Owner-op Garrett Steenblik's 200-lb. weight loss journey, and Trucker's Body Shop program to give back

Garrett Steenblik: What was really difficult for me about the weight loss journey, sometimes it's even difficult talking about it because I still remember what it was like to be somebody who was afraid and who wanted change. And every day I hated myself in the beginning up to the point that exercising regularly and changing my habits made me feel good. So when I think about it and when I tell other people about it, I feel that all at once, you know, it, it was definitely a journey. It had a lot of hard work in it. But what I also want people to understand is that I just, I don't like being addressed about it as if I'm exceptional. What I want other people to understand is that this is something they can do themselves and that they should do themselves. And they need to either love themselves enough or hate themself enough in order to be able to get started on figuring it out one day at a time.

Todd Dills: In essence, Garrett Steenblik wants his fellow owner-operators and truckers to know, if it is your goal to lose weight, to get healthy over the road, you can do it. Today on the Overdrive Radio podcast, a bit more encouragement and information about how Steenblik himself did it, but also how he marshalled a network of docs and a program under the Truckers Body Shop company name to help.

I'm Todd Dills, your host for this podcast edition for Monday, November 25, 2024 and know that Garrett Steenblik today is a whopping 200 pounds lighter than when he began his weight loss journey. He's moved out of the KW he teamed with his wife in for nearly a decade now, devoting full time efforts to get Trucker’s Body Shop off the ground. As he explains here.

Garrett Steenblik: I just got off the road in August to take care of standing the business up, going into trade shows. I hired a driver to drive with my wife. Right now she's out over the road driving at Tri State Motor Transit Co where owner operators running specialized freight over there.

Todd Dills: What's you guys’ truck and what kind of trailers are you pulling if you're pulling trailers at all?

Garrett Steenblik: We do flatbed, we do dry van. occasionally we'll do other modals, we'll do reefers. It just depends on the situation. We do it all but we drive a T680. I'm a big Kenworth guy. It's a 2023 with the cut sides down that have the little LED light in it that makes it look like a really slick race car.

Todd Dills: Clearly there's pride in the rig for the owner, even if he's out of the truck today. It's that pride and hustle and all the work required to make a success out of a one truck business. It sometimes can lead to a feeling he certainly identified in himself. Maybe you notice it in you too.

Garrett Steenblik: But a lot of other owner operators feel that their health has to take a back seat to work and to the lifestyle. And by the time usually we're off the road, we want to be a family. You know, we don't want to really focus on trying to match our home time around with meeting up with a doctor. So we designed Trucker's Body Shop to be able to provide access to a physician to help them with specific conditions and for them to be able to get that medication delivered to them on the schedule that works for them so they don't have to compromise visiting with their family or doing what they need to do.

Todd Dills: We’ll hear much more about the particulars of the program in the rest of this episode.

On the other side of a break, we pick up with Steenblik’s 'personal history in the business of trucking. Likewise his health journey, where he learned plenty about the bedrock importance diet and exercise, but also the supports and effort like Truckers'body Shop strive to provide. In some ways, the goal of weight loss can be product of basic math, something any owner operator who's ever figured up their cost per mile knows.

Garrett Steenblik: Well, certain people, walking was a big part of my journey because listen, if you just walk an hour, you're burning 200 to 250 calories in that hour instead of sitting around and burning 40 to 70 calories and an hour staring at your phone looking at cat videos.

Todd Dills: Keep tuned for more.

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Todd Dills: Find more about the Howes company’s many fuel treatments and other products including its Howe’s Multi Purpose Penetrating oil via HOWES, howesproducts.com. Here’s Garrett Steenblik harking back to his beginnings in trucking About a decade ago, and a traumatic episode at a fuel island that would ultimately set him off to launch truckers body shop.

