In Part 1 of this episode, we welcomed two indisputable master riggers in the towing industry: Mike Scheidt, GM of Garner’s Towing and Daniel Williams, Manager of Southwest Towing, who gave us a deeper understanding of their rigging skills and all of the factors that are involved in a recovery. They shared some incredibly interesting stories and their brotherhood and support for one another that is a direct result of the towing industry is evident in their interactions with each other. Click play to listen.

Transcription

 

Shelli Hawkins:

Welcome, everybody, back to TRAXERO On-The-Go. We are on episode 11, Laura Dolan. How is your day going, my dear?

Laura Dolan:

It’s going very well, Shelli. How are you on this pleasant fall day?

Shelli Hawkins:

Fantastic. Temperatures are lowering in the morning. I love it. It’s 54 degrees. Can’t wait till the snow flies. In Columbia, Maryland, we don’t really see a whole lot of snow. So, nothing like we did in northeast Iowa, for sure.

Laura Dolan:

I am hoping that Ohio… One of two things could happen in Ohio this year. We’re told because it’s El Nino, we could either get a lot of snow, or no snow. So I’m hoping it’s the former, because that’s the reason why we moved here. But yeah, it’s great. I love waking up in the mornings and having the heater on, and it’s just so much more cozy.

Shelli Hawkins:

My towing friends call snow pennies from heaven. Have you ever heard that?

Laura Dolan:

No, I have not. What is the correlation?

Shelli Hawkins:

You understand?

Laura Dolan:

What is the correlation there?

Shelli Hawkins:

When there’s snow, there’s more recoveries to be had, light duty, medium duty, and heavy duty. So, snow… For the most part, any type of severe weather situation is going to mean more revenue for the towing business. Because people do [wild] things in [wild] weather, so it’ll be a good thing for them. I had no idea it was El Nino. That’s going to be interesting to watch. It’ll certainly be an interesting year for our friends in your state of Ohio, like our friends in Dayton, Ohio, also Cleveland, Ohio, and for sure Columbus, Ohio. So you’ll no doubt, get to see a whole lot more tow trucks out there, if you guys get the weather, that’s predicted. So, good luck with that.

Laura Dolan:

Yeah, we’ll see. Tow trucks are definitely top of mind, now that I’m involved in the industry. It’s funny how before, you never really noticed them. And now, I’m like, “Slow down, move over.” I give them a little salute, sometimes. And they probably don’t even notice, but it’s like, “Hey, I appreciate what you do.”

Shelli Hawkins:

I love it. I love seeing you growing, and your awareness of all things towing. Makes me happy. We go to the show, “That’s a Vulcan. That’s an NRC. That’s a-“

Laura Dolan:

“That’s a Century.”

Shelli Hawkins:

Exactly. Yes, yes indeed. It’s been-

Laura Dolan:

I’ll never be the same.

Shelli Hawkins:

No. And you’ll be at Baltimore and Tennessee with us this year, so you’ll get to see all the tow trucks of every kind, even brands that you probably have never even heard of. So that’ll be really exciting.

Laura Dolan:

Yes, ma’am. Can’t wait.

Shelli Hawkins:

So we’re going to get right into it, because we’ve got a couple of guests on our podcast this week. We are shifting gears a little bit away from some of the topics that we’ve covered in the past. And as we talked about before, Laura, our podcast is really to not only entertain our listeners, but also educate. We want to bring some education and awareness, and also have a great time and have good conversations with the folks that we talk to every day. And then also, like I said, the folks that are listening to us.

And this week we have two guests. One is from Dodge City, Kansas. And one is from Fortville, Indiana, just a little bit north of the city of Indianapolis, joining us. I’m very excited for them to come on. One is in a family business. He is general manager over in Dodge City, CEO, running things, wearing every hat possible in the family business. And the other one is the general manager of the towing company in Fortville, Indiana.

Laura Dolan:

The suspense is killing us, Shelli.

Shelli Hawkins:

I know. I feel like I’m dangling the carrot out there. Our conversations, we hope to give our listeners a deeper understanding and appreciation of things like rigging, and recovery, safety, scene management. We’ve really not covered any of those topics yet, Laura. What do you think about that? We talked about the trucks, but we haven’t really talked about what it means to be a rigger, what it means to understand the physics of everything.

Laura Dolan:

We haven’t. And I’ve been looking forward to this conversation, because like you said, it does involve a lot of physics. It involves the actual act of balance. And just I was hooked on the show “Wrecked.” Shelli introduced that to me. I watched both seasons of O’Hare Towing’s adventures out on the road, and just seeing how they operate. It’s incredibly fascinating. So to hear the stories we’re going to hear today, I can’t wait. I’ve been very much looking forward to this conversation, and just hearing about the actual components and the mechanisms, and the meat of this industry, and what goes into a recovery. So yes, definitely a different topic for us, for sure.

Shelli Hawkins:

Yeah. To even go further with the suspense, these two gentlemen are absolutely the indisputable top riggers in our industry. They are folks that they have peers along with… But I chose these guys because they’re friends of mine. They’ve been customers of mine in the past. They are highly regarded for their knowledge in rigging. People will text them and message them for their advice and send them photos, no doubt every day. “What should I do here?” And they have expert knowledge. They’re subject matter experts, when it comes to rigging, the complexity of recoveries, and everything that goes into that. So, should I bring them on? Is it time?

