Regarding types.... - You'll want to change all those TEXT columns into CHAR (or VARCHAR); that is, as long as you're sure they're <= 255 chars. - The columns that are DECIMAL(n,0) should be declared as a type of INT. Depending on their max range: TINYINT UNSIGNED (for 0-255), SMALLINT UNSIGNED (for 0-65535), MEDIUMINT or INT. For a quick but less than optimal fix, you can make 'em all just plain INT.

And indexes... Do you realise that right now the server has to scan through the entire table to find the records? You'll need indexes on orders.custid, principl.id, customer.id

There's way more to say about the used types, making fields not NULL, the fact that it's not very economic to do searches/joins on string columns, but.... the above hints should already help you get a useable result.

You posted the output of some EXPLAIN statements... but just a "EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM table". That won't tell you anything. EXPLAIN is used to see how the server will process your REAL queries. So you stick the word EXPLAIN in front of the real query, and then look at the output. It will tell you in which order the tables are joined, and whether (and in what way) indexes are being used. Doing joins where an index can't be used will always be slow.