How to Move Freight Across the Icy Roads of Alaska

We're interested in trucking here at Odd Lots. It's one of those industries that can tell us a lot about the economy, both in terms of the short-term cycle, and also long-term structural trends. Of course, we know that the industry is prone to big boom and bust cycles. And Alaska itself -- driven so much by oil and natural resource extraction -- is also known for its boom and bust cycles. So on our trip there, we spoke with Josh Norum, the CEO of Sourdough Express, an Alaska based trucking company that's been around for over a century. We talked about how the business works, the history of the company, the current economic environment, tariffs, and the unique challenge (and opportunity) of moving freight in America's northernmost state. Read more:Uber Freight Founder Joins Autonomous Big Rig Startup WaabiDriverless Trucks Lumber Along With Safety-First Approach Only Bloomberg - Business News, Stock Markets, Finance, Breaking & World News subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlotsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 2:27Joe Weisenthal?

  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

• 2:32Tracy Alloway?

  And I'm Tracy Alloway.

• 2:33Joe Weisenthal?

  So Tracy, we're here in Alaska. We're still here in Alaska.

• 2:36Tracy Alloway?

  We are. It's beautiful.

• 2:37Joe Weisenthal?

  Stunning.

• 2:38Tracy Alloway?

  And it's bright. It stays light until like 11:00 PM.

• 2:41Joe Weisenthal?

  It's so bright. I couldn't believe it. It's amazing. Alaska in August. It's the best. It's already such a fascinating place to me.

• 2:47Tracy Alloway?

  What iconic industries will we be talking about while we're in Alaska, Joe?

• 2:52Joe Weisenthal?

  Well, there's many industries that we've hit over and over. Obviously, we like to talk to people in the trucking industry for all kinds of reasons. But also, like, one of the things that I'm aware of is that Alaska has its own distinct trucking culture. I think there was a reality TV show about it, right?

• 3:06Tracy Alloway?

  Ice Road Truckers?

• 3:07Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, right. Wasn't that based here?

• 3:08Tracy Alloway?

  Yes. I have questions about how realistic that actually is, but you are absolutely right that trucking in Alaska is the sort of well-known thing, maybe because of the reality TV show. But when you think about trucking in Alaska, you think like these crazy, like mud-riddled roads and people having to cart these like huge payloads of, I don't know. I heard it was mostly dirt in the summertime because people are doing a lot of road construction, but I don't know that much about it.

• 3:34Joe Weisenthal?

  I don't know that much about it. Trucking is a fun topic to cover. A, because it's just an interesting logistical industry in any environment. And then B, I don't think anyone has a better pulse on the economy at any given moment than people in trucking. So while we're here in Alaska, for all these obvious reasons, we got to talk trucking.

• 3:52Tracy Alloway?

  I think you have to come clean, Joe, and admit your secret dream to become an owner-operator working in Alaska. I don't even know if that's possible.

• 3:59Joe Weisenthal?

  Well, let's find out. I'm really excited to say we really do have the perfect guest. We're going to be speaking with Josh Norm. He is the president and owner of Sour Dough Express. Josh, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

• 4:10Speaker 07

  Yeah, thanks for having me.

• 4:11Joe Weisenthal?

  What does Sour Dough Express mean and what is the company?

• 4:15Speaker 07

  So Sour Dough Express is a trucking company in Alaska. All of our assets are based in Alaska. My family bought it in the 1920s. It's been in existence since 1898. So we're celebrating 127 years this year. We are a all-service trucking company. So we run the haul road. The ice road's up in Prudhoe Bay. We haul between Anchorage and Fairbanks, which are the two main population centers in Alaska. We also own a moving and storage company that focuses on DOD military members moving in and out of Alaska's military bases.

• 4:46Tracy Alloway?

  What does sourdough actually mean in this context? Cause I hear sourdough express and I think, are you like, you know, driving around huge, huge loads of baked goods?

• 4:54Speaker 07

  Yeah, most people think that we're a bakery, but no, sourdough is a basically a long-term Alaskan. So somebody who's been here for many years or experienced winters here and, and really understand the culture of Alaska and understand what it takes to live here.

• 5:09Tracy Alloway?

  So just one more question before we dig into the now, but you said your family bought this company in the 1920s and it's existed into the late 1800s. What was it actually in the early 1900s? Cause I assume you weren't, you know, it wasn't big trucks back then.

• 5:23Speaker 07

  Yeah. So most of the freight coming into Alaska then was gold mining and they were coming from Dawson City. And so the owner, Bob Ellis, ended up coming into Alaska and establishing in Fairbanks. And my family was working in and out of the company through that time and ended up purchasing in 1923. And the first years was not trucks. It was dog sleds and sleds and I mean, and walking the trails with the freight. And by the 1920s, the pictures show that there are trucks and makeshift roads that they're traveling on. But most of it was not far. It was makeshift trails that they were getting where they needed to go to their mining claims. And, and then as the community established in Fairbanks, we continued to grow and moved heavily into

• 6:07Speaker 07

  heating fuel and the different supplies that people needed to live in that climate.

• 6:11Joe Weisenthal?

  I already want to do this for like three hours, right? Like we could just like, let's just talk.

