Joe Samaan

Jeremy Perkins 0:23
This is Bucket Talk, a monthly podcast taking you across America. Meet the most badass trades people, industry leaders and personalities. If you're looking to level up in the trades, you're in the right place.

Joe Samaan 2:12
he bought a gas and I started working for him. So I should be, he should be on the podcast, yeah, because it looks like it got softer over time.

Joe Samaan 2:22
He could go all day.

Jeremy Perkins 2:24
He used to have to walk out there. You just get to sit behind the desk. Oh,

Joe Samaan 2:31
yeah, yeah. He had changed their oil.

Mr Samaan 2:33
When we was pumping gas, it was you have to pull the the license plate to fill up gas. There were no such a thing on the side. Oh, okay, that's how far I remember you, yeah, but license plate down to pump the game,

Jeremy Perkins 2:47
yeah, yeah. Oh, wow.

Jeremy Perkins 2:48
Fuel runs through your blood. Yeah? One gallon at a time. One gallon at a time, son. But yeah,

Jeremy Perkins 2:55
so you had a unique opportunity of, you know, obviously your dad's own gas stations. You've worked at them. But how'd this opportunity come about playing poker?

Joe Samaan 3:06
So I was in, I'm in another business. I wanted to come back to the gas station business. Like you said, he's been doing his whole life. I got into the business. Is actually how I started doing my content. So I people always go, why are you still work at the gas station? Was like, that's where I do my content, and that's where I got started. Yeah, you know what I mean. So I got started in the gas station. I wanted to come back. I talked to a guy. And gas stations are really hard to come by. Right now, the market is just saturated, so the competitions got harder to buy them. And, you know, we've been here for 40 years, so a lot of people started becoming doctors or getting in, becoming engineers. And yeah, they gas station business wasn't, you know, enough for them. Yeah, you know, I have a lot of cousins. You know, they started in it. And now don't even think about they would never run against, right, right? 20. I've been in it since I was like 14, working in it, and I'm sorry I got off track. We're playing cards. I told him, Look for a store. I'm sorry. Told him, Look for a store. He told me about this one. We went looked at it. The owner of the building, he agreed to lease it to us, and we just did our due diligence, did all of our work, because in any business you buy, you need to make sure what you're getting into. Yeah, you do it.

Jeremy Perkins 4:15
So you bought a pretty much, you know, the gas station had been closed for three years. But Doc coddle, is that? Yeah. So doc

Joe Samaan 4:24
Cottle, he owned it for 30 years. Wow. He had some health issues. Got older and he couldn't run it no

Jeremy Perkins 4:29
longer, right? So, so you had to go through the entire building, roof, siding, flooring, cabinets,

Joe Samaan 4:36
yeah, everything is fully done. Yeah, completely done. The only thing we didn't do is the tanks and the pumps. Yeah, pumps, we might do, well, we're still only a month into the store, so we'll see how much volume we're doing, but we want to make the investment, make sure it's the right

Jeremy Perkins 4:50
investment for us. Yeah. And we were talking about how, you know, basically, tank replacement is a big endeavor, which you didn't have to do, but it's

Joe Samaan 4:58
very expensive and it's a lot of. Or, yeah, you know, you have to build a, you have to dig a almost 20 foot deep hole, you know. And tanks come in different sizes. They used to come just, you used to get them separate. And they used to be stainless steel, yeah. Now they're fiberglass, double walled, yeah. And you can get one tank, 20,000 gallons with certain compartments in it, like, you know, like 3000 diesel, 6000 unleaded, just depending on what kind of store you have and what you sell more of is you could customize the tank the way you want

Jeremy Perkins 5:23
it. Yeah. Now I was, I was looking at your fuel selection, so you have kerosene on road, diesel and, you know, obviously regular, mid grade and super premium or premium? Is there a difference between super premium and premium? Or is that just

Joe Samaan 5:39
branding? That's, that's, that's just branding, right

Joe Samaan 5:43
soup, yeah, the octane, okay,

Mr Samaan 5:45
now that the plus. What happened? You don't have a tank. You don't have a tank for the plus, the plus mixture of super unleaded and regular think like 70, either 6040 you know, 470, 30. So the when, when you push the button on the on the plus, yeah. So you can mixture of regular unleaded and super they meet, and then you comes to interesting,

Joe Samaan 6:12
yeah, a lot of people for that, ah,

Joe Samaan 6:15
a lot of people think it's just a separate, it's just a black, it's just a blend.

Mr Samaan 6:19
Exactly, they blend, they somehow they meet and they they go together. That's cool. That's cool. A lot of people don't know

Jeremy Perkins 6:27
that. Yeah, yeah. Well, why? Why kerosene? Do you got a lot of

Joe Samaan 6:33
kerosene in especially smaller towns, is used to heat homes and whatnot. I would like to switch it to an off road diesel, because there's more farmers here, yeah, and they'd use it for their tractor equipment. Yeah, off road diesel is red dye diesel, yeah, and can only be used on farm equipment, you know, because it's not tax,

Jeremy Perkins 6:53
yeah, you know, yeah, it's like, it's the same with boats and gas, like there's a different price for gas at marinas. And wildly enough, it's usually higher. It's higher.

