Hog Truck Driver Laid Off as Meatpacking Plant Loses 85% of Workers to COVID Outbreak

Vance Crowe [00:00:02] As the crow flies on the Vance Crow podcast. Chris Neiman, welcome to the podcast.

Chris Niemann [00:00:10] Thanks for having me back a second time.

Vance Crowe [00:00:13] Well, I mean, it was, I, I'm really impressed that you're here 'cause you just sent me a message, which was alarming and life altering, and I, and then I asked if you'd be willing to come on and talk about it, and you said yes. So we just jumped on. I I really know very little other than today you were told go park your truck.

Chris Niemann [00:00:32] Yeah. Well, you said if anything changes to let you know, and so this changed and this is about as much change as I can give you in one shot. So I let you know as soon as possible. And it definitely was, it was a shock. Like I, like I had mentioned to you off the camera, we had, we had kind of knew that a slowdown period was gonna come at some point, but to have, have everything kind of just canceled, stopped abruptly. Like this was really mind blowing. I took a load up to JBS in Worthington, Minnesota last night, and not a word was said about, you know, a shutdown, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:01:07] And so for people that don't know or aren't in farming, JBS is a meat processing facility. Chris picks up pigs all, all over. Where, where were you picking 'em up from?

Chris Niemann [00:01:18] The area that we haul out of is here at East Central Nebraska.

Vance Crowe [00:01:22] So East central Nebraska had a farm that people were producing all sorts of pigs, and this was the time when they fill it up in a tractor and then they send you up to go drop 'em off at a slaughterhouse. You were just up there last night,

Chris Niemann [00:01:35] Right? Yep. We haul, we haul about 175 to 185, head on a trailer load on a semi load of 280, 290 pound fats to go for slaughter. And it's kind of a, you know, for me it's enjoyable. I mean, we, nobody really likes hauling hogs. They're about, as about as big of a headache as you could possibly have. But I mean, we all love bacon, so you, you take the opportunity when you can get it to, to provide some more bacon for the rest of the country. And yeah, when we got there, there was a pretty decent lineup of trucks and everything. It was business as normal, I guess you could say. There was probably 15, 20 trucks there that I had to wait in line for to unload. And when I unloaded, you know, I joked around with all the guys at the unloading chutes and everything. You know, we've, we've all been taking our precautions at these, at these slaughter plants, you know, masks, further gloves, distancing, stuff like that we've all been doing. But nobody said a word about anything coming down for an actual, like stopping loads. The biggest concern they had was, we found out a few days ago that a rough number, of course, this is nothing statistical, but about 85% of the workforce up and walked out. They, they finally got tests to the clinic there in town and a bunch of tests came back positive and pretty much scared everybody else that was still healthy and feeling fine into not wanting to come back to work. And so about 85% of the workforce walked out. And then I haul in, well, what I hauled in last night was a Sunday night considered Monday morning delivery. Their first shift, their shift changes at one o'clock in the morning.

Chris Niemann [00:03:08] And so my delivery was at one o'clock in the morning and there's probably about a dozen cars in the parking lot. And that's, I kind of knew something was up there, you know, that usually the parking lot's packed and us trucks gotta take our turns, you know, getting in and out of the plant. But there was nobody there. So,

Vance Crowe [00:03:23] Which, so for people that have never been to a meat processing plant, and, and I've never been to a pork one, but it is enormous. They are football fields huge filled with conveyor belts that are going every direction. People are in lab coats, hair nets, gloves, they are cutting things. Everything is sparkle, shine clean every single time they move a ship shipment through there. It's like cleaned, but it is filled with migrant workers and Oh,

Chris Niemann [00:03:54] Absolutely. And, and from every descent, you know, the, like, the end, the end that I'm on ain't quite as clean as that. We get the dirty end coming off the trucks. Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:04:03] Really? Okay. Yeah, that's

Chris Niemann [00:04:05] Fair. Fair enough. We, we got, we got the stinky end. We don't, we don't get the, the Clorox smelling end. I wish we did, but it just don't work that way. But, but yeah, I mean, still nonetheless shoots are, you know, washed down, hosed down, you know, multiple times throughout a shift, you know, to, to minimize. I mean everything, you know, both the animal, the food and humans. And so when you look at, at a, a processing plant, you, it's almost, you know, to the point of a hospital, you know, you just wouldn't think nothing of it. But yeah, both, both migrant non-grant workers combined, you know, fill this entire place and, and it is, it's huge. They take in, what was it, it was 26,000 head a day, five days a week and slaughter 21,000 head a day, seven days a week.

