and I woke up the next morning and the wind was blowing and so I called in told him the wind was blowing got Jordan on the phone right Jordan asked me how much I had in the trailer I said 42 0425 he said oh you'll be fine I said you sure he's like yeah okay I put the truck in gear and we went out on the interstate at 15 miles an hour for 10 hours because the wind was 70 miles an hour steady

life by the mile delivered by freight works is your 30-minute weekly podcast adventure you'll hear the hearts soul and passions of those who keep america moving join us we're ready to roll in this episode of life by the mile delivered by freightworks we have recruiter reg moody he has unbelievable personal stories came out of the funeral home business professional diver emt work mountain climber loves being a dad to his daughter madison who's now 23 but in the midst of it all he's got a faithful commitment here to freight works and being that voice for drivers who want to become part of our team you're really going to enjoy this episode welcome thank you okay now i usually start by asking the question what was the story of how you got here and i have a feeling we'd have to develop a whole series the reg moody story in episodes to cover all of that but people often want to know before we get into exactly what you do here at breakworks you know can you paint a picture even if you have to do it with a mop not with a fine brush can you paint a picture of how your life brought you here to freight works in the position that you're in now as a recruiter okay for 30 over 30 years i worked in the funeral funeral industry and actually funerals funerals yes actually owned two funeral homes and that ended um i'll were you an embalmer you knew how to do that yes okay yes i'm a funeral service licensee okay and still am okay and so then uh after that ended i my daughter enjoyed showing horses madison madison and so we started riding around the east coast showing american quarter horses okay and i pulled those and one late night we were headed to raleigh and my father said you know you ought to try driving trucks you enjoy driving you do it enough and so i thought about it and called some companies that specifically haul horses and livestock and talk to them and they're like oh yeah go to school so i ended up in school now where where were you living where was this i was still living in silva in the mountains okay and tell people where that is still live there it is uh 50 miles west of asheville okay and so it's beautiful it is it's 20 miles from the great smoky mountains national mark so i went to school i finished school um

called the same companies back and they're like oh well you have to have two years experience to drive for us so okay

where do i get it general freight so i went to work i originally called freightworks and got turned down how did you hear about freightworks through the school okay uh tracy o'neal sent me dandy okay and andy our safety director our safety director and andy turned me down okay no experience now you don't harbor anything still no no of course not yeah so i went to work for another company worked there for a few months i actually ended up becoming a trainer for them okay well that showed a lot reg that you you know you you moved from doing it to to share them with other people and then i got back from the west coast because that company ran team trucks i got back from the west coast off trip and i got a phone call from josh and he was like would you like to come work for us you talked about josh the founder and the president of brainworx okay and that must have seemed pretty unusual i mean here you have the head of the company that's calling you right well he had uh one of the guys that i went to school with needed a team partner and he had said something about me so josh called me and asked me if i would come work for freight works and honestly i wasn't making very much money where i was at so i decided to come so you came to freight works and i'm going to just say this real quickly folks uh if when you get the opportunity watch the episode it was the inaugural episode for life of the mile delivered by freightworks the one that features josh farmer he's he's a multi-tasking character-driven biblically oriented ceo and founder that's incredibly inventive and you're going to find a lot of commonalities with people that come here often you see his fingerprints on part of the conversation so you you came here and you drove uh and and did did you like you drove over the road you drove to the coast and like yes now i heard a story i started as a team driver okay you started with yeah and then we broke up and did somebody started and then i got the opportunity to be a solo driver okay did you like driving solo i did okay and some people really i'm sure you find us as a recruiter here at great work some people just like being on their own and we're self-contained and other people seem to flow as a team right it's they're two different ways of driving team team trucks you need to be comfortable with the other person you need to have some trust in them solo you need to be able to have some trust in yourself and confidence to be able to i'm still to this day amazed by the fact how many times i actually have driven a truck from north carolina or virginia all the way the west coast by myself right um if i sit and think about it it is kind of

