Good Morning, Kings and Queens.
I’d like to share two items with you from some friends of mine, one a former guest of Voice Of GO(r)D, another a fine writer and musician who once interviewed me for Overdrive Online.
First up, we have Mike Lombard of the Lombard Trucking Podcast, who has really been making inroads with various mainstream media, whom have picked up on the messaging from his TikTok channel, delivered via oral machine gun while Mike is training for marathons.
Here we have Mike speaking with News Nation, and delivering the truth about the driver shortage narrative using rhetoric that might be familiar to the readers of this Substack.
In case you missed it, you can hear Mike and I in discussion about trucking, health, family, heritage, and many other things on my podcast -
Meanwhile, my good buddy Long Haul Paul Marhoefer writing again for Overdrive Online, conducted an interview with former guest of Voice Of GO(r)D, Cornell Sociologist and author of ‘Data Driven’, Karen Levy.
Paul is a much better interviewer than I, and has been involved in trucking for as long as I have walked this Earth, and he really nails some points about Levy’s book. It’s a pleasure to listen to, possibly due to Karen and Paul both being natives of Indiana, and in possession of that MidWestern American niceness and ease of conversation.
The written portion is available at Overdrive here and you can listen to the Overdrive Radio podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, or watch here on YouTube -
Paul is also a fan of this show and Substack, and even quoted me in the Overdrive article.
”Trucker, writer and podcast purveyor Gord Magill has a phrase for the phenomenon behind those hectoring dispatchers. "The answer for these companies" seems always to simply 'tech harder.' They don't want to put the money into actually paying for training, or making the driver's life better. So they just treat him like a robot."
I think I used the phrase ‘tech harder’ in discussion with Karen on my own show, and it is also the title to a work in progress which will be published here soon; if anyone wants to steal the phrase, go right ahead - I’m happy to see my ideas, well, criticisms is maybe a better term, spread through the zeitgeist. Take no shit from these swine, be they human or digital.
While we are discussing Mr Marhoefer, we should end this little update on a lighter and more humorous note, so here is a single from his latest album, Legends of The Lost Highway, which you should go and order from his website, right now.
Keep smiling.