Webinar Replay #78: Navigating Holiday Roads and Mental Loads

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Steve Kessler: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the INFINITI Fast Forward Webinar Series. We’re very glad to have you join us this morning.

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Steve Kessler: My name’s Steve Kessler, and I’ll be the host for the program today.

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Steve Kessler: I don’t know if you all are like me, but I can hardly believe that Christmas Eve, I believe, is one week from today. So, we are approaching Christmas Day very rapidly, and I think our topic for today is very timely. We’re going to talk about navigating holiday roads and mental loads.

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Steve Kessler: and I think it’s a perfect topic, because this time of the year can be very anxiety producing and give us some

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Steve Kessler: feelings that are a little bit tough to deal with from time to time. So, we’re very excited to have Horatio join us on this program this morning quickly. A couple of housekeeping items, those of you that have logged in are muted so we can’t hear you. But if you need to communicate with us or ask a question, feel free to type it in the chat box there. There’s even a Q&A box. And you can put your question in there.

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Steve Kessler: As a matter of fact, as I get ready to introduce the rest of our guests, why don’t you just jump in the chat. Let us know who you are, who you’re with and where you’re from. So, we kind of have an idea who’s out there.

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Steve Kessler: and while y’all are doing that. Let me introduce my co-host, Mark Rhea. Most of you

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Steve Kessler: are familiar with Mark. He’s been part of our webinars for quite a long period of time. Mark’s a veteran trucking executive for what? 34, 35 years now he’s a certified director of safety and involved in a lot of safety advisory boards and councils around the country.

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Steve Kessler: but most importantly, I want everybody to welcome Horatio Neely. He’s our guest today. Horatio is the vice president and co-owner of Neely counseling, but, more importantly, heads up Neely employee assistance program.

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Steve Kessler: You see a little logo there. So, a very experienced person is a good friend of ours. He’s a content producer for us, has a lot of experience in this field, and is very familiar with transportation and trucking.

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Steve Kessler: So, without any further delay, I’m going to introduce you all to Horatio Neely. Horatio, you want to take it away.

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Horatio Neely: Alright. Well, thank you. Thank you, Steve, and thanks for having me today. Good to see you, mark. So, they were. Going to talk about really navigating the roads during the holidays, and then understanding the impact mentally that your drivers or your admin team admin team may have during the holiday season

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Horatio Neely: before I get started. In the chat. I want to get some feedback. Where are you located? I know. Steve. Put our request for your name but want to get a good feel where you are located. I’m here. Currently I’m in Houston, Texas. I got out this morning for a 5 k. Run, and it was hot and humid, so

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Horatio Neely: didn’t have any bad weather. But I think last week the cold front pushed down, and it was below 30 in Texas, right? So, there’s a lot to do when you talk about moving through navigating the holiday season as well.

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Steve Kessler: Yeah, I’m seeing Chicago, and here’s Texarkana Fort Recovery, Ohio. We went to Charlotte, North Carolina, Toronto, Ontario, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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Horatio Neely: Nova Scotia.

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Steve Kessler: Yeah, we’ve got them from all over. So, there’s Atlanta, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis. So, we got folks from all over the Us. Here that have joined us.

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Horatio Neely: Okay, I’m loving it stocked in territory. So especially if you’re in anywhere close to Canada in that Midwest northern part northeast this time of year the weather can be very tough. So, when you talk about getting out and working with drivers, it’s a different animal as well.

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Horatio Neely: So today. What we’re going to do, we’re going to look at really making a connection between the holiday travel season and stress. Part of what happens is that what we don’t look at is the level of anxiety that goes up when we talk about managing those time constraints and unexpected delays, especially this time of the year. I’m working with a company now. So as a consultant. And there, this this week, we’re looking at

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Horatio Neely: what areas are open. So, when we’re making deliveries. Can they get into a location? Because from a driver’s perspective, they take this hot load that they’re, you know, this urgent to get to the site.

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Horatio Neely: and they’re not taking delivery. So, they got to go back to the location, or there’s some delays so managing those time constraints, those unexpected delays drives a lot of anxiety for a driver group. When we talk about the feeling of being lonely and some of the unmet expectations you may have someone this time of year going through a divorce or going through a separation, or they just had a big breakup.