Vance Crowe [00:04:49] Oh my

Chris Niemann [00:04:50] God. And to have that come to a stop, you know, that's, you know, like I said, we're hauling 175 to 180 head on a truckload. Some guys can fit 200. So just, you know, let's just call it 200, but 26,000 per day, you know, and if, and if we just go off of like quarantine numbers, you know, two weeks, that's, that's 10 load days at 26,000 ahead, that's not getting brought in because they're not allowing it. And then on the likewise, 21,000 ahead, getting slaughtered, that's, you know, seven days a week on 14 days, that's a, that's a lot of bacon that's not gonna make it. So the, the

Vance Crowe [00:05:29] Repercussion that goes, do you have any indication right now as to when that comes back on? Did they say go home for the afternoon or did they say go home for the week? What'd they say?

Chris Niemann [00:05:38] Well, the, the guy that I pull for, he lets me leave my truck at his shop. Great shop, great guy to work for, couldn't be any happier where I'm at. He told me I could go ahead and take the truck home. So to me that was kind of a indication of this ain't gonna be back tomorrow. This ain't gonna be back by the end of the week. This is, this is gonna be, at least the way we're looking at it is because of the whole quarantine for 14 days thing, we're assuming that the workforce is gonna stay away for at least 14 days. And from there, even after that, it's still iffy. You know, it's obvious, we've all seen it. Nobody stays home during their 14 days. You know, nobody, nobody locks themself in their bedroom. So, you know, if, if a few more people have it after those 14 days, they still test positive. We're, we're worried that the workforce is still gonna be too nervous to come back, you know, to open up the plant again.

Vance Crowe [00:06:30] So what is going on in the world of trucking right now is if, because hogs shut down, is there demand for you to be able to go out and truck for somebody else? Or does it not work that way?

Chris Niemann [00:06:41] Well, there is, I don't wanna say there's not, because then I, I would definitely make myself and the trucking community to look pretty awful if I said that. There's not given my situation though. There's not, with with working on the farm with my dad, this, this, you know, this time of year it was, it was gonna work out really good with being able to haul at night and then still be able to do farm work during the day. And so I, I can't say that there isn't work out there for other drivers, but at the same time, you know, a lot of these guys, when this is what you've done for the last how many years, you know, livestock, beef plants are slowing down dramatically because same, same thing. You know, the workforce is not coming in. And so, you know, both beef and pork, poultry, I've heard numerous loads going for kill loads instead of going for actual slaughter, you know, food, food use, you know. And so it's, it's not just us, you know, it's not just the me and the three guys that I run with. You know, there's, there's, there's another really large family owned pig farm, pillen pill and family farms. I can't tell you how many trucks they have. It's incredible how many trucks they have. And they haul to the same plants we haul to, and that's gonna be shut, you know, stopped too.

Vance Crowe [00:07:56] So what is gonna happen do you think with the pigs that are, that, you know, they were supposed to be picked up tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day. If those farmers are raising pigs right now and they don't have anybody that's buying them, what happens to those pigs?

Chris Niemann [00:08:12] Well, that's the, that's kind of the scary and kind of almost hurtful part more than anything right there. The, the, the cattle market is in the same boat as well, you know, cattle are still getting fat. They still need to be slaughtered, you know, and so right now, from the couple of guys that I've talked to on the hog side of things, I can't really speak for cattle right now, but on the, on the pork side of things, a couple people that I have talked to right now is kind of the, the disgusting part of they're, they're gonna have to kill 'em. They're, they've got a little bit of leeway on the weight. The, the, the problem with the slaughterhouse is like the loads that I take, they need to be under 290 pounds. If they're over 290 pounds, the producer gets docked for it because the animal actually weighs too much for the conveyor system and the, and the hook system for slaughter. And so last night, my load that I hauled in was three tenths of a pound average over two 90. Well, when that happens, then the producer gets hammered really hard with a penalty. So it can't, it, it can be two 90, but it can't be two 90.1. Well, he was two 90.3. And so with the market price, the way it is so horrible, I mean, just disgustingly horrible right now, low to also get slapped with a penalty yet too, for being three tenths of a pound average over that, put that load dramatically in the red. And so you, you, you,

Vance Crowe [00:09:30] I mean, you're gonna a lot of chaos into this system right now. People, people wait and have their pigs get just a little bit heavier, then bang, they're getting hit, they're getting docked and now it's getting real bad. So,

Chris Niemann [00:09:41] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:09:41] The options are just like dumping milk. This is what it looks like when you have a lot of animal and it's the, it's the, you've gotta, it's gonna be put it out gonna be,