Joe Samaan 7:01
I think it's, I think it's just higher because they just choose to, doesn't a boat just take

Jeremy Perkins 7:08
regular gas, yeah, unless it's, unless it's a diesel, and then it can use off road, I guess. Yeah, that makes sense, which is actually pretty interesting, because prior to this call, you were, or prior to the podcast, you were on a call about, you know, whatever company,

Joe Samaan 7:26
the gas company, called me, and they, I'm guessing, on their end, had a truck close to here, and maybe a store didn't pump fit all the gas in their tank, and they had 3000 gallons left over. Yeah, if usually you don't want to order 3000 gallons, because the tanker holds 8000 gallons. And if you don't order a full 8000 gallons, you're gonna get charged more. It's called a full freight. Yeah, you're gonna get like, three pennies more on the on the is

Jeremy Perkins 7:53
this a usual thing? Do you constantly wheel in and deal

Joe Samaan 7:56
in, or not? Usually? Maybe it just happened that was actually, I haven't had that happen this month, they they probably in a tough spot. They don't want to bring the it's not, it's not feasible for them to bring the gas back to the right plant. So if they can get rid of it, it work out for both of us, actually, because I got 3000 gallons, I didn't have to buy 8000 gallons at full

Jeremy Perkins 8:14
freight. It's kind of funny in the trades, you actually see that a lot. You see that with like paving and asphalt companies. You see that with like millings or what have you that you know, people sometimes discount a the time of the operator and be the fuel costs and the housing costs. So sometimes getting rid of these products, whether it's asphalt or whatever, at a discount, actually saves that money. Oh, yeah. So it's always good to be tied in and and willing to so it helped you out, but it also helped him

Joe Samaan 8:47
out. Yeah, yeah. I didn't have to invest as much money on 8000 gallons in get charged more by getting a three Right, right? And it was a good he told me the price, there's a good price,

Jeremy Perkins 8:58
good stuff. So let's start at the pumps you have, you know, we walk through the whole the whole gas side, and you know the mixtures, and you know the different stuff you need to do. But you constantly have weights and measures out here to Weights

Joe Samaan 9:15
and Measures comes once a year. They just make sure that you're not, you know, screwing the customer. And sometimes you're not screwing the customer. Sometimes there's just issues with the with the pump. That's why they come out, just to ensure that the customer is getting a full, you know, full gallon. Yeah, they're checking for and sometimes your pump actually might be dispensing more, yeah, more gas. But if it's dispensing more, they don't say anything, Yeah, you're good to

Jeremy Perkins 9:38
go. So I'm gonna spoiler alert, I'm gonna debunk a myth, and then I'm gonna tell you the myth now, but it was interesting, like growing up, people had always told me not to fill up while there's a tanker in the in the lot, because it stirs up the sediment or what have you. But you've reassured me that there's a non. Number of, basically, filters and what have you that it would never reach your gas tank. But

Speaker 3 10:07
another thing I didn't mention, also, when he's dropping gas in there, yeah, that tank keeps a minimum of 200 gallons left in the tank. Okay, at all times, really. And if you wanted it out, they would have to come pump it out. Okay? So if I have, if I have 300 gallons in the in the ground, yeah, we call it in the ground because it's in the ground. And I don't have 300 gallons to sell, only have 100 left to sell.

Jeremy Perkins 10:30
So your pickup tube doesn't it, it doesn't go all the way down. It leaves a 200 leaves 200 gallons. What's the reason for

Joe Samaan 10:38
it's a sensory machine, and I think it's, it's also a, it's just a, it's an environmental thing. Okay, why do they leave 200 gallons in the tank? Dad, that's all the pumpkin. Reach. All the pumpkin reach

Mr Samaan 10:49
doesn't go all the way down. It doesn't go all the way down and pick up. Oh, yeah. Okay. So water goes down. Every tank got a water moving the water?

Jeremy Perkins 11:00
Yeah, so you have an apartment above here? Yeah. You ever thinking of renting it

Joe Samaan 11:08
out? Or is that just for you? Right now, we only have one employee, and me and my dad are working. So I slept here last night. I came at 10 o'clock. I worked till nine. I slept here and I opened at five. Well, I opened at six, but I got up here and made breakfast and stuff at five. So right now, I'm gonna just stay up there. I don't know if I'm gonna rent it, because I don't know if I want anybody upstairs. Yeah, while there's this operational store, I'd have to do some security measuring, you know, I want someone to come make a bologna sandwich, you know, grab them a pop. Well,

Jeremy Perkins 11:33
they can't, because they need to have a food handler. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Put

Joe Samaan 11:38
it on my charge account. They leave me a note

Jeremy Perkins 11:40
that's crazy, like again, though these walk and talks are just so enlightening. That was producer Mac's idea. But what's interesting is the amount of regulation that you go through when it comes to food, food handling, not tobacco in the state of Kentucky, but everything else, everything else, from fuel to fire suppression to weights and measures to you name it. There's, you got to be, there's a permit for everything. Money, money, money, baby. That's crazy. Everything's about, it's kind of where it all kind of swirls together. Is at a gas station, yeah?

Joe Samaan 12:15
Because you're, you're selling so many different things, just like our old gas station was a full blown restaurant, yeah? So you think about it, you're selling gas full blown restaurant. You have more employees because of the restaurant. So there's different food and licenses, just so much more it goes into it. Yeah? It's quite kind of like this store. It's kind of a smaller store, and it's just, it's just, it's not as big of a headache to run. Yeah, you know what? I mean,

Jeremy Perkins 12:36
what is the least amount of money somebody has put on a gas purchase.