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Horatio Neely: That’s what we get into that depression piece. So that’s where that that stress comes when you talk about the mental focus from that perspective, working with anxiety, dealing with anxiety and depression. Those are some variables that can drive both talked about really the weather. But when we talk about traffic, if you’re in a major metro area, especially when you talk about? Said Top. 20

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Horatio Neely: someone said, Atlanta, Texas. We have, you know, 4 Austin Dallas, San Antonio Houston.

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Horatio Neely: You know those routes during the holidays. They are atrocious. It’s hard to navigate. I. 10 and 45 throughout the holidays, because you have so many people on the roads. But if you’re in a local community. Schools are out. You love moving around because you don’t have to deal with the bus stops and the bus stops, and the kids and the teachers on the road. So sometimes traffic and congestion can lead to a lot of additional stress.

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Horatio Neely: The weather, no doubt, though, when you talk about snow and rain, and some of the certain changes in the weather patterns that can be very impactful, because a lot of drivers do not like to get out in the snow in the snow, especially if you’re a driver accustomed to navigating through the southern part of Texas. You know, when you talk about snow and putting on snow cleats.

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Horatio Neely: And thank you.

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Horatio Neely: Things of that. Nature

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Horatio Neely: trips and falls of getting into the truck. It’s kind of difficult in the snow, because you’re not used to it. If you’re in Wisconsin of your Nova Scotia, you up in that area in Canada, you’re accustomed to it. So, you put snow chains and things of that nature, and how you navigate, and the snow is. It just comes second nature

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Horatio Neely: when we talk about the schedules. Just you know the tight schedules like I talked about earlier. That level of stress leads to high levels of cortisol. And when we talk about short term impact of cortisol levels. There’s a couple of things to keep in mind. So, we’re looking at an increase in blood pressure and heart rate. That happens because they may have a panic attack.

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Horatio Neely: We’ll talk about blood sugar, imbalance when you talk about some of your drivers who may be diabetic

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Horatio Neely: when we look at suppressing your immune system, they may be more susceptible to colds and things of that nature, and I think most of all is high levels of cortisol. Disrupt your sleeping patterns. So, there’s a point to where, from a driver perspective, you’re not getting a full 6 to 8 h of rest because

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Horatio Neely: you’re stressed out. So, your sleeping pattern you may be accustomed to going down at 10 o’clock. Now you’re staying up until midnight. So.

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Horatio Neely: taking all these things in consideration, I think, during the holidays it hits a little harder because managing relationships, managing those expectations during that period is tough.

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Horatio Neely: I know firsthand I had a driver who

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Horatio Neely: who then get vacation time in on time.

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Horatio Neely: He was single father. He was trying to get his kid, but it says he didn’t have vacation time he had to work, and eventually I worked it out to where he got 2 days instead of a full week. But those 3 days that he was away from his kid the most stressful period, because he hadn’t had his kid for like 2 months. But you know, when you talk about being a father and being out on the road that level of stress, trying to meet those commitments, trying to be

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Horatio Neely: be present for your family members. It can be additional. It can be tough.

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Horatio Neely: So, understanding the connection, the mind body impact and how stress can impact you on the road. So, there’s a couple of things.

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Horatio Neely: I’ve been around this business for a while, and I can tell when a driver is stressed out.

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Horatio Neely: one is the physical component when I see them more lethargic, not upbeat.

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Horatio Neely: Always headed to get

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Horatio Neely: aspirin or something of that nature. Coming into the dispatch office. Very erratic. Normally they’re upbeat. They’re good, happy go, lucky!

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Horatio Neely: But now you know, they give you 2 words, and they’re out the door

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Horatio Neely: so, doing. Check in with your drivers. Kind of looking at. Hey? What exactly, is driving some of the abnormal behavior that you’re not accustomed to seeing

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Horatio Neely: the emotional piece.

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Horatio Neely: it, you know it’s if you’re on this call, and you’re a safety director of your supervisor. You’ve probably experienced having drivers break down and in tears or emotionally, be it be at a point to where either they came out of bad relationship, or the holidays may trigger that they they’ve lost a significant other. They lost a parent or relative during holidays. So that can be impactful.