Chris Niemann [00:09:48] It's gonna be, it's gonna be barrel burial yards in the middle of fields with, you know, big holes dug by excavators and, you know, load the pigs onto, onto a truck and back 'em up to a chute at the edge of a hole and run 'em down into a hole and, and kill 'em. I mean, that's, that's all you can do. You know? And,

Vance Crowe [00:10:07] And once you've done that, those people aren't coming back. It's not like they're gonna hold a few back to be able to start up in a couple of weeks. I mean, this is may maybe they try, hopefully they try as best they can, but once you start trying to make those choices about bringing up an animal and you say, we're not gonna do it, then you can't just concentrate back from that. That's

Chris Niemann [00:10:29] Right. And that's, that's the other step too is, is the producer themselves with, you know, the, the small farmer when it comes to pork is, is diminishing as well, you know, just like dairies and, and beef cattle and everything as well. You know, it's all becoming bit larger and larger. And so the other step that these guys need to take is to try and figure out what to do with the next breed that's coming in. You know, there's, there's still baby pigs being born, and so that's gonna have to be a, a kind of a disgusting feature there too, of, of having to kill off piglets right off the mom because there's no barns to put'em in because there's no barns getting emptied because there's no slaughterhouses open. It's a huge snowball effect. That's it. It's sickening is what it is. I mean, that's, that's just, and IIII might be sounding like I'm coming more from the producer side when I'm not, you know, but nonetheless, I mean that's, that's what it comes down to. It's, it's a big snowball effect that's disgusting and sickening and, and it

Vance Crowe [00:11:22] Every down

Chris Niemann [00:11:23] To us. I mean, everybody tricks down to us.

Vance Crowe [00:11:24] You know, no one wants to raise a, a pig for, for raising up just to kill it and put it out in a field. I mean, that's, that is heartbreaking for anybody that knows that an ounce of resource and all of that caring and people that have worked hard their whole lives to care for a line of pigs and been supportive. Like it's, I mean, this is tragedy. Heartbreaking unfold. That's, yeah. And, and I think it's, it's, it's, it's a part of the pandemic that, that when we were talking one month ago, we would not have been able to say, Hey, by April 20th, 2020, this is what's gonna be happening. Right?

Chris Niemann [00:12:00] Absolutely. And that's, you know, and I, and I'm just speaking for the, you know, the, what do we got? We got five, five or six slaughterhouses that we haul to, you know, just from the barns that I haul for for this guy, you know, and that's, that's just those plants, you know, this isn't, you know, I'm not speaking for, you know, nationwide. This is just from what I, from what I know and from where we haul to that this is getting shut down. And it's not just our four trucks that are getting parked. You know, like I said, you know, pill's got, I don't know how many trucks Iowa Select has got numerous barns, numerous trucks, you know, I, I hate throwing names around, but I'm just picking names that maybe some people might be able to, you know, relate to by seeing these names going down the highway. But there's, there's so many trucks that are gonna be stopped because of this, that in return have a driver that need something to do now, you know? And like I said, a lot, you know, yeah, we can go haul something else, but a lot of these guys are company drivers, you know, that they, they don't own their own truck. They don't not, you know, when this comes to a stop, they don't have nothing else to do.

Vance Crowe [00:13:01] So how, and, and you've gotta switch over, you gotta get into a whole new system. I mean, like, these people have gotta find new places to go to work. I mean, and I'm sure moving from the livestock industry to go into Best Buy, you know, delivering for theirs, gotta be a pretty different, pretty different animal. Probably dealing with different people.

Chris Niemann [00:13:20] Well, different, different people. And like for myself as an owner operator, you know, you've got different insurance standards, you've got different time clock standards. You know, with me hauling hogs, you know, I was, I was ag exempt from logbook for, for the most part, I'm not saying I was a hundred percent, but for the most part, ag exempt from log books. Well, now if I'm gonna go run, let's say drive van hauling, you know, electronics, well now I gotta have a electronic logging device installed into my truck. Well, you know, that's, that's a, a purchase that needs to be made and, and just a whole new way of life really, you know.

Vance Crowe [00:13:50] So let's talk about it because I mean, I've been kind of thinking of you every couple days and, and smiling and laughing a little bit because at one point we had talked about, it's kind of the wild west out there. I mean, the police aren't looking to pull you over. So what are the interstates like on the parts where you don't have people running around as much?

