Overdrive Radio

"If you're not going to do it right the first time, don't do it at all. That's what I tell everybody in here." --2024 Small Fleet Champ Paul Rissler In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, listen in for a tour around the headquarters of Paul Rissler Transportation, current Overdrive Small Fleet Champ, on the old home place for the big Rissler trucking family. Overdrive Editor Todd Dills was there in early May just ahead of Paul’s older brother John and younger brother Delton Rissler’s Crossroads Truck Meet show at the junction of U.S. 50 and Missouri state route 87 in California. Paul Rissler’s one of five Rissler brothers all with some tie to trucking -- in their family, it’s clear the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree. In the podcast, Paul details his father and mother’s small fleet history right from the spot where it all started for a young Paul, following in his father’s footsteps as a small fleet owner. The fleet’s ranged over more than a couple decades now from just a few to eight trucks. Paul and Michelle Rissler were right at 6 when they brought home the Small Fleet Champ title belt from the NASTC conference last fall. When we visited in May, things were in a brief moment of flux with one longtime driver moving toward retirement to local work, and another leaving as well. In search of the right drivers to fill those spots, the all-reefer fleet was well-positioned still with steady LTL lanes out of Pennsylvania from consolidator Dutchland Refrigerated, and other customers back toward Missouri from Colorado. Paul and his wife, Michelle (with all three sons Justin, Josh, and Jordan involved in various aspects of the business), have clearly built a fleet that's sustainable, no matter what comes. We start in the company office, then get a look at the main shop and warehouse area for Paul Rissler Transportation, then at the Risslerbilt, LLC, custom truck shop operated now by Josh and outfitted with what might just be the biggest paint booth in the entire state of Missouri. All of it was built by the hands of, and the close bonds between, the Rissler family and close-knit trucking community they’ve brought along with them on their long run of success. As mentioned in the podcast, small fleets of 3-30 trucks can enter to compete for this year's title belt in Overdrive's Small Fleet Champsionship via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/2025sfc -- deadline: July 31. Find more images from Rissler headquarters and the Risslerbilt custom shop in the post that houses this podcast at https://overdriveonline.com/15748560

"If it continues like it's going, it'll probably be our best year. ... The way it started out and the way it's going so far, it'll be our best year." --Flatbed owner-operator Ollie "Rufus" Morris reflecting on the year thus far May Trucker of the Month Rufus Morris of Youngville, North Carolina, was sounding a lot like April's honoree and fellow flatbed owner-op George Kincaid reflecting on the year thus far: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/15745657 Morris is leased today to Material Logisitcs Management out of Pennsylvania, operating from that home base in North Carolina, and was nominated for Overdrive’s 2025 Trucker of the Year award by his wife and business partner in the one-truck, two-flatbed-trailer outfit Midnight Rider Transport. We featured Morris late last month in Overdrive Senior Editor Matt Cole’s story about the decades of trucking experience behind Morris: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15747142/back-in-biz-owneroperator-rufus-morris-trucker-of-the-month In this week's Overdrive Radio, hear Morris directly in conversation with Cole, walking through his current operation and long history -- this is his second stint as a trucking business owner, after hauling logs in the late 1990s into this century as an owner-operator. Morris hauls flatbed steel, a good bit of it oversize, in a 2004 model Peterbilt 379 he purchased several years back. It's in tiptop shape, shined up and outfitted with plenty in the way of bright parts and lights and just generally well-maintained, delivering all manner of benefits from the pocketbook on down to the scale houses. He takes pride in safety, clearly, the truck too. "Get out there and stay consistent," he advised others on the safety front. "You just can't be in a hurry." Also: "Be proud of what you're doing. Keep maintenance up on your truck. I know they say, 'Chrome don't get you home,' but it does. Believe me." Most of the time crossing scales, Morris said, he's bypassed, the immaculate appearance of the rig he feels playing a big part in that. If your dog bites the inspector, though, all bets are off. (Catch an account of just such an incident in a recent-memory inspection in Matt Cole’s story about the Morrises.) Morris and Midnight Rider you can for sure call a little old-school in approach, in some ways, yet he keeps an eye on new ways and new people, too. In today’s episode of Overdrive Radio you’ll hear from him a clear priority placed on business relationships invested in, cemented over time, a key characteristic of so many a successful trucking business owner. Morris offered this word of encouragement for the next generation coming up behind him: "A lot of people say, 'I wouldn't get into trucking for nothing in the world.' Don't get me wrong, it's dfiferent than it used to be. ... but I won't tell nobody don't get into it. If they want to do it? Trucking's done me good all these years. I can't complain one bit about it. If they've got a dream and want to do it, I'd say do it." Dive into Morris’s history trucking: an early business, long experience driving, and the reboot that was inspired in part by Patricia Morris herself after 25 years in real estate. Enter your own business or that of another owner-operator you admire (up to three trucks) for Overdrive's 2025 Trucker of the Year award here: https://overdriveonline.com/toptrucker