amazing that i actually did that yeah and i've done it numerous numerous times right and you know rach one of the things that we've heard from experienced drivers like david jensen and others that are part of the team here in the family we really call it a freightworks family is that the really good drivers are ones that know they never know it all no and you have to keep learning and the day we've had several drivers tell us this the day you ever feel like you know everything you're about to fall you're going to have a serious would you say that's true absolutely absolutely if you stop learning what you're doing on your in your craft that's the day you're going to have an accident right well you know one of the things too that we've often communicated here folks at life by the mile through these podcasts and by the way if you haven't subscribed hit that button click that button and please subscribe and share this with people that want to hear about the incredibly diverse world of trucking and logistics in america which has been in the news a lot here lately one of the things that has been so true is with every person that sat in that seat rich there's just an incredibly diverse set of stories i mean the stories are what really motivate people and we want with god's help to be the premier storytelling platform for america's truckers and i'm going to take a deep dive with you right now which by the way you'll understand deep dive because i understand that you're a diver i want to hear i want to hear about some of these life experiences because folks if you ever have the opportunity if you're interested in learning more about becoming a driver at freight works you may have the opportunity to speak with reg and i want you to know it's more than just a professional truck driver you're talking to somebody that's had multiple experiences so let me just ask you some questions okay okay and we'll do this in rapid fire all right tell me what you know about diving and what you've done uh scuba diving am an open water scuba instructor okay uh i dive rescues certified specialists level one and two what does that mean i work on a dive rescue team recovery rescue submerged cars people lost in lakes things like that also have done a little bit of commercial diving okay for duke energy okay um are those different kinds of suits you're wearing to do those two different things no no because we're above 130 130 feet is our limit is that a different atmosphere when you go below that okay mix gas we're not doing mexico okay okay so you've done that done that okay let me ask you this have you ever climbed a mountain oh yes tell us about that uh south america ecuador uh climbed two mountains coat epoxy and uh kahombay how did you get into mountain climbing actually it was through my attorney okay he uh he folks i want to say this real quickly the only role that i have with the life by the mile delivered by freight works is to prod and poke enough so you get these incredible stories that come out like this so your attorney introduced you to mountain climbing well i always enjoyed the hacking backpacking rock climbing and he and some friends had set up a trip to south america and uh i asked they asked me if i would come as a paramedic because i was a paramedic at that time okay so this is so a diver a climber and a paramedic we're going to get into that part in just a minute okay so they invited you to come you went to south america we did and we spent i think 20 25 days maybe um but we tried to summit two mountains uh i got as high as 17 000 feet so it was an interesting experience they were actually volcanoes okay you know reg i'm just going to say this this is not a patronizing comment one thing i really appreciate about you already is you know they have a saying still waters run deep and there's a lot underneath the surface and you just matter of factly talk about you know i tried to summon them out and i got up to 17 000 feet did you have a rescue that you did there did i understand that correctly or no uh one of the guys did get have heart problems and we had to bring him off to mountains okay and that was all successful and safe and everything okay so so a certified diver uh now do you are you an emt or did you have some experience in that arena or tell us a little bit about your emergency medicine involvement i understood that you may have had like for the municipality or the area of the county did you do something sir my bachelor's degree is an emergency medical care okay and i was i've held every emt certification in the state of north carolina from basic all the way through paramedic um i also am a national registry paramedic and uh i did i basically worked that way for probably 20 years okay so you so you were confronted with a lot of serious situations you've seen a lot and i ended up being director of ems services for the county for the county okay okay so you you've had background uh in funeral home management you've been an embalmer you that's my family that's your family that's been a family business yeah it was right it was a family business uh emt work all these different experiences now i want to tell you about the most experience most important experience though as i understand it for you and that is you you're a dad to a daughter tell us about madison madison uh she's 23 years old she's graduated from college she's in graduate school engaged to be married um do you like him

her Beyonce her you know I don't think from a father's perspective you're always guarded okay because your child is the ultimate gift you could have so you're going to guard it sure, yeah I had three teenage daughters and you know yeah Tatiana MacKenzie and Makayla and they used to tell me, dad, all the boys at the high school are afraid of you and there was something about that reg I have to tell you that I liked i i liked it I can sympathize with that, yeah and I would ask I would i you know I would i would I would uh have very open-hearted conversations with him so I completely understand uh what that means to be a parent now you did something though I understand i did my research did a little research before we talked here today you and madison went on a trip or two or we did madison she rode with me to the west coast she rode one trip to the west coast and all the way back how old was she when she did that