Chris Niemann [00:14:09] Well, fortunately, I don't get to run the big road too much that way. I don't have to run the crap outta my truck that way. So I, I stick to the two lanes about as much as possible. But it's been fun. I, I can't even lie if, if, if all the quote unquote non-essentials would wanna stay home for the next 30 years, I would be thrilled I not having trouble crossing, what, what would normally be just beat your head against the steering wheel intersection. You pull up to a stop sign and it's a ghost town, you know, there's, there's tumbleweeds blown in front of you sooner than there's a car rolling in front of you. It's, it's been, it's been absolutely crazy. We, we've all joked around about how we're gonna get comfortable with this, this a little bit too much. And if life ever goes back to normal, I, I think we're gonna hate trucking a lot when these cars get back on the road of normal people. And, and the scary part is, is that there's so many people at home and so many people wanting to get out and do something right now, that when they're actually allowed to, everybody's gonna wanna do everything all at once. And so we're, we're more afraid of the kind of the catastrophe that it's gonna turn into. Nobody's gonna have patience. We're gonna get so relaxed in kind of running our own way that now all of a sudden you're gonna throw in, you know, millions of cars on the highway, again, with everybody on a, you know, let's

Vance Crowe [00:15:26] Hope, man,

Chris Niemann [00:15:27] A mission. Let's,

Vance Crowe [00:15:28] Let's hope.

Chris Niemann [00:15:28] No, absolutely. I mean, I, I hope we have this problem, but, you know, coming from a seat, five feet higher than a car, I'm enjoying this, this was, this was kind of nice, you know, I, i, I can't stop anywhere or enjoy anything along the way, but just, just cruising down the road. It's been kind of nice to set the cruise at 70 and just let it run rather than worrying about traffic and everything.

Vance Crowe [00:15:49] So what is your take on how serious the virus is? How worried you are about getting it? How serious are other people around you taking it?

Chris Niemann [00:16:00] You might lose listeners from this, or the comment section's gonna blow up. Hate in me, one or the other. I, I had this thought last time we had talked and I, I thought about mentioning it myself, and I figured I'd just let it go. But from where I'm at right now, I'm, I'm over the scared part anymore. It's, it's more frustrating, more, especially now after today, frankly, I'm pissed. Everybody was fine working at these plants for the last month when all this has been going on. And then now that the tests are finally available at this clinic, now all of a sudden everybody's scared and they walk outta their job. If you're sick, stay home. By all means, just like the flu, I mean, just like any cold at any given time during the year, if you're sick, stay home. That's common sense. You don't need to go to work. You don't need to be coughing on people. Stay home aside from that, let the rest of us fricking go back to work. 'cause this is, I I, I don't wanna say I know a lot of people, but I know a lot of people. I don't know a single person that has it. I, I personally know nobody. Now I'm not saying that that gives me any right to think that this is some, you know, brush off situation or anything. But given where we're at, the, the ruralness that we live in out here, the way of life that we live, this doesn't need to be the way that it is. The, the, the jobless people, the, the heartaches, the trouble, the, the snowball effect of all of this to me is, is way overblown. And you can blame it on whoever you want.

Chris Niemann [00:17:33] I, it doesn't really matter at this point. There's been so many lives affected by this small businesses affected by this dairies, farmers, producers, it don't matter, no matter where you look, there's been so many people affected by this, that this isn't gonna be something that, you know, even when they do release it, it and they say, Hey, go back to work that a couple weeks later things are gonna be back to more normal. This is, this is gonna take years and years to, to recover from this. And even at that point, will it ever, you know, crude oil traded at a negative number today for the first time in history. What, how do you come back from that? You know, what, what do you do instantly shoot back up to 50 bucks a barrel on crude oil? It just doesn't work that way. You know, it just, this is gonna be such a long, drawn out recovery mode. And what worries a lot of us, mostly us guys that are out on the road that I talk to the most, what's gonna happen next fall when flu season comes around is, is, is every flu season for the rest of our life gonna get treated like this where, you know, Jimmy Coughed and now we need to close down the country? Or is this never gonna happen again? Because we learned our lesson as to what kind of a, a reverb is gonna come from this. So, in my opinion, short and sweet, it's blown way out of proportion. Everybody needs to quit. And can we please just fricking go back to work? I mean, anything I'm begging at this point 'cause parking, that truck does not make money, and that truck payment still needs to be made. You know, I, we, we've got a little bit of a cushion. I've, I'm, I have worked my tail off for the last six months running like I've never run before and I, I've created a little bit of a cushion for me and my family, but you know, that cushion's gonna run out a lot quicker than it was created.

Chris Niemann [00:19:12] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:19:12] It's a cushion you worked for, right?