Joe Samaan 12:42
I think someone put gave me 25

Joe Samaan 12:47
cents, really, yeah, and I took that damn 25 cents. Yeah, 25 cents. We used to always say they used to get what the pump number was. So if you're on pump one, you get $1 these guys, this is how they pump, yeah, to let me get 25 cents on that they were, that's why I got the five on the diesel. I didn't. I didn't just, just make that up. A guy coming here, and he said, let me get five on the diesel. You getting in a truck? Yeah? Truck, five in the diesel. I said, Brother, you got problems. Then he got a $20 scratcher. I priority? Well, you went on to scratch, or you have a chance to get about 100 bucks in diesel. Maybe he's thinking, maybe, maybe we're

Jeremy Perkins 13:30
wrong. So what's, uh, what's your number one seller for tradesmen in here? Is it monsters,

Joe Samaan 13:35
energy drinks, chew and warmer food, usually not two beef turkeys. Yeah, anything really, I would say I'm serving the blue collar community. Yeah, I'm serving them in here,

Jeremy Perkins 13:48
which is, which is actually a huge point. So you were, you obviously went through the pandemic. Everybody remembers that, but you were deemed essential trade workers were to see were deemed essential, and you were basically hustling and bustling, supporting them. Oh yeah, throughout the training

Joe Samaan 14:04
worker and yeah, we, we actually kind of got a little bit busier. Yeah, you know, because you're the only store

Jeremy Perkins 14:11
open, he's like, bring it back. Yeah? Bring me back.

Joe Samaan 14:15
We had a drive through too, so we made it even at our old store. Yeah, no,

Jeremy Perkins 14:20
so that's cool. Well, COVID wasn't cool, but you know, there were

Joe Samaan 14:29
lovely, like you said, man serving like, I would honestly say, like, 80% of gas station customers are usually blue collar workers, trade workers, and they're the best people to deal with honestly. I love them. They they're not picky, yep, you know, yeah, they don't, they don't. They don't bother me. They want to get their stuff. They want to get out. You can bull with them, you know, bust their balls a little bit. So

Jeremy Perkins 14:51
you must be in a safe community because your bathroom is unlocked in public. Yeah? That is narrowing.

Joe Samaan 14:56
That's a city thing, man, yeah, that's a city thing. You can they always got the key on something random, like a broom, a wrench,

Joe Samaan 15:11
really, yeah,

Joe Samaan 15:18
oh, really, Josh, use the bathroom.

Jeremy Perkins 15:21
Actually, I liked it up in Maine. Lot of the rural gas stations, they just put a porta John outside. Oh, really, yeah, so that makes sense. You can go blow it up, throw cigarettes in it, whatever. You know, employees got their own bathroom, which is inside, and I'll

Joe Samaan 15:35
go upstairs, take a dog. I'll tear that song.

Jeremy Perkins 15:41
I'm sure you've had some messes in there. Gas stations are a little, like, notorious to have, like you're coming in. I don't know how people

Joe Samaan 15:47
sometimes, I feel like people are doing like, handstands while they take a I'm like, how did it happen? How did you get pissed right there? I don't understand. I got pictures. You got to clean it. Yeah, you got to clean it every day. And I guess a gas station bathroom is key to a good operating people, a lot of people stop, especially women, they want to stop where it's notorious at the gas station,

Jeremy Perkins 16:10
yeah, yeah. And that's what you like, I was totally impressed with your outfit. Like, obviously it's newer, but you know, everything is clean and neat, yeah, no dust. Then you're running quite the operation here that, like, you know, I'm sure it didn't take long to get your clientele back up.

Joe Samaan 16:26
And not, not as long as I thought it would, yeah, and we still, we're still gaining it like we were talking earlier, man, we're all creatures of habits. And, you know, you got to get that person the reason to stop with you. And, you know, build that habit again of stopping, you know, passing by and realizing that you're open. Now,

Jeremy Perkins 16:42
I don't think anybody from this area is going to see this, so I'm going to, I'm going to make money for something that I saw while your father was there. This man thought the price of the stokers was a little too high, and was about to leave, and he goes, Ah, I'll do it for 18. You know what? Though we've like. That's that sense of community, that that you know, that lost art of the negotiation or retaining your customer or whatever. I mean, that's key to a business's success. I mean, yes, you eat into your margins a little bit, but then he'll come back and buy something else

Joe Samaan 17:16
you want to have. Volume, volume, volume. Just like location, yeah, if your location is not that good, you sometimes have to eat on some stuff. Yeah, and he's really good about that. Why would you have that guy? He's already in here. Why would you have him go out somewhere else? Go by? Yeah, he's standing here right now. Yeah. Okay, you you might lose $1 on it, or maybe you break even on it, yeah? But he might get diesel. He might come tomorrow in a big truck. No, no, you might get food here. Yeah, and you go make money on that. Yeah? So people are stubborn. There's not a business to be stubborn, yeah, because customer service is you deal with so many customers on a daily basis.

Jeremy Perkins 17:52
So what excited you about this property in general? The fact that, like, the location was good, competition was not around, didn't take much to get it running. Like

Joe Samaan 18:03
I was a little mix of both. We didn't buy the property, so the investment wasn't as high, yeah, and it wasn't as risk, risky as if you put a bunch of money to purchase the property, plus the gas station and the outfit, okay, plus the comp. There's not much competition out here, and it's a when you're in the business for so long, you can kind of just walk, he knows, my dad knows right here. He can look at it and go, it'll work, or it won't work, yeah? Or, let's give it a try. Yeah? It's like a

Jeremy Perkins 18:31
sixth sense, yeah, no. I mean, it's since we've been in here, this place has been, like booming. And I don't know if it was, you know, morning commute or whatever. But all, all kinds of kinds coming in here, buying all different things, and really just kind of getting their day started.

Joe Samaan 18:47
And how many boots Have you counted walking in here? Oh, I don't know, 20. Every foot in here had a boot on it, yeah?

Jeremy Perkins 18:56
Tennis shoes? No, yeah. It's definitely, you know, as we were coming in from, from Lexington, it's nothing but farm

Joe Samaan 19:05
fields, yeah, this is a beautiful area, yeah, it's, it's amazing, like, I look out there sometimes and I just see the the mountain line, yeah,

Jeremy Perkins 19:13
and the tractor trailers that are banded across the Street. Beautiful

Joe Samaan 19:17
excavator in the back.

