It’s us, The Slaugh’s aka Turn and Burn livestock transportation

I’m Brandie, and I’ve been married to Trent for ten years. He’s a truck driver in the oilfield, rigging up and down then hauling oil rigs from one location to another. Ive worked as pilot car driver, a cashier at a convenience store, but most of our marriage ive been a house wife. Together we have 6 grown children, 4 beautiful granddaughters, 2 dogs, a goat and a couple of horses.

Brandie 47, married to Trent

Trent 47, my handsome, hard working husband. 

 Trent has spent 26 years working in the oilfield always providing very well for his family. In 2019 the oilfield essentially went away. Oil prices dropped, rigs stacked out, and work came to a halt. Luckily there’s been just enough work between us to keep us paying the bills, but things have been spread thin. In the beginning of 2020 we began to talk about how to bounce back from knowing nothing other than the oilfield to provide for our family. We had heard there is money to be made in transporting animals for people, and talked about it incessantly for months. Finally we decided we had to give it all we had, and Trent dove in head first while I continued to work at the convenience store. Right off the bat, the livestock hauling was a hit. He spent the majority of his time on the road hauling horses for people who had purchased them from another state. Needless to say, we had to be apart more than we wanted to be. He tried to make it back home atleast once a week or so, sometimes he’d get home late at night just to leave early the following morning. 

We talked a lot about how nice it would be to have me join him, but it made more sense to maintain my employment just in case. I started thinking that if I could go with him, he wouldn’t have to try and make it back home to spend just few hours together. Maybe that would make his time more profitable. He could take more loads, and I could learn to help him making it easier on him to be on the road for long periods of time. We talked several time on the subject, and agreed that it made sense. I put my notice in and set a date for me to join him. We decided on October 21st, 2020. We left early that morning for my first ever livestock transportation job.

Trent and I, our first day working together over the road. October 21,2020

 By the end of that day I was a proficient driver of a Dodge 5500 super duty flatbed, pulling a 28ft Cimmaron stock trailer loaded with cows. My lesson was driving through the Portland rush hour traffic.