Chris Niemann [00:19:14] It's, yeah. Yeah. It, it's a cushion I created not for this. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:19:17] You

Chris Niemann [00:19:18] Know, it's a cushion I created to, to take my kids to Disney World. It's, it's a cushion I created to, to put a down payment on building a new house so that we can get out of our 130 year old farmhouse. It, it's a cushion that I created for a million other things besides to burn it up because a bunch of people got scared and didn't wanna go to work.

Vance Crowe [00:19:34] That's, is there, is there anything standing in your way now of pivoting and finding a way to, to, to, I, I don't know. Like, I, I think of this pork and I got two buddies up in northern Illinois and they, they've been running a feedlot and it is really, it, they're staring right down at commodity price or commodity prices for beef not good. Right? Right. And people not being able to run that. And so they pivoted and have now started selling beef. And I think that kind of supply chain stuff is gonna be so important because damnit, knowing a farmer or knowing how to get food from one place to another, that is now valuable in our country. It's valuable.

Chris Niemann [00:20:17] I, I agree. I think a lot of, a lot of people that, that understand the situation and what it takes to produce an animal for food. You know, that Walmart does not make pork, you know, Walmart does not make your steaks. People that understand where that comes from, I feel that they have already either reached out or they've got a plan in place to reach out, or they've already got an agreement with somebody that if this comes to where we're at in my situation, to contact them and they'll take, you know, two or or three pigs or they'll take a side of beef. But at the, the rate you're, you're not gonna get 26,000 hogs

Vance Crowe [00:20:55] No, no way taken

Chris Niemann [00:20:56] Care of. And that's one plant, you know, that every, every plant that we go to, that's, that's a rough number for all six plants, you know. So

Vance Crowe [00:21:05] How long do you think it is between, between when the plants shut down and people start feeling this in the grocery store?

Chris Niemann [00:21:16] I personally, I think it's already kind of, kind of mixed into the price already in anticipation for this. But aside from that, if this, I guess the bigger question, I think that comes before it is more of, are we gonna get workers back? 'cause right now, all these plants, you know, coolers are full. I mean, that's, that's what they do. They fill coolers daily, you know, but at this point, meat's going out, but it's not coming in. And so I think a lot of it's gonna depend on how fast the consumer consumes what they do have, and then the kind of trickle down from there as to how long it takes to get this from, from the, the packing plants to the store, and then how fast in return people buy it up, I think when word gets out about these plants getting closed down, and, and I, and I, I keep saying close down, but it's not really a close down. They're not closing their doors. And I, I, I guess I should make that very clear, they're not closing their doors, but the workforce is not there to slaughter the animals at the rate that they did before. And so in turn, they're gonna slaughter one truckload of cattle a day, not 26 or 21,000 head at one plant. But nonetheless, these coolers are gonna start running out. And then it's just a matter of do the coolers run out before workers come back? Or do workers come back before coolers run out? If workers come back before coolers run out, I don't think the store is gonna see the price jump, but if coolers run out and the workforce ain't coming back to work, your pork CHOP's gonna triple in price overnight.

Vance Crowe [00:22:45] This is the scariest thing that I think maybe anybody said so far with, with this whole coronavirus and it, and it really is, if the workers decide not to come back, it's you, the, the clock is now started between when Yes. When you'll start seeing that on the, in the grocery stores and Right. Nobody really knows what that is. Somebody knows what that is, but

Chris Niemann [00:23:08] It's not us.

Vance Crowe [00:23:08] It's not us, and it's not, and it's not forever.

Chris Niemann [00:23:11] Right. And, and, and the biggest thing I guess that I would wanna push for anybody that that's listening, watching, I am far from trying to create even more of a chaotic pandemic out of this, you know, by all means, I, I would love to tell you to run to your store right now and buy all the pork you possibly can, frankly, because I'd like to go back to work at some point. But at the same time, I I, I don't want to create chaos out of this. I just want everybody to understand and be educated so that they do understand what's going on at the store. So one day when you do do go, and you do see those pork chops are $37 for a package of two instead of 8 99, hopefully somebody somewhere listened to this or saw and understands, oh yeah, there was like eight packing plants in the Midwest that all closed practically the same day or diminished their numbers the same day. You know, and that's, that's where this, this shortage is coming from. We do not have a shortage of pork or beef or poultry or vegetables in this country at all. We have got such a surplus of it. It's ridiculous. It's the fact of getting it processed is where the, the funnel is coming from right now.