• 6:15Tracy Alloway?

  Let's just start in 1920.

• 6:16Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, exactly. Let's just go decade by decade through the history. I'm already fascinated. All right, but let's just take it up to today. What are the main goods that you move? Whether it's industrial, whatever it is, what are the main things that are moved in? What are like the big routes?

• 6:31Speaker 07

  So 70% of our freight is oilfield related and it's going up to Prudhoe Bay. And generally it's coming into the port of Anchorage and traveling up the road through Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay. A lot of it runs on the rail. From Seattle area Tacoma up through the waterways to Alaska. And then from there, they rail it to Fairbanks and we pick it up there and continue the journey to Prudhoe. We do a lot of stuff down south to the Kenai and basically anywhere on the road system that needs freight, our trucks will travel. We do not leave Alaska because we feel that our assets are best used here for, for the freight that's local. So most of our freight that comes from outside is coming

• 7:12Speaker 07

  on the steamships that come into Alaska four times a week.

• 7:17Tracy Alloway?

  If I'm a customer, I mean, obviously this will vary by customer, but what are the decisions I'm making? Or what are the constraints when I'm deciding whether to send something by road, by rail versus a ferry?

• 7:29Speaker 07

  So there's generally three options that people look at. One is over the road up the Alcan Highway through Canada. And that one is generally the quickest because you can have a driver take it from point A to point B, do the checkpoints and make it into Alaska the quickest. The second fastest is steamship. And so there's two companies that run two boats each and they go from Tacoma to Anchorage twice a week and both of them are sailing on Sundays and Tuesdays into Alaska. So I always tell people that if you want to get fresh groceries, go after the boats come because that's when everything shows up. There's also barge, which that travels more on a set schedule. And there's a few different barge companies in Alaska and that's slower freight, but it's generally more economical to ship. So there's different options.

• 8:14Joe Weisenthal?

  The ship from Tacoma to Alaska, how long does that take?

• 8:17Speaker 07

  Uh, three days.

• 8:18Joe Weisenthal?

  Okay. You know, you said all your assets stay in Alaska. Like, how long are these routes? How long are the drivers on the road? Like, how, talk to us about like those routes that they do and how tough that is.

• 8:28Speaker 07

  So as grueling as the roads are in Alaska, the truckers actually have a pretty decent schedule compared to lower 48 truckers. All the routes can pretty much be a two day route, no matter which way you go. So the ones going from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay, those ones generally leave Fairbanks on a Monday. They go to Prudhoe Bay, they deliver their load, spend the night and then come back on a Tuesday. So they're getting home every other night doing that, doing that route.

• 8:51Joe Weisenthal?

  That is better than a lot of drivers in the lower 48.

• 8:54Speaker 07

  Yep. And most of them. Have done lower 48 freight and love that they're home that consistently. The other routes are generally Anchorage to Fairbanks, Fairbanks to Anchorage. And those ones you can do round trip in a night. So those guys are home almost every night.

• 9:10Tracy Alloway?

  Are there special skills you need to be a trucker in Alaska versus elsewhere or in the lower 48? Do I have to be really, really good at taking chains on and off my tires?

• 9:19Speaker 07

  You definitely chain up consistently in Alaska. The thing that we look for the most in our drivers is teachability. Drivers that are willing to learn and learn from the people who've been doing it for years and years. There's a lot of things that they teach you in truck driving school and down in lower 48 that technically is the correct way to do something. But in the situations they're in, it can cause issues that you can't recover from. So there's a lot of small technical.

• 9:43Joe Weisenthal?

  Give us some examples. What are some things that people encounter here that they don't encounter elsewhere?

• 9:49Speaker 07

  Sure. One of the big things is running for hills. A lot of times in the States, people, they'll run and get speed up for hills. But in Prudhoe, on the road there, it's almost critical that you run for hills.

• 10:00Joe Weisenthal?

  What does that mean?

• 10:01Tracy Alloway?

  You have to speed up.

• 10:01Speaker 07

  So you have to speed up.

• 10:02Joe Weisenthal?

  To get over the hill.

• 10:04Speaker 07

  So you know you're coming up on a hill and everyone has callouts. So everyone has rados in their truck and they're calling out truck, whatever's coming up the hill. And so everyone waits at the top. And basically you just get speed and then your momentum carries you as far as you can before you start downshifting. And it's critical in the winter time because if you start slow, you will never gain traction. So you will be stopping and chaining at every single hill where there's generally a few hills you chain consistently. If you run at them, you can usually momentum up and over a lot of them without having to do that. So it saves a significant amount of time and, and energy for the driver having to get out. And, and chaining up on that road is not a fun experience generally. It's.

• 10:46Speaker 07

  Twenty thirty below and once you get up further north, it's windy and it's dark. It it's not a pleasant experience. So any tricks like that that you can incorporate really help their time and their quality of life.

• 11:00Tracy Alloway?

  You mentioned the radio just then, and this was gonna be one of my questions, which is like, are people able to use the radio out here? And are they on like Citizens Band or something else?

• 11:09Speaker 07

  They're on CB radios, just like anywhere, and they have channels that they run on. A lot of trucks have, we call them the big radio, which goes further and they can, it's usually like more of a chatting station, but on the CBs.