Laura Dolan:

Let’s do it.

Shelli Hawkins:

Welcome to the show, Mr. Daniel Williams, of Southwest Towing, in Dodge City, Kansas. And Mike Scheidt, of Garner’s Towing, in Fortville, Indiana.

Mike Scheidt:

Thank you for having me.

Shelli Hawkins:

You bet.

Daniel Williams:

Yep, I’m here.

Shelli Hawkins:

You’re here. Thanks, guys. It’s a Wednesday, on the day that we’re recording this. Daniel, how has your Wednesday gone, so far?

Daniel Williams:

It’s been good. I had to show up to work earlier than normal. Because I had a job we had to go accomplish, before this meeting. So I needed to make sure I got it done, before the 12:00 deadline.

Shelli Hawkins:

We appreciate that.

Laura Dolan:

Do days of the week mean anything, in a 24/7 business? I just gotta ask.

Daniel Williams:

Not really, no.

Laura Dolan:

Do people care that it’s Wednesday? It’s not exactly in the middle of the week for you guys, because it’s 365, right?

Daniel Williams:

I think Mike and I are probably in the same boat, that the best part about the days of the week is he gets to go watch baseball on the weekend, and I get to go to the racetrack. So, that’s the difference for us.

Laura Dolan:

There you go. There you go.

Mike Scheidt:

Exactly. That’s exactly it, too. Yep.

Shelli Hawkins:

Yeah. And how’s your Wednesday been so far, Mr. Scheidt?

Mike Scheidt:

It’s been great, to be honest with you. Yesterday was a little [wild]. The whole week has been a little fast-paced. It’s been interesting. But today is very relaxed, very nice. I feel like I’ve caught up on everything. I feel like that, but it doesn’t mean I have. But I feel like I have.

Shelli Hawkins:

Yeah, good. I love it. That’s great. I’m so glad to have you guys. Really excited to dig into some different things out there, about recovery, and rigging, and all of your experiences. So, just some basics here. Daniel, for our listeners, I mentioned already that you do live in Dodge City, Kansas. Tell us your story about growing up in a towing family, and what that was like, and when did you really start being solo on your own in towing with tow trucks?

Daniel Williams:

Man, that’s a loaded question. I was raised in, I guess you could say a family business, originally. My father was working under my grandfather, which would’ve been on my mother’s side. So, it’s kind of a confusing deal. But eventually, in the mid-’90s, my father started his own company. Which at that time, I would’ve been like… I don’t know, 11 years old probably, so I was still pretty young. So I’ve been in it my entire life. It’s all I’ve ever known. Spent a lot of time in the passenger seat of a truck, going down the highway as a young kid. Probably as far as going out full time… I don’t know, 13, 14 years old. I wasn’t very old. I kind of got one of those [wild], shouldn’t have been successful stories about not finishing school, and going to work instead, and making it work out okay. So I was kind of in charge of… Not in charge, but doing driver training ride alongs, when I was really young, for people that my dad would hire, and then I would ride along and make sure things were getting done properly on the truck, which was really-

Shelli Hawkins:

And how old were you, when you did that?

Daniel Williams:

Oh, probably 14.

Shelli Hawkins:

Can you imagine a brand new driver hired, and then this 14-year-old kid riding along, to make sure what you-

Daniel Williams:

It was a really awkward situation for people. And I can understand why some people probably didn’t get along with me back then, because it was really weird for me to be in that position. But, that’s just the way it was back then. Things are different, now. But, I’ve been full-time since I was probably… I don’t know, 16, 17, just going on the truck every day and doing my thing.

Shelli Hawkins:

What do you love the most about it?

Daniel Williams:

Oof. I don’t have an answer for that, probably.

Shelli Hawkins:

You could chew on it. I could feed you some things. But, as working in the family business, you know that-

Daniel Williams:

On my side of it, I’m able to work with my children. My wife works for me, on a part-time basis in the office. We homeschool our children, so they end up spending a lot of time at the office, which we have the area here. We have a really unique situation, with enough square footage in the office that they can kind of do their thing and run around outside, because we’re kind of in the country. It’s not like we’re in a city setting, with a cramped environment. So being able to work around the children. My boys can ride with me, the girls can ride with me. We kind of hang out as a family a little bit. Just allows us to have that relationship together, without having to necessarily be at home all the time.

Shelli Hawkins:

That’s fantastic. Talk a little bit about the lay of the land, and the environment that you’re in and that you’re recovering, and the industry that goes through Dodge City every single day. Are you mountainous? Are you flat? What’s it like?

Daniel Williams:

Well, I think most people are going to think of Kansas as flat, which it is. We don’t have mountains, but there’s definitely some geographical oddities that go along with my area. The weather is [wild]. We can have four seasons in a day. It’s windy, often. Winters are extremely cold. Summers are extremely hot. I am fortunate that I’m far enough west, that we don’t have to deal with a lot of humidity. So, that’s a blessing. It’s more like a dry heat, probably comparable to Arizona kind of weather, in the summer. It’s hot, but it’s at least tolerable.