Garrett Steenblik: Trucking started for me when I was 23. Memory's a little fuzzy there, but I'll tell you, I got into trucking because I was really lost. I went through a lot of physical and sexual abuse growing up and it made it very hard for me to find what made me happy. Because I wasn't happy when I met my wife. And my wife and I had strengths and weaknesses that played off each other. And team truck driving seemed like a great thing to do because we could be around each other, we could support each other and we'd have the means to exploring the country and making money. So we went into truck driving and started with Transport America as a team. Before that I trained at Averitt Express and then we worked at Boyle transportation for a few years. And from there we got our own truck. It was a T680 and it was a 2018 or 2019, I can't remember. And we hopped into Heavy Haul and oversized freight. We did that till the work ran out. Running solar batteries, and running wind turbine parts out west. And then we got into, specialized with Tri State. I'd say I've been in trucking for about nine years now.

My name is Garrett Steenblik. I am the CEO of trucker's body shop were a specialty pharmacy and telehealth support company. We were created specifically to tackle the obesity crisis and side of truck driving. I myself lost 200 pounds while driving cross country. And as I grew this business, I realized that we could do significantly more than just help truckers lose weight and provide them access to the tools and resources to do so safely and to keep that weight off. We could offer them the ability to quit smoking. We could offer them a better sex life. We could offer them the means to take control of many of the different problems that they deal with over the road, including helping them address small problems that can become big problems later for me. Over the road I had a really traumatic experience. after I was recovering from my loose skin surgery, I got back on the road and I encountered a driver in the fuel island next to me.

And I watched him get out of his truck. He weighed like 400 pounds. And I watched him grab the diesel pump after putting in all the numbers and by the time he was place it in the fuel tanks, he was out of breath. I'm gona get a little emotional here. I apologize's a problem. And. And he collapsed on the ground. and. And he's ban on the side of the cabin, rushed over, and his wife comes out, and she's on the top step. She's looking down at him. And the shock in his eyes and the fear in her eyes were burned into my brain. And I realized in that moment that the technology existed to do something about this and that I had to get this done. I had to make it so that situations like this were far less common. Because if. If I hadn't lost the weight myself, I could have been this guy on the ground with my wife out there, worried if I was gonna die in a slimy puddle of diesel right in front of her. So that's where we came from.

We're here to solve problems. Formal, founding of the company started back in May, But I built this company while driving over the road. It just took a lot of time for us to be able to put together a doctor network that could serve all 50 states, to be able to put together a pharmacy network that could deliver everything that we needed, and for us to compile all the resources that we would need to offer in order to be able to positively impact drivers.

Todd Dills: When did your own weight loss take place? and how. I mean, how did you do that while you were over the road?

Garrett Steenblik: So my weight loss journey started around 10 years ago when I started trying to run some of the weight off, and I got into trucking. I gained a lot of that weight back, and, my health spiraled out of control. And I remember, for me, the defining moment was when I was bent over a toilet and I was puking my guts out. And I got up and I looked in the mirror, and I saw with puffy eyes that I hated the guy who was looking back at me and that I had made him. And then it was my responsibility whether or not I had the answers to fix this guy and turn him into somebody that I could love and respect. And it was very difficult at first. I lost about 100 very quickly. I would say in a period of nine months. Just by eliminating soda and just by running. Yeah, yeah. And running in place 45 minutes a day. But I didn't change my diet. I wasn't eating nutritious food, and my body was deprived of essential nutrients because everything I ate was processed junk.

And I relapsed, started gaining the weight again, and it was very frustrating. I almost gave up. And I got introduced to, a weight loss program made by a guy by the name of Bob Perry, who's also known as the trucker trainer.

Todd Dills: You'll for certain find some mention of Bob Perry's past training work, in-cab exercise routines and the like, among other efforts, if you search for it @overdriveonline.com.

Garrett Steenblik: Bob taught common sense strength training. He taught whole food diets, he taught moderate physical activity. Getting out, getting active when you could. And I started implementing that and I got some great results. The way it started coming off again and then I was really feeling a lot better mentally and investing in myself.

Todd Dills: Teaming with his wife at Boyle, he got a bit of a reputation for his efforts too.