• 11:21Tracy Alloway?

  Is there a lot of chatting just because you're in Alaska and you're sort of on your own on a big highway or something?

• 11:26Speaker 07

  There's a lot of chatting, but everyone knows each other. So generally on that road, if you go up in one day and you come back in a day, you're passing all your friends either way at some point. So they all know each other by their truck, what they look like, they can tell on the radio. So a lot of it's just them checking with each other. How's your trip going? Beautiful day. Man, that hill was icy. Whatever it is, hey, there's there's caribou ahead. A lot of it's just banter back and forth between friends on the radio that help each other out. The haul road is very special in the sense that if a truck is pulled over and has an issue, everybody's gonna stop.

• 12:02Joe Weisenthal?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 12:02Speaker 07

  Nobody's gonna drive by him without checking to make sure he's doing okay and and that he doesn't need help. So that's a pretty special thing that you don't see everywhere. I know there's there's some places that people will stop and help, but in Alaska, it's almost critical that you do because somebody could be in

• 12:17Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 12:18Speaker 07

  in trouble. So.

• 12:19Joe Weisenthal?

  Someone told me that like used cars are more expensive in Alaska. I don't know if that's true. Actually, I haven't gone to verify that. But I'm just curious about like the cost of like the physical, yeah, your physical assets. Like, is there a significant price gap between just what you pay for any sort of piece of equipment, whether it's the truck or some part or et cetera in Alaska versus the rest of the country?

• 12:40Speaker 07

  Sometimes it's hard to compare because we don't have a sales tax.

• 12:43Joe Weisenthal?

  Oh.

• 12:44Speaker 07

  So without a sales tax, a lot of times that reduces the price right back to where the cost of getting the goods here is offset by not having that sales tax. So I can honestly say that I've not noticed a huge difference in prices between food, used cars, a lot of the stuff that we ship up. Business wise, like big trucks and that, we are dealing with the shipping ourselves. So depending how we want to drive it or what we want to do with that, we're paying the the cost at manufacturer and hauling it up.

• 13:13Tracy Alloway?

  What about fuel costs? Because I guess there's two things. There's the price of fuel out here. And I know there's a big, you know, oil industry, but I don't know if you actually refine that much. So I don't know what gas prices actually look like. But then secondly, I imagine when you're out in, you know, middle of nowhere, Alaska, there probably aren't that many places to have fuel stops for. And I guess maybe you have to be more strategic about where you're stopping to refuel.

• 13:38Speaker 07

  Yeah, so I would say fuel is definitely more expensive than say in Texas or the place where they have big refineries. We do refine some fuel in Alaska, not a lot. We have the pipeline going right through the middle and a lot of it just goes south and gone. But they do refine some. I don't think we save on price by doing that. It's just more of a efficiency thing. Fuel stops are extremely important. So our big trucks that go to Prudhoe Bay have 300 gallon tanks on them. And there's only one gas station between leaving Fairbanks and Prudhoe Bay, which is almost 500 miles.

• 14:09Tracy Alloway?

  Wow.

• 14:10Speaker 07

  So generally.

• 14:11Joe Weisenthal?

  You don't want to run out of fuel.

• 14:12Speaker 07

  You don't want to run out of fuel. There's not a lot of, a lot of options. And people are used to driving in the country and they see farms and they see, okay, there's a truck stop. And when you leave these communities like Fairbanks and you go north, there's nothing. It's just woods. And there's no one to help except the other truckers on the road. You'll see the tourists and the hunters, but there's nowhere to stop. So drivers, when they pull over, they're stopping on the side of like a pull off, just a little spot to stop, but there's no bathrooms or showers or anything like that. So planning your trips and where you get fuel, you can get fuel in Prudhoe, but it's more than double the cost of fuel in Fairbanks. So you definitely plan your fuel and carry a lot of it.

• 15:07Speaker 00

  What's next for virtual assets? I'm Jacob Rees, host of Economy Scale, a series exploring growth in key global sectors. And in this episode, we're diving into the digital forces shaping finance. Sean McHugh from Dubai-based Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority has this to say.

• 15:23Speaker 08

  We're seeing a lot of institutional players come in, digital asset dedicated hedge funds, high frequency traders and that sort of thing, and folks who service institutional clients.

• 15:32Speaker 00

  As more capital enters the market, adaptive regulation is likely to become increasingly key. Rees-McRae of Ripple says.

• 15:39Speaker 09

  A lot of regulators globally would like to keep the industry at arm's length. That's the opposite here. I think also what you'll find is that regulation and frameworks can come out, but some of them are maybe a slight iteration on some 80-year-old policy and not actually in line with what the technology can do and offer. And again, that's very different in Dubai.