Most of the industry out here is all related to cattle. So we have a lot of cattle, grow yards, feed yards, and then a lot of cattle slaughtering. Milk production is way up. They’re doing a lot of dairies. They’re building a new cheese factory, about four miles from here. That’s under production right now. That will be a really large investment for our community. Because my community is pretty small. We’re country style, out here. And the fact that they’re going to put this cheese factory out here is going to… I don’t know, 150 or 160 tanker loads a day are supposed to go into this place.

Shelli Hawkins:

Wow.

Daniel Williams:

So for a community as small as ours, that’s a big deal. But we also have two big beef plants in my community, that do probably, I think 12,000 head of cattle a day in beef production, when they’re at capacity. So there’s just an incredible amount of cattle that come in and out of this area. And then associated with all that, you’ve got to feed them, you’ve got to maintain them. So all the farming supports the cattle, which supports the people.

Shelli Hawkins:

I remember reading somewhere, that I think there’s… In one of the historical areas of Dodge City, there’s a sign that said that there’s over 1,000 tractor trailers moving through Dodge City, Kansas, six days a week. Is that still the case, or is it even more?

Daniel Williams:

A thousand? Oh, that would be a super low number. I don’t know where that number even would’ve come from. But, think about… The average slaughter weight cow is probably 1,500 pounds, so you’re only putting like 32 of them on a truck. They’re slaughtering 12,000 a day, and then they’re going out in boxes. And then, you’ve also got the tallow tanker loads that are a byproduct of that. And you’ve got the bone meal, that’s a byproduct of that, and the blood trailer. So there’s a whole lot that goes on, more than just a cow going in, and out in a box. Because all the other parts have to go out too, and it’s all used.

Shelli Hawkins:

I never thought about that before. Very true. Mr. Scheidt, let’s shift gears, over to you, sir, if you’re there with us.

Mike Scheidt:

All right. I am.

Shelli Hawkins:

Outstanding. You run a busy ship over there, north of Indianapolis. You’re the general manager over at our friends, Garner’s Towing. Love the trucks. The wrap and the design of the Garner’s Towing truck is unmistakable. I don’t know who… Who designs that for you?

Mike Scheidt:

So the first truck that we had actually was all paint. It was done in house, by two painters that Jamie had, that have always painted for him for, I guess, decades, to be honest with you. And then, when we built my truck, to replace that truck, we didn’t have the time. It takes three to four months to paint the truck, to put a truck down to have it done. So Jamie got with Mark at Razor Wraps, and they kept putting concoctions together back and forth and back and forth, and that is finally what they came up with. And then, over the last… I don’t know, five or six years, we’ve modified it a little here, a little there, added a little more, made it a little more wild here, to get to where we are right now. So, wraps seem to be the thing of the industry these days.

Shelli Hawkins:

Yes. Well, especially with the supply chain shortage. I know guys that are buying black trucks, and wrapping them white, because you can’t find a white truck, etc. It’s getting a lot better, but yeah.

Mike Scheidt:

Yeah, it is. It’s to each their own. I think we go in spurts. I think when we first did the truck, I loved the wrap, love my truck, love all the trucks we have. I thought, “Yeah, it’s really cool.” And I’m kind of the one for like… Once everybody starts doing something, I don’t want to do it anymore. Because I like to be unique, but I like things to look classy, streamlined. The older I get, the more I want to just look unified, and classy-looking and very sleek. So, that’s where I looked at some of my buddies out west at different places, that just… Like Daniel’s truck, his name is on there, and it’s a classy truck. You never mistake his truck. You know exactly whose it is. When you see the Ten West trucks, the name is so small on them, you just know they’re JR’s trucks. To me, that’s more of a statement and branding, than having the flashy wrap and stuff. Although around here, we’re known for it. So, everybody knows who we are. They know our color of our trucks, and they know our wrap.

So, to each their own. It works. I do like them. Our fleet looks really good. And when we’re done, the good thing about it is the return on it is that the individual that buys one of our trucks can just unwrap it, and do their own thing. They don’t have to repaint it. They don’t have to change nothing.

Shelli Hawkins:

I love it.

Laura Dolan:

And I would imagine that’s more cost-effective, right? It’s probably a lot cheaper to wrap than to paint.

Mike Scheidt:

Oh, absolutely. I think it was about a tenth of the cost to wrap the truck, versus what it costs us to actually paint that thing. Because when we painted that first one, it was all house of colors, candy colors. The layers and layers and layers on top of it were just… Every day, I would walk by going, “This thing is never getting painted.”

Shelli Hawkins:

That’s funny. Walk us through your career in towing. Did it start back before the tow truck was invented? I’m joking, of course.

Mike Scheidt:

Well, that first horse and carriage came by, and the wheel fell off. And my great granddad was like, “Hey, we got an opportunity here.” No. So it happened for me… I think it was the third week I was in junior college. I was taking the night classes. I wasn’t really per se enrolled with a major or degree in mind. I was just taking some classes. Because I had been working with a towing company for a little while, and I was cleaning trucks, to be honest with you. And my car broke down, and I had to get it towed. And a lady flatbed driver actually came out there, and towed my car in. So, I thought that was pretty cool. Talked to her the whole way back. Her husband actually owned the business. They had a transmission shop and stuff. And just talked briefly about it. I thought it was interesting. And raised on a farm, I was like, “I’d love to drive. I’d love to be out, and I hate anybody directly over me.”