Jeremy Perkins 19:20
Yeah? John Deere, is

Joe Samaan 19:23
that yours now? No, that's, that's my landlords. You don't get to get in and play a little. I won't get in, but I

Jeremy Perkins 19:28
don't. What do you think the last time that things run? He ran it the other day. No, that's

Joe Samaan 19:32
where I got us all. Like, now, you guys get snow up here. Oh, yeah, we get snow.

Jeremy Perkins 19:35
So who does all your plowing and stuff? Is that

Joe Samaan 19:38
you guys? Well, I haven't figured that out, but he's gonna, he my actually, my landlord mows. Okay? He has a mowing company. So if you mow, usually you do snow plowing. You'd be dumb not to,

Jeremy Perkins 19:48
yeah, you got a lot of salt.

Joe Samaan 19:50
You can have. You can have a year where all you get is snow like this. This year, all we're getting is rain. This is the worst rain can ruin your business. Yeah, it's not the best you. Know what I mean? When it rains, I'm not saying your gas station is going to be slow, but you're not gonna do as much business when it's sunny outside, because you're selling ice, pop, people are mowing, filling up gas, going to the lake. You know what I mean? There's just more people want to get out. No one wants

Jeremy Perkins 20:12
to get out. What's the what's the best day for business? Is it on the weekends? Is it Monday morning?

Joe Samaan 20:17
Friday, Friday. Some stores are really good. Sunday stores, okay, you know. And some stores are just busy all the time. So

Jeremy Perkins 20:26
you stay late? Do you stay open later on Fridays or

Joe Samaan 20:29
that? Doesn't know? I might change my hours. Sundays are actually pretty slow here. A lot of you know, people get out of church. They want to, they eat the lunch and they go home. Monday seems to be a little busier. Yeah. What's

Jeremy Perkins 20:40
your number one selling

Joe Samaan 20:42
sandwich? Bologna, Bologna and cheese. In that specific cons, Bologna with mayonnaise. Everyone gets it. A lot of people get it with just cheese

Mr Samaan 20:50
and mayonnaise, mustard, pickle and onion. You try that?

Joe Samaan 20:56
Okay, oh, it's delicious. I'm gonna

Jeremy Perkins 20:57
have to make yellow some now. Do you do you have Duke's mayo? You just helminth. I

Joe Samaan 21:01
forgot the name of it. It's through my distributor. Dukes is amazing. I like,

Jeremy Perkins 21:05
Dukes is fantastic. I had, I was at a rodeo in North Carolina, and the hot dog vendor was outside, and she's, like, you got to try it this way. It was a hot dog with Duke's mayo on out. Oh, really

Joe Samaan 21:18
in LA, they put mayonnaise on it. I

Jeremy Perkins 21:19
mean, it's basically like fried baloney at that

Joe Samaan 21:22
point. Fried Baloney, that's what they get here, too. Fry baloney. Chubb a bologna, son.

Jeremy Perkins 21:26
So when you started the five on the diesel thing, it came from that, that one particular instance. But a lot of those skits are either based in fact or has kind of happened. What's the funniest interaction you've had with the tradesmen being on the other side of the counter? Well,

Joe Samaan 21:44
I will say this, tradesmen usually have the best one liners. Yeah, you know what? I mean. They just say,

Jeremy Perkins 21:49
That's hilarious. You got to give me a couple of, Oh, give he's

Joe Samaan 21:53
got, usually he's got. Now you got me on the spot. What did one tell me the other day? He come up? Did one guy come up to me and he's like, you hear about that, that that lady that had a boy that was born with a full mustache, and I was like, No, he goes, his mom was tickled to death,

Jeremy Perkins 22:14
and they just come in and fire him out. Yeah,

Joe Samaan 22:16
I saw this one. I'm gonna take it as mine, because if I do some stand up, I want to use this. But I did, I zip my I can say whatever I want, yeah, well, I did zip my zipper. That's pretty bad. Uh,

Jeremy Perkins 22:28
at an old age or as a young age, oh,

Joe Samaan 22:30
last week, yeah, I can't wear this up boots anymore.

Jeremy Perkins 22:41
See that I should, you know, that's why we shouldn't make zip up boots

Jeremy Perkins 22:47
hilarious. Somebody's had to come in and tell you crazy story, crazy story.

Joe Samaan 22:53
In you, when you're in a gas station, it can be every, every day is different. You just see, you know, either the crack heads outside looking for cigarette buds or, you know, but tradesmen tend to be, you know, you know, bust, bust each other's balls a little bit. You know, they love to come in say, boy behind this counter, you got soft hands. You don't know what a hard day work is, and that that's where I get my content inspiration is just dealing with this. And they know, they're just, yeah, you know? I mean, it isn't physically a hard job, but, you know, because they, they truly, they get up and they go to work, yeah, you know what? I mean, that's, that's tough.

Jeremy Perkins 23:29
Well, I mean, also, without you, we wouldn't be able to go through our day. I mean, legitimately,

Joe Samaan 23:35
yeah, we, that's this. That's why we like this business too.

Jeremy Perkins 23:39
We don't have our tobacco products, and soon to have beer.

Joe Samaan 23:42
You ain't got my Zens, nope. Scratch offs. Gotta have scratch offs. Yep. You want to stop somewhere. You know, you asked my dad earlier, what made you get in this business is that a monkey

Joe Samaan 23:53
can do it. He did listen. My dad a monkey

Jeremy Perkins 23:55
could do it. Yet he's negotiating.

Joe Samaan 23:58
He's downgrades everything a little bit.