17-18 okay all right anything notable happens along the way well the whole trip was notable okay um well in ways that are inimitable and consistent with your personality tell us about that trip we hauled frozen chicken I was still waiting on my hazmat, okay and we haul frozen chicken so you have your daughter who's 17 you're going to the coast the west coast hauling frozen chicken how much-frozen chicken 42 000 pounds 40 that's a lot of wings and thighs and drumsticks well during that period that was the three months right after I started freight works i was still waiting on my hazmat because it was the holidays and the government wasn't working really well and uh

during that period of time i hauled more frozen chicken and fresh chicken for freight works than i really i think i ended up one time that came to like over 200 and some odd thousand pounds of frozen chicken okay that's a lot of birds that is that's that's a lot of birds you know what bridge i'm already loving this i just i like i like the way that you're just matter-of-fact about these things all right so you're on this trip you went out to california what happened along the way actually we were going to portland portland um and it was one of my early trips were you going south or north north on 80 and it was one of my early trips on 80 so i really wasn't familiar with december in wyoming okay you say december in wyoming to professional truck drivers and even though i don't have experience in this industry uh anywhere near anyone else here you say december in wyoming and a lot of experienced drivers are going to know what you're talking about right snow ice so what happened what happened to you and madison we got in a windstorm on the way out okay uh we were i'd stopped at the petro in laramie that was before the loves was over lurid me wyoming and we'd stayed overnight and i woke up the next morning and the wind was blowing and so i called in told him the wind was blowing got jordan on the phone right jordan asked me how much i had in the trailer i said um 42 000 425 he said oh you'll be fine i said you sure he's like yeah okay i put the truck in gear and we went out on the interstate at 15 miles an hour for 10 hours because the wind was 70 miles an hour steady okay but you know what folks what i want you to take from this story is not a load planner or driver manager saying you can make it through the wind because freightworks is absolutely committed to driver comfort and safety i want you to take the tenacity reg that you had with madison to just inch your way safely for 10 hours through all of that and you know what there there's no grief that i'm sensing on you at all no yeah and it's a story that's now being told that uh the world can hear if they want to hear it oh i know i know jordan even mentioned it the day i got back here well and right and i want you to i want you to know this when i was doing my quick research on you this morning before we had the opportunity to talk i popped in to talk to jordan he told me that story so uh that was that was really good to hear now let's let's take the balance of our time and talk about the important role that you're in reg you know it's so clear that freightworks has drivers from all kinds of backgrounds you have teams you have solo drivers you have men you have women you have people that are older people that are younger uh people that have worked in a lot of different companies and people this is their first company to really work for in the role that you're in tell me a little bit about how you personally approach these folks that you're you're talking to because you never know the story behind the story with the person on the other end of the phone and it just occurs to me that so many of the stories that you shared you're able to touch people and say that was like me or whatever how do you handle you know the you get a phone call or you make a phone call what what's your approach there well i try to relate to them and i can because i have been and still am a truck driver and uh somebody related to me one time that if you spent any time in a truck you're always a truck driver which i really it's true um it's a there's a fraternity there that happens when you become a professional truck driver three and a half million in america yes uh what what are what are some of the things that you hear what are some of the things that you have to work through with drivers you know talk us through what your days are like which i know we're not scheduled and predictable no they are not i usually chat with them let them know what freightworks is about i and freyworks is not the only company i've worked for i left freightworks and went to another company that was at home and uh madison actually still works there and so but you came back i came back okay uh joyce got me to come back as a recruiter and i've also been with another company other than frayworks when i started so i can see their career path i can and i just try to work with them try to get them to fit into whatever they want to do the one nice thing about freightworks is when i'm talking to someone on the phone and i don't specifically tell them what we're going to do i don't specifically say oh we just have otr or we have this or we have that i want them to tell me what they want to do that's good all drivers i don't care who they are have their preferences some prefer to drive at night some prefer to drive a mixture of night and day some prefer days i prefer days i'll drive nights i'll deliver nights but i it's not something i want to do every day i have a friend who i

seriously think he's blind because he only wants to drive at night he never wants to drive day okay but there's a place for people like there is yeah and so you try to take that conversation and take out what the person is looking for and try at freight works i can fit them into something that they're looking for this is so important folks we we want you to know and of course uh life by the mile delivered by freightworks is not a driver recruitment podcast or infomercial but what i'm hearing you say reg correct me if i'm wrong is that it's really more monogrammed than it is a cookie cutter in other words we want to get a sense of what is it a driver wants to do and then try to figure out if there's a compatibility there with with freightworks needs is that safe to say that is but before i started here i took a week off between jobs i stepped out of the semi truck i took a week off um and i did something that i thought i needed to do i called other truck companies just to hear their recruiting speeches yeah and i called one who i won't call the name of the company and started talking to the person on the phone and act you know he was trying to recruit me for a position and other than the way he was doing it was really grading

