this feeling of, we need to find David Schultz uh, here are some excerpts from the press release that went out on November. Uh, I think this was shortly after actually, this was the press release from December 9th. So this is the most recent one that I have from the Sack County Sheriff’s office, November 21st, 2023 at 2:23 p.m. Sarah Schultz. After learning that her husband David Schultz had not dropped off a load of pigs at Whiteman’s Hog buying station in Sack City as scheduled that day called the Lakeview Police and reported her husband missing after she was unable to make contact with him by cell phone. David Schultz left his home around seven pm. On the evening of November 20th, Schultz was scheduled to pick up a load of pigs in the Eagle Grove area and transport the pigs to sack city at 3:04 p.m. On November 21 a sack County secondary road employee reported to the Sack County sheriff’s office that there was a semi tractor trailer parked on the traveled portion of the road at the intersection of D 15 which is 1/90 street and in 14 which is Union Avenue, it was reported that the semi had been sitting there since early morning. Responding deputies determined that it was David Schultz’s semi. The truck was shut off and inside deputies found Schultz’s wallet and cell phone. David Schultz’s driver’s license was in the wallet. Investigators would later learn that nothing was missing from the wallet. Over the next several hours, law enforcement searched the immediate area on foot and with a canine, the sack. County sheriff’s office requested assistance from the Iowa State patrol air wing unit. An airplane was dispatched from Iowa City that was equipped with forward looking infrared. A state patrol pilot flew the surrounding area and did not detect a heat signature that would be consistent with a person for the next two days. Law enforcement area. Firefighters and volunteers expanded the ground search on foot and with the use of drones, however, nothing of significant value was located. Detectives from the sack county sheriff’s office and the Lakeview police traveled to the Eagle Grove area and with assistance from Wright County sheriff’s office located the hog confinement that Schultz was scheduled to load from load. Crew members were interviewed and load records were obtained. Investigators learned that Schultz had picked up his load but had been late to arrive and he was the last truck loaded. Schultz left at about 10:50 p.m. Investigators obtained video footage of Schultz at 11:15 p.m. on November 21st at the MM 126 truck stop east of Fort Dodge on highway 20. Schultz is there for 16 minutes before leaving the truck stop. He’s then seen on a dot camera on highway 20 west of mile marker, 126 truck stop headed west. This was the last time David Schultz was seen cellphone data obtained from Schultz’s cellphone corroborates this timeline. Cell phone data also shows investigators that Schultz travels across the highway to the intersection of highway 20 highway 71. There was not any usable video from the dot camera at highway four and highway 20 there is no video of Schultz stopping at the truck stop on highway four. Cell phone shows uh cell phones show that Schultz arrives at highway 20 highway 71 about 12:18 a.m. The data shows the phone traveling north to where the truck was found. Data suggests the truck may have been there since 12:40 a.m. On November 21st, video video surveillance from an area business was obtained near Wycombe Hog buying station. The video shows that David Schultz never made it to Whiteman’s law enforcement has searched for additional video footage from the Eagle Grove to Fort Dodge but has not yet located any, there are a lot of different uh police investigators and like I said earlier, divisions that are helping out through this. Uh The Iowa division of criminal investigation is in on this and they have assisted with a forensic search of David Schultz’s phone. They’ve also confirmed that Schultz has not legally gone through a US border crossing information was received that a person named David Schultz had a one way flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix Arizona on the late afternoon of November 21st working with Minneapolis airport police and the airline. It was determined after viewing video footage of the gate and receiving ticketing information that this was not the David Schultz that is missing DC. I continues to assist in the examination of other digital evidence that has been obtained or requested through a subpoena or search warrant. So let’s talk about who you’re looking for here because this is really important. David Schultz is 53 years old. He is 100 and £80 and he stands 511. I will tell you this right now. I’m looking at pictures of David as we speak. If anything, I would say David would qualify as looking like a young 53 year old. I would have put this guy in his mid forties at the absolute most. So he’s aging. Well, um, authorities in Sack County and Iowa are looking for 53 year old David Schultz. Police say Schultz was last heard from in the early morning hours of November 21st. If you have any information, please contact the Sack County Sheriff’s office at 7126627127. We’re going to continue to follow this story on this podcast. Whenever there’s developing information, I will definitely get it to you. Uh, because we need to find David