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Horatio Neely: And I think most of the cognitive piece lack of focus

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Horatio Neely: where they’re not. They’re not concentrating.

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Horatio Neely: I was in the Catholic business, and we would have drivers

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Horatio Neely: have a low bar pop up and hit them in the face where they’re loading because they’re not focusing on where they’re loading the cars and tying the car down on the truck right?

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Horatio Neely: in the transportation industry. You must have a high level of focus. I think this is probably one of the one of the industries that we’re in to where if someone’s showing up and they’re not focused, and they’re not ready for the game that day. I say, hey, once you take a PTO, or just take a day off because you don’t want today to be the day that you have a major incident, because you’re not engaged in what you’re supposed to do.

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Steve Kessler: These could be serious safety issues here with, you know, cognitive type issues.

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Steve Kessler: concentration, and such could create a very unsafe circumstance for a driver.

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Horatio Neely: And not only for driver, of course, is for the roadway and for their other their coworkers. So, from a safety perspective. You want to be engaged and understand what type of resources you can provide for your drivers, especially during the holiday period, as well.

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Steve Kessler: Interesting.

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Horatio Neely: So, wellness on the road, so we’ll give you some tips as far as, and this is nothing new, but I think more so, especially during the holiday season.

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Horatio Neely: Planning ahead, already mapping out the route.

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Horatio Neely: already accounting for contacting that location, especially if it’s a new location. Hey? Are you open to take? Deliveries are identifying. If there’s any construction, there’s different apps. Now, the way you can identify

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Horatio Neely: construction and things out there. Of course, with your

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Horatio Neely: with your iPhone not familiar with the android platform, but iPhone. When you put in a route it’ll tell you, Red, and you can see, you know, it’s intriguing. You can see the traffic pattern. So, plan. So, you can set some realistic goals if you’re going to make it that day. If you’re going to make it the next day, because the more you plan, I’ll say often people don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan. So

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Horatio Neely: if you’re not a planner, especially in this business. You’re just at the mercy of whatever may happen to you, and because you’re not planning correctly, that contributes to your level of stress and high levels of anxiety as well.

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Horatio Neely: When we talk about self-care there was a study, and I can send it to you if you’re interested where they did a pilot on 16 different truck stops.

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Horatio Neely: and they had different stats. But one of the stats that jumped out at me was 50% of them lack fresh fruit and 37% lack fresh veggies.

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Horatio Neely: I think that’s positive. Because if you did that study, probably 2030 years ago, those numbers will probably be under 10%. Oh, yeah, 5, Mark, you’re laughing. Yeah, right? And so, when you talk about some of the truck stops out there like Pilots, The flying J’s, The TAs the Petros.

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Horatio Neely: They’ve made a lot of investments in health and wellness. So, I think, no doubt some of those locations offer fresh fruit and veggies and other nutritional things that drivers can have.

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Horatio Neely: because in our industry it goes without saying a lot of our drivers, because it’s a sedentary environment. There’s a lot of obesity. And so, obesity leads to high blood pressure drivers being diabetic.

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Horatio Neely: getting a Med. Card. I think the shortest they will have will be one month. I know they do them for one year. They don’t give them the longest period, but being able to get your Med. Card renewed because of your blood pressure and not managing your meds correctly.

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Horatio Neely: And of course. One of the things you want to have been an emergency toolkit. So having contact numbers, having

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Horatio Neely: everything accessible

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Horatio Neely: in your in your rig, everything is accessible at the office for drivers to when I worked at a remote location outside of Memphis, we had to make sure that we had the portable chargers for to charge batteries, and you know they got all these different portable features that are battery operated that drivers can either have in their truck, or you can have an office that’s accessible to them.

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Horatio Neely: And then also access to different types of

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Horatio Neely: apps. When we talk about like the calm app meditation apps it. It helps as well, one of the key things that I do now sleep with. Then I use an app to sleep because I sleep with wave sounds. And so, a lot of people.

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Horatio Neely: you know you instead, evolution that you realize, hey, what works for you, what helps you get to a calm space. We’ll talk more about that as well.

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Horatio Neely: So, managing your anxiety, there’s a couple of things and we do a lot of different things in our office, in our practice, Neely Counseling Center.