So, right down the street from me, where we live… When I say right down the street, maybe a mile or two, was Cost Towing. And they were looking for someone to clean trucks, and do different things like that, be yard guy and clean up stuff. So, that’s how I started. And when I got old enough to drive, I started driving. And we had our 440s, back then. I remember we had a flatbed, a single flatbed, and a fleet of 440s, some [inaudible 00:18:44], a couple Century hydraulics, but they didn’t have a wheel lift on it. I think we had one truck that had a wheel lift on it. A lot of heavy duties. At that time, I think they had like 17, throughout the whole company. And it was just on from there, and I just became fascinated with it. I love towing. I thought it was always interesting. As a matter of fact, it was my junior year of high school. I wasn’t driving to school back then. Not everybody drove back then. I was old enough, just didn’t have a car.

But I remember walking to school, we had to walk about a mile, and a tractor trailer had come off the interstate, and it was straddling the two… We had to walk a different way, because it went off the interstate, down across the road that we cut underneath the interstate on, and it was on both sides. The cops was out there, and they were holding it upright, and they were unloading it. And I skipped school all day, to watch them do that job, and recover that truck at the end. Sat right there, the whole day.

So, it was really cool. And then, just one thing bled into another. And the more we did, the more I just wanted to learn more. And I’m very fortunate to have Richard Kauff as not only a great friend of mine, but at the beginning, was a mentor, in more ways than just being a boss, a life guider. He was a father figure, in my eyes. He would also help me with a lot of things. He looked past my immediate faults, and saw more in me than I realized. But until I look back now at what he was… And with his patience, kept me on the right path, to help me be who I am today as a human being, to be honest with you.

Shelli Hawkins:

Wow. Thank you, Mr. Richard Kauff, for sure.

Mike Scheidt:

Yep.

Shelli Hawkins:

That’s really great.

Mike Scheidt:

We had some great operators. Howard Kauff, in my mind, is just an amazing individual that sees the future, and saw the future of the towing industry evolving, way before it began to evolve. And he saw that it could be done at a much higher proficiency, and viewed as a true job, not a grease monkey job. Howard Kauff considered us to be… The industry was capable of being… To look like doctors, and be respected as a doctor, or somebody of high influence, just by image, not by even talking to them. And he had a lot of influence in the industry, a lot of foresight, put a lot of time and a lot of money into it, and invested in young men like me and ladies.

If you were to see our dispatch center then, what I grew up in, and our drivers, and what we wore, the way that we conducted ourselves, the way that we approached the scene, the way that we were done when we were finished, the way our trucks were kept, and the things that you were required to do, the responsibility, it didn’t just teach you how to do your job and do your job right, it built the foundation and the building… It built the building blocks for you in life as a person, as an individual, just installing those things in you.

Shelli Hawkins:

I love that. What a great testimony. And we all need mentors like that, and people to guide us, to keep us on track, to teach us character. Daniel, who would you say, for you, has been that foundational person that kept you in line, kept Daniel Williams in line? And I’ve met both of your mom and dad, so I don’t know if you have anybody outside that too, that’s helped you along the way. What do you attribute your amazingness to? And Shelby is going to hear this later, by the way.

Daniel Williams:

Amazingness, I don’t know if that word is probably the correct way to describe me. But obviously, my father has been involved in my life, significantly. I’ve worked for him since day one. It’s the only job I’ve had, and he still works with me daily. He’s probably, single-handedly, the most influential person that I’ve had. Just keeping me busy, so I couldn’t get in trouble, was probably one of the better things that they did for me. Growing up and being young, instead of going out and doing [foolish] things with friends, I was at work. Which at the time was… I don’t know, kind of awkward, because I was the only young high schooler aged person, that had a full-time job that required me to be called out. But at the same time, it kept me on a straight path, where I didn’t have time to go do anything [reckless].

So, outside of my father, I didn’t really have any other major influences on my life that I can really think back to. Once I became established a little bit in the career, I had several people that I could lean on in the industry, as far as honing my craft, and taking it above where I was capable of doing it myself, mostly because of geographical constraints. Since I am somewhat in the middle of nowhere, it’s hard to have a lot of interaction with unique things.

So, way back in the day… I don’t even know what year it would be, probably 2007, 2008, somewhere way back in there. There was social media before there were social media. You always had online forums. So, I met a lot of influential people, Mike being one of them, through an online forum, a long time ago. And then eventually, just met with these people face-to-face, through towing conventions, and built relationships with people, and then leaned on them, throughout my career. Phone a friend is kind of a big deal, sometimes. Every once in a while, Mike still gets that ridiculous phone call from me. And I can imagine he probably rolls his eyes, when my number comes across his phone. He’s like, “Oh, what does he want now?”

Mike Scheidt:

No, that never happens. I’m always like, “Man, this is cool. I get to talk to him again.”

Daniel Williams:

Yeah, we don’t talk near as much anymore as we used to, but I think that’s probably… What’s the word I’m looking for?