At the top of the podcast, crank it up with a rare breed of a Caterpillar diesel in an on-highway truck, the V8 3408 motor in livestock hauler Troy Bolin’s 1979 Peterbilt 359, a 302-inch-wheelbase unit we got a close look at out at the Crossroads Truck Meet early last month in Missouri: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15747179 Tap that link or listen on to hear its story here, too, with its 6/4 two-stick tranny and 66-inch Double Eagle custom sleeper put behind the original daycab-ordered Pete when it was brand-new by Huck Huckaby. But the bulk of this week's podcast features another owner-operator brain trust in the Trucking Solutions Group, long a regular conference-call meet-up between a bevy of owners aimed at business improvement through sharing experience. The TSG has routinely for several years lent us all a window into their decades of combined experience at the Mid-America Trucking Show, where Landstar rep Bob Bailey moderated this panel discussion with TSG members focused on questionable choices and successes. They called it "Failing to Succeed," acknowledging there's a whole heck of a lot all of us learn from our own, and others', failures. Owner-operator and TSG current Chairman Joel Boelman set up the discussion with a slide that showed a chart with two columns. On one side, a variety of "questionable choices" and on the other things various owners have done they'd do again and/or recommend to others. "Questionable choices" discussed range from use of a factoring service for load payments, a change in carriers for leased owners, and working with a dispatch service to holding onto a wide variety of trailers too long and getting tied up with time in "overanalysis." The decision to change carriers was also on the "would do again" side of the ledger, along with purchase of an aerodynamic truck, the switch from company driver to owner-operator, and a variety of tried and true, and some novel, practices to recommend. Voices you’ll hear in the podcast include, in addition to owner-operator Boelman: Independent owner-operator Mark Heggestad Team owners Stephen Halsted and Sandra Goche. Failure is an opportunity, ultimately, to learn from mistakes made, illustrated in so many ways throughout the TSG discussion. As mentioned in the podcast: **Small Fleet Owners of 3-30 trucks can enter to compete in Overdrive's Small Fleet Championship through July: https://overdriveonline.com/2025sfc **Overdrive's own biz-improvement Partners in Business library: https://overdriveonline.com/pib **Trucking Solutions Group's website: https://truckingsolutionsgroup.com

Here's hoping the Memorial Day long weekend’s been a safe one for you. Today on the Overdrive Radio podcast, a special treat in the work of our own longtime Overdrive Extra contributor Long Haul Paul Marhoefer: https://overdriveonline.com/14865330 Marhoefer spent time at the Mid-America Trucking Show with a man who’s been well on his way toward a status of custom-truck royalty, you might say, these last several years. His name is Tim Eacret, proprietor of Iowa-headquartered EZ Pete Interiors, a custom truck upholstery business whose legacy stretches back in history to the work of Eacret’s father, Daniel Laverne Eacret, and his own early and long auto-upholstery work. Sadly, Daniel passed in 2023, and Eacret honors his memory in the conversation with Marhoefer that follows here, detailing the big custom build that really got the dedicated truck upholsterer's business going full bore dedicated to custom rigs. Find EZ Pete Interiors here: http://ezpete.com/ More, too, in Long Haul Paul's story about Tim and his wife and business partner, Tricia: https://overdriveonline.com/15746914 As mentioned in the podcast: **T.J. Kounkel's project 2018 389: https://www.overdriveonline.com/pride-polish/article/14897010/2019-gats-best-of-show-limited-mileage-combo-the-joker-gets-last-laugh **Marhoefer's story about the legacy of Scot Marone, longtime organizer of the Wheel Jam Truck Show coming up soon: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-extra/article/15745088/the-wheel-jam-truck-show-staying-alive-with-the-village **Tales of two lease-purchases: https://www.overdriveonline.com/equipment/article/15738011/a-tale-of-two-leasepurchase-experiences-truck-ownership-exit

This week’s edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast features C.W. Express small fleet owner Steve Wilson, reigning Small Fleet Champ in the 11-30-truck division after a bit of a growth spurt for the fleet followed Wilson’s brush with death in 2022. The team he’d built around the dry van fleet sustained while he was in hospital for the better part of that entire year, and in the aftermath has only continued to not just sustain, but excel, on dedicated lanes for a central broker in Avenger Logistics. Wilson’s up to near 20 trucks and drivers today, and doesn’t have all his freight eggs in that single basket, as you’ll hear in today’s podcast, with customers in his area helping build lanes loaded both ways -- in one case out to Arkansas and back to the Louisville, Kentucky, area, where he’s headquartered in Sellersburg, Indiana. The podcast amounts to a tour around C.W. Express headquarters on Avco Boulevard in Sellersburg, right off I-65 and purchased and moved into in 2023, marking a significant upgrade to the former location. Wilson, a wear-all-the-hats small fleet owner for decades, continues to build out support for C.W.’s trucks and drivers with deft delegation, too, particularly on the time-consuming maintenance side of the business. He's added an expert lead mechanic you’ll hear hear who oversees the operation and a younger diesel tech, Clayton Higdon, to provide an assist and a well for education and growth, no doubt. Listen on for an update with reigning champ Wilson and C.W. Express.