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Horatio Neely: where we have therapists, and we have clients and customers that come in. We teach things like box breathing. You know, 4, 5, 7. We have different type of breathing techniques so they can. They can come back. We’ll talk about grounding level. Later, there’s a different type of mindfulness.

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Horatio Neely: techniques. They can practice doing delays. So, they can. They can get into space when they feel like, okay, I had dispatch call this office.

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Horatio Neely: I reached out to someone to see if they were taking this delivery. I get here

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Horatio Neely: and the door is closed and no one’s available, so

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Horatio Neely: you may have a driver who is always they call him the hothead right? He’s known for speaking his mind. He’s known for going off on people.

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Horatio Neely: But you know, over a period. And you’ve seen that market that doesn’t work, you know, especially today. Right? So how are you? How do you give that driver some tools to relax and calm down? So, when you get hit with a delay.

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Horatio Neely: go back out to the truck practice, a breathing technique.

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Horatio Neely: Get grounded. We’ll talk more about grounding later, but

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Horatio Neely: put yourself into a different space so you can stay calm and carry on. I think most of all visualizing.

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Horatio Neely: We do a sports clinic with young athletes, and we talk about visualization.

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Horatio Neely: and I play basketball and football as well.

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Horatio Neely: being able to see the ball going in, being able to see yourself on the road, making a safe, safe delivery, being able to see yourself smiling and shaking a hand of someone that’s happy to get that that holiday load because they’ve been waiting on it all week.

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Horatio Neely: Picturing yourself in a safe space.

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Horatio Neely: having that vision helps tremendously, and it helps you control your thoughts.

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Horatio Neely: A lot of drivers.

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Horatio Neely: And I think the environment is changing, because.

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Horatio Neely: as you look at the average age of drivers now, I think I got to go back. Maybe Mark or Steve. You have some of this data, but I think the average trucker out there now is about between 48 and 55 in that in that group.

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Horatio Neely: and that’s mostly you. That’s your late sixties and your seventies babies. So, a little bit more open to some of the

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Horatio Neely: the psychology, and open to counseling, open to health and wellness. So, I think teaching drivers how to mentally go to a different space so they can calm down. That’s 1 of the biggest benefits, especially if you have a training organization that can help reinforce that as well.

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Horatio Neely: So, depression. This is unfortunate. This is one of those times of the year where sometimes people think holiday music is the best.

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Horatio Neely: but you, unfortunately, some people cannot stand Christmas music. Whether it reminds them of a relationship reminds them of a loved one.

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Horatio Neely: So, this is where we talk about just really staying grounded during the holidays. There’s a couple of things that can help you get there, one is

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Horatio Neely: stay connected.

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Horatio Neely: Share your travel itinerary with your loved ones, especially if you got your kids. I think this week.

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Horatio Neely: This is the last week for kids to be out of school. So next week, if you have drivers out there on the road, they can share an app with them with their kids, so the Kid can see where Dad is going. There at home they can stay engaged.

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Horatio Neely: I wouldn’t recommend them calling them all the way on the road, but at least they can follow them via an app so they can stay connected, especially if they’re feeling like they should be home during the holidays while the kids are out, but they can’t get off because they got to keep the lights on right

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Horatio Neely: and then scheduling those moments of joy, especially on those small trips. You know, just being in a position where you’re creating memories with yourself, with your loved ones, or with someone that’s in your family.

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Horatio Neely: And then I think most of all for a lot of people you’d be surprised from a driver perspective, even admin.

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Horatio Neely: Stay away from the apps, especially when you’re comparing your life or your lifestyle to someone that you’re

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Horatio Neely: following on a social media or someone that you know on social media. I tease often that my main social media apps are really LinkedIn and

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Horatio Neely: X.

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Horatio Neely: I did. I do have Ig, but I’ll be honest. I don’t want to see

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Horatio Neely: ex or see someone that I don’t like living their best life. I don’t know. Sometimes I feel some way right like.

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Horatio Neely: you see, this person, you know, they’re not living right? But they’re giving this image. So now you’re caught up in this image. I think a lot of times the Facebook and the Instagrams they create this facade that people buy into.