Garrett Steenblik: Whenever we were stopped, I was so dedicated to the weight loss journey that I told myself I had to work out every day no matter what. So if we were getting loaded, I'd wake up, I'd hop out and I'd do some push ups, I'd run around the truck, I'd do body weight exercises and the shippers would be like, what's that man doing? And my wife would be like, oh, he working out. He's lost 80 already. Georgian accent and then I do it. If I had the time, I do it in my 30 minute break. You know, if we were parked for the night waiting to get unloaded, I'd get out, I'd walk it. just the way I did it without being bored was like, I get an audiobook or, you know, I'd listen to Spotify and I just allow myself to experience what it was like to challenge myself and to let go of my past and be in the present. And eventually it became a habit that filled me with joy and I was doing it at all the shippers and I got this reputation with Boyle for doing this.

It was really funny because on my birthday I have a picture of a message that the operations team sent me there. I love those guys. They're so wholesome. They said, happy birthday, Garrett, do some laps around the truck and eat some kale cake. That is my favorite picture in all of trucking man.

Todd Dills: you'll see that in the image on the cover of this podcast, wherever you're listing yet find it in full in the post that houses this edition of overdrive radio @overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio. Along Garrett Steenblik's journey to dropping 200 pounds of extra weight...

Garrett Steenblik: I learned about keto, intermittent fasting and how to track your daily caloric intake. So a big part of what we do inside of Trucker's Body Shop is we help people Contextualize what options are available to them on the road, kind of like a field guide. And we help them with a tool similar to the one that helped me lose the weight, that allowed me to understand the fundamentals of oh my gosh, well, if I'm just sitting in a truck all day, how many calories do I burn existing? Okay, well, how many calories do I burn if I add in a little bit of activity? Okay, so how many calories are in the food that I'm eating? And this becomes all incredibly complicated unless it's very simple with something like a barcode scanner or an AI powered tool that we offer that allows you to pull up millions of food from the databases that are offered by the US Institutes of Health and the USDA. So it makes it a lot easier once you understand what foods won't make you feel bad as you're losing weight and will allow you to continue to have energy so that it's sustainable. You understand what kinds of exercises are, easy to implement into trucking and with the limited time you have. And then it becomes sustainable and assurable when you have the tools that help you make the situation about math.

Todd Dills: Calories coming in, calories going out.

Garrett Steenblik: Yeah. And it becomes so much easier too when a doctor is working with you to get you on a medical weight loss program in conjunction with all of these things. And that's what we're offering is the same medications, the same active ingredients as Ozempic, as Wagoi, as Mujaro.

Todd Dills: Those medications. Were you, was that part of your weight loss or. It sounded more like, your weight loss, started anyway simply as diet and exercise. Did you also benefit from the, from the medications?

Garrett Steenblik: I did benefit from the medications. I wouldn't be comfortable with recommending to prescribe them to anyone unless I had. When I lost the weight, I had to undergo loose skin surgery. And it was a really big operation and I needed to eat a whole lot of food while constantly laying down because it's an abdominallasty, right. They're going to cut your stomach open, they're going to take off a bunch of skin. And so I had to recover and I gained 30 pounds during several months of laying down and making sure my body had enough nutrients. So after I d got to the weight that I wanted to naturally, I took the weight loss medication to lose the weight that I had gained from recovering from the surgery. And I had a really positive experience. It was very good for my mental health. And the weight came off very Easily and I've transitioned off the medication. What's really exciting about these medications is that they help people who are struggling with losing weight. I'll give an example such as my wife, who may drive at night and dieting, keto, intermittent fasting. These things may be something they really struggle with and they might not get results from because their hormones are working against them.

So in the case of my wife, she's lost 30 pounds in a period of about a month and a half taking these medications as a night driver, which is incredibly challenging. She finds it very difficult to throw in a significant amount of physical activity to help her lose weight. And what these medications do for the people who take them, as they enable them to not experience a sense of urgency towards their hunger, it turns off the receptors that control cravings so that people feel fuller, more easily. They don't feel this nagging sense that they have to constantly eat. That helps regulate their blood sugar. And ultimately this leads to them being able to more, more easily stay in a caloric deficit and be in a position where their body is also less inflamed.