Schultz. This is very suspicious. His truck is just parked in the middle of the road. His phone, his wallet are still there and he is nowhere to be found. People don’t just vaporize in this life. So let’s figure out what happened to David and bring him home to his wife and his twin, 10 year old boys. Something else I want to get to here. Uh is uh uh something that helps out with things like this. Now, maybe not exactly this story because you don’t expect a 53 year old male to be uh a victim of trafficking. But it’s possible. Ok? And truckers against trafficking is a great foundation that helps keep trafficking out of the transportation industry and helps get people that have been trafficked home. Uh I’m gonna read you a little bit from their website here about truckers against trafficking. Modern day slavery or human trafficking exists whenever people are bought and sold for forced labor or commercial sex around the world. It’s estimated that there are over 50 million slaves today. Human trafficking has been reported in all 50 states and the number of victims in the United States is estimated in the hundreds of thousands. While illegal human trafficking is a booming business traffickers recruit out of our schools online in shopping malls as well as the streets and other locations. A large percentage of the people trafficked are women and Children. Many of them are used in the sex industry. There are prostituted people on the street and in private homes and in legitimate businesses such as restaurants, truck stops and motels, they need to be identified and recovered. This is where you come in. Truckers against trafficking. Recognizes that members of the trucking, bus and energy industries are invaluable in the fight against this heinous crime as the eyes and ears of our nation’s highways. You are in a unique position to make a difference and close loopholes to traffickers who seek to exploit our transportation system for their personal gain. This site has been created to inform members of the trucking, bus and energy industries and other travelers of the basic issues involved in human trafficking and a summary of ways that you can help. We invite you to travel through this website and learn how you can join this worthy cause and save lives if you want to hit up that website and do some more reading for yourself. The web address is truckers against trafficking.org and there are a few different ways that you could go about helping um the uh they call it tat training and it actually helps drivers and other civilians save lives. Um I’ll talk to you about a couple of these stories right here. They have 1.7 million people registered as truckers against trafficking trained. Uh Here’s a story right here acting on the training he received from truck truckers against trafficking after seeing a woman covered only in a towel standing along a remote stretch of highway. A professional truck driver named Joe Aguayo made a call to law enforcement that recovered a trafficking victim that had been left in the area. Here’s another one using a rewards application to capture critical information on behalf of a woman being sexually exploited. The quick thinking of Sap Bro’s cashier, Jessica Chapman resulted in the arrest of the perpetrator. That’s amazing. Um There’s a few more, there’s a bunch of them. You can go through and read all of these stories about truck drivers and industry employees that helped save people’s lives. It’s a really awesome website. There’s plenty of information on it and if you want to get certified or get trained, um, you can get trained as an individual, it’s as easy as just going to the website, they’ll send you the information, you can download it. They’ve got a little wallet card in there. Um, you can get uh a, you can complete the course. Sorry. And they will print you a certificate. They’ll send you some stickers. I’m sure those of you drivers that are listening have seen the truckers against trafficking stickers out there on various other trucks and maybe in the windows of truck stops and things like that. So head on over to truckers against trafficking.org. If you want to learn more about this, it’s a really important thing that we as members of the trucking industry and I’m sort of painting myself with that brush right now because I’m not out there driving, but I am trying to entertain those of you that are. So I’m gonna put myself in this. We all need to put an end to trafficking in any way that we can. And if using David Schultz’s mystery to spur you into getting tat trained and start looking for some of these signs while you’re out there on the road is what it takes then. That’s great. But at the end of the day, we just need to put it into trafficking. And more importantly at this point, bring David Schultz home. Uh as I said, we’ll continue to follow this story and more right here on the Liquid Trucking Podcast, but it’s time to turn the lights back up and send Emo Marcus home for a little bit. We’re gonna get happy jovial Marcus back in here and get to another interview next up here on the Liquid Trucking Podcast. It’s Vice President of Safety and Human Resources, Jason Eisenman. Jason, appreciate the time. Thanks for being here as always. Absolutely. How’s your day today? I can’t complain at all, man. Nobody’s listening. II, I found out if you complain a lot on these podcasts that uh that