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Horatio Neely: And because you may have, someone has low emotional intelligence of low, cognitive functioning where they’ve really taken this to heart, and it generates this level of depression. And you may see this person, hey, what’s wrong with you, and

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Horatio Neely: they may just have seen a clip about someone they care about, seen a clip about an ex.

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Horatio Neely: And all this comes from social media. I think one of the biggest ones is tick tock I think there’s a

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Horatio Neely: there’s going to be a ban on TikTok coming up in in January. That’s going to be interesting if that’s going to take place.

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Horatio Neely: But I think more and more you’d be surprised. Outside of our youth, our driver groups.

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Horatio Neely: a lot of people are addicted to social media, and it drives their emotion. It drives how they feel and how they engage with people because of them going on to a social media platform.

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Horatio Neely: Steve, you were about to say something.

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Steve Kessler: No, I was about to. Yeah. Social media. Would it be a benefit if the companies that are on this social media put positive messages out if they’re going to be on the social media, anyway. Maybe they get a little bit more positive stuff that they can look at. I don’t know if that made sense or not, but if they’re going to use social media, the company should prop them up a little bit with whatever they put out there.

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Horatio Neely: I love it. So, it’s 2 different animals in one of my previous companies that I worked with. They have a social media Facebook account

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Horatio Neely: and drivers love following the Facebook account. They would post pictures, you know. They may have a contest step contest at work. They had a Potluck, who had the best potluck who had the best dish.

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Horatio Neely: And then suddenly, someone got fired or someone left the company.

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Horatio Neely: So now that social media platform turned into this this area so it can go both ways. One thing that I’ve seen very successful. I work with a company that develops an app to where everyone within the company. The app shared information about everything happening in the company, and they can lock the app down to where you could put comments, but you couldn’t go out of control, get out of control.

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Horatio Neely: But I love that, thought I. I think more and more companies, more and more companies need to look at creating in-house apps to where people can control the narrative and control the message, especially during the holiday season for their driver and the employees to engage.

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Steve Kessler: Good.

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Horatio Neely: Oh, you know, when we talk about weather conditions, especially, for

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Horatio Neely: you know I had people mentioning there in the Midwest. We had some people in Canada. You know this second nature, because the terrain is completely different. But as we move into the winter months as we get into January. There’s a couple of things. One

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Horatio Neely: make sure that you’re checking the weather. There’s nothing worse than that that drives stress and anxiety is being out, and suddenly you get hit into a storm that you’re not prepared for, or you got a load that you’re working with, and it’s open, and you don’t have it strapped down right. You want to make sure you check the weather reports before you head out.

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Horatio Neely: Of course you want to make sure you’re practicing good following distances. I’m sure that you have some modules and you’re training if they want to know about that as well. But you’d be surprised how sometimes, especially in these metro areas, that

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Horatio Neely: even when I’m driving, I’m seeing truckers not providing good following distance if you had a 4-Wheeler that’s trying to cut over and get in front of you can see that being erratic. Go ahead and pull back. Give them the space. Let them get in there so they can keep going. More than likely, if you’re in Dallas or Houston

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Horatio Neely: probably within the next mile or 2, you’ll see that exact. Same. 4 mil. 4-Wheeler sitting right there in front of you. They’re not going to go far. It’s a race to go nowhere.

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Horatio Neely: Yeah, yeah.

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Horatio Neely: Yeah. And then, of course, keep emergency. Kit, get a nice emergency kit with you. Whether be a flashlight, 1st aid blankets, anything that you know this is central that you need when you’re out on the road.

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Horatio Neely: So how do you balance these schedules and priorities? So, one of the key things is, there’s no perfect holiday.

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Horatio Neely: Every holiday is different.

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Horatio Neely: I will tell you that more and more now, especially with the iPhone and the

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Horatio Neely: the android phone phones. You’re in a position where you can make memories. If you’re like me. Often, I get a memory that pops up, and my latest memory was my kids 2023 memory. I don’t know how it suggests these memories on iPhone, but it makes memories right? And but what do you realize over a period. That, hey? Doing that memory. That was something that someone was upset.

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Horatio Neely: But you got through it. So, there’s no perfect holiday. So, embrace flexibility and expect minor delays, expect something not to go right throughout the process.

