10-4 Magazine / March 2026 47 handled much differently than what we see today. For one, there were no load boards on the internet, as there was no internet. Contacts were handled person to person. We had a face to go with the name on a trip lease contract. Many of us introduced our children to them at the office when they rode on the truck during summer breaks and vacations. If the shipper said you are to be their primary carrier, you were the guy. That doesn’t mean there weren’t dishonest people out there constantly trying to horn in on a good deal, and rate cutting has existed as long as there have been contracts. However, as a general rule, people were more honest than what we are experiencing these days (freight brokers weren’t hiding behind keyboards and shadowy innuendos). Today, anyone can open a freight board app on the internet and represent themselves as a legit carrier. They can even invent a fictitious safety score and fill in bogus numbers for units available and driver scores. Does that make them a trucking company? Not in my world, but to the shipper out there looking for a deal, if it fits it ships, right? Back in the day, if you wanted to move freight, you were required to sign a trip lease. In general, it was much the same as a broker/load confirmation, and it explained the terms of the contract (the who, what, and where regarding the deal). Most of the time a driver needed to be recommended by someone familiar to the leasing organization. We all carried a little black book of numbers. Those numbers were our livelihoods, and the longer you were driving, the more you accumulated. Most of us ran the same region every trip, whether it was weekly, daily, or in some cases, seasonal. No one gave out their broker’s name or number without good reason. If the person you recommended was a poor choice for the broker, then the next time you called them for a load they wouldn’t load you, either (guilty by association)! The second part of the process was you needed to physically sign a contract. They got to meet the driver when you came to collect the trip lease signs (door placards) and place them on your truck. You didn’t just carry them – you were temporarily leased to the company who tendered the freight. More than once I even had to go through an equipment inspection before they would give me all the load information. Back then, I was driving an older truck that looked a bit worse for wear. The company I drove for didn’t believe in truck washes or maintenance. I don’t know if the broker felt sorry for me or if they had confidence I could deliver their load, since I was holding that old truck together with duct tape and bailing wire. All the same, I gained experience and learned the value of good maintenance. Your performance will always depend on the level of preparation you plan for and execute, which is where I want this article to go this month (finally). In addition to the big MATS event every year, March is also the month I start my maintenance countdown. That time when ambition meets opportunity. It is when the last days of winter come and the rock salt, sand, and urea-based deicer start to shake down and melt off. This is also about the time that the ugly sight of corrosion peeks its head out from under the blistered paint. I know that’s a subject no one wants to talk about because it’s unsightly and expensive, but costly or not, it is a fact of reality. And, if you don’t tackle it early, the problem will only get worse. I haven’t done much truckin’ this winter due to health concerns, so my old truck has been sitting in the shop since around Thanksgiving. The last trip out I ran in a few miles of deicer on the way back to the shop. I was in a hurry and didn’t stop to get a good truck wash since the truck looked clean. However, looks can be deceiving, and because I didn’t follow through with it then, I have some problems now. A few days ago, I went out to move the truck so I could get some things from behind it, and this is where this month’s story began. The outside temperature had been hovering around 0 degrees Fahrenheit for a couple weeks, so no part of that truck wanted to start. Normally, I would plug in the engine block heater and boost the batteries for a short time and, just like that, it would turn over and start making smoke. Well, not this week. After robbing a couple batteries from another truck, I plugged in the block heater, but I failed to notice it tripped the breaker on my power supply. I came back later, expecting success, and that’s when I noticed the power supply had been tripped. I haven’t had this issue before, so I decided to split the cords and run the heater from a different power bank. When I plugged it in, all hell broke loose – I had fire, sparks, and smoke! It was kind of like the 4th of July
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