he got down to well let me look what we have in North Carolina for you

and he said oh I have a team position in North Carolina and i said oh I don't do teams I'm solo he said and so then he was like well you know you can make extra money for teams and I'm like did you not hear me I don't do teams right and we kept going around this tree and I kept saying I do not want a team position he had some it seems like he had something to sell and he was going to keep pressing one thing yeah one thing and uh

finally he said so you're not going to do teams i said no he said well i don't have anything in it roles reversed with me in that recruiting position if someone tells me i don't want to do teams i've got a whole panel of things that i can say well do you want to do regional solo do you want to do otr solo do you want to drive nights solo what you tell me what you want to do right because freightworks has a whole menu of things to offer this is so important for anyone who's who's listening to really take to heart so instead and i like that you used menu instead of feeling like uh metaphorically speaking a word picture you're going in and you open up the menu and there's only one thing there or two things there freightworks is more like a salad bar right and and let's figure out if you want garbanzos and beets and spinach salad we may not show it right in the menu but let's see if there's not a way for us to come your way and of course as a company there's a bottom line to manage but is it more of the spirit that freightworks gonna try to figure out a way to make it work yes yes and that's different it is very different because most truck companies only have one thing they can do they're not very flexible some of them are a little flexible some of them are as flexible as freight works but our size allows us to be flexible

and our cohesion cohesiveness as a on the on the administrative side allows us to walk into such and you know somebody's office and discuss it without and fit a driver where they want to be and the idea behind it is if i can fit a driver where he wants to be yeah he'll be there right and that's what we're trying to do is have drivers that want to be here that want to stay here right and you know reg one of the things that i've just heard from a number of drivers and this is not to make negative comments about the industry but so many come here and they've been lied to they've been abused they've been moved around uh like a a chess piece with no they haven't been listened to uh i mean most companies will say you'll get great miles you'll get great home time we love you you're going to be part of a family i mean the marketing out there is all sounds the same which is one of the reasons why we encourage people to come kick the tires pick up the phone call get a sense of the unique cultural dimensions that are here but uh you know i've had a number of drivers privately say to me you know when i came here was kind of like okay i'm going to see if this is real does that resonate with you that is true i you know i started with freight works um years ago and i found them to be a very fair very uh and listen listen to me as a driver yeah um which is which which is sadly uh unfortunately not typical in the industry from what i'm learning no it's not yeah because when when josh and i started talking joyce and i started talking about law and jordan is launching a communications function including this podcast at breitworks one of the things i quickly told them is you know what i know about trucking and logistics nothing and you know what's great reg is when i in the driver's lounge right around the corner here from freight works one which is our studio when i tell a driver i don't know anything about this industry can you help me learn you know what i find they're ready to teach they've got lots of stories and it's it's just a blessing it's such a blessing reg uh you know we're rounding the home stretch here i told you to go quickly and it will um you know the culture here is different the values here are different of course the founding of the company was clearly on on a biblical basis and not everybody here is a person of of faith but certainly the leadership and the founding of it and the way that we do our businesses that way if you had a nutshell and explain for someone who's watching or listening just what you have found about this family we call freightworks that's different what would you say in a minute or two what's different about the culture what's different about freightworks culture is family

they can go speak to anybody they need to speak to

then there's no restrictions um you're treated as a family your input is taken into consideration um with the caveat as much as possible right as a driver yeah uh and even from my seat um

it's just it's a different

you know honestly when I started was with another company and I really didn't like that company I really you know I would get to the yard I would be

ill it was just it was a bad time I got to freight works I brought that with me and all of a sudden I started feeling like I belonged like it was a place where i could relax that I didn't have to perform it wasn't the antagonist antagonistic relationship that I'd had before right and that felt good yes it did and pretty much it stayed that way

they just expect you to run your loads deliver them and uh enjoy yourself that's a wonderful benediction for this program that's gone too quickly we're going to have to have you back reg I can already tell because there's more to the story we water-skied over a lot of it we didn't do the deep dive that you're referring to

you

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