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Horatio Neely: and then, you know, be realistic, set realistic expectations with your family and your coworkers, especially if you’re if you’re out there.

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Horatio Neely: Working during the holidays. Did I ask this question in chat in the chat? Let me know. Are you going to run trucks

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Horatio Neely: on Christmas Eve and Christmas or New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day? Let me know in the chat. Are you running trucks during the holidays.

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Horatio Neely: How many of you guys are running trucks during the holidays?

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Horatio Neely: Mark in in your previous life? Did you guys run a lot during the holidays? Okay.

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Mark Rhea: Yes, we did. Yes, so

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Mark Rhea: you know, the other thing that that I’d just like to comment on is all these things are certainly relevant to our commercial professional truck drivers.

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Mark Rhea: But the people we’re sharing the road with. I think the distractions, the impairment, the

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Mark Rhea: for everybody else on the road needs to be something taken into consideration.

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Horatio Neely: Yeah, big time.

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Horatio Neely: yeah. So, I got that. Yeah, shut down New Year. So, you have a limited window currently, don’t think you’re running. Yeah.

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Horatio Neely: yeah. So, it varies. But when you’re out there running during the holidays, it’s a different animal, especially when you talk about the stress that people are dealing with. Because a lot of time drivers sometimes they don’t. Wanna, they don’t want to be out there. And then I had a thought this morning. I had a driver who

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Horatio Neely: who wanted some vacation time, but he was at the house, and he realized

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Horatio Neely: that he needed a break away from the family he’d been there for like 3 or 4 days. So, he called the dispatch office. Hey, do you guys have any work? Can I come in and get a load. He was willing to just come in and work for the day, so he could get away from the family for a little while right.

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Mark Rhea: Yep. Yep.

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Horatio Neely: So, it varies, but I think set it realistic expectations. And then I think most of all prioritizing your reps. So, you don’t over commit

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Horatio Neely: a lot of times during the holidays we get into this mode of

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Horatio Neely: getting out to, hey? I got to go shopping today, hey? I got to get the lights up. There are so many different things to do that you have during the holidays, hey? We need to make a trip and go see this person.

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Horatio Neely: So, you go to over committing. And then at that point

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Horatio Neely: you don’t get your rest. So, you’ve been running, running, and this period when you should be able to just shut down and get refreshed.

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Horatio Neely: You’re still on the rope.

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Horatio Neely: so, make sure you’re taking time to relax. So, you’re not on the rope as you as you get through get through the holidays.

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Horatio Neely: So, let me give you some tools. We talked about a couple, but one. There’s a common app that you can. You can engage in it as well.

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Horatio Neely: There’s was. There’s a weather bug. There are different types of apps that that you can use for stress, free travel.

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Horatio Neely: And I think the app world. It goes on and on. But at the end of the day.

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Horatio Neely: There’s some free resources out there that you can. You can plug into

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Horatio Neely: we have a podcast we call it drop your Bs, drop your backstory. There are so many different podcasts out there that depend on what you’re into. If you’re into fishing, if you’re into traveling.

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Horatio Neely: if you’re into artifacts, I love, the podcast platform these days, because it’s a good escape.

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Horatio Neely: And I think often that’s what people are looking for. They’re looking for an escape for their current reality, their current stress

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Horatio Neely: what they’re currently dealing with.

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Horatio Neely: And then also, you know, there’s some different type of

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Horatio Neely: items, portable items you can take with you, whether it be Central or stress balls or neck pillows, you can have

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Horatio Neely: I used to have a driver who was into a lot. He had all the rocks and

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Horatio Neely: the beads in the in this, in this truck.

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Horatio Neely: and even in the car I keep some. I keep a neck pillow in my car as well. But there’s different portable items that you can use that can kind of help. Take your mind away that can

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Horatio Neely: help you. Take that energy that you’re feeling that that level of stress and anxiety to where you can just get back and reset and get grounded.

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Horatio Neely: And I think, lastly, part of what I want to do is there’s a couple of things. One is what we call bots breathing and I want to try to which I want to get want to kind of go through a box breathing exercise with you.

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Horatio Neely: So, box breathing is imagined that you’re building a box.

