Drilling Deep with John Kingston

With so much other news, you may have lost track of what is going on with the backed-up ports on the U.S. West Coast and how their situation has spilled over into other ports.

Greg Miller, FreightWaves senior editor who has been following the port backups for months, joins host John Kingston to bring listeners up to date on the easing of the backlog but why the situation is far from being over.

Also on the podcast, Kingston discusses the latest craziness in the diesel market and why retail prices haven't plummeted with the fall in futures prices.

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Just as the pandemic was starting, a new Kansas truckstop, Bert's, was getting ready to open its doors.

It went ahead with the opening and now it's been recognized as one of the best in the country. On this week's Drilling Deep, host John Kingston interviews the owner and manager of Bert's to find out how they pulled off this accomplishment.

Also on the podcast, Kingston discusses the wild ride that diesel is undergoing, featuring record moves up and record moves down.

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LTL has a highly unique set of practices, pricing and operations that sets it apart from truckload companies.  

Training people wanting to enter the LTL field is a major challenge, especially if they are coming in cold from the outside. On this week's Drilling Deep, host John Kingston sits down with Brian Thompson, the chief commercial officer of SMC3, to discuss how his company approaches the challenges of getting the next generation of LTL employees and managers ready to take on the market.

Also on the podcast, Kingston reviews the diesel market that propelled by the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been doing things it has never done before.

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As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and oil markets start gyrating in response, there's a lot of bad information out there about the state of the oil market.

That's not a good formula in an industry where fuel prices are a major cost for transportation costs. Host John Kingston clears up some of the so-called "facts" this week on Drilling Deep.

Also on the podcast, Transfix and The Trucking Fitness Company are teaming up to get a fitness program into the hands of drivers. Representatives from the two companies join the podcast to talk about their plans.

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Michael Lemecs is a former truck driver and is now an assistant professor at the University of Houston-Downtown. He's spent a good part of his career studying drivers from the perspective of the forces that shape their careers and their perspective on the world.

Given that, host John Kingston wanted to sit down with him and get his views on what happened with the Canadian truck blockade of several crossings with the U.S. as well as downtown Ottawa, and with the forces that led drivers in a country known for being "nice" to take such extreme action.  

Also on the podcast, the demand numbers that are helping to drive oil prices higher. 

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Amit Mehrotra, head of the transportation research team at Deutsche Bank, joins host John Kingston to review the numbers that poured out of public companies in the recent round of earnings reports for the fourth quarter of 2021.

Also on podcast: Kingston talks about the troubling drop in global refinery throughput last year. Those refineries are needed to make diesel. Why didn't they turn out more?

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WorkHound is a company designed to bring in feedback from drivers using nothing more than a text message, and it brings in more than 60,000 comments per year. Not all of them are complaining; there was a lot of praise last year too.WorkHound CEO and founder Max Farrell joins host John Kingston to discuss what he heard in 2021 and why the feedback points to the utter importance of training as leading to a much happier workforce.Also on the podcast, Kingston talks about the red hot diesel market and how the outright prices aren't revealing just how hot that market is.

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Making the final mile more efficient is a challenge with hundreds of moving parts. It is particularly challenging in an urban setting with clogged streets and limited parking.

Host John Kingston caught up with Penn State's Andisheh Ranjbari after hearing her presentation at the urban freight session at the Transportation Research Board's annual meeting in Washington earlier this month. She was recently on a team that dealt with a uniquely last-mile type issue: should a multi-unit dwelling use a locker system as a place to take in packages? It's a quirky question but one that has significant impact on fuel consumption and driver time on the road.

Also on the podcast, Kingston talks about a recent report that says renewable diesel might not be the bonanza that some forecasts say it is going to be.

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In an interview done from the Transportation Research Board annual meeting, Barb Rhode of the Mileage Based Users Fee Alliance talks about continuing progress in the drive to replace gasoline taxes with mileage fees. She joins podcast host John Kingston following a presentation she made at the conference to bring us up to date on where that push stands.

Also on the podcast, Kingston talks about the renewed surge in natural gas prices and how that can impact the price of diesel.

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Driver recruitement and retention were a big issue in 2021. It is likely to be no different in 2022.

Dan Johnston, co-founder and CEO of WorkStep, joins host John Kingston on the Drilling Deep podcast to discuss his company's software-based approach to recruitment and retention. He has pretty blunt words for the efforts that have gone on otherwise in that field; his argument is that they all pretty much failed in 2021.

Also on the podcast, Kingston talks about how the current price increase is in defiance of what all the supply/demand models said should occur at the start of 2022. Even if there's an imbalance, the market isn't accepting it.

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