• 15:59Speaker 00

  Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts. This series is brought to you by Bloomberg Media Studios and the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute, brought to you by ChatGPT. I'm Carol Muster. Getting hired at SpaceX requires exceptional ability and may include having Elon Musk review a candidate's resume. So writes Bloomberg Businessweek's Lauren Grush. She reports that the company culture is defined by Musk and job candidates must understand that a commitment to SpaceX means adhering to this culture and exhibiting loyalty to Elon Musk. To get hired, candidates must demonstrate their achievements from past jobs and hands-on experience matters more to recruiters than advanced degrees, with the company looking for people with raw innate intelligence. A spokesperson for SpaceX didn't respond to a request for comment on its recruiting

• 16:51Speaker 01

  and hiring practices, but according to recruiters, advisors and those who've interviewed for jobs there, it's the space exploration dream that draws people to the company and Musk invokes that dream regularly to remind workers why they're there. Prospective hires are told that the job will require stamina, including in job ads that candidates, quote, "must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed." One major perk for all that hard work? Employees' access to equity, either the right to buy shares or payment in the form of restricted stock units that vest over time. That's the Bloomberg Tech Minute, brought to you by ChatGPT. Get started at ChatGPT.com.

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• 18:39Joe Weisenthal?

  So we're recording this August 5th, 2025. How's business right now? Or how does it compare to August 5th, 2024?

• 18:47Speaker 07

  Business has been very good and very steady.

• 18:50Joe Weisenthal?

  Okay.

• 18:50Speaker 07

  A few of the different oil companies in Alaska have put a lot of investment and a lot of bets on the future and invested.

• 18:57Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, Chris Wright, the Energy Secretary, was, I think, in Alaska not too long ago, like, telling.

• 19:01Speaker 07

  We had a big delegation come up here and they went to Prudhoe to pump in the gas line up, the potential gas line that they're trying to get approved. But the overall investment in the oil fields and the downstream effects of that of people coming up to work those and the good jobs it creates that then trickles through the rest of the economy. So a lot of our business is also groceries and lumber and housing supplies and basically anything that a worker on the slope that we also provide drilling pipe to, they still need everything back at their house when they're on their off shift. So the overall Alaska economy has been been healthy. There hasn't been a huge growth, I don't think, but I think it's replaced a lot of what was on a downward slide five, 10 years ago.

• 19:47Tracy Alloway?

  So one of the things we've learned from doing all these trucking episodes over and over again is that it is an extremely cyclical industry. And supposedly a lot of that, at least in the lower 48, is because there are really low barriers to entry. So if people see freight rates start to go up, they think, oh, I'm going to get a truck, I'm going to get my CDL, and then I'm going to make the big money driving this truck around. I'm curious, in Alaska, is it the same way? Do you see those sorts of boom bust cycles where you have lots of new entrants flood the market and then freight rates start going down and people start going out of business? And then eventually you go through the cycle once again?

• 20:22Speaker 07

  I would say Alaska's entire economy is that exact situation. And so in trucking, we have company drivers and most companies that are at a scale that we are at have company drivers, but they also use owner operators or they use contractors which they hire on for the busy times. And those contractors over the years have become very flexible. So when times are not good, a lot of times they'll head south. When you need them again, you call them and they'll come back up and start hauling again. So I would say that people do buy more trucks and try to start their businesses during the really good times. But a lot of examples of truckers who've done that and not been successful when it does decline. It seems like we've done it enough that the truckers are getting more

• 21:05Speaker 07

  savvy to know how much they can spend. And instead of buying five trucks, they buy one truck or two trucks and they keep those trucks busy with the flexibility of going out and finding other work down in the States. Because as an owner operator, you can go out of business very quickly if there's a few slow months.

• 21:22Joe Weisenthal?

  How has sourdough expressed state and business so long? Like, you know, at this point, I'm sure you like, have there been any near death experiences in the last century or any close calls in there?

• 21:33Speaker 07

  Yeah. So through the generations, I'm fifth generation owner of sourdough and my business partner is my mother. And she's a CPA and been the CFO for sourdough for 30 years and she's extremely conservative. So she's told me stories of the history of the generations. And her ability to save and plan for the future for those bad times, I think is why we've been so successful. When the big shiny loads are sitting out there, we don't always run at them. We let those go and we continue servicing our customers that have been dedicated customers and reliable freight for years. And with her management of those assets and over time, I think it's, it's been very successful.

• 22:14Speaker 07

  But I can tell you that we're in a minority in that sense where there's been a lot of trucking companies come and go over the years that we've, we've seen come up and go down. And I would say her ability to plan has been the biggest asset to sour in the last 30 years.

• 22:28Tracy Alloway?

  What would be a shiny load in that context? Is it like, you know, some oil company needs something like right, some crucial component for a pipeline or something and they need it right now. And so they're paying loads of money.

• 22:40Speaker 07

  That could be an example. I mean, it's just anybody who needs something very quickly that requires a lot of assets. And so sometimes they, they dangle that out there and trucking companies, well, I'll go buy 10 trucks and I can do that. 2015 was a good example of where the oil companies had come and said, Hey, we're going to produce all this oil. And there's a good chance for growth. We ended up, everyone purchased trucks and got ready. And then the oil prices crashed and so no fault to them, but they couldn't sell oil at a profit. And so they had to pull back the loads and coming back around, I think everyone was a little more cautious. But we've also learned with them as a group that works together, because if we're not successful, they're not successful and vice versa.

• 23:21Speaker 07

  That we're able to, to plan better and adjust how the loads work to make sure that the freight gets there without that risk of the boom bust. So we've done a lot better job, I'd say in the last 10 years of planning those cycles and how that's going to work.