Mike Scheidt:

I think Daniel’s always been one of those family friends to me, that no matter what… We don’t talk a ton, but when we do connect, it’s like we were just talking yesterday. It’s just odd. Him and I have a mutual friend, Judd. And the three of us, when we talk, it’s like we’ve talked every… It seems like we’ve talked every single day. We haven’t missed nothing. It’s just amazing, when we pick up the phone and start talking to each other. Everything else… They have a way of just relaxing me, and making whatever seems wrong, not even be there. And even I don’t even have to mention it to them. It’s a different conversation that we have. And it’s really cool, and I appreciate that friendship. I really do.

Daniel Williams:

And I’m trying to think, how many times have the three of us even been in the same room together? Has it been once?

Mike Scheidt:

I think it’s been twice. Is it twice? No, it might’ve been just once. Yeah.

Daniel Williams:

Man. Yeah-

Mike Scheidt:

Because you guys came here, you picked your truck up, and I met you with my son. And-

Daniel Williams:

Yeah, we had lunch together.

Mike Scheidt:

And we had lunch. Yeah-

Daniel Williams:

We had lunch together, that day. Did we meet up in Orlando, at the Tow Show, several years ago?

Mike Scheidt:

That’s what it was. Yes. And at the tow show, so it’s twice. And that’s it.

Daniel Williams:

And that was probably 2013 or ’14.

Mike Scheidt:

I think it was ’13. Yeah, something like that. Yep.

Daniel Williams:

It’s been a while ago.

Mike Scheidt:

Yep. And then, if anybody had us talking together, you’d swear to God we lived a mile from each other. And I don’t know, it’s just the way we communicate. People say, “Oh, you have a lot of friends.” And I’m like, “I have a lot of acquaintances.” But I probably have, I would say, seven or eight friends. And I’m very proud to say Daniel is one of them, and so is Judd. And I rely on them for a lot of things. Other than that they don’t even see outside the industry, that we have, that we do, that just inspire me. Things Daniel does that he didn’t even realize inspire a lot of people. So I have a lot of respect for him for that.

Shelli Hawkins:

I love it. And that just speaks to the connection, the brotherhood, the sisterhood that we have in the industry. We all speak the same language. And I think it’s like we get to the point where we get so many tools in the toolbox, where you guys are in your career, and you’ve experienced all these recoveries, all these super complex recoveries, that you’re 95% sure that you’re on the mark where you should be. But you want another set of eyes, before you wench in, before you do the thing. Is this how you would do this? Or is there another way to think about it? Is that true?

Mike Scheidt:

Absolutely.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah. I try to tell the guys that work with me all the time, “Hey, just because I’ve done a lot of stuff and I have a lot of experience, doesn’t mean I’m right. If you see something, you need to say something.” Because we’ve had instances where I’m doing something and we goof something up, and I’m like, “Hey, how come no one said anything?” And the answer is always like, “Oh, I thought you had it figured out.” But I’m a human, so things can go south very easily.

Shelli Hawkins:

For sure. How much of the human pride plays into that factor?

Daniel Williams:

Oh, I don’t know.

Shelli Hawkins:

When you mess up big time? Because you both have messed up big time.

Mike Scheidt:

Oh, yes. Yeah.

Daniel Williams:

Do we have to talk about all this?

Shelli Hawkins:

We do. Yeah, we do.

Laura Dolan:

We don’t. This is classified information. We don’t have to go down that road.

Shelli Hawkins:

It’s the humanity. You don’t have to tell stories. It’s fine. But, I think if you… Being a leader, and having other people looking at you for your leadership, and then just making a really, really [reckless] mistake. I have a friend of mine… And I won’t go into the details of what the situation was, but it was something super simple that he did not remember to do on his rotator, one day that he was leaving a recovery scene. And it caused a pretty significant accident. And there were no fatalities or anything, but it’s just like this one… You’re having to be responsible for so many things, flipping so many levers. And I just use that kind of proverbial, but just checking all the boxes, crossing the c’s, dotting the i’s, and you just forget this one thing. Because like Daniel said, you’re human. You’re a human being. You’re not perfect.

Daniel Williams:

Oh, yeah-

Mike Scheidt:

Absolutely.

Daniel Williams:

I’m always [fearful] I’m going to leave the outrigger sticking out, and take out a guardrail or something.

Laura Dolan:

Has anything like that ever happened? What is the most challenging recovery that you gentlemen have ever done?

Daniel Williams:

I can’t even rank in the same category. I think Mike could talk for hours on this subject.

Shelli Hawkins:

We could just go over Mike’s top 10. What are your top-

Daniel Williams:

We’re going to be here a long time.

Mike Scheidt:

No. I don’t even know where to start on that one right there. Because I have been very blessed with the company that I worked for, and the unique challenges and diversity they had, that afforded me those opportunities to go do some of those just off the wall recoveries. But it’s not the size of the recovery, sometimes. It’s more of the challenge, even on a small job. And I can honestly say that I don’t think… And this is my 38th year. I haven’t done… If I have, maybe it’s less than a handful of recoveries that I don’t look back and said, “I’d have done something different.” That’s the sad reality of it, of just wanting perfection in what you do. And that’s where Daniel is at, also. Daniel is… He’s a perfectionist.