Jeremy Perkins 24:01
Yeah, no. And so then you moved on. You also do comedy on the side

Joe Samaan 24:05
that do comedy, jack of all trades, master of none. Yeah, I have the time. My real goal is to, is to operate this, get it nice operating. And then I actually do want to get into stand up, get me a nice set, and then go on the road. Yeah, eventually,

Jeremy Perkins 24:20
so is your your most of your content, is it trades related? Or what do you do for? Like, yeah, so that's

Joe Samaan 24:28
actually funny. So I mixed in a lot of Middle Eastern and I'm mixing working at the gas station jokes, like I just told you, yeah, but then, you know, Sean Latham, right? Yeah, I believe so, the $20 chef, Oh, yeah. So I opened for him a few times. He's a great comedian, yeah? One day I bombed really bad. He just said, What are you doing, man, just go out there and be yourself and act like, you know, we know what people know you for. I went out there, started doing my act almost like I was doing my content on the stage. Yeah, killed, you know, so people like that, and I don't know what I was even trying to switch it up for. Maybe I was. Just trying to be like, Oh, it's not real. Stand up, if you're not doing joke, punch, blind joke, punch, yeah, but yeah, it's a new day and age of stand up. Be honest with you, stand up comedians are different. You know, a lot of stand up comedians now, you know, we're

Joe Samaan 25:11
content creators, and you know people hate that, but some people just run around on the ground, yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot

Joe Samaan 25:18
of everything's crowd work now, but I me, personally, I love crowd

Jeremy Perkins 25:21
work. I've been watching this guy. He's actually over in the UK, Paul's The Joker past the time. I can't understand him because he's got such a thick English accent, but that's all he does is pick people out of the crowd. And it's the funniest

Joe Samaan 25:33
thing. I think it's the most I saw a guy getting mad because he said comedians, all they do is crowd work. And I was like, that's what people

Jeremy Perkins 25:40
like them. Don't sit in the front row.

Joe Samaan 25:41
Yeah. Plus, whenever you post your stand up online, you don't want to post your material. You want people to come see you. You don't want to put all your material out there. So you post crowd work, yeah? So it makes sense. I like to get a stand up with just blue collar workers in the crowd. That would be a rowdy, that'd be a rowdy, and I wouldn't have to ever worry about what I say, because I don't give it. That would be so cool.

Jeremy Perkins 26:01
Not only would it, not only would it be sick, but it'd probably be the biggest brawl, and they'd probably run out of alcohol. So Moorhead, right? Morehead, Kentucky, this place is absolutely rooted in blue collar for you is that being like a pillar of the community, like a sense of community that's important to you, right?

Joe Samaan 26:21
Very important in small towns, community is number one, yeah, now, always number one in small town, man, I mean, that's all that, you know, that's, that's where you actually, some people take for granted, because that that strong community base, is actually a blessing. It's really nice to have, because they'll give you the shirt off their back

Jeremy Perkins 26:38
for you. And you guys got a paper mill up the street, or a lumber mill. It's

Joe Samaan 26:41
a, it's called a, what is it called? I've been set stave mill. A stave

Jeremy Perkins 26:45
mill. Do you know what a stave mill

Joe Samaan 26:46
is? Yeah, you know, like, are you build the barrels for the whiskey? Yeah, it's not the, not the top part, I guess I call it a stave, the wooden parts on the side. Oh,

Jeremy Perkins 26:55
like the little slats that they band together, yeah. Oh, interesting. Yeah.

Joe Samaan 26:58
He has like, four or five of them. He has that. He has all around. He has them in different countries. How close is the Bourbon Trail to here? Bourbons in Frankfurt. So it's kind of okay. That's also when you were talking about whenever doing our due diligence, you know, you want to look at somewhere where factories are, yeah? So they have 40 to 60 people working, yeah, it's not a ton, but it's something, you know, you're gonna get some traffic. Yeah, you got loggers coming through. Their employees are gonna come eat, you know what? I mean, yeah, and get them in there. So that's some things you look at when you want to open a gas station. Yeah,

Jeremy Perkins 27:27
that's crazy outside. What's the number one crop or agriculture out of here is it got past the sheep farm, for

Joe Samaan 27:36
sure, it's tobacco. Really. Tobacco is the number one crop here, yeah, really, right, tobacco. It was, you know, we have tobacco in the bourbon industry, yeah. And then horse racing. You get that.

Jeremy Perkins 27:48
Horse racing, yeah, yeah. Three good things, three, three of the best alcohol, tobacco and horse racing. That's, yeah, I did. I went. I went with my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time. We had a friend that lived in Ohio, so we went to her house and then drove down. So we drove through Kentucky. I don't know if you were old enough to know big butter Jesus. You ever heard of that? No. So there's this big church, like one of the mega churches, but there was this massive statue of Jesus that came out of the water. Oh, really. And it looked like it was made out of butter. And

Joe Samaan 28:28
so when I saw like, Texas Roadhouse you

Joe Samaan 28:33
just described, but it

Jeremy Perkins 28:37
was, it was funny, she pointed it out to us. I didn't put any stock into it, but I guess it got struck by lightning either the next year or the year after, and this whole big butter Jesus just burnt down. But not to get sidetracked, we drove, you know, through Kentucky and ended up at Louisville. Yeah, not Louisville, or everyone Louisville.