And if you think about the body, you don't want to get too deep in the weeds. But as an integrated system, there's many different factors that control who we are, what we do and how we think, and ultimately how we act. So if you for a long time focus on eating very unhealthy foods, it can be very difficult to make a sustainable switch because your body develops a gut bacteria biome, that is focused around continuing to feed itself with the foods that you've already been eating. And so it's steering the ship to some degree. And it can make a challenge like overcoming your own cravings, overcoming the demands of truck driving significantly more difficult without the aid of a medication such as GLP1 medications.

Todd Dills: That's the acronym for the class of meds that makes up those brand names Steenblik mentioned earlier. Ozempic and the like. Truckers taking up the weight loss programs get medical evaluation as to the feasibility of including them in the program and if so, ongoing oversight and consultation with physicians in the medical doctor network Steenblik laid out. At once, he added...

Garrett Steenblik: Yeah, it's no magic pill, right? Yeah, there is no magic pill.

Todd Dills: But this age for sure, it sounds like in terms of that making the change, faster than you might otherwise.

Garrett Steenblik: One of the things that I'm really passionate about that we're doing at Trucker's Body Shop is that we're really focused on ensuring that healthcare meets truckers where they're at on their own time because we're moving targets. Even myself as an owner operator who gets to set my schedule, I really struggle with being able to see a doctor on the road. I struggle with being able to get into a clinic to be able to get prescription medication. So something as small as a UTI, for example, can take a week, week and have two weeks to properly address because I'm having to balance my working schedule when I'm stopped, whether I'm on a load, where I'm going, will I have celf service and there's a lot of moving parts to it. And I feel like me and a lot of other owner operators feel that their health has to take a back seat to work and to the lifestyle. And by the time usually we're off the road, we want to be a family. You know, we don't want to really focus on trying to match our home time around with meeting up with a doctor. So we designed trucker's body shot to be able to provide access to a physician to help them with specific conditions and for them to be able to get that medication delivered to them on the schedule that works for them so they don't have to compromise visiting with their family or doing what they need to do.

Todd Dills: So we're talking telehealth appointments and scheduled deliveries at various locations, wherever you might need them to be and for prescriptions and the like.

Garrett Steenblik: When I got into the trucking industry, I encountered a whole lot of deceptive practices. And I decided that as I was going to found my business, what I wanted to do was leave the B's out of everything and include transparent upfront pricing. And I also wanted it to be fair. And what I found is I started this business inside of the telehealth space. There's a lot of costs that is offset to the end user. In this case it would be the driver. Through social media marketing, it can cost a company like mine anywhere from 500ars to $1,000 per person to find a patient. And I didn't want to have to offset that onto the drivers who joined our program. So I designed a model that was specifically made to cover the cost of paying the doctors a fair wage, cover the cost of manufacturing the medications that they could be prescribed, and to cover a small margin that is enough for us to grow the company and add on more helpful services to truck drivers.

It's cash based and the way the model works is our biggest focus. Is on enrolling people and the weight loss program in order to help tackle the obesity epidemic inside of trucking. Because of that, that one is a membership model. It comes with access to a lot of resources. It comes with access to an app and tools and a, roadmap to being able to navigate the difficulties of being over the road and weight loss. Medications delivered with a personal plan with unlimited access to a doctor, all on your schedule, all on demand. You don't have to do a video appointment unless your state requires you to.

And that's subject to state by state regulations. But with all that being said, you also get access to discounts for our other medical therapies, such as help with quitting smoking, such as sexual wellness, such as getting help with hair loss, all through prescription medication. Now the other therapies, oh, I should mention you can cancel your membership at any time. The only way we cannot reimburse you is if you have paid and you, have scheduled your medications, whether it's a one month or three month to be sent. If they are out and sent at that time, we're just not legally allowed to recom compensate you for that. There's regulations against it. When it comes down to the other programs, they are month by month or three month intervals. I believe some of them go up to six months in certain therapies. However, they are not memberships. We designed the membership model because it also allows us to be able to include a referral program. That way truckers who want to save money on their medication can refer their friends and family to engage with our program to also take control of their health and receive a, discount on the cost of their medication.