"This year, if it goes like it has this past month, it'll be phenomenal." --George Kincaid In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, an audio window on our feature story about flatbed-pulling owner-operator George Kincaid’s one-truck business, written attendant to the Quinwood, West Virginia-headquartered Kincaid getting the April Trucker of the Month nod from Overdrive: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15743659/trucker-of-the-month-george-kincaid-and-the-power-of-positivity You can nominate your own trucking business -- or that of another deserving owner you admire -- via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/toptrucker Kincaid’s deserving, for sure, with a sharp handle on maintenance with a decidedly do-it-yourself approach. What’s more, a whole lot can be said for doing something that you love, as he puts it, and a positive outlook on his life and work has been part and parcel of his success. Love of trucking has been with him since he was a kid when he and his younger brother both grew up with an eye toward exactly what they wanted to do when they were men. "It's pretty much what we always wanted to do growing up -- drive a truck," Kincaid said, and "have one with our own name on it." Dive into Kincaid’s story, but also that of another owner, John Rissler, whose Horse and Buggy Express trucking business out of California, Missouri, morphed into the Horse and Buggy Accessories chrome shop he operates now out of the Crossroads Shopping Plaza at U.S. 50 and Missouri 87, home of the annual Crossroads Truck Meet show: https://overdriveonline.com/15745021 We spent the day out at the Crossroads May 3 for this year’s show, and sat down with Rissler to hear its history, stretching back four years now to the time he and another brother, Delton Rissler, decided to build a new headquarters there. What’s it like to be the proprietor of a small fleet, a chrome shop with Missouri and Pennsylvania locations, and a truck show all at once? Well it never comes without a hitch, Rissler said. Soon as we sat down for the talk, his phone rang, as it would throughout our conversation. This call he had to take, though, from the man who was ferrying show attendees from the car parking area up to the show on a hay-ride-set-up flatbed trailer toted by an old farm tractor that had developed a pretty significant oil leak, as it turned out. A hitch indeed, yet they would overcome. Hear more in the podcast.

In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, we’re looking back at the long run of the W900 model from the Kenworth Truck Company. The W900's coming sunset has been among the biggest equipment news of the year -- uncovered ahead of the Mid-America Trucking Show, where the company unveiled the launch of the W900 Legacy Edition special series to close out the model's run. Kenworth plans are to build a final 1,000 units of the W900 for customers through next year. If you missed the video walkaround of the very first one built, find it at this link: https://overdriveonline.com/15742576 On the podcast this week we'll run through details of the Legacy Edition, likewise delving into the history surrounding the W900, with two Kenworth reps: Kyle Kimball, Kenworth director of marketing, and Jamin Swazo, company marketing communications director. The model itself certainly has built a big legacy with untold numbers of truck owners through well more than a half-century run of production since its 1963 introduction. According to Jamin Swazo, the company’s not aware of any uninterrupted "longer runs out there in any automotive history for a single model," he said. Dive in with Kyle Kimball and Jamin Swazo in the podcast, answering the question on the mind of any prospective owner of one of the final production units of Kenworth Legacy Edition -- or a new standard W900, still available itself for order through … well, find the answer in the podcast. Also there, hear Kimball and Swazo's answers to another pressing question I've heard from a few Kenworth fans among owner-operators -- whether they'd yet seen anyone add old-style can external breathers to a W990. Both also detailed their outlook for the W990 as a platform for custom-equipment builders and other owners, and efforts to showcase the successor model at the Mid-America Trucking Show. There, Kenworth showcased a vintage W900A and MHC Kenworth's Joplin, Missouri, dealer location's custom treatment of the W990 pictured at this link: https://overdriveonline.com/15744843

This week on Overdrive Radio we track back to the Mid-America Trucking Show and the big news for the trucking community from podcast sponsor Howes. The Howes Hall of Fame added its 12th member when it honored Mother Trucker Yoga proprietor and fitness and wellness coach Hope Zvara at the show. You heard part of Zvara’s story when she was featured here on Overdrive Radio in conversation with Long Haul Paul Marhoefer a couple years back: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15448049/the-qualityoflife-benefits-of-movement-introducing-hope-zvara There, queried about the scourge of anxiety, depression and other mental health ailments throughout America, she asked a simple question -- "What's if it's not a mental health crisis? What if it's a movement crisis?" In that podcast, and here, she detailed her step-by-step program for fitness through basic yoga techniques drivers can do in-cab, around the truck, at points throughout a day for an approachable journey toward better physical health. Mental health, too. Zvara well knows the connections between the two and isn’t shy of stressing them routinely with those she works with. She’s combated mental stressors of various natures in her own life, using yoga practice toward that end. And she’s now worked with an untold number of individual truck drivers to help them achieve their own goals. We got a little tutorial in her brand of “no mat necessary" yoga at the start of the Trucking Solutions Group’s talk in the East Hall out at MATS on the final day. She led attendees through a series of stretches aimed simply at relieving the neck and upper-body tension so many of us face after a long day at the wheel or, in my case, typing away at the desk. Today on the podcast, hear the audio of Zvara’s instruction on that mini-routine at the tail end, and otherwise buckle up for her story of helping truckers help themselves in health and wellness. And though Zvara’s program is designed for simplicity, she's also well aware it’s not exactly a simple matter for any of us. Hear how yoga and general phyiscal well-being got her through her own crisis, and into the work for which she's now honored as the latest member the Howes Hall of Fame. Nominate a deserving trucking industry participant for the Hall yourself, and browse all so honored todate, via https://howesproducts.com/hof Find Hope Zvara's Mother Trucker Yoga effort at this link, where today you can download a free guide to 11 helpful stretches: https://mothertruckeryoga.com