Joe Samaan 28:59
I just say Lou. Yeah, I just said Louisville. Louisville, they claim is a, not Kentucky, okay, yeah, I, I'm not A, not the biggest

Jeremy Perkins 29:07
why don't they claim

Joe Samaan 29:08
it's, I'm a UK boy, okay? Because they think it's just, you know, they just want to be complicated. So we

Jeremy Perkins 29:13
got tickets. Now, I've never done it, yeah, I got a stack of mint julep cups because I've been going through them all. And we're like, where are our tickets? So our we got tickets to the infield. Now it had been raining all day. It's just mud everywhere. Once we got into the infield, is this giant party. And we realized you can't see any any horse races in the middle of the infield. Now you can bet on them all day. Yeah, of course. But so we got guys running across the port of Johns. We got dudes flying down these mud slides and stuff. It was my Derby experience is not what you see on TV. I think I might have saw an ass of a horse on the last race and bet once, but left there with a stack of mint julep cups.

Joe Samaan 30:00
Did you have a good time? As I think I remember, that's a good time. Better not to remember something, but the doubt, I mean, it's, it's this past Derby was super rainy, and, yeah, just got a lot of rain

Jeremy Perkins 30:10
here, yeah, yeah, that's the start of the Triple Crown, right? That, yeah. So it's that then Churchill, and then

Joe Samaan 30:17
the oaks, okay? The Oaks, the Derby, and then they have Preakness. I think it's the Preakness. Yeah, yeah. You know what? You'd actually be surprised about. Kentucky. There's like a shit ton of famous people from here. No way, so many like you. I would famous, famous. I'm just dick talker Mac on your phone. Get on your phone while we're talking.

Jeremy Perkins 30:37
Yeah. Come on now and

Joe Samaan 30:39
look up uh, famous people from Kentucky.

Jeremy Perkins 30:42
I think five on the diesel comes out first. Who five on the

Joe Samaan 30:45
diesel? But there's a lot of people. But, uh, name off

Mac 30:47
a couple. Johnny Depp, Jennifer Lawrence, George Clooney, Josh Hutcherson, Billy Ray, Cyrus, Abe Lincoln.

Jeremy Perkins 30:57
Abe Lincoln's from Kentucky. Yeah, yeah.

Joe Samaan 30:59
I knew him back in day. Actually, he's

Joe Samaan 31:00
good enough. Y'all.

Joe Samaan 31:04
See that little boy that knows everything about a tractor, what? No on Tick, tock. You know little kid, yeah, in the comment sections like, let he let me borrow a heating transformer.

Jeremy Perkins 31:17
That's table. Since that kid is, that kid is something else. See, that's actually impressive. See that the knowledge he has old tractors is just wild. It's wild. Dude, yeah, we gotta get him on the podcast.

Joe Samaan 31:28
Dude, that kid, he reminds me of the yoru kid in Walmart. That kid owns a subway now, really, I think that's what he did with all you know, God bless America. So

Jeremy Perkins 31:39
let's get back on track. Yeah, all right, we had so obviously you had you hit the Tiktok, boom, right, and what have you. But like, what made you get started into

Joe Samaan 31:52
it? I always wanted just to be funny. I always liked making people laugh. I tried Facebook, tried vine, tried every social media to try to go viral on. And the best coffee in town by the gas station, coffee the best, and it's free with a fill up. Oh no, I'm just kidding. It's not, don't come here and try to pick up. But yeah, I just, I tried everything. Wanted to, wanted to act a little bit, you know what I mean. So I just started recording on my phone. And I want to be that average guy that got a bunch of Tiktok followers, and it happened around COVID. I guess it didn't happen. I got I went viral on my first video before COVID, okay? And then after COVID, I just kept growing with it, man, be honest with you, it's like a you get such a dopamine whenever. I can't even express how I felt when that first I got like 8 million views on a video, how my phone I just kept looking at throw my notifications on. Yeah? It's such an awesome feeling just

Jeremy Perkins 32:48
going your body. Man, from notifications when your phone dies. A bunch of guys,

Jeremy Perkins 32:55
yeah, tell me.

Joe Samaan 32:59
Told you about that zipper, right? It wasn't mine. No, it's cool. It is. It's a cool feeling, yeah? And then I just, I just ran with it, be honest with you, yeah, I still got to work, you know, still get to work in my gas station, work with my dad. So it's actually a blessing, but I stayed consistent with it was probably the main key, actually,

Jeremy Perkins 33:19
that that brings up a good point. You know, as I've done interviews in the past, we, you know, we talked to the Stanley family, American pavement specialists and a few others. The list goes on and on. But like, what are some of the trials? So you work with your brother, just my brother and my dad, you'll be your brother and your dad. But like, you know, when I asked the Stanley family, I was like, how y'all get along? And they're like, good. Are there any times that you guys don't get along? Or is it just always been

Joe Samaan 33:46
hell yeah, yeah. No, we do sometimes we don't get along. You got to have a good story. Me and my brother almost took out the whole the whole Hershey section,

Joe Samaan 33:57
arguing over where to put the damn honey buns. He ripped his beard out because they were arguing over politics one time, my dad. But all in all, we get along very well. People are like, oh, you can't. I was just thinking about this other day too. You can't partner with family. You can't, you can't do this. We are very tight knit family, like I can truly with everything. I say, can trust my brother, yeah, trust my dad with everything they can do it the same with me, like, you know, that's just how we operate. And it's, that's a really, really big blessing to be able to do that. Well,

Jeremy Perkins 34:28
it's kind of, it's kind of an interesting take, too, because, you know, in the world where, you know, blue collar work and labor is at a shortage, you know, my father had said to me at one point, like, hey, I'll help you guys out on the farm, which he does, my kids get involved and whatnot, and you basically have a built in workforce that you trust. You know, I know there's families out there that you know have their trials and tribulations, but for the most part, you're, you're either like minded and, you know, obviously your father and your grandfather kind of brought you, brought you into this industry. That you know nothing else, right? You know it their way. You don't know it another way, of course. So there's no teaching you. You've already been taught Exactly. So the way he does it is the way you're gonna do it. Yeah, when he's not here, he knows that you're gonna do it his way, exactly. So that, I mean, that there's a lot of stock in that, and the fact that, like family owned and operated businesses, when they when they jive, well, our powerhouse, of