• 23:37Tracy Alloway?

  Joe, I feel like I have to say that we are in Anchorage and some listeners might hear the train going by. Just that it's very atmospheric.

• 23:45Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, it's very atmospheric. And actually, sort of walking through Anchorage, you turn your head and you see like ports, facilities, and you see oil facilities right there. And so it does feel like just walking through here. We are in this hub of logistics industry and commerce, and you can certainly hear it. You know what I'm curious about? How does a family keep people in Alaska? Because I have to imagine that a lot of young people, generally speaking, it's like, yeah, probably some tough, dark, long winters and maybe get attracted to like, it might be nice to move to Los Angeles or something like that sometime. Talk to us about like, is the culture of like, who stay, the type of people who stay in Alaska over generations?

• 24:24Speaker 07

  Yeah, no, I think that a lot of people have been here for a long time. They like what Alaska has to offer outside of the cities. So a lot of people you talk to have cabins and have places they go and spend time and they build those family units that are strong and based on these experiences they've had together. A lot of people, when they graduate high school, do go out to the States and they go to college and they get their degree. And my sister's a good example, where she went out and she was gone for 10 years and decided that she could be an eye doctor in Alaska just as easy as she could be in Oklahoma. So she ended up moving back with her family, more so to just get that family unit that she had been looking for. I think that a lot of people like the community that it has to offer and for some reason, the misery of living here in the winter, I think brings

• 25:07Speaker 07

  people together too. I'm not quite sure on that, but I've been here for a while. So.

• 25:12Tracy Alloway?

  Well, in the summer, it is very, very nice. I have to say, I haven't seen it in the winter, but right now it's beautiful.

• 25:18Joe Weisenthal?

  You know what the flip side of 11:30 sundown is?

• 25:22Tracy Alloway?

  I lived in London and it getting dark at 3pm in December was bad enough. I imagine it's even worse here. Okay, this is my moment to just ask, can we get some ice road trucker type stories? Like, tell us some of the hairiest moments when, you know, you or one of your drivers is on like the Dalton Highway or something like that.

• 25:39Speaker 07

  So I've driven the road twice in my career. I had got my C D when I was nineteen and I I mostly worked in the moving side of our company, moving and storage. And so I never did the ice road long term, but I did drive a couple loads up there and got to experience. What that was like as a driver. The benefit to our trucks now is we have cameras in every truck. So when stuff does happen, we have very good vantage points of exactly what that is. And it's probably four years ago. The best camera footage I've seen is we were climbing Attigan Pass, which is on the Dalton. And out of the corner of the camera, it was night, but you could see snow starting to come and an entire avalanche came down and pushed the truck up against the guardrail. And when everything came still, the snow was over the front.

• 26:20Speaker 07

  And he was just sitting in an avalanche that then he had to wait for the loaders to come up and and dig him back out. We've had a few of those avalanche type stories. That was the the biggest one. We consistently see wildlife every day. You can see caribou or wolves or bears. On the road and moving out in front of the trucks.

• 26:41Joe Weisenthal?

  Do wildlife pose a danger? You talk about having to chain the tires. When you're out, like, is there any risk? You're just like, when you're out of the cab. So is there any danger to the driver in those situations?

• 26:52Speaker 07

  Yes, and they've gotten smarter over the years. Back in the seventies and eighties, when it was. Kind of the good old days, they used to feed a lot of the animals, I think, and the animals got very used to that. And we have a lot of pictures of bears standing up to windows and taking food back in the seventies. Drivers have gotten a lot smarter since then about inviting the wildlife to the trucks. And there are notices.

• 27:13Joe Weisenthal?

  Those were the good old days, weren't they?

• 27:16Joe Weisenthal?

  Lean out of your truck and feed the bear. This is what they took from us.

• 27:20Speaker 07

  Yeah, but they do post notices and you'll hear on the Facebook groups and on the communications that, hey, there's a bear at mile post. Two, twelve, make sure you watch out when you're chaining up or. I mean, there are situations. They they had a wolf problem last year at one of the construction sites that the. Pilot cars had to really be paying attention to. And so there are risks to that. Generally, it's not an issue, but over the years, there definitely have been stories.

• 27:45Tracy Alloway?

  You know, you mentioned cameras in the trucks and this reminded me, but is there technology that people are using out in Alaska that might mitigate some of the like Alaska specific dangers? Do you have better weather forecasting technology or do you pay more attention to the forecasts? Like, are there specific things you're doing with tech that might make it easier for your drivers?

• 28:05Speaker 07

  I would say Facebook groups.

• 28:07Joe Weisenthal?

  Oh, say more about that. This is really interesting.

• 28:09Speaker 07

  So Facebook groups is just an example, but text threads and the different communication between the drivers that are traveling it every day. They all have their groups of guys they know. And hey, I just went through this mile post. It was really bad. You might as well stay home until tomorrow. It'll get better by tomorrow. And so their feedback is way quicker than the weather, way more accurate. And their ability to to get that through the road is uncanny. So I think that camaraderie between the drivers is really what keeps that road safer.

• 28:38Joe Weisenthal?

  So I take it there were wildfires this summer in Alaska?