In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, drop into our conversation with OOIDA Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh at the Mid-America Trucking Show. Pugh was fresh off a whirlwind round of a whole lot of other talking himself, including a MATS-opening breakfast panel discussion you heard here a couple weeks back, then prior to that on Wednesday the week of the truck show in the halls of Congress where he joined a panel of trucking and other industry reps to talk through significant issues ahead of the highway bill reauthorization due next year. Pugh made headlines for his urging of federal reps to get a handle on the scope of so-called “non-domiciled CDLs” issued to residents of foreign countries by states here in the U.S. for work OTR or in other industries on a temporary basis. It’s an issue that’s risen to prominence this year as attention to it has increased. It’s but one of the issues Pugh addressed in Congressional testimony, likewise in what follows in the podcast, yet one we heard about also from trucker Teresa Brittain in the wake of MATS. English proficiency violations used to be treated by the Comercial Vehicle Safety Alliance of inspectors and industry as an out of service violation, yet when CVSA removed that out of service violation about a decade ago now, FMCSA subsequently relaxed guidance on how to enforce the violation itself. Paired with some DOT changes for states around non-domiciled CDLs that happened later, it seems to have gotten simpler for foreign country residents to come into the country to work over the road with a CDL. How many such people are working in the U.S. today? Nobody can really answer that question, as has been evident from Overdrive’s Alex Lockie’s ongoing reporting around the issue: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15741322/ Brittain flagged the importance of the English language proficiency regs, though, particularly when it comes to roadside inspections. She noted a conversation at MATS she herself had with Kentucky state truck enforcement about the issue. “How does any state law enforcement officer do an inspection on the truck if the driver cannot follow instructions to inspect it?” she asked. Inspectors told her essentially they can’t inspect such an operator’s truck, she said, “for their own safety. They told me they give 15 minutes after the initial request for the driver to contact their company and provide driver's license and required paperwork, then just let them go if the paperwork is compliant.” No inspection for the truck. Considering such dynamics, Terea Brittain then quipped, “Next inspection, I’m speaking Martian!” OOIDA along with some from the law enforcement community petitioned CVSA to return English proficiency to the out of service criteria, and CVSA’s spring Workshop event is but one week away. Pugh noted owner-operators might stay tuned for any news on that front in the coming couple of weeks. Also in the podcast: RaceTrac Travel Centers Marketing Manager Nick LaFalce details growth in his company’s mostly Southeast regional network of truck stops in what was once mainly just a fuel-stop network for automobile drivers. Since 2018, the RaceTrac company’s been expanding high-flow diesel options and acquiring land to even add parking options within the network. As mentioned in the podcast: **Recent coverage of the parking issue: https://overdriveonline.com/15742614 **Detail from recent Congressional hearing: https://overdriveonline.com/15741287 **More from MATS: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4372607

This week's edition of Overdrive Radio is another in our series highlighting contenders for 2025 Trucker of the Year, with Overdrive Senior Editor Matt Cole’s talk with Virginia-headquartered two-truck straight dump owner-operator business Dice Mayhem’s Trucking, headed up by owner-operator Hunter Hubbard and her husband, Tim. Hunter’s just about six years into truck ownership herself, her husband a good bit longer, yet clearly she’s harnessed a quality that current reigning Trucker of the Year Alan Kitzhaber sees in all successful people when it comes to business. As he put earlier this year in his “Plan for better business,” authored for our Overdrive Extra blog, “99.9% of success is desire.” That is, those who have a clear case of the want-tos, ultimately, probably will do whatever it is they set out to accomplish: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15712314 Cue Hunter Hubbard’s own advice for any aspiring truck owner when it comes to success in business for themselves. "if you have your mind sret to do it, go for it. Nothing's stopping you but yourself, and the worst thing you can do is fail. But at the end of the day, nobody wants to fail. You're going to figure it out one way or another." Some days will be awful, but "you'll sit back a month down the road, two months down the road, and be like, 'that was rough, but hey we're still here.' You just gotta keep digging on it." As she well acknowledges, challenges will present themselves day-in, day-out, but those who keep digging will get through to the other side. Clearly, Hubbard herself has been one of those sorts these last years in business. "I might be a little stubborn sometimes," she said. She and Tim have built a steady base of customers for their two-truck straight dump business in and around their Virginia home base, weathering an array of their own customer challenges in recent years when a buyout of one of their main customers and integration of the two business left their own trucking company in an uncertain position for hauling work, given the company's small size. Last year, she pivoted to a certain extent, with purchase of an older Peterbilt tractor, utilizing mechanical prowess with a new shop, too, to get it in working order and standing up a new, one-truck business for livestock hauling regionally: Dice Logistics. Yet dump work remains the Hubbards’ bread and butter, and the seasonality of both businesses continues to inspire the occasional second-guessing of their commitment to niche specialization. They could be hauling food, which always has to run, Hubbard notes, telling her story to Cole in this episode. They could be, that is, but "I didn't really choose that route. Everything's seasonal, everything depends on the weather," she said. "You just wait it out." They’re doing more than just waiting, that’s sure. As also mentioned in the podcast: **Matt Cole's two-part feature on ways to save on insurance at renewal: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15740305 **Learn how you can put your own or another owner-operator business in the running for the 2025 Trucker of the Year honor, with a chance to win a new seat from sponsor Bostrom Seating and Commercial Vehicle Group: https://overdriveonline.com/toptrucker