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Horatio Neely: so, I’ll talk you through it first, and then we’ll do the exercise.

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Horatio Neely: So, on one side of the box, when we inhale, that line is going to go up.

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Horatio Neely: And then when we got to hold it.

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Horatio Neely: And while we’re holding that line is going to go across when we excel

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Horatio Neely: that exhale that line is going to come down.

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Horatio Neely: And then when we pause, we’re going to build another line. So, we built a box by going through the process of inhaling.

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Horatio Neely: holding exhale, and then pause again.

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Horatio Neely: So just humor me. Let’s go ahead and do box breathing. Let’s go ahead and do it.

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Horatio Neely: All right. 3, 2, 1 inhale.

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Horatio Neely: Hold it

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Horatio Neely: exhale.

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Horatio Neely: Pause.

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Horatio Neely: Oh, you build a couple of boxes, I said. Do the box routine about 2 or 3 times. It just

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Horatio Neely: takes the air out of the balloon, just

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Horatio Neely: takes the heart out, lets you just relax and get back down to normal

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Horatio Neely: on the grounding exercise. There’s a 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 in grounding. So, part of the grounding is you look at 5 things. You can see

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Horatio Neely: 4 things. You can touch 3 things. You hear

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Horatio Neely: 2 things you can smell, and one thing you can taste

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Horatio Neely: so, for grounding, you can do it in your current office environment.

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Horatio Neely: You could do it at home.

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Horatio Neely: And part of what you want to do is be in a relaxed area where you’re either laying down or you’re sitting up in a chair, and you can just go to the exercise of looking around and finding 5 things

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Horatio Neely: that you can see identify with those 5 things, and then 4 things you can touch.

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Horatio Neely: Look at 4 things you can put your hands on.

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Horatio Neely: and then 3 things that you hear

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Horatio Neely: get yourself. Get your mind in a state of calmness to where you can hear everything around you.

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Horatio Neely: and then 2 things you can smell like taking in the environment.

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Horatio Neely: And then one thing you can taste. So that’s what we call a grounding exercise. Very powerful

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Horatio Neely: once again, free

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Horatio Neely: but just knowing that it exists and participating in that process helps you get to a grounding spot.

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Horatio Neely: And then one thing I love about the holidays is being grateful. People do it differently. My grandmother, God bless her soul! She was the queen of cards, so we would always walk down to the Walgreens or the Woolworth back in the day.

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Horatio Neely: and we would get these

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Horatio Neely: cards, is greeting cards, and I would help her fill out cards, and she would mail them out to everybody. All family members and friends.

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Horatio Neely: and then she would collect cards.

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Horatio Neely: And now, when I think about cards, it’s just a good way to express gratitude.

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Horatio Neely: Sometimes people think they need to put pictures in it. You don’t necessarily have to have the holiday pick with you in the family. Just open the card and say, wishing you a happy holiday.

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Horatio Neely: putting a note, hey, hope all is well with you and Joe and Bob.

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Horatio Neely: and seal it up, put a stamp on it and put it in the mail.

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Horatio Neely: you’d be amazed, I think. One the effort, because not everyone does email.

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Horatio Neely: And then 2 people love to get mail. Believe it or not. They love to check the mailbox, and well, I guess I got a piece of mail. So

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Horatio Neely: so, this shows your gratitude. You’d be amazing amazed at how people feel and take that into consideration how it makes you feel, too, when you give gratitude. We had a training on showing gratitude from a leadership perspective.

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Horatio Neely: And you never know how impactful it is when someone knows that you’re thankful for what you do for them, and that you, when you express it.

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Horatio Neely: you just feel different. Just feel like a different person, especially if you’re in a bad space.

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Horatio Neely: And I think that’s about it for me, short and sweet, about 40 min presentation. But

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Horatio Neely: I I think overall it’s this is a holiday season of joy and giving.

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Horatio Neely: And so, you don’t want stress and anxiety to creep in and take that joy.

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Horatio Neely: you know. Always equip yourself and know when you’re getting into that zone. So, you can do something different.