• 28:40Speaker 07

  This summer was a dry beginning of the summer, and there were a few that were very close to the road. There's two ways to get from Anchorage to Fairbanks. And so we had to send our trucks to longer route this summer for about a week because they had so much activity next to the road. And it wasn't a reliable route to send the trucks to get stuff through. So we had to deal with that over the years. A few years ago, south of Anchorage, there was a lot of them that it was delaying the drivers on a nightly basis, waiting for openings to to get through.

• 29:12Tracy Alloway?

  Oh, yeah. On this topic, is there seasonality in this business in the sense that some routes are only open at certain times of the year? So I I heard, you know, for instance, some roads have to be frozen for the trucks to go over them. And then I also heard that there are some trucks going over like actual frozen water. So you have to wait for the water to freeze before you can actually get to the specific part of the world?

• 29:33Speaker 07

  So the the big ones that everyone talks about are the ice roads up in Prudhoe Bay. And most of those are not actually frozen lakes or rivers that they're crossing. There are some, but most of it is they're building up the ice to protect the tundra so that when the ice does melt, there's no damage to the tundra. So if you fly over four wheeler trails that are in the summer, you can see where all those vehicles went. But if you go up to Prudhoe and fly over the oil fields, you can see no trace of trucks because they build those roads up so strong. They do go out on the ice in certain areas, but it's very controlled and very measured.

• 30:07Joe Weisenthal?

  There was a Netflix movie about that, I think, a few years ago. It was like, it was not a reality show.

• 30:13Tracy Alloway?

  About protecting tundras?

• 30:14Joe Weisenthal?

  No, no, just about like those, like the literal, like going over the frozen water and stuff like that. No, I forgot about it. It was really stressful.

• 30:22Speaker 07

  They always, in the shows and the reality shows, they obviously dramatize.

• 30:25Joe Weisenthal?

  They over, they over bake it a little bit?

• 30:27Speaker 07

  They over bake it a little bit and nobody would go on them if they were that unsafe.

• 30:31Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah. Yeah. In the movie, it made it look like there was a 50% chance. And then they give a time of like making it.

• 30:36Speaker 07

  The volume of trucks that travel on it and they're, they have dedicated crews to just maintain those roads on a daily basis. It's, it's not something that anybody's willing to risk.

• 30:45Joe Weisenthal?

  So something I'm curious about is, are the tariffs showing up in any way that you notice in your business? Have they had an effect on anything? Maybe even with, you know, Alaska, Canada trade or anything like that?

• 30:54Speaker 07

  We haven't seen significant ones yet in our pricing, other than we pre-ordered a lot of stuff with the anticipation of tariffs that might not have.

• 31:02Joe Weisenthal?

  And when you say pre-ordered stuff, is this like equipment or parts or something like that?

• 31:05Speaker 07

  Mostly parts. So parts that were specifically tire chains. We ordered a lot of tire chains, a lot of gear that was related.

• 31:12Joe Weisenthal?

  So you're sitting out, you're still sitting on inventory from some of this that you've pre-ordered?

• 31:15Speaker 07

  We're prepared for winter.

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• 34:28Tracy Alloway?

  What's the big constraint on your business now? Like, if you had to name a single frustration that is stopping you from growing further, what would it be? You know, whether it's labor, or I don't know, money available for capital investment, regulation, what would it be?

• 34:49Speaker 07

  I would say it's probably the availability of work. So the more that they open up the oil fields and allow us to produce on them, I think that's going to be the biggest factor to growing all of the businesses in Alaska. They've proven over and over again that they can continually do it safely, and that we're one of the cleanest producers in the world. And so as they open those up and responsibly start producing them, that's what grows the Alaska economy is when we construct those sites and then produce over the long term. The oil pipeline, since it was built, has declined in volume that has traveled through it, and for the last couple of years is the first time it's upticked again. So that's a very positive thing for Alaska because it's kind of the lifeline of almost

• 35:32Speaker 07

  all Alaskans is the oil and gas industry. DOD is not very far behind with the Department of Defense spending, but for what really drives Alaska, it's oil and gas development, so.

• 35:44Tracy Alloway?

  You said DOD just then, and I noticed at the airport, there was like a military lounge. So I guess like military is a big presence here, right? Like, what exactly is going on? I should know this already, but like, what is happening here?

• 35:56Joe Weisenthal?

  Looking over the water at the Russian.

• 35:58Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, no, I get that, but like, what exactly is here?

• 36:01Speaker 07

  So in Anchorage, which is where we're sitting now, there's a joint air force and army base that's fairly large. If you go north to Fairbanks, there's an air force base and an army base separated, but also very large, that that air force base is used for all the training for a lot of our allies. They come there in the summer and you see fighter jets parked all over and they're doing war games. Outside of Fairbanks, they have Fort Greeley, which is missile silos in there. It's more of a protection. Base and then on the other side, they have clear for space, which is more of a identification base where they they're able to monitor closer to our enemies.

• 36:41Joe Weisenthal?

  And I'm going to ask a hot button question that I know divides much of the freight community, but is there a truck driver shortage?