Vance Crowe [00:24:22] And people don't understand that because, you know, they, they don't really make the jump between where you get a pig or a cow and then to the store. Like there's some part, but they don't really think about it much. And I don't blame 'em, I didn't think about it either until I went and got involved in agriculture. And all of a sudden you're like, oh, I never really thought about the fact that, right? You have to kill this cow. You have to have its blood drain out. You gotta have all that go somewhere, right? You gotta cut 'em open. You gotta get rid of things that you don't want or need, right? You gotta use all the meat. It's, it's complicated.

Chris Niemann [00:24:55] It is. It really is. And

Vance Crowe [00:24:56] It's what keeps us safe and it's what makes it so we have such a bountiful system, but right now it goes, all of the production goes into these pipes, right? And if those pipes get stopped, then nothing gets, gets through it. Well, and

Chris Niemann [00:25:11] That's a couple other things that have kind of gone on around here as well. A lot of people have heard, you know, ethanol has almost come to cease production almost nationwide, just because of the price accrued, you know, it, it can't compete, it can't turn a dollar profit off of it either. And so that's a snowball effect there too. There's, there's synergy, there's gluten, there's DDG, there's wet slop feed, there's steep water. There's one more byproduct I'm missing right now, all of which get turned into feed for cattle and other animals. When you cut down your ethanol production, you cut down all of your byproducts as well. Well now that creates a catastrophe for feedlots, dairies, all of the such that have been feeding their animals all these byproducts, which once again, trucks move. And so trucks aren't moving any of this product anymore at the rate that they were before. And so there, there's more, you know, trucks getting parked because of that. Our, our local ethanol plant got, they're down to, I wanna say 6:00 AM to 2:00 PM and they stop loading at 2:00 PM for distiller's grains. The dairy, that family friend of mine, or family member of mine that hauls to, they've switched from hauling everything DDG to, they're trying to find other stuff to do. Now they're, they're trying to look for other byproducts for the, for their cows to be fed for the dairy. They, a lot of, a lot of dairies and a lot of feedlots are switching over to like soy meal. Well, you can about imagine, you know, you tell everybody that, you know, Walmart's closed, send them to Target.

Chris Niemann [00:26:43] Well, you can about imagine what the lines are like at Target. And so it's, it's exactly the same way with, with DDGs, everybody switching to soy meal. Well now let's all go to the soy plant. There's lines days long.

Vance Crowe [00:26:54] Yeah. And for people that don't know, you know, I've got a buddy Brian Moose up in South Dakota who feeds cattle, and he was talking about if the ethanol plants go down, I can still feed cows. Yeah. But now I've gotta change basically everything. Like everything, yes. It's, it's

Chris Niemann [00:27:10] Not

Vance Crowe [00:27:10] Just one little thing. Oh, I'm taking this part of it out. I have to change my setup. I have to change how I'm getting stuff arranged, how I'm getting stuff delivered. Right.

Chris Niemann [00:27:18] It's

Vance Crowe [00:27:19] Not an easy thing. And

Chris Niemann [00:27:20] So, right. And even,

Vance Crowe [00:27:21] Go ahead.

Chris Niemann [00:27:21] Even rations, you know, rations to go with it, you know, if, if if DDGs were taking, you know, five parts, DDG one part alfalfa, well the soy might take, you know, one part soy and five parts alfalfa. Well, now you gotta come up with five parts of alfalfa when, you know, for the last 10 years you've been feeding your cattle one part alfalfa, you've got the stockpile for one part, alfalfa. Now you gotta find five parts alfalfa to compensate for the loss

Vance Crowe [00:27:46] At the exact same time that everybody else is. And Right. The, and then at the end of the supply chain, they aren't taking the cattle that you're putting out. Right. So now you're looking at all these changes, an increase in the expenses to be able to get those cattle to be fat.

Chris Niemann [00:28:00] Absolutely.

Vance Crowe [00:28:00] Then, then you're, you're for no reason working on the margin. Yeah. Well,

Chris Niemann [00:28:04] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:28:04] So the question becomes like, will are the workers smart to get out or is it, is it gonna take a vaccine? Will people come back to work even when the va when, when the disease is possible there? Because now we're starting to see that even if you've been protected, even if you've been in a secure location now, you may start seeing this stuff impacting your life.

Chris Niemann [00:28:26] Right. You're gonna, you're gonna see the impact of it now. Like exactly like you said, whether you know, like myself, you know, nobody in my family has it. Nobody that I personally know, no other drivers have it, none of their family has it. Nobody at any of the, the, the packing facilities that I, you know, associate with every load, none of them have it. Nobody in their family has it. You know, like I said, I, I don't know anybody that has this.