Joe Samaan 35:22
course, yeah. And, you know, people like to come in and see a family working too. I mean, it's more meaningful to some people. And he taught me so much like I didn't go to college, right? Yeah. And, but I can go open, operate a business,

Jeremy Perkins 35:36
you know, COVID, you go to college,

Joe Samaan 35:39
I believe it or not. I mean, he owned a gas station, and I enjoyed working there, and I hated school, yeah, the only college I did was I did air conditioning school for a semester. Really, I have a hair handler's license, yeah? What made you get an HVAC that money? They said the money is really good in it. And then, honestly, I didn't have the time. Yeah, I did a whole semester though, I passed. I got EPA license, OSHA certification, yeah, go to the field. So I technically did a little bit blue color.

Jeremy Perkins 36:11
I got the certification. Yeah, I'm

Joe Samaan 36:12
not gonna lie, they do make a lot of money, and I'm a business man, in a sense. So I, if I would wanted to do air conditioning, I would want to, I would want to own my company at one point, which obviously you can't own one right away. Yeah, learn, yeah. But, uh, that, that one's always been my favorite, because in the gas station you have refrigerators, and that's with air conditioning refrigerant. It's all the same feel. You got walk in coolers. You got your units outside. I mean, that stuff breaks down so much, yeah? Because one thing, cooler doors open constantly. Yeah, that was our biggest headache ever. It was a damn walking cooler trying to fix the compressor go out or something. Well, yeah, it's the worst, man, it's the worst

Jeremy Perkins 36:55
I could imagine. What the energy costs are on a business like this. Oh, bro, the

Joe Samaan 36:59
the electric bills are nuts. Yeah, the electric bills are nuts. So, yeah, that's so when you when you talk about trade work, actually, you want to almost try to learn how to work on some stuff yourself, because you don't want to constantly call somebody to pick up, like, Breakaway hoses out there, pumps, that stuff you can do yourself. It's a wrench. Yeah? You can break the wrench off, drain the gas out, put a new hose, put a new nozzle on, because, believe it or not, people forget that they left their pump in the damn car. How and they drive? Does that happen? That can happen once a month,

Joe Samaan 37:28
really? Yeah, bro, that's

Jeremy Perkins 37:29
yeah. Now that they bring it

Joe Samaan 37:32
back. Well, they're too

Joe Samaan 37:33
embarrassed. No, they bring it back. They bring it if you're responsible, they're responsible. You're responsible for it. So if you take the hose with you, and the owner says you got paid for you got paper No no, because it's not when it's not knowingly. I had one. She, she ran off small town. You catch anybody in small

Mr Samaan 37:55
town? That was a bad mistake.

Jeremy Perkins 38:01
Now that that's actually pretty funny too, because you want to talk about, like mishaps at gas stations,

Mr Samaan 38:05
mostly when it's cold outside, yeah, because people want to put the nozzle in and get in the corner, they get on the phone, they get they

Jeremy Perkins 38:14
drive off. So one of the one of we used to probably get every month or two, we should get somebody to come in and put either gas in their diesel or diesel in their gas, which, for the layman who just drive gas powered vehicles, you it is physically impossible, extremely hard, to put a diesel nozzle, which is a larger diameter, into a and They do it specifically. I mean green, green gas cap, right for a diesel. It's a larger opening. The handle on the diesel is green. It's says diesel. The one thing you guys got here going for you to keep this over there.

Joe Samaan 38:56
But I like those tick tocks where they would call their dad or their husband and be like, I put the green nozzle in there just with him, and they go,

Jeremy Perkins 39:04
absolutely no. Or the guy charged me $150

Joe Samaan 39:08
for air. Yeah,

Jeremy Perkins 39:11
premium air.

Joe Samaan 39:13
You know, it's funny BP, it's opposite the BP gas station. No, green is green is regular gas, black is diesel.

Jeremy Perkins 39:22
Isn't that illegal? I don't, I don't think there's a

Joe Samaan 39:25
no no. I don't think it's a regulation that has to be green. It's just a

Jeremy Perkins 39:28
common you know what? You know what happened to me at one gas station? I was like, these mothers, so the premium was on a different it was closer to the closer to

Joe Samaan 39:40
the nozzle. So that's so funny. You just mentioned that. But what

Jeremy Perkins 39:43
happened was is I naturally hit that right and I put it in, and then I realized I'm playing premium, yeah, exactly. I'm like, shit, dude, they got me

Joe Samaan 39:55
our pumps or backwards. So how

Jeremy Perkins 39:59
many people. That

Joe Samaan 40:00
happens twice a day. Do they come in and complain? One girl comes in, she goes, No, no one ever got mad at me, because it's like, you know,

Joe Samaan 40:12
yeah, we sold 700 gallons.

Jeremy Perkins 40:16
I also had, I also had a hose. One of the hoses. It actually hit the premium button. It slapped the premium button.

Jeremy Perkins 40:33
See doc coddle. That's how he got his

Joe Samaan 40:35
great man, smart man, one guy, he she

Joe Samaan 40:37
came in yesterday. She goes, is it $4 a gallon? Said the premium is all. I said to her. She goes, I pump premium. I said, Yeah, you must have accidentally hit the premium. And then a buddy of not a but he's a buddy now, he he pumped premium. He come in, he goes, I think something's wrong with you pump. He's a nice guy. He's like, I think you got the price mixed up, yeah. So would you how much is it? I printed the receipt, yeah. So you pump premium, dude? Yeah.