uh that tends to get the downloads down to zero very fast. So I’m trying to keep positive I’m having a great day. How’s everything out there in Plattsmouth? It’s good. It’s winter time uh in trucking, it’s been a little slow winter compounds that issue because, you know, in the Liquid business, things just don’t flow as easily when it’s frozen. It tends to be the cruddier time of the year for, for uh liquid trucking or, you know, any bulk, liquid fleet in general, in the cold elements. So, yeah, now I, I understand it. It is the end of the year and you’ve got a few things that you want to address that kind of pertain to the end of the year. So I’m just gonna let you jump off right there. Uh, let’s, let’s get the important stuff out of the way and let these drivers know what it is that you have to tell them. Yeah, thanks. So a lot of questions we get toward the end of the year and these are kind of like a Fa Qs if you will, you know, like when do we get our uh W twos? Well, we close the final payroll and then uh our payroll vendor gets to work and, and usually it’s the second or third week of January, the Paycor, which is our payroll vendor will make those available electronically first. So if you keep an eye on the section in your uh Paycor app that shows your paycheck stub, there’s a little place you can click in there for tax statements. You’ll see the electronic copy first and then the paper copies will come in the mail usually about a week or two weeks later. But the secret is to watch for that electronic version in your Paycore app. That’s where you can get it the fastest. And that’s what everybody wants is to get their hands on that W-2 so they can get taxes out of the way before they actually get around to April and really have to start sweating about it. Right. Yep. Yep. We still do send all W twos on paper still. So it’s also important that if you’ve moved and your address hasn’t been updated to get a hold of us, you can email payroll at Liquid trucking.com with any address updates and that’s still not too late to do that where we can get your address updated. And if you don’t get the electronic copy, the paper copy will make it to your new address. Perfect. Now, the other thing that happens four times a year. So this isn’t typically just an end of year thing, but we have our driver quarterly bonus review and we close that out usually within about a week at the close of each quarter, which is coming up. So we work hard to review everyone’s uh performance and fuel usage and their safety record. So I wanted to give a kind of a brief behind the scenes peak about that and then also coming down the pike additional episodes, you know, if you have questions about that to have drivers, email those questions in and we’ll, we’ll give a email address for that here in just a minute, but it takes quite a bit of work to compile the numbers. And uh it’s a pretty manual process. We’re a small fleet. We put a lot of effort into making sure everything is accurate. Um I did bring one statistic to this recording today, which was, we had so far, we are quite to the end of the year. So knock on wood, but we have 241 incidents that we were, we recorded for the year. And what is uh incident mean? It’s a and it could be from the littlest stuff to the biggest stuff. So a one gallon spill all the way up to a roll truck and everything in between and we log it all and, and we, and we use it year over year to look at. What did we do good this year? What did we do bad? What could we do better next year? What training could we put in place? How can we better serve everyone out there to make a difference and cut out some of those, uh, incidents, accidents, spills, etcetera, um, to make life safer and more efficient in the next year. And how many of those? And maybe you could just give me a rough estimate here. But in your view, how many of those that you logged this year do you think you probably could have prevented or could, uh, work something in to help prevent from happening again? Jason, unfortunately, a good majority of them are what, what you would consider a preventable incident or an accident. But I don’t know that I’d wanna guess too much. That’s a great question. I think we should bring that back. In fact, I had planned to put together a kind of a year end close and, and where we’ll talk about maybe our most expensive category and our least expensive category and give some, like, real numbers behind that. And I’ll also add to that, what percentage, you know, would be preventable versus unpreventable because our drivers get hit with a lot of stuff out there, You know, like deers, tires, owls, moose. If you name it, it’s livestock, those are really hard to avoid. Uh, you know, so those are the easy ones that are just, uh, non preventable, but also not the driver’s fault because we don’t want you driving the truck off the road to avoid an owl. So you just got to take that hit and, you know, we get a lot of it, believe it or not. I do believe it. I, you know, growing up in a rural area as I did, um, as a kid and going back there as much as I do roadkill is one, one of the things that the local authorities spend their most time on and if you’re like a pro driver out there and you’re putting on as many miles as these guys are, I don’t think it matters where you’re at, whether you’re metropolitan or rural or anywhere