Carbon Express owner Steve Rush, Gorski Bulk Transport’s Bernie Gorski and Groendyke Transport president Greg Hodgen boast more than 130 years of combined experience in the tank truck industry.
And according to National Tank Truck Carrier (NTTC) Vice President Ryan Streblow, who introduced, and occasionally roasted, the veteran panel, Rush may have been around when the first tank trailer was built.
“He’s by far the oldest guy we’ve ever had on stage,” Streblow joked.
The oldest, maybe, and certainly one of the wisest—which goes for all three participants in a revealing discussion about Tank Truck Tradition during Tank Truck Week 2019 in Nashville, Tennessee.
They shared stories about their introductions to bulk hauling, greatest influences, lessons learned across lengthy careers, the importance of treating drivers—and every employee—with respect, thriving in a heavily regulated industry, and the advances that have changed it for the better.
“There are some stories in here … that are pretty hilarious, pretty amazing, and it’s going tie in decades … (of) changes that we’ve had in our industry,” Streblow said.
Changing times
No one knows the industry better.
Gorski, born and raised in Ontario, Canada, is the current NTTC chairman; Rush, who hails from Northern Maine, was the chairman in 2010; and Hodgen, a native of Enid Oklahoma, manned the top spot in 2011.
Rush, whose father had him behind the wheel of a 2½-ton truck on the family farm at 7 years old, went into trucking in the late 1960s after leaving the Air Force, which he joined out of high school. He remembers driving a refrigerated truck on a Saturday morning in New York around 1968 after a late night filled with “Friday night festivities” and deciding he was too tired to stay awake.
So he picked up two hitchhikers—and put them behind the wheel while he slept.
“Don’t tell any of your drivers to do this, by the way,” he cautioned.
“When I think back to some of the stuff I did that was foolish and crazy, there’s no question in my mind the good Lord had another mission for me.”
Gorski, who entered the industry around the same time, recalls an incident in 1976, before safety was foremost on everyone’s minds, when Gorski Bulk had a load of hazmat that needed to go from Winsor, Ontario, to Decatur, Illinois, but his dad, Ted Gorski, couldn’t reach the driver—so he went to the driver’s house, where he found him drunk from the night before and dragged him out of bed.
They returned to the terminal, Ted put him in a truck, handed him the keys and said get going. The driver then passed out for two more hours before Ted woke him again and got him on the road.
The younger Gorski remembers seeing this play out—and not feeling great.
“That was the day we started our safety department, and it was a bittersweet thing that I did,” he said. “Nobody liked it but me for the first two or three months, but then it turned out OK. The guy made it by the way, and he delivered the load on time—and it was a load of whiskey.”
Hodgen’s tale of trucking terror took place in the early 90s in Denver, Colorado.
As a young mechanics helper with Groendyke, he was asked to move a rusted-out old GMC Astro cabover with nearly 500,000 miles on it from the company’s Fort Worth terminal to Enid. After brutally bobtailing to Oklahoma, he was approaching the Enid terminal when the truck stalled at an intersection while Hodgen tried unsuccessfully to switch gears—and his dread slowly grew.
“I’m literally pushing the clutch to the floor, and pushing on the front of the sleeper back behind the seat, and sweat’s pouring down my face, and I’m thinking ‘I’m going to marry the boss’s daughter (John Groendyke’s eldest daughter, Shawn) and I’m going to have a wreck here in Enid with this truck I can’t get out of the intersection,’” Hodgen said.
“That was when I learned how a worn-out truck can affect a driver.”
Lessons learned
For Gorski, success in this business is about attention to detail. He was memorizing key information about every driver, and maintaining lengthy, hand-written files before computer databases.
“Doing it right (applies) to fiscal stability, safety and customer service,” he said. “All three of those elements require you to do your job right, and that’s not an easy thing to do because of the amount of detail that’s required, the amount of analysis that is required, and the amount of people you’ve got on your team who understand what to do with the data and the details they’ve got.
“They’ve got to make wise decisions so the entire team becomes successful.”
Hodgen agreed that quality business starts with quality people.
The bulk hauling sector is unlike any other in trucking, he said, and it’s filled with people with grit, and the determination to do what they tell a customer they’re going to do—no matter how difficult. “For the core people who stay in it, it’s a career and it’s a choice they’re proud to make,” he said. “They’re not saying ‘Well, I’ll do this until I get better money over here, or I’ll change modes.’
“This is a special kind of business.”
And it’s the drivers who make the business go—even if they’re not lauded like they were in the 60s.
“In 1965, the driver was considered the knight of the road, and surveys year-in and year-out would come back and say that was one of the top five or 10 jobs people wanted in this country, because they got paid and they got home time,” Rush said. “We didn’t leave them out for weeks and months on end. And you didn’t have, in my opinion, smoke-and-mirror things like lease-purchase.”
But, Rush says, the move to electronic logging devices (ELDs)—as painful as it’s been at times—has helped put focus back on the driver.