In 2024, finally, as regular Overdrive readers will know, owner-operator income was up on a year-over-year basis. ATBS Vice President Mike Hosted makes that abundantly clear in this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, featuring the business services firm's March 25 update offering an economic outlook for the year ahead as well as lessons within the benchmarking data ATBS dervies from its tens of thousands of owner-operator clients' performance. If you missed our report from the session as MATS got under way, find it via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/15741374 The small boost in average income is certainly a first in what’s been an exceedingly tough three and more years now as freight demand’s declined, revenues and income falling for many owner-operators as costs just rose through much of the period. The 2024 income gain also comes despite even further rates and revenue declines last year, a sure sign that successful owners are tightening the operation, increasing fuel efficiency to reduce costs as much as possible. Today in the podcast, we essentially let the tape roll on Hosted’s presentation. You can follow along by downloading Mike Hosted’s slides via this link, or watch the Youtube version up top or on Overdrive's Youtube channel to listen along with the presentation of the slides. Download all the slides from Hosted's presentation via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15741380 Yet another bit of positivity to emerge from the ATBS session had to do with the spot market, particularly for flatbed freight, in year 2025 so far. The moves up and down in the spot indices Hosted sees as particularly valuable as near-term indicators of demand in the market. Though the positivity there is tempered by a big degree of uncertainty made even bigger by the President’s tariff announcements this past week, if the surge in flatbed freight and demand seen so far this year doesn’t just prove to be a result of a kind of importers’ pre-buy to beat a variety of tariffs on goods coming across U.S. borders, we could be headed in a longer-term positive direction. Recent trucking market performance recalls Gary Buchs’ advice around freight, around customer identification and the time to strike, likewise when some measure of a kickstart might truly arise. It came back in late September 2024, before elections’ outcomes were known, and following the fed’s moves to begin to ease off the cost of borrowing with interest rate cuts. Buchs advised to set a calendar reminder for 4-6 months out from the time of the fed's cuts. “Odds are,” he said, “that is about the time business will change, as it takes time for companies to have confidence" to place orders, others to respond to those orders with their own confidence, "and the cards begin to fall and make things move....” Here we are, four-to-six months on. Looking at the stock market since the Trump tariff announcement last week we can’t say business confidence is 100% the rule. Yet flatbed freight’s been moving up, as noted, and a couple weeks back dry and reefer rates and volumes finally joined in. Maybe Buchs was right on the timing. And maybe in the freight economy, things are in fact changing for the better. ATBS is coproducer with Overdrive of the comprehensive Partners in Business playbook for owner-operator careers, start to finish, now in a new online content library format. Browse the new playbook: https://overdriveonline.com/pib

Back from the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Kentucky, this Overdrive Radio edition kicks off continuing coverage as all of us here at Overdrive spent the show fanning out across convention center grounds to cover just as much as possible. The fruits of that labor you’ve seen just a small sampling of to date, the lot of it collected with the MATS tag at OverdriveOnline.com: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4372607 Today we drop back to the very beginning of the show for an 8 a.m. Thursday, March 27, panel discussion that set the issues stage for the remainder of the event. It was moderated by Brent Hutto, longtime Chief Relationship Officer at Truckstop and now a senior advisor for the load board as he’s joined the staff of the Truck Parking Club company. You’ll hear a variety of voices in the panel discussion, touching on freight market dynamics, small business struggles and ways to overcome, predatory towing, parking, fraud in the brokered-freight marketplace, cargo and payment theft and so much more. Panelists included: **Jason Cowan, leader of 45-truck Silver Creek Transportation, as Overdrive’s Small Fleet Champ in 2021, since which plans for growth have come to fruition. **Hell Bent Xpress owner Jamie Hagen, whose all-Mack fleet operates out of a South Dakota headquarters and which was one of two finalists in the 3-10-truck division of the Small Fleet Championship last year. **Jessica Dotson, co-owner-operator of Dotson Transportation with her husband **Tyler Johnston, Mercer Transportation's director of operations **Lewie Pugh, Owner-Operator Independent Driver's Association executive vice president As mentioned in the podcast: **Overdrive's recent insurance renewal-related feature: https://overdriveonline.com/15740305 **Post-crash litigation series: https://overdriveonline.com/15287415 **Tow companies dominate DOT listening session: https://overdriveonline.com/15678174 **Overdrive's revamped Partners in Business start-to-finish playbook for owner-operator careers: https://overdriveonline.com/pib

In this Overdrive Radio edition, big news: We’re releasing today our brand-new Partners in Business playbook for owner-operator business, start to finish. The 2025 reboot of the PIB program is a total revamp designed with the decidedly mobile professional trucker in mind. You can access it today at https://overdriveonline.com/pib For more than two decades, Overdrive's Partners in Business, coproduced with owner-op business services firm ATBS, has focused on training and continuing biz education. Today, you'll find a brand-new format for all of the content that last year made up the 100-plus-page manual -- and plenty in the way of new updates. For this year's release, PIB goes from a single-download format to a much more dynamic online content library, easily accessed on any smartphone, tablet or laptop or desktop computer. The reorganization collects valuable tactics and strategies for long-term profitability in eight categories, charting the journey of owners from start-up all the way through to retirement: 1. The “Starting Line” section details the choice of business structures, motivating factors for different individual owners, and plenty to think about in terms of business and goal planning, choosing a freight niche, a motor carrier to lease to, and/or how and why to take another route altogether. 2. The “Equipment and Maintenance” category pulls on Overdrive and ATBS resources along with the accumulated knowledge of so many of our industry-participant contributors over the decades to detail the ways to acquire the best equipment at the most-favorable terms, down and dirty PM and repair tactics, and much more. 3. The third, “Business Management” section offers a wealth of insight on tracking costs, revenue and profits; building those profit and loss statements; and paying yourself for better business health analysis and load planning, among many other subjects germane to both beginners at the start of an ownership career and seasoned veterans in need of a business refresh. These three sections contain more individual parts than the remaining five, and there’s a reason for that. They represent the bedrock foundation on which owners throughout history have built their success. The remaining five sections in large part will be pretty self-explanatory when you see their titles, and all is aimed at a self-help assist for owners to, long-term, better enjoy the fruits of long labor put into the business. That last bit's a nod to the title of Part 2 of Overdrive Trucker of the Year Alan Kitzhaber’s “plan for better business” authored for Overdrive and published right around the time we announced Kitzhaber’s big win in January. He's looking ahead to being able to retire quite soon, actually, after more than three decades trucking, mostly as an owner-operator. He’ll be parking his truck amongst the rest of you at MATS this year, and I’m honored to be able to help host him at the show. If you won’t be there, keep tuned for much more from him and other longtime owners in our show coverage. Truth be told, all of us here at Overdrive lean on those among you who engage with us for ideas worth sharing, a lot of Partners in Business itself in fact made up of the accumulated wisdom of those in the readership who’ve shared their expertise with us over the decades. Here's huge appreciation for all of you. Run through the new PIB at https://overdriveonline.com/pib As mentioned in the podcast, here's the registration link for ATBS's live update scheduled for March 25 charting 2024 owner-op income performance: And keep tuned for our MATS coverage later this week and certainly in the weeks to come here: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4372607 Also in the podcast: MATS-preview retreads from three interviews from the last several weeks with Jamie Hagen, Hotels4Truckers.com proprietor Dan Fuller, and trucker-songwriter Tony Justice.