Daniel Williams:

OCD’s on a new level, I think with both of us.

Mike Scheidt:

Absolutely. It’s just, we look back and we both go, “Okay, I could have done this better. I could have moved this strap. I could have done this.” And people look at it and go, “Are you kidding me? That was perfect.” And we would both look at it and go, “It was good. It was good.”

Daniel Williams:

Yeah. There’s very few jobs that I’ve done that I was just like, “That was perfect.”

Mike Scheidt:

Yep.

Shelli Hawkins:

It’s like, “Well, I got that job done. Let’s go on to the next.”

Daniel Williams:

It’s not always the size of the recovery. Sometimes, it’s the small little things that you just don’t think about, that really make you smile when you’re done. I could lift a car over a guardrail, and be like, “Oh man, that was freaking awesome,” just because it might’ve been kind of twisted up in a bush or something, and I was able to get it without crinkling a fender. To me, that’s a bigger success than picking up a loaded cattle truck from its side.

Mike Scheidt:

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely, yep.

Shelli Hawkins:

Can you guys even imagine going into work every single day, and literally doing the exact same thing, every single day, 40 hours a week, for the rest of your life?

Daniel Williams:

I’d go [wild].

Mike Scheidt:

I’d go nuts.

Shelli Hawkins:

Literally the same thing.

Mike Scheidt:

Yeah, I couldn’t do that. Because the monotone you would have after week two, you’d be like, “Okay, we’re going to paint this wall today, and watch it dry. And then tomorrow, we’re going to paint that wall again, with a different color, but the same thing. And we’re going to do it over, and over, and over.” No, I’d go nuts.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah. I think one of my grandfathers, he had the same job for like 45 or 43 years. He worked at the Ford plant up in North Kansas City, assembling cars. And even though over that career, he had a lot of different titles and jobs, he still drove into the same parking lot, and hit the same punch card clock for 40-some years. And it would drive me [wild].

Laura Dolan:

So that being said, does this mean most of your work is immediate and not scheduled? So basically, every single day is kind of spontaneous? Or is there anything in your job that’s routine?

Daniel Williams:

Mike, you go first.

Mike Scheidt:

I would say that the shift in our industry, for us at our company here, has changed, and that we’re probably becoming more of a… I don’t want to say 50/50. But on our heavy side, our crane work and stuff is scheduled out now for days in advance, if not weeks sometimes. And our towing, our bigger companies are just giving us a list, and saying, “Hey, I’ve got these trucks need to be transferred from here to here, go here and there.” So, it kind of balances out. It’s not a 50/50, but I would say it’s a good 65/35 split, that is more scheduled now than it ever has been.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah. We try to schedule as much as possible, if it’s not an emergency. You obviously have those breakdowns that are on the side of the road, that we take care of if it’s an after hours situation. But sometimes, you’ve got trucks sitting in a parking lot, going to a dealership that’s not even open.

Mike Scheidt:

Exactly.

Daniel Williams:

We’ll schedule that, and have somebody go out in the morning. But then also, like Mike does, we do a decent amount of un-towing related lifting work and transport work. I set electrical transformers yesterday, for an electrical company. I did another one this morning. And I’ve got another piece tomorrow that’s already on the schedule, at one of the packing houses, that’s just scheduled out work that’s been there for days on the books, or even weeks. I kind of enjoy that part of it a little more, because it’s not so stressful mentally. Because you already know you got to get up, and you got to be at this location at 8:00 AM. And you don’t have to worry about traffic. You don’t have to worry about getting run over by some [wild] person on the road. And it’s a little bit safer work. Things are more calculated, and you don’t have to push yourself. You don’t have to be in a hurry. So you have that part of the job where it’s less risky, because you’re not in a hurry, and you’re not trying to clear a highway quicker.

Laura Dolan:

Yeah, and I’m sure that creates a nice balance, as well. So you’re not constantly in this state of panic, if you will. You got to do a recovery. There’s a little bit of reprieve there, so that’s good.

Daniel Williams:

Well, it’s also… It’s an excellent place to try to train up new employees, or people who are lesser experienced. Because you’re not in a hurried up environment, where you’re like, “Hey, give me that. I’m going to do it, because I’m faster.” You can just sit back and just walk them through it, and take your time, and really focus on honing their skills. And that’s been a huge improvement for keeping our employees sharper than they had been in the past.

Shelli Hawkins:

That makes a lot of sense. And I know you have two young sons. In those controlled environments, do you let them have their hands on the controls at all, to get used to it?

Daniel Williams:

I do. But to be honest with you, that is an area that I have partially failed in. Because this industry is… It’ll chew you up and spit you out. And I’ve been hurt by it so much, and having schedules ruined, that I’m not trying to keep my kids away from it, by any means. They go with me all the time. But sometimes, I’m just like, “Hey, go ride your bike. I’m going to take care of this one tonight,” kind of thing. So I haven’t had them hands on, as much as I should. But with that said, my 11-year-old can jump in a rollback, and take it out in the backyard and unload the car, unsupervised. I don’t let him do that unsupervised. But I have just said, “Hey, take that, go put it in line with the rest of the cars in the backyard.” And I just sit on the sideline and make sure he’s not accidentally trying to flip the free spool in the wings or something.

