When building the truck, I kept vendor info and truck specs to myself; making the case that since changes were being made through the build, it would be premature to release the not-yet-finalized information. At that time I took a lot of heat from people who said I should release information.
Now that I have taken the time and trouble to assemble and release detailed truck information in a format that is actually useful for anyone building a truck in any price range, I am taking heat for doing that.
Go figure!
Some day, if I find myself with too much time on my hands, I may go back through the forum and list every personal shortcoming I have been accused of having. Satan himself would not have a longer list. This time it is gloating. Not long ago it was low self esteem, a time before that it was incompetence. A time before that it was lying. Yet another time it was a too-large ego. Tomorrow it will be something else.
Kinder readers will note that such criticisms have NOTHING to do with the expediting business. They will also note that I have never once negatively criticized another forum member's honor, motives, personality, productivity, career approach, career results, or anything else in a way that would degrade the person.
To the very best of my ability, I have always tried to focus my comments not on the person but on the points the person is making.
Regarding DaveKC's point about telling what not to do, it is simple. Do not fall into the trap of trusting experienced drivers and vendors for no other reason than their experience alone. Drivers with experience may only have been doing it wrong for a long time. Vendors with experience and even with the very best intentions and reputations may get distracted or over-committed, with negative results to your project.
We had a failed project before the successful project that got us into our current truck. The lesson learned from the failed project is to be more hands-on with your project and to not trust vendors to be as careful and thorough as they say they will be.
Ronald Regan said, "Trust but verify." That may be wise in international diplomacy. In custom-truck building I'd say don't trust and always verify. The first time around, we trusted our vendors and paid a very high price for doing so.
While the vendors absolutely failed us at many levels in our first project, some of the blame falls on me. My part in the failure came from trying to minimize the time poured into the custom truck build and keep running instead. I incorrectly assumed that I could successfully delegate tasks and project responsibilities to a group of vendors and have them properly completed. That was a costly mistake.
For example, the trailer shop sales rep told us and all other vendors involved in the project that the reefer body would be ready to go by a certain date. Everyone organized their work around that date. Silly me and silly them, we all believed the man. When the date came, the man shocked all vendors at a meeting when he said the reefer body had not even been ordered yet. When pressed about why, he offered double talk and tried to weasel word his way out of it. The simple fact was that this vendor who was always eager to speak at length about his experience, forgot to order the reefer body.
Imagine the joy of the other vendors when they learned that and immediately calculated in their minds how much their carrying costs just went up.
Then when the vendor in question did order the reefer body and other vendors prevailed upon the manufacturer to rush the order through, the vendor in question ordered the wrong-size box. When it arrived, it was eleven inches too long to legally fit on the truck.
That happened after not one, not two, but three e-mails were exchanged between me and this vendor, with copies to the entire group, making it absolutely clear that the completed truck must not be over 40 feet long. Three times, in writing, the vendor in question assured us that the reefer body length he spec'ed would suffice. One of those times, he specifically acknowledged my concerns about the body length he spec'ed and my offer to accept a shorter reefer body in the interests of meeting our truck length goal.
He assured us again and again that the reefer body would be fine as spec'ed.
My mistake was to accept his assurances. His mistakes were numerous and later compounded as he tried to weasel-word his way out of the fix he put himself in with us and the vendor group.
I could write a book about such errors that rose multiple times in the first project and led to its failure. But the details really don't matter because the moral of the story is exactly the same in every case.
Take a hands-on, eyes-on approach to building your custom truck and NEVER trust the voice of experience. The fact that someone has been doing something for a long time does not mean they have been doing it well. And even if someone has been doing it well for a long time, he or she is still human and still subject to being distracted, preoccupied with other projects, and still capable of making mistakes.
Finally, let me correct misinformation that was widely circulated by certain people during our first truck build. It is not true that Diane and I spec'ed that first truck. We went to vendors, told them what we wanted in a truck and left it to them to work together and determine the specs.
That is just another way of saying what I said above. We made a mistake by delegating too much to vendors and not being more hands-on and eyes-on ourselves. The project did not fail because we provide bad specs. The project failed because our vendors failed us.
There you have it, DaveKC. Information on what not to do when building a custom truck.
To leave no doubt about it and to restate a point that DaveKC has made again and again and again........we, Phil and Diane Madsen, once set out to build a custom truck and the project failed.
Does that make us losers? Some love saying so in one form or another. All I know is we are not quitters. Immediately after it was clear that the first truck would be rejected, we started on the second one; learning from our mistakes and succeeding the second time around.
Jeff Jensen recently published a piece entitled, "The Next Truck I Buy Will Have..." See:
http://www.expeditersonline.com/artman/publish/truckbuying.html
It is very interesting reading what others had to say about what they would do different next time around. With 100,000 miles now on our truck I can say without hesitation that the next truck we build will be virtually identical to the truck we drive now. It rides like a dream, gets good fuel economy, all components (generator, roof unit, lift gate, reefer, etc) do the jobs they are designed to do. The floor plan is perfect for us.
While it is more expensive than most, this fully-equipped CR unit combined with our work ethic, business skills and lifestyle of choice is well within our means. At the rate we are going, the truck will be fully paid off before we replace its second set of steer tires.
to validate your station in life. There are a lot of people that would embrace, back and support you if you could find the definition of humility