• 36:49Speaker 07

  I don't think there's a truck driver shortage. I think that there is an industry that has put truck drivers in positions over the years where maybe some of them have left their profession or told their kids not to join the profession. I think there's a lot of quality truck drivers out of there. I think there's a lot of companies who don't treat their truck drivers the way they should be treated. And so that they have a shortage of employees more so to do with their policies and the requirements of what they expect of their drivers rather than what they give back to them. So sourdough, we've always tried to treat our drivers as best as possible. We give them schedules that are family friendly and we understand that life happens. And so I think that's been a huge benefit for us

• 37:32Speaker 07

  and not just taking drivers for granted that they just keep coming through the door to really develop your drivers and and make them high quality drivers that they can be.

• 37:41Joe Weisenthal?

  I have another, I have another hot button question. So you've, you know, your family's owned.

• 37:46Tracy Alloway?

  It's going to be self-driving ice trucks?

• 37:47Joe Weisenthal?

  In a hundred years, your family's had the company about 100 years. Will there be human drivers in a hundred years?

• 37:53Speaker 07

  I have no opinion on that one. I, I think that would be a very hard road to do an actual self-driving truck.

• 38:00Joe Weisenthal?

  Mm hmm.

• 38:00Speaker 07

  I think if they came up with some sort of rail system or something, they could, they could potentially do it, but it would require an extreme amount of investment to set that up just because the train's so extreme. That road does not have lines on it. The road shoulders change every mile. The snow, how they plow it changes every year. So I think it'd be an extremely, extremely hard road to send a, a truck driving itself up.

• 38:25Joe Weisenthal?

  Have you seen any effect yet from labor related policies yet from this administration that in any way has like affected the business for better or worse?

• 38:33Speaker 07

  No, we have not.

• 38:34Tracy Alloway?

  If you're in a bar in Fairbanks or wherever with a bunch of other sourdoughers, what do you sourdough people sourdough?

• 38:42Speaker 07

  Sourdoughs.

• 38:42Tracy Alloway?

  Sourdoughs and trucking buddies, what's getting you guys riled up? Like, what is the topic of conversation du jour?

• 38:49Speaker 07

  Most of it goes from stories on the road back to family camping trips and hunting trips and fishing trips and what they're doing on their off time. The the trucking industry in Alaska pays very well, so most of the drivers have the ability to buy snow machines and four wheelers and go out and experience what Alaska actually has to offer besides city life. And most truckers are very independent and they like that lifestyle. So I would say it's it's mostly comparing camping stories.

• 39:16Joe Weisenthal?

  If there's someone who's just like a young guy looking for direction in the world, if they come to Alaska and can they probably find a job eventually if they go through the CDL training, et cetera, like?

• 39:26Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 39:27Joe Weisenthal?

  Is this someone in the lower 48 looking for direction, looking for maybe some adventure and excitement and decent pay and that sort of lifestyle? Like, is there demand for it that right now?

• 39:37Speaker 07

  So we've learned over the years that a lot of people have this dream of Alaska.

• 39:41Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 39:42Speaker 07

  And until they come here, they don't quite realize what that dream is. They just know that it's this vast place that they want to go and spend time. So we always recommend people come and visit it, not in the summer, but in the winter to make sure it's a place that they want to be. And then we have a lot of very good truck driving schools. So if they come without a CDL in three weeks, you can get your CDL. And there is a lot of opportunity locally in the different cities to learn to be a truck driver. And so patience is the biggest one. And people knowing that the first day they get in that truck, they're not driving the haul road, they're they're going to be delivering produce to Fred Myers or they're going to be delivering lumber to to Spanard Builder Supply. It's patience and then also the, like I had mentioned earlier, the willingness to learn from the the experienced drivers who have done it for years and years.

• 40:26Speaker 07

  And drivers are very generous with their knowledge as long as you're willing to learn it. As soon as you start pushing back, most drivers don't want to teach you anymore because it's not worth their time. So there's definitely an opportunity to to grow your career and make a a life in Alaska. You just have to be patient.

• 40:42Tracy Alloway?

  I'm going to ask the flip side of Joe's question, which is, is there anything that people are underestimating about the Alaskan truck driver experience, or something that people might have misconceptions about when they're starry eyed youthful would be Alaska truck drivers?

• 40:58Speaker 07

  So if you're talking ice road trucking, which is what the show is based on, I think that the show romanticized it in the way that it's kind of this very fun and entertaining thing, but the road from Fairbanks to Peru is 12 hours long and you're by yourself the whole time. So I think a lot of people underestimate how much time they spend alone. And you're not sleeping at truck stops, you're not seeing people in person, you're talking to them on the radio, but you're not getting that interaction that a lot of truckers in the States are used to walking in. You have one spot, Coldfoot, Alaska, to stop and see people. But I think the lonesomeness of it, and then coming back to the terminal and going home to a, in the winter, it's very dark.

• 41:40Speaker 07

  I think the darkness is what really drives a lot of people back out of Alaska. The cold's not fun either, but you can turn the heater on, you can put a jacket on.

• 41:49Joe Weisenthal?

  Actually, I did have one more question related to this, which is, you mentioned, it's like, you're truly in the middle of nowhere, there aren't gas stations anywhere. If there is some sort of an accident or something like that, what are the sort of like state level infrastructure for like emergency response out there? Like, is there a helicopter?