This week’s edition of Overdrive Radio starts with a brief part of "Truck Stop," earmarked by today's guest for a special place in his heart the last time we hosted him. That'd be trucker-songwriter Tony Justice, who back then in 2023 spoke to the inspiration the song took from Justice’s mother’s long work at a couple of different East Tennessee truck stops you’ll hear him mention in today’s podcast. Yet it’s with a bit of heavy heart, here, that we get this edition rolling, given Sharon Justice passed in November last year. It’s no small number of truck drivers -- and one trucking magazine editor at least -- that were touched by her life, that’s sure, Tony Justice and his late father chief among them. "She felt like she was still taking care of dad," Justice said, noting how much Momma J, as she was known to so many, loved the work she did over the last nearly two decades of her life. "You wouldn't find a cleaner shower on the interstate, or a more warming smile to meet you when you walked into the door." Fellow trucker-songwriter Bill Weaver, Justice said, summed it up best once noting he didn't "know anyone who was called Momma by so many different people." Tony Justice is back on Overdrive Radio this week for a bit of preview of his big headlining concert upcoming next week Friday, March 28, at the end of the day at the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Kentucky. Find more about MATS happenings via the collection at this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4372607 If you're unfamiliar with Tony Justice’s music, know that for a decade and a half and more now it's been nothing if not steeped in his life over-the-road, joined in the journey by his wife and chief promoter, Misty Justice. For many years he trucked with Everhart Transportation out of Greeneville, Tennessee, among others prior, yet these days enjoys not having to deal with shippers and receivers so much behind the wheel of his own tour bus. And if you’ve not seen Tony Justice live, get ready for a spectacle at MATS, that’s sure. He performs with a crack group of players, and it’s always a great show. Dive into a conversation with Justice that touches on plans for the big show with Colt Ford at MATS March 28, the Justices' huge Large Cars & Guitars Truck Show event in East Tennessee in May (at a new location this year), and the legacy of Momma J, the late Sharon Justice.

The voice you'll hear at the top of this Overdrive Radio edition is that of Overdrive's February Trucker of the Month Kenny Wingate. Clearly, he knows of what he speaks when he invokes the feeling -- "nothing like it," he said -- that he associates with best of trucking as an owner-operator, running your own game when times are good. It's part of what drove him to take the leap back from company work he was doing to launch his Southpoint Exchange businss with one truck and his own authority in 2019. He’s up to two trucks today, headquartered in Auburndale, Florida: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15738560/how-truckings-supposed-to-be-done-meet-kenny-wingate He's the proud owner of two sharp Peterbilt 579s and stainless reefers, and he's been focused throughout the company's relatively short six-year history on business brass tacks, building a team around him for freight with regular brokers, many of whom he’s known going back decades. Likewise on the accounting, bookkeeping and general business management side of Southpoint Exchange, and he's set up for further growth after a lifetime spent trucking, as you’ll hear in the podcast. He's 55 years young today and relishes that long history in the business, though many of the men he learned from, and some of those he came up with in trucking, have passed on. Magnanimous in manner, clearly on top of his game as a business owner, Wingate is also nothing if not grateful for all the help of those who came before him. He told the story of a recent encounter of an old friend at a dock. "Our generation is starting to be few and far between ... The other day I run across a gentleman I probably hadn't seen in 25 years, and we trucked together," Wingate said. "We sat down on an old wooden bench at the back of our trailers while we were getting loaded" remembering all those who came before but also "we just laughed, man, and just cut the fool, and it felt good. It felt good to see somebody that you trucked with years ago, you know, when when things were a little different." At once, most of the folks the two men asked each other about were gone, he said, or at the very least off the road for good for health or other reasons. Wingate, 55, stays grateful for his own longevity, and looks ahead to the future and opportunities to build better business with Southpoint Exchange. In the podcast, hear that perspective but also just how two-truck Southpoint Exchange is getting the work done with dedicated freight on lanes between Florida and Northern Ohio. After being nominated by one of his customers, he’s officially in the running for our 2025 Trucker of the Year award, which you can enter yourself or nominate another owner via https://overdriveonline.com/toptrucker