Shelli Hawkins:

For sure. I never thought about that, using that environment of those controlled situations. You were talking about just moving… Was it transformers, or generators, or what were you moving?

Daniel Williams:

Yeah, today was an electrical transformer, just putting a new one at a job site, new construction.

Shelli Hawkins:

Yes. I had a question for you. Do the mundane tasks bore you? But you answered it already. It’s just an opportunity for your brain to go on tilt a little bit, and it’s…

Daniel Williams:

Absolutely.

Shelli Hawkins:

It’s an environment that is sure. You don’t have entities on the interstate talking to you, in a certain way, like they always do. Mike can speak to that a little bit. Managing the scene and all the people that are out there. Have you guys had a recent recover, Mike, where you’ve had every single entity imaginable, out there on the interstate?

Mike Scheidt:

Yeah. Monday morning at 5:00, we had one. We had a tractor trailer fully engulfed, with raw meat in bins. And when I say burned to the ground, I mean burned to the ground where when you pulled up on, all you see is the box. Because it burned so bad that the sides had fallen down around the tandems in the back, and the landing gear has gone up to the floor, and the tractor is laying on the ground. And you’ve got EMA out there, you’ve got environmental out there, you’ve got police out there, fire, who just continue to dump fire on it. Because the meat is steaming, so they think there’s a fire that’s about to [inaudible 00:39:14]. And it’s a lot to the cleanup. It’s a lot of moving pieces. It’s a lot of parts. It’s a lot of trucks.

And I got there on that one there, I happened to be the fourth one to get there, because I was off for the weekend, and I wasn’t… I was coming home, so they let me kind of sleep. And they’re calling for a lot of extra equipment, a lot of people just to have hands on scene. And I’m like, “You have to control the amount of equipment that you bring to the scene, to not overrun it, and not over control it. And then, you have to time how that equipment gets there, where to stage the equipment out, because you don’t want to make the incident any bigger than it actually is. Because the last thing you have to do is get it all there, and not be able to move, and do what you have to do.”

So, I’m putting the brakes on a lot of people. Well, in this industry, our young guys, they want to get there. They want to see what’s going on. They want to be there. They want to be a part of it. And there’s not much they could do, but they want to be there. So they’re driving out there on their own. And I’m putting the brakes on people, going, “Back off. Just go back there. I don’t want you guys touching this. It’s raw meat. We’ve got machines. We’ve got an excavator. We’ve got skid steer. We’ve got containers. We’ve got everything. Don’t physically you have to put your hands on this, because this is not that kind of job.”

And people are like going, “Well, I could do something.” And I appreciate some of them want to do something. And then, what happens is you get five or six of them congregating, and just talking and having a powwow. So you have to control the amount of people you actually get out there, not overrun it, where you have too many people not doing enough.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah, it doesn’t do any good having four rollbacks sitting on the side of the road, not doing anything, just taking up space.

Mike Scheidt:

Absolutely. Or three big wreckers or something, knowing that you absolutely don’t need them. So I started kicking guys off the scene immediately, saying, “Just go. Just go, go, go. We got other jobs going on that are scheduled, so get going.” So that one there can be a little bit tedious. And sometimes, you hurt some of their feelings, because they’re like, “Well, I want to stay.” “You just want to stay and watch.”

So there’s a balance point there to it, when you work that job, as far as getting it to be an orchestra. You want the music to come in softly, have a big audience. And then, you want it to just die down quickly. As soon as you don’t need somebody, you start getting the pieces out of there. Because, let’s face it, the fact of the matter is our goal is to get traffic going again, but to make this incident go away, and we have other things to do. I find nowadays, instead of just sending everybody out there, I start to ramp things up slowly, and then time out, get there and then let it filter out at the end, and blend it in.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah, it’s kind of a methodical calculation that only you understand, because no one else can see inside your head. You’ve done it long enough. You’re like, “I am.” You can see the end result, before you get there. So you already know where you need staging, what equipment has to be placed where. And if one guy shows up, you’re like, “Hey, we don’t need that. You’re just going to be in the way. We need to get this thing out of here. We don’t need more flashing lights. There’s plenty of those already.”

And I’m real big on large incidents, not just jumping in a truck and taking off. But I’m trying to communicate with boots on the ground, “Send me photographs from four angles, so I can see what I need to bring.” Because it doesn’t do me any good to send a heavy wrecker over there, if it can’t tow it away, because it’s missing all of its wheels are burned to the ground. And it’s hard to convince the authorities of that, sometimes. They just want you there. But at the end of the day, I know what’s best. And if I need to wait and organize the equipment a little better, the end result is going to definitely be a lot more expedited.

Shelli Hawkins:

How do you professionally communicate to other scene professionals that you are the professional, and, “Let me do my job”?