Joe Samaan 40:59
He was, like, he got $20 really, got like, two gallons, three gallons less. You think premium gas is bull?

Jeremy Perkins 41:07
I Well, all right, here's the deal from from a mechanics perspective. Okay, let's hear it from from a mechanics perspective. A I don't know what you guys put in for additives, and not you, but like the gas companies. And, you know, there's, there's a lot of people that that live by, you know, throwing in all these injector cleaners, yeah, and stuff like that. And I've had me personally, I've had two engines blow up on me doing, like, my personal vehicle. Um, granted, it was a Chevy and they had lifter problems. But like, if you do the maintenance and you follow the guidelines, you know whether it takes super whether or not, I don't think there's a difference, yeah, I really don't think there's a difference. It's when, it's when you get into the territory of, like, you're going 5000 tab we had a lady that went 20,000 miles over oil change, but, granted, she had a Toyota so those things don't blow up. But like, we pulled the drain plug, nothing come out. And we're like, holy, put it, put stuff back in, and it ran. I don't know how,

Joe Samaan 42:12
but he got on my ass. Always get your oil change on time, yeah,

Jeremy Perkins 42:15
but, and I've been that way, and I still have mishaps. So like, I do think there's a lot of science behind all this stuff. But, like, if you don't slap a bottle of injector cleaner in and think it's gonna work and solve all your problems, yeah, I don't think so. I mean, I do know, like my in laws, they swear by premium. Have always used premium. Their cars run forever. I've been using unleaded all my life. Yeah? And, I mean,

Mr Samaan 42:40
when they've taken premium on Yeah,

Joe Samaan 42:43
at least my wife a car, and it says to take premium, like, just put some damage. But

Jeremy Perkins 42:48
there's also, I mean, legitimately, there's also some shady operations out there, and I don't know if the do the oil companies. So when you have a tanker show up, right? Is there actually a world where they could put a leaded into a super premium tank, or

Joe Samaan 43:03
they're dealing it's got to be a mistake. So yeah, you're not going to get away with

Mr Samaan 43:07
it. Tanks with the color, yeah, they mark them white, red and yellow, for that reason. So the driver knows. And and you go to a gas station, you mix up their top, yeah, and it's all

Joe Samaan 43:21
but the beta rooter still tells you that the premium got gas, that it's not supposed to, so it's, it's something that it would have to be a big mistake for someone.

Mr Samaan 43:29
I had a gas station where they dumped diesel in my the driver in my regular gas, yeah, oh, yeah. It's,

Joe Samaan 43:36
oh, that's not good. No, that's terrible. Is that where they did it?

Jeremy Perkins 43:39
So we're debunking a lot of myths. So even if, even if the gas station is of not great standing, the driver would have to be in on it. The the oil company, to some degree, would have to be in on it, because there's so many checks and balances that, like

Joe Samaan 43:54
no, mainly have to watch the driver. Yeah, and it wouldn't be so much. It would have to be a very small company to get away with something like that, because that company would get in so much trouble if they were much trouble if they were doing something like that. You know what

Jeremy Perkins 44:05
I mean? Yeah, because you've heard those. How do I even know this is premium? One guy, yeah.

Joe Samaan 44:09
They even customers sometimes make Yeah. They be like, Yeah. He puts, he puts unleaded in his brain, yeah. You know it should tell you, yeah.

Jeremy Perkins 44:18
Well, this has been actually very enlightening from the convenience and community side of things to the oil and gas side, which is fantastic. The fact that you still saw home eating oil is unbelievable. I could just see a guy coming down to get a five gallon jerry can full of I had a

Joe Samaan 44:38
store that we had kerosene vouchers so that the state provided a voucher. It was only allowed to be sold at the only can use the voucher at my store, they provided them money to buy kerosene, and they would have to come to my store. It was perfect, because I was, like, only store that sold kerosene, yeah. So I got a lot of business from that cool, cool. It was, like, pretty neat,

Jeremy Perkins 44:57
but thanks to you and your family. For, you know, allowing us to sit in the active store, yeah, like just saw people coming in and out. What are they? Am I on

Joe Samaan 45:07
TV? My candy?

Jeremy Perkins 45:10
But yeah, I'll use this opportunity to, you know, if anybody wants to reach out to you for questions, or wants to find you on your comedy channels, or even wants to come by some sandwich. Where can they find you?

Joe Samaan 45:24
They can find me at on YouTube, at Joe Gotti 96 the Joe Gotti. Anytime you type in Joe Gotti or five on the diesel, want to pop up. I actually just started doing vlogs in the gas station, kind of teaching my community and followers how gas stations operate. So this is actually a really cool podcast to do. I want to thank you guys for coming out. I always love it when Brunt comes out. It's a It's amazing. You guys are actually one of the first people that reached out when I first started doing content like with that. And, you know, we got hooked up. Love the boots.

Jeremy Perkins 45:56
And what is it? Coddles and Moorhead free coffee with a fill up. Maybe

Joe Samaan 46:01
you spent 200 spend $200

Joe Samaan 46:02
I'll give you a

Mr Samaan 46:05
cup of coffee. Used to be, if you fill up, you get a free cup of coffee. I've seen it all, I mean, and if you charge it, somebody got gas, 5000 gas for a cup of coffee that would never come back. I mean, it was, it was a thing,

Joe Samaan 46:20
some some gas it's I do videos over this, sometimes actually, some, some gas station. Some people just cannot live with that, that they have

Jeremy Perkins 46:27
to pay for coffee in small town. Yeah? Well, thank you for being on the podcast. It's been Thank you.

Joe Samaan 46:32
No, this is awesome. First podcast done inside of a gas station, I think somebody. Thank you guys. Check me out. Five on diesel.