• 42:06Tracy Alloway?

  Helicopter.

• 42:07Speaker 07

  Yeah, the state troopers have helicopters that they will fly out. The problem with helicopters is you gotta be able to land it somewhere. And a lot of the roads not wide enough or in a position where they can land. So generally, the first responders are other truckers. And a lot of them have training on what to do with an injured driver or something like that. You can call the different towns on either side of it, but I mean, it could be eight hours before you see an actual ambulance or something. So a lot of it. Is very remote and requires the help of your fellow truck driver.

• 42:41Tracy Alloway?

  And weather restricted too, right?

• 42:42Speaker 07

  And weather restricted too.

• 42:43Tracy Alloway?

  If you're in trouble because there's a storm, then a helicopter is not going to be able to get to you.

• 42:46Speaker 07

  This year, the road washed out too, but it wasn't for very long, but they've had years where the the road gets shut down by avalanches and there's a bunch of drivers stacked up. And the road's too small to turn around, so you're stuck facing the avalanche and it's it's been a couple of days or they they send fuel trucks out to go fuel the trucks so they can continue running and and staying safe and hand out food, but most of the drivers carry a few days.

• 43:09Tracy Alloway?

  Do the drivers create like a little camp for themselves? I have this vision in my head of like a group of like 12 truck drivers just like.

• 43:16Speaker 07

  Turn around a campfire.

• 43:16Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, getting along in the wilderness while they wait for the avalanche to get cleared.

• 43:20Speaker 07

  I definitely think there's probably a lot of stuff that they they don't feed back to us. I don't know if a campfire is included, but.

• 43:26Joe Weisenthal?

  Josh Norum, president and owner of Sour Dog Express. Thank you so much for coming on Outlets.

• 43:32Speaker 07

  Yeah, thank you guys for having me.

• 43:46Joe Weisenthal?

  Tracy, that was a lot of fun. You know, it's funny thinking about like, you know, obviously Alaska as, you know, a literal gold rush place.

• 43:53Tracy Alloway?

  A literal gold mine.

• 43:53Joe Weisenthal?

  And then this idea that the whole state is a big boom bust cycle, right? Because if you start with gold mining and then you're very levered to the oil industry. Yeah, so it's like trucking is like truly the the tail end of the whip, it sounds like.

• 44:07Tracy Alloway?

  Cyclical squared.

• 44:08Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, cyclical squared. Yeah, right.

• 44:10Tracy Alloway?

  The other thing I was thinking about is, you know, in terms of new technology, Josh mentioned the cameras, but also you got to imagine something like Starlink would have a big impact on drivers' quality of life. Uh, if you're driving out where there's no cell service, maybe if you have Starlink, you finally have a chance to download a Netflix movie or download all your favorite podcasts so you don't feel so lonely on the road. But then, you know, he mentioned Facebook as just a messaging network for the drivers. And this is something that I really didn't get until like two years ago when I got the house in rural Connecticut, which is like. Facebook is essential in rural parts of the country. Like, that is actually the local network.

• 44:55Tracy Alloway?

  And that's where, when people see a bear coming through, you know, the neighborhood, that's where people post it. Yeah, or, you know, maybe your, like, neighbor will text you directly or something. But like, all that local info is going on Facebook.

• 45:08Joe Weisenthal?

  That is, uh, that is really interesting. Also, like, it's not the first time that trucking specifically is still an industry that runs on, like, sort of group chats and WhatsApp pages.

• 45:20Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, sure.

• 45:21Joe Weisenthal?

  WhatsApp channels, et cetera, like that, even.

• 45:23Tracy Alloway?

  The message boards for loads.

• 45:24Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, the message boards. Like, that technology, that power is, like, clearly still, like, deeply embedded into, like, sort of, core industrial, you know, the core, it's core infrastructure for what makes the economy run.

• 45:39Tracy Alloway?

  Well, all of logistics, right?

• 45:40Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 45:40Tracy Alloway?

  It's Sven in the port in, uh, in Europe or whatever, right?

• 45:44Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, right, right. And yeah, I mean, as you noted, it really feels like this is a logistics hub. You could, the listeners can literally hear it while we're doing the episode.

• 45:52Tracy Alloway?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, when you get to the airport, you can already realize it's a logistics hub. Like, I know our producer Dash was talking about people carrying fish through the airport. There's the military lounges in the airport because you have the big military airbases. And when you're coming in, you can see all that infrastructure. So you do get that sense.

• 46:12Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 46:13Tracy Alloway?

  All right. Shall we leave it there?

• 46:14Joe Weisenthal?

  Let's leave it there.

• 46:14Tracy Alloway?

  This has been another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.

• 46:20Joe Weisenthal?

  And I'm Jill Weisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart. Next time you're shipping oil industry equipment, call up Josh at the Sourdough Express. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez at CarmenArmond, Dashell Bennett at Dashbot, and Kell Brooks at KellBrooks. For more Odd Lots content, go to Bloomberg.com/oddlots, where we have a daily newsletter and all of our episodes. And you can chat about these topics 24/7 in our Discord, discord.gg/oddlots.

• 46:46Tracy Alloway?

  And if you enjoy Odd Lots, if you like it when Joe and I go to Alaska, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad-free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.

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