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Steve Kessler: This is great. Horatio. One thing I wanted to throw out, is that I know a client or 2 of ours has done in the past. Obviously

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Steve Kessler: with our platform you can upload custom, content and documents, and we’ve had trucking companies that around holiday time had collected drawings, Christmas cards, if you will from the children of the truck drivers.

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Steve Kessler: and they would share those with drivers, especially those that are, you know, long haul living in a sleeper, you know. Sometimes, if you have a way to communicate with the drivers, the best thing you might be able to do for that driver that day is put a smile on their face

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Steve Kessler: can be lonely out there. So, I thought that was a great idea, and I’m sure some of us

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Steve Kessler: other folks out there that are watching the webinar have done things like that, but I think it’s important for the trucking company to.

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Steve Kessler: you know. Reach out and wish me happy holidays. Thank you for what you do goes a long way to

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Steve Kessler: make drivers feel a little bit better about the circumstance they’re in and time of the year, and all that, so.

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Horatio Neely: And you know this is tourist for tots. You have

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Horatio Neely: different, you know, bike. We tried collecting bikes when your drivers brought in their bikes. And of course, people had to fix a couple of them up, but you know it’s the spirit of giving as well.

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Steve Kessler: Mark, do you have any comments? And then I’ve got one last thing here before we adjourn

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Steve Kessler: any comments.

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Mark Rhea: Yeah, just I. I think it’s a Co. It’s a fact that our roadways are more dangerous during the holidays. And we can get content delivered. That would at least let our commercial drivers

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Mark Rhea: have some awareness of those anxiety issues as the public.

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Mark Rhea: I always visualize you know, a pickup pulling a travel trailer, and they’re throwing empty beer cans out the window and swerving all over the place. That’s a reality of the things that happen over the holidays compounded by the changing of weather

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Mark Rhea: fog family issues. It’s just a dangerous place, so I would certainly encourage everyone to go.

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Mark Rhea: Do everything you can to make your drivers aware of the danger, additional dangers that they express. And I’m going to start practicing the box concept.

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Steve Kessler: Yeah, I, like.

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Horatio Neely: Yeah, yeah, you know, I kind of gave you abbreviated version. But you can YouTube, the box breathing. It’s very impactful.

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Horatio Neely: I. I’ve done it a couple of times, because, of course, when you’re engaging, it’s so easy to get so amped up about what you’re trying to deliver. What you’re trying to give people that you may

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Horatio Neely: come into a zone that you need to pull back. So, it helps you relax and get grounded so you can hit the reset button.

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Steve Kessler: Very good. Lastly, I popped up a poll on the screen of folks, if you’re a NATME member and you would like to get a certificate so you can get your recertification points from having attended the webinar. Just say yes. There on the poll.

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Steve Kessler: if you’re a current customer, if you want to get access to ratios driving well, driver course, which talks about anxiety and depression and stress management and personal development just reach out to your customer service. If you’re not one of our customers reach out anyway, and we’ll

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Steve Kessler: reach back to you and tell you how you can get access to that kind of information. And, one of the things that creates a lot of anxiety obviously, is the possibility of a driver being involved in an accident of some sort.

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Steve Kessler: And we have very recently introduced a whole series of

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Steve Kessler: premium video content about what to do at the scene of an accident. So, I think there are 25 videos, half for drivers, half for company personnel.

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Steve Kessler: And if you’d like to learn more about that content, because, you know, that is a very serious anxiety producer, if you’re in an even if it’s a minor thing. So, to make sure companies train their drivers and make sure they’re comfortable and know what to do when that happens, I think that can reduce the anxiety associated with that.

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Steve Kessler: So, having said that, I don’t see any other questions coming in, Horatio as always. Thank you, sir. This is always good information.

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Steve Kessler: and just remind everybody. If you’re still with us here, we’ll be sending out an email that’ll have a link. So, you can see a replay of this webinar that way. You can share it with some folks there that haven’t had a chance to join us today. So, with that being said, Horatio once again. Thank you, sir.

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Steve Kessler: Okay, Mark. Thank you.

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Steve Kessler: Your happy holidays to everyone that joined us. Thanks for joining and keep a lookout for an email for the next webinar from INFINITI Workforce. So, thank you all for coming, and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

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Steve Kessler: Take care, guys, thank you. Have a happy holiday.