“Without the driver, none of us are sitting here—not one of us,” he said. “Without the driver, this country doesn’t move. Without the driver, we can’t fight wars. And yet we go to war with drivers all the time, trying to pound on them and pound on them. So for me getting back to the main core of what we’re all about, and taking care of that driver, is the success I’ve enjoyed over the last 10 or 12 years.”
And drivers’ success goes hand-in-hand with the employees supporting them.
“Don’t forget the people in other parts of your operation,” Hodgen warned. “They are just as committed to your success, and helping that driver get his job done.”
“Real drivers”
There are “steering-wheel holders,” and there are pros, and the tank truck industry is the major leagues of trucking. “This is an intentional business for intentional people, and I’m talking specifically about tank trucking,” Hodgen said.
To be the best, businesses need the best people, especially behind the wheel. But even the best drivers are human, and bad behaviors need corrective coaching, not dubious discipline. Tank truck companies maintain a delicate balance between regulations and the liabilities placed on them, and drivers are under the most pressure to deliver, so they often feel “picked on,” Hodgen said.
The key to making them feel appreciated is to form bonds, and transform terminals from operationally driven hubs to people-oriented homes filled with personnel who support drivers.
“It’s got to be a more personal relationship,” Hodgen said.
And since long-distance relationships are difficult, keeping drivers on the road for long periods of time isn’t ideal, Rush said.
“This is going to blow some of your minds: I fly drivers home for the weekend, or I rent them a car,” Rush said. “Why is a driver, who’s your key employee in a trucking company, any different from you or me when it comes to home time? Why would you leave that person, who’s your only revenue generator, out at some truck stop or wherever for a long weekend? Why would you leave them out for weeks on end? I just don’t get that. It didn’t happen in the 60s because the unions were here. The unions wouldn’t let you do it. Then the unions went broke, deregulation came and it’s been a wildfire ever since.”
Bring drivers home, treat them with respect and dignity, and pay them a fair and proper wage—which Rush says is hourly. “Pay has everything, in my opinion, to do with safety,” he said. “If you pay him to go fast, he’s going to go fast. If you pay him to go safe, he’s going to go safe.”
Turning profit
Bulk-hauling companies, like their drivers, need to make money, too.
Hodgen says Groendyke used to reassess rates only when margins were thin. Now they regularly reexamine them because costs change constantly, and not only on Jan 1. Businesses can grow without operating in the red, he said.
“There are some businesses where the shippers aren’t willing to pay (higher rates), and I would say don’t do it,” Hodgen counseled. “The minute they can’t handle the freight they need, because carriers aren’t willing to do it for a loss or small margin, our guys become more important, and the true value of their experience and approach to the business becomes very visible.”
Rush says e-logs also helped him change how he rates after 30 years charging only what he thought the lane would bear. “We no longer rate by the mile,” he said. “How in the world does anybody rate by the mile? How do you do that? How do you get your arms around that, without looking at the time involved in each load? So we now look at it strictly by the hour, and if it doesn’t match the hourly rate we want, we don’t touch that load. We go home empty.”
Until every trucking company adopts the same approach, freight brokers and third-party logistics firms will continue reaping the profits that should go to freight haulers, Rush maintained.
His message: “Truck, don’t broker.”
“I’ll be blunt and honest—I hate brokers,” he said. “And I have since I first started in this business, because all they do is take the cream that we should be enjoying, and they don’t care about us.”
Greatest influences
Before offering their final words of wisdom, Rush, Hodgen and Gorski credited the people who helped inform theirs.
Hodgen mentioned Max Barton, Groendyke’s president from 1981 to 1996, and an “institution” who died in 2006 after a 47-year career with the company. He also praised Rush, K-Limited Carrier CEO Dean Kaplan and, of course, Groendyke chairman and CEO John Groendyke, for their contributions to the industry. “There’s a fraternity in this group, and it makes me creative,” he said. “It helps me think of things, and I try to offer the same thing when people ask me questions.”
Rush credited Gene Meehnan, former safety director for Matlack Systems, who he said was the “J Edgar Hoover of safety.” Gorski pointed to Cliff Harvison, who retired in 2005 after 32 years as NTTC president, and, from outside the industry, Roger Penske, who he admires for his like-minded attention to detail.
Parting message
All three agreed: The tank truck industry is where serious drivers go to make money.
Don’t believe them? Just look at the earnings potential—and how easy it is to become fully invested. “You can come in and have a career, and not have any debt, and whether you wanted to drive or be a mechanic, there are things here where you can work with your hands and still see the country,” Hodgen said.
And once immersed in Tank Truck Tradition, everything else pales in comparison.
“Every driver we’ve recruited from another part of the industry comes up and thanks me every now and then, and says ‘I’m really glad you talked me into coming here; this is the best job I’ve ever had—best customers, best relationships, good equipment (and) safety conscientious,’” Gorski said.