Vance Crowe [00:28:50] Well, and now everybody that's listening to this, everybody that's listening to this has a friend that lost his job. Right? That right that, that got told to put it up. So, yep. It's, that's, and I've,

Chris Niemann [00:29:01] I've, I've got the, okay, I mean, I'll, I'll be, I'll be one of the first phone calls he makes to, to get me back up and going, you know, as soon as he gets the okay to start hauling loads, he's kind of, he's on the hope. Well, you gotta be on the hopeful side. If not, this is gonna become a serious mental issue for a lot of producers that's gonna turn, I don't wanna say it, but rather really mentally ugly, really fast. There's, there's a lot of money out there that, you know, banks still need to get paid. Employees that are still caring for these animals still need to get paid. You know, there's, there's mortgages that still need to get paid. And when banks come knocking, you know, with all due respect to the banks, they really don't care why you can't pay. Nonetheless, you still gotta pay, and this is gonna put a lot of producers in the pork and poultry and beef industry and even row crops here. If things keep going the way they're going, they're gonna put 'em all in the same boat as where the dairy farmers have been for the last five years as far as, you know, mental situation. And I, I think most of the country kind of knows what I'm getting at with that. You know, we don't hope for it for nobody. But nonetheless, you might wanna reach out and check on your neighbor once in a while because I, I, I, I hate saying it, but it's gonna get, it's gonna get a lot uglier yet before this gets any

Vance Crowe [00:30:09] Better. You know, when people, when people get knocked down, like when you, when you weren't expecting getting hit by something and then you do, and then you get hit a couple of times, your mind stops giving you the full access to like good ideas you had or things you could be excited about or Right.

Chris Niemann [00:30:25] Opportunities

Vance Crowe [00:30:26] That are right in front of you because you get so down that you absolutely forget there's good things out there. And so calling up your buddy and playing around with ideas about what are we gonna do to, to, to be the ones that make money here, to be the ones that solve a problem here. That to me is the, is the most heartwarming conversation I can have with anybody, you know?

Chris Niemann [00:30:46] Absolutely. And that's, you know, by all means, I, I'm no psychologist at all, but it doesn't take a lot to see what's going on in front of you. You know, you know, even if you're not involved in agriculture, just for five minutes a day, take a step out of your, out of your city shoes and step into rural life for just, just five minutes a day and just think about everybody, you know, not not just us truck drivers, you know, everybody, producers, you know, everybody. I mean the, you know, these people that do work at the plants that are still going to work that, you know, might get told to go home because we can't operate with just five of you here, so we gotta send you home. They don't want to go home, they wanna work, you know, just like me, I don't wanna go home, I wanna work.

Vance Crowe [00:31:26] Well, and I think about the guys that have worked through pain for the last 15 years. They had back pain or they had whatever, but they worked through it because it work had meaning, right? You're feeding your family, right? You're getting things done, you send somebody home and pain that they used to have that was just kind of something they could put behind them. Now all of a sudden is all they have to think about now all of a sudden medicating it or sleeping it away or just doing whatever is, is what, where, where people head like right now, all the other problems get hugely amplified.

Chris Niemann [00:31:59] Yes, yes.

Vance Crowe [00:32:00] It's a scary time man.

Chris Niemann [00:32:02] And it's, it is. And that's, you know, and like, like some people can't handle it as well as others. Some people take it further than what they need to, you know? And that, that's what I mean, you know, if, if you know somebody that looks like they're struggling, sounds like they're struggling, invite 'em over for coffee for crying out loud. I mean, yeah. Social distance, whatever you want to do. I don't care. Anybody could walk in my office right now. Have you done,

Vance Crowe [00:32:23] Have you and your, have you and your wife done one of these calls with like a couple at night and had some drinks or, or no man, it is a hundred percent worth it. A hundred hundred percent worth it.

Chris Niemann [00:32:35] Well, to me it's more in person is a lot more worth it. And so that's what we do more than anything. 'cause we're not worried about it. It just,

Vance Crowe [00:32:43] There you go.

Chris Niemann [00:32:44] If, if, if one of us feels sick, just stay away. You know? That's just the way it is. And a couple of friends that we do have, you know, everybody's been fine. Both of them are, are kind of laid off, I guess you could say for right now. So they're stuck in the house all the time. And so I, I get to get out yet. And so we, we still do in-person stuff as much as possible. But, but I agree. Yeah. You know,

Vance Crowe [00:33:07] I mean, I even think those, if you have a group of people that you trust, they're making smart moves and you're doing smart moves, that's your whale pod, man. That's your, we we're all in this together. 'cause if we completely shut ourselves off, if we say the disease doesn't allow us to come into contact with anybody else for under any circumstances, then we're all in this alone. But, right. But finding that whale pod, that group of people that you can connect with and everybody follows the same rules, keeps yourself safe, then we can weather it all together.