in between, eventually you’re gonna hit an animal on the road. It’s just something you can’t avoid. I agree. And most of the drivers, in fact, this year, every single time we hit something, I feel like our drivers did the best they could. We have the over the hood video footage of them all and they, they hold the lane, they do a really good job at keeping the truck slowing it down, pulling over off the road, whatever the choices are. But you know, that, that, that, that’ll be a whole another episode sometime where we’ll just spin off the driver stories because I feel like the guys will have a ton of cool stuff to share like that for sure. And hats off to them for doing a good job on that. It’s not that, that type of stress coming through when you’re moving down the road trying to get your job done in a safe manner, something unpreventable comes out and you still are able to keep your wits about you and handle it as well as the drivers have. That’s great work. I mean, there, there’s nothing to be, uh, upset about there. Some things are out of your control. Right. Yep. That’s, and you got to just focus on what you can control and, and to double back just a little bit. I’d like to open it up, you know, to, uh, any other year end questions. This is the podcast is new and it’s an open forum for all employees. We tend to navigate toward the drivers because, uh, it’s the majority of our workforce. But you know, if you’re a mechanic or a tank wash employee or a driver or someone in the office listening to this conversation and you have a year end question. Definitely. Email the podcast at Liquid trucking.com. Get the question out there and, and we’ll get it answered or we’ll have you on to talk about it with us. There you go. And I’m not as intimidating as I seem, I promise I’ll make it easy on you. Uh Love to have any of the, any of the employees there at Liquid that are interested. Come on and share, not only their questions but their experiences and, and issues, anything like that. We’re here for you guys. So uh please do send those questions in at that email address there uh at Liquid trucking.com and let us know because uh we’re always looking for good content, Jason and I have been talking about just this conversation for a couple of days now figuring out how we’re gonna put it together. So all of that stuff is welcome. And there’s just one last thing not to keep pushing it, but this is not for us to keep talking, but for the uh employees collectively. So if you’re a couple of drivers out there on the road, two or three drivers, you got something you wanna talk about, we can have all of you on at the same time talking to Marcus. Um I can join other people can join from around the company. We definitely wanna make this all about what you guys wanna talk about. So definitely let us know what it is so we can get it on the air and have some fun. Absolutely. Uh I, I love that and thank you for, for making that a part of your uh your time with us today, Jason because you know, uh I, I’ll tell you right now guys, it gets really boring uh, when nobody wants to talk to me. So I, I’ve had that experience from other places so far. Everybody at Liquids been awesome. And if we keep up like this, uh, we’re gonna get a lot of things ironed out on this podcast, uh, as the future rolls on. So I’m really looking forward to it and, uh, thus far, it’s been a great time. I’ve gotten to meet a lot of people both in person and on the phone. Uh You got a great company that you work for there, Jason. I gotta tell you it, uh, hats off to everybody over there at Liquid for, for making this as fun as it’s been hard for me to believe. We’re only seven episodes in, at this point. Uh I feel like I’ve been doing this for a year already, for sure. Well, I’m looking forward to the next one. I hope to hear from a lot of folks out there on the road listening and, uh, New Year’s coming up so be safe. Have fun and we’ll talk to you soon. That’s Jason Eisenman VP of Safety and Human Resources at Liquid Trucking. Thanks Jason. That’s gonna put the brakes on this episode of the Liquid Trucking podcast. Thank you all for clicking that listen, download button and uh subscribing to the podcast. It helps us out greatly when you do those things. Uh So we really appreciate everybody that has listened to this episode, but we also uh appreciate all of the contributions from the great staff there at Liquid Scott Schultz, Jimbo Bostick. And of course, Jason Eisenman and uh something to remember before we get away from it. We are looking for truck driver David Schultz who went missing in Iowa. Uh This is Sack County Iowa and we are looking for a 53 year old £180.05 foot 11. David Schultz. Again, if you have any information on that, contact the Sack County Sheriff’s office at 7126627127, I appreciate all your efforts out there. Uh Want everybody to get home safe. So make sure to, uh you know, watch the speed, watch the roads. It’s that time of year out there. I don’t want anybody hitting Black ice and, and hearing any horror stories about it out there. So be careful, be safe and we’ll see you around the corner on next week’s episode of the Liquid Trucking podcast. Thanks for tuning in and being the gold standard of drivers on the road. Be sure to like and subscribe to the channel and tune in next week for another episode of the Liquid Trucking Podcast.