Jamie Hagen's got the inside scoop, but won't divulge the name of the new Mack tractor model set to be debuted next month in New York in this year of Mack's 125th anniversary as a company. Small Fleet owner Hagen has actually driven one hand-built production model already around the company’s test track hidden behind the walls, and come June he expects to be leasing one of the first production units in an arrangement with Mack’s marketing arm -- it’ll add to his all-Mack fleet, South Dakota-headquartered Hell Bent Xpress, among finalists in 2024 for Overdrive’s Small Fleet Championship: https://www.overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ/article/15704803/small-fleet-champ-four-finalists-to-square-off The new truck will add 1 to Hell Bent's power-unit count, currently sitting where it was back when we last spoke around the Small Fleet Champ program’s conclusion in November, at 9 trucks, so there’s big things ahead for Hagen and Hell Bent, no doubt. Yet the new Mack wasn’t the principal reason we brought him in for this edition of Overdrive Radio -- rather, the forward-looking small fleet owner happens to be the first U.S. owner to install a new-to-the-U.S. auxiliary air-conditioning unit in the sleeper of one of his Macks. That’s the Fresco 9000 MaXX system built by an Italian manufacturer and powered by U.S.-based Dragonfly Energy’s Battle Born Batteries Lithium Iron Phosphate battery to deliver cooling power in the warmer months: https://www.overdriveonline.com/gear/product/15684579/autoclima-fresco-9000-maxx-batterypowered-auxiliary-ac-unit-hitting-us-shores Hagen walks through the unit’s design and, along the way, his rationale for jumping into the modular, portable system after years forgoing alternative A/C for his mostly upper Midwest regional fleet. (Yes, he’s got auxiliary heat in the form of Webasto bunk heaters.) If you’ll be in attendance at the big Mid-America Trucking Show later this month, too, Hagen will be part of a panel discussion opening the event on Thursday, March 27, about small trucking business issues. It also features a past Overdrive Small Fleet Champ in Silver Creek Transportation’s Jason Cowan, among many others: https://truckingshow.com/opening-breakfast/ Hear more about that in the podcast, likewise the story of how a 2023 Mack Anthem in the small fleet of Hell Bent Xpress came to be the first truck to get an install of the Fresco 9000 MaXX battery-powered alternative air conditioning system, performed by the way by Jim Fowler and his team at Michigan MD Alignment. Much more from in the way of MATS preview coverage at https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4372607

In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, Hotels4Truckers.com proprietor Dan Fuller, former driver and independent owner-operator, details completion of a project years in the making. The website and now mobile app as well got its start simply as a cataloging of hotels around the nation where parking a tractor and 53-foot trailer was not only possible but welcomed, provided for by the hotel facilities. Within the last year, users of Hotels4Truckers.com, though, noticed some significant changes, boosting the seamless-experience factor with booking possible now, with discounts, right from the site itself. Functionally, Fuller said, "We're like Hotels.com for the trucking industry now. Tell us where you're looking, you do your dates, and all the hotels come back" with a search, showing the discounted rate available to Hotels4Truckers users and with a built-in parking filter you can use to show only sites where parking's available. The new website soft-launched back last Fall -- legacy users, Fuller added, will need to re-register if they haven't already -- and ever since he's been tweaking the design and adding hotel chains and truck parking-friendly facilities. In total, close to 13,000 rooms are represented within the platform (many with parking) among dozens of hotel brands. In Canada, too, with a very recent update for users up North. That just so happens to be where Dan Fuller lives today -- he came off the road in 2017 after much of his life spent headquartered near Detroit. A second marriage to a Canadian health-industry specialist took up to rural far Northern Ontario, where he's been hard at work building out the new version of his longtime service. I'm willing to bet he's looking forward to warmer climes as he preps for an official launch of the new Hotels4Truckers.com upcoming at the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Kentucky, next month. (You'll find him in the North Lobby near the main registration -- attendees can sign up for the service there for free and with a special gift as part of the bargain. I think it will be worth the visit, I'll say, for now.) In the podcast, Dan Fuller lays out his personal story trucking, likewise the 15 years or so he's spent at work building a network of discounted hotels and with, as noted, verifiable intelligence about whether tractor-trailer parking is available at any site. Find Hotels4Truckers via https://hotels4truckers.com and via iOS and Android app stores. More Overdrive Radio: https://overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio

Today, a bit of a hypothetical that is really not hypothetical at all, though we’ll withhold names with multiple court cases pending. But consider the scenario: You engage with a broker you feel you know is legitimate for a load of copper moving toward the Northeast. You drop that load for $1,600, you ultimately get paid, and you go on about your business to the next piece of freight. Meanwhile, though, the same load of copper is being rebooked by the same “broker” – note the scare quotes, certainly safe use them in this scenario. The “broker” contracts with yet another owner to move the copper west to the center of the country, whereupon that owner drops the cargo and goes along his own merry way. Yet again, the “broker” now has another owner-operator in his sites for the third move of the copper, this time with a destination in the Los Angeles area. The operator who picks this load up, though (promised a handsome rate for his work), along the way gets a good indication of just where the "broker" wants to send him. It's no kind of manufacturer who needs the coiled, finished copper for their products, rather the address for what looks to be the kind of place where old cars and trucks and scrap metal of various kinds are sent to die, to be reprocessed -- a salvage yard, in essence. This operator obeys his spidey senses and calls the cops, opening a case that then winds its way back to the origin of the copper in the rural Southeast, where a rural detective IDs and then orders you, the owner-operator who picked up the load to begin with, arrested. You land in jail in your home region, spending several nights locked up before being bonded out for $50K. The original crooks -- the “broker” on the load, likely impersonating a legitimate entity or otherwise part of a double-brokering ring of authorized entities -- meanwhile get to sit at their computers wherever they might be and keep up the "good" work. You and your leasing carrier face scheduled court dates that come and go, ongoing discussion amongst defense and prosecution, with no resolution to your charge. When we first learned of a particular case fitting these parameters back late last summer, the arrest had just happened, with a September court date scheduled, which was then pushed to October. None of those court dates held for the owner, and still, there’s been no resolution as efforts to untangle the scheme continue. The charge? "Obtaining property by false pretenses in excess of $100,000," apparently for falling for a fake broker’s representation of himself as legitimate as he schemes with an unknown number of actually knowing accomplices to steal the copper. How's that for personal risk? Today on the podcast, a conversation with cargo-theft security firm Overhaul’s Danny Ramon about just what that company’s seeing in the so-called “strategic theft” landscape around the nation. That’s the kind of theft described in the scenario above, often with multiple layers of deception and misrepresentation involved to use entirely legitimate, unwitting operations to steal hot commodities. As mentioned in the podcast: **Alex Lockie's recent story about the FraudWatch system from Overhaul: https://overdriveonline.com/15737195 **Transportation attorney Hank Seaton's "Supply chain protocol": https://overdriveonline.com/15302784