Chris Niemann [00:33:36] And that's, that's, I think that's gonna be the biggest thing that's gonna pull a lot of people out. You know, even stepping away from agriculture just countrywide is sanity. You know, if, if you can find that one thing, I mean, whatever it is, if you can find that one thing just to keep you moving, to keep you smiling, it's gonna go a long ways, you know? But, but a lot of people need to remember, there's a lot of people that don't know how to smile right now. And you know, some of these producers that I haul for and stuff, they don't, there is nothing to smile about in their world, you know? And so it just, we've all been told, you know, love your neighbor, love one another, check in on each other. It's real. I mean, that's, whether, whether this virus thing is real, whether I believe it, whether you believe it, it don't matter. The fact of the matter is lives are being affected at an alarming rate and it's not gonna get better anytime soon. I I, I, I want it to, I mean, I I, I'd be happy if I woke up tomorrow and he called and said, Hey, hey, everything's great. Everybody went back to work. We could use it by Thursday. We'll be ready to go. Great. But we all know that ain't gonna happen. So,

Vance Crowe [00:34:36] So one thing we, thing we do know that's gonna happen is that planting is going to get done.

Chris Niemann [00:34:41] Absolutely.

Vance Crowe [00:34:42] You are, you are lining up a planner. Tell me about what the next couple of weeks in your life is, is gonna be like.

Chris Niemann [00:34:48] Well, with me and dad here on the farm, we've got, we, we've got beef steers that we background. So right now we're in the process of fixing fence, getting pastures ready, fertilized, sprayed for weeds, stuff like that. So we're working on fence right now. The other day we pulled the planter out, got everything greased up, swapped boxes and stuff. So it's ready to go for corn. We're hoping if Mother Nature works with us here and everything, last Friday, I think it was Friday, we had six and a half inches of snow. We're hoping Wednesday to be planting. So as long as Mother Nature works with us, they're talking chance of rain tomorrow. But other than that, we're hoping to start planting Wednesday. But yeah, regardless of how pathetic prices are right now and the way the rest of the world is going right now, tractors are still gonna roll. Plant 2020 is gonna come out one way or another. Hopefully better than last year, man.

Vance Crowe [00:35:41] Are are you on Twitter?

Chris Niemann [00:35:43] No, I'm not

Vance Crowe [00:35:44] Dude. Okay. For plant part of it, get on Twitter because we gotta stay connected and that's the way that I see what people are doing. I really want you to do it and shoot photos of it, of what's going on with Plant 2020. I'd like to stay in touch and, and yeah, see, see how this rolls out. You're gonna be in touch with all your trucking friends and be able to keep me posted on what's going on with the packing houses. Absolutely.

Chris Niemann [00:36:10] I'll do my best.

Vance Crowe [00:36:11] All right.

Chris Niemann [00:36:11] Whenever I find out, I'll make sure and pass on,

Vance Crowe [00:36:13] Man. I am really, really sorry that this happened to you. I'm, I'm glad that you have planting season to go to and I'm grateful that you were willing to share it with the listeners 'cause I know this gets them a better perspective on how Coronavirus is impacting all of us.

Chris Niemann [00:36:29] Right. And I, if you, if you got any, any listeners that got questions or something, I'd be glad to try and answer. You know, to the best of my ability, by all means, I'm not a know-it-all of what's going on, you know, to a t but you know, if there's something that I might've said that was a little confusing or that just didn't quite make sense, you know, I'd be glad to, to, to reach out and answer as well, you know. No problem. Great

Vance Crowe [00:36:48] Man. Great. How can people get ahold of you then?

Chris Niemann [00:36:51] If you wanna, I guess, tag me on your,

Vance Crowe [00:36:53] That's why you gotta get, again, that's why you gotta get on Twitter. That's exactly why you gotta get on Twitter. So.

Chris Niemann [00:36:58] Well, I'll, I'll

Vance Crowe [00:36:59] Get something you get on

Chris Niemann [00:37:00] Twitter, up on Twitter and I'll let you know so we can get it all put together on this when you post it.

Vance Crowe [00:37:04] All right, brother, thank you so much for, for doing this and we'll check in with you later.

Chris Niemann [00:37:09] Alright, thanks a lot. Thanks

Vance Crowe [00:37:10] Man.