Daniel Williams:

I’m blessed to be in a part of the country where people still respect you, and law enforcement agencies aren’t so large, that they don’t know who you are. I’m able to work around a lot of the same people regularly, even in a greater area than my city that I’m in. And people understand that my job is my job, and their job is their job. I can’t ever think of a time where I was told how to recover something or what to bring, by a fire chief, or by a sheriff deputy. Because that’s not their job, and they know it. Now, I know a lot of other people in other parts of the country, claim that they get dictated, they got to have this, they got to have that. “Show me this.” I’m just in an area where I haven’t had to deal with that.

Shelli Hawkins:

Mike, any thoughts on that? Maintaining your professionalism, on the scene where there’s lots of other professionals, that they think that they know better than you do. Have you ever had to deal with that?

Mike Scheidt:

Absolutely. And you always find when you’re on a job… Let’s just face it, the fire department wants to be in charge, police department wants to be in charge. They want to tell you how to do your job. And you just have to paint a picture to them, to understand that you understand what needs to be done. And then, I normally start at the end, and tell them, “This is how I’d like to approach this. This is my end goal.” I ain’t going to lie to you. 20 years ago, I’d go in there and say, “You just let me do my fricking job. You guys do yours. And when I’m done, you’ll thank me.” and I don’t do that anymore. I’m a lot more tactical now, when I do stuff now.

Shelli Hawkins:

Yeah, that’s-

Daniel Williams:

I’m the same way. We got old, and then we didn’t care no more. So we don’t want to fight.

Shelli Hawkins:

You guys, I think that’s a fantastic piece of advice. When you can paint the picture, “This is my strategy. This is our goal. This is how we’re going to get there,” it calms everybody down. “Okay, I’m glad that we are thinking on the same wavelength. Yes, we all have the same goal in mind, right?”

Daniel Williams:

Yeah. I can think of one situation where I got crossed up with the fire chief on a scene. And it had to do with… We had a semi that was loaded with piglets, and it was on its side, and it was sideways across both lanes of traffic. There was no way to get around it. The whole highway was blocked. And back then… This has been several years ago. It wasn’t tradition for us to pick up livestock trailers, while they were loaded. I hadn’t done it. But, this was the perfect storm. It was laying in the perfect position, and it wasn’t hardly damaged. And at the end of the day, I said, “Who’s going to unload 600 small pigs?” He says, “Well, we’re going to grab them. We’re going to put them in these fences.” Well, they brought cattle panels out to the scene, which the gap on a cattle panel is pretty big. Pigs are just going to walk under it.

Shelli Hawkins:

So I’m going to pause one second, and just unpack one thing you said, that Laura and might not be aware of. When a trailer is rolled over, your first goal is to… You have a decision make, “Am I going to offload the contents? Or can I lift it up with the contents in it?” And that’s kind of the crossroads where you were at, Daniel. Go ahead.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah. So this particular situation, I just didn’t think it was necessary for us to hand offload a bunch of pigs. Because they’re going to run all over the place.

Laura Dolan:

Yeah, you have a little mess on your hands there.

Daniel Williams:

And we just… I don’t know. We both had a bad day, and we got kind of crossed up. And he thought I was going to create this large bloodshed, public eyesore thing. And I was confident enough that we could successfully do this job. So I ended up just… I just overrode him, and I just started going to work. And we threw some straps, and lifted it. And it was on its wheels, I think, in under 45 minutes that day, from when we started. And three pigs fell out of it and ran off, and they picked them up and put them back in.

But because of that day, it has changed the entire way we handle those scenes now. So it went from, that was going to be a multiple hour scenario of handoff loading animals, to, “Wow, this is easy enough. We should make this the status quo.” So now, all of these jobs, were not unloading any of them. The county is not bringing out cattle panels any longer. They’re calling me on the phone, saying, “What do you want to do with this when you get here?” And if it’s 100 degrees outside, my answer is, “Put water on them. Keep them cool.” We’re talking about livestock, at this point. And if they send me a picture, and the whole roof blew out of it, half of them already unloaded themselves. It’s going to be an easy job.

But it changed everything, because I was able to instill confidence in my own ability to upright these things. And we’ve tweaked the methods over the years. And then, at the same time, all the deputies and the fire people that were on scene, seeing that this was going to be really easy. And they were like, “Wow, we don’t have to work that hard anymore.” So it totally changed the way we work out here.

Shelli Hawkins:

And it was a situation that was 100% by accident. You didn’t feel-

Daniel Williams:

Yeah. We were arguing, and it wasn’t good, and we kissed and made up afterwards. And since then, that particular chief has retired on. And we’ve got a great relationship with that county. It’s not a problem. But it was just… I was young, and we were butting heads. And in the end, it actually turned out to be a good situation.

Laura Dolan:

Hello, folks. As much as I’d hate to interrupt the anecdotal part of this episode, this is going to do it for part one of this podcast, featuring Daniel and Mike. Please be on the lookout for part two coming soon, where our shop talk between these two master riggers continues. We promise, it’ll be worth the wait. Till next time. This is TRAXERO On-The-Go. Thank you for listening.

Laura Dolan:

Thank you for listening to this episode of the TRAXERO On-The-Go podcast. For more episodes, go to traxero.com/podcast and to find out more about how we can hook your towing business up with our towing management software and impound yard solutions, please visit traxero.com or go to the contact page linked at the bottom of this podcast blog.

Music by AlexGrohl from Pixabay