In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, January Trucker of the Month Ken Brodeur, owner-operator out of Escondido, California, tells the tale of his circuitous path to trucking over three decades of prior IT tech and music-industry careers. He leased and then purchased his first and current truck in 2016, a new Kenworth W9 that he’s kept in great working order ever since, with a diligent maintenance approach, some good luck, and plenty in the way of shrewd decision-making over tumultuous years for trucking, the economy in general and more. The flatbedder’s experienced highs and lows through his now half-decade in business with authority, before that leased to Landstar, learning from successes and failures and putting them into practice. In essence, as a fellow owner and friend said about him in Cole’s feature story, Brodeur’s just “one of them good old success stories” in trucking. In some ways, Brodeur's is a story that repeats itself all around the nation for owner-operators who successfully manage revenue against costs for solid income. It's a tale of a man who “started with a big company and moved his way up, bought himself a truck, got himself a trailer and watched his Ps and Qs," his friend said. "Just a true owner-operator.” Meantime, Brodeur's made good on a long-term goal of greater control of his life, with full control of his business. Read more about owner-operator Ken Brodeur in Matt Cole's feature attendant to his January honor: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15736267/trucker-of-the-month-throws-chains-tarps-after-decades-in-it Nominate your own business or that of another deserving owner you admire for Overdrive's 2025 Trucker of the Year award: https://overdriveonline.com/toptrucker

With this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, we pick up where longtime Overdrive contributor, former OTR owner and current business coach Gary Buchs left off on the Overdrive Extra blog last week: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15736116/ There, as regular readers will know, he penned and published notes on the "fine art" of rates negotiation, with a special emphasis on ways to counterbalance the pressure so many owner-operators feel to move fast on load opportunities, given the speed at which loads come and go on the boards in particular. Comparing to just a short time ago in history, freight "information's moving so much faster" in this day and age, Buchs said. "The speed ... interferes often with solid negotiation. When you speed that up, things get missed." Move too fast to just outright accept an offer, and you might neglect to consider fully that the good-sound long-haul run to the West Coast starts out due well east of Atlanta, with a load pickup time of 2 in the afternoon. If you didn’t effectively build into your rate the added cost of traffic in Atlanta rush hours (or the time to wait it out, as it were), you’re behind the eight ball before you even get started on the run. Buchs offered a different example of one among many details you can miss if you don’t take the time to effectively negotiate. He heard this one several times: And owner "got to a shipper and ... they wanted cash for the lumper and they didn't have cash," Buchs said, asking "How does that get missed if you do a lot of reefer work?" He advises owner-operators think about such scenarios, when things didn't go as planned: "What lessons do we learn when things don't go quite right? How do we apply the lesson we learn? Like when we overcommit or fail to anticipate travel times, drive times. ... Drivers and owner-operators feel the pressure of time squeezing them so much, and that interes with our ability to tap that brake pedal, to pause for even just a moment. So we have to" be aware of that and "use our experience," he said, knowledge of routes and so much more. Today on the podcast, much more in the way of specific ideas built on Buchs’ wealth of personal experience in business and with owners operating in the freight world today. Getting better at negotiation in general certainly isn't easy. "If we're going to get better, we've got to stop thinking that everything is going to be easy," as Buchs put it. But with some of these ideas, hopefully more can avoid participating in what might otherwise feel like an auction, where the “winner’s curse” is almost always to be paying more than what an item is really worth, research has shown. In the freight world, that’s the opposite. Win the load after race-to-the-bottom ping-ponging with the competition or accepting a broker's lowball offer blindly, and you’ll certainly be getting compensated below the market value for the freight movement. In the podcast, Buchs also stresses starting with cost analysis, and recommends including salary needs on the cost side of the ledger when it comes to business profit analysis. It might help you in load-by-load profit analysis and negotiation, too. Overdrive’s Load Profit Analyzer, our fairly simple online calculator introduced late last year, is an assist to analyze individual and/or compare multiple loads. The calculator includes on its front end places to use the knowledge and analysis Buchs talks about to input not just cost per mile overall, but variable cost per mile, fixed cost per day worked, and, again considering it on the cost side, a salary per day worked figure. Profit-potential results then show results not only per-mile but per day -- with salary added back in, too -- for better appreciation of the impact of time and fixed costs. The Load Profit Analyzer is free to use with registration: https://overdriveonline.com/load-analyzer