I believe it's $50 for every person that you refer. You save them $50 and there's an, you can refer an unlimited number of people. That's the pricing structure. And we've designed it to be as grassroots as possible because we believe that the proof of who we help and how we help them is going to do the talking for us. When I first started exploring how to build this, I didn't have a clue what I was doing. And I was also working 10 to 14 hour days. So starting at square one, I initially tried to recruit a bunch of individual doctors and quickly realized that that really wasn't going to do the trick. And then I needed to find another way around this. And I spoke with many different large, established and credentialed doctor networks to make sure that the one that we picked would be the right fit for truck drivers. And I found not many of them were, but we settled on one in the end. That's very astute. We did find one Dr. Network in particular that not only had a good understanding of the lifestyle of truck drivers, but they worked with a number of organizations in the past. Third parties and trucking companies.

Todd Dills: But they're basically like, they underlie  all the telehealth appointments, that folks will set up through the program and prescription writing, et cetera, et cetera.

Garrett Steenblik: Trucker's body shop sits in the middle of all of the experts. And we're able to provide our tools and our resources and our experience in order to be able to make sure that established incredible companies and pharmacies and medical manufacturers are able to provide the services necessary to meet the needs of our people. And we are able to aid in the scheduling process as well with our support team so that we're able to deliver on our promises. If somebody joins, the medical weight loss program, they get unlimited access to their doctor and it covers all of those medical appointments. There's no hidden fees. The only thing that may happen for a driver is if they meet with their doctor and their doctor. It's uncommon. But if their doctor decides that if they want to move forward with prescribing a certain medication, they may want lab testing and that can be sent to the driver on their time or for an order that they can fulfill with. But the labs are an extra cost and we keep them at cost.

Todd Dills: Drivers that do have insurance wouldn't really apply to this, I guess.

Garrett Steenblik: I'll tell you what. As an owner operator, I have found that insurance is a nightmare in many scenarios. I don't feel that the insurance and healthcare system has our best interest at heart. Give you a good example. I, might get angry talking about this. I don't feel like it has our best interest at heart. Because I spent $20,000 on an MRI because I had a contractor insurance policy that was offered to me by a group telling me that it would be great for truck drivers, especially small business owners like me, and that what would happen is it would function like a PPO and I could get coverage in network wherever I was. And I followed their in network provisions. I showed up at a hospital and an MRI that I could have paid 2,000ars to $3,000 for out of pocket cost me $20,000. Because once a hospital or medical provider understands that you have insurance, they get to set their own prices, right? And that I think is highly amorting. And I don't want anything to do with it. And I don't want there to be a situation where a driver has unexpectedly high fees or we have to try and convince an insurance company as to why this driver deserves care when we can just keep this as cheap and as effective as possible.

Todd Dills: To that end, Trucker's Body Shop introed a new kit just this month that regular readers may have caught in the Overdrive Gear section a couple of weeks back. When Steenblik and I talked just prior to its release, he described it this way.

Garrett Steenblik: We have a really exciting, new part of our offerings that we're working on right now in the same vein for the same reason I've seen drivers have small issues like UTIs just go completely out of control and then they turn into kidney infection, a kidney infection turn d sepsis. It just puts him out of commission and then it becomes a massive hospital bill that they struggle to recover from while dealing with the consequences of that health at the same time. And we're putting together an offering that will come out soon that allows us to make it so that drivers don't have to deal with downtime. They can get essential medications field guide delivered to them, but they can keep in their truck that, empowers them to be able to keep small problems from becoming big problems that just take them down. And they'll also have unlimited access to a doctor to help navigate whatever situation.

Todd Dills: They find them in the kit called Medi Ready. And as a benefit of the Truckers Body Shop membership, you can read about via a link I'll post in the show notes for this podcast, heres a big thanks to Garrett Steenblik for his story and again find more about the company at truckersbodshop.com. heres a big thanks for listening.