Overdrive Radio

"I spend a lot of time making deliveries around here, so I have my little spots I know I can park." --Owner-operator Jason Shelly, speaking to knowledge borne of more than two decades' experience serving customers in Amish markets on the East Coast Those words were among the first owner-op Jason Shelly spoke when he talked to Overdrive Editor Todd Dills in early August attendant to reporting on his longtime one-truck business, Overdrive's 2025 Trucker of the Month for August: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15753418/trucker-of-the-month-jason-shellys-multistop-reeferhaul-niche He'd gotten parked up for the call mid-run on his regular route through the Washington, D.C., area, among the many routine destinations for his multistop reefer-haul business. It sets the scene, as it were, but also demonstrates the expertise he's built through consistency through the years, through specialization in that now 20-plus-year run loaded with fresh meat bound for those Amish markets. In this week's Overdrive Radio edition, sit in with Shelly as he tells the story of how he proved his invaluable nature to the customers starting with a partner serving a premium pork producer, then following through with consistent customer service as demand grew and grew and grew for the product over those decades. Headquartered in Pennsylvania in the town of Telford today, owner-operator Shelly's legacy is certainly a work in progress. He's got plenty of working years ahead of him, but he's been nothing if not outgoing in his efforts to lend the benefit of expertise to those coming up behind him. As experience has shown, those relationships then grow to the point of mutual business benefit, too, as the Trucker of the Month feature about Shelly last week illustrated. Owner-operator Kris Bair, a decade and more Shelly's junior, calls him a mentor, no doubt, a sounding board for ideas and questions. Bair also bought his first truck, a restored 1980 A model Kenworth, from Shelly, with private financing worked out between the both men. For the very brief moment Shelly thought he was going to be potentially getting entirely out of trucking when he and his business partner sold to a larger operation, Bair then traded that W900A back to Shelly for his longtime runner, a 2000 W900 outfitted with a custom Double Eagle big bunk. Does Shelly still have that W900A in his stable today? Dills asked the owner-operator. "I upgraded and financed it for another" young trucker looking to get his start in business. "I'm not looking to get in the finance business" by any stretch, said Shelly, "but I figure everybody needs to get started, and I had some really good guys in my life that helped me get started." He's been able to be that helping hand up the ladder, so to speak, for the generations of owners behind him "several times over the years," he added. Hear his story, in his own words, in this Part 1 of our talk with Shelly on the podcast today. Shelly's Trucker of the Month nod for August puts him in the running for the 2025 Trucker of the Year award, sponsored for the year by Bostrom Seating, who’s putting a new seat on the line for the ultimate winner. You can enter your own or nominate another deserving business for the award at https://OverdriveOnline.com/toptrucker.

This week's Overdrive Radio podcast is a re-air for owner-operators and other truckers on the occasion of the 2025 Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance Brake Safety Week inspection blitz. Get over to OverdriveOnline.com for an updated list of our Top 10 toughest states for brakes violations, to get a bit of a clue into where you might expect inspectors’ scrutiny of braking systems to be most intense this coming week: https://www.overdriveonline.com/csas-data-trail/article/15753592/10-toughest-states-for-truck-brake-inspections-as-blitz-arrives Brake Safety Week runs August 24-31, and along with reporting around brake-system inspections there for this episode we revisit a talk with Fleet Safety Services’ Jeff Davis delivered at the 2023 annual conference of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies. Davis offered time-honored ways fleets and owner-operators can avoid the inspection to start with. Even in an inspection-blitz week like this one, fundamentals still apply. And keeping on top of maintenance -- particularly with regard to lights -- is a big part of it, but there’s more to it than that. So we’ll just let the tape roll on the past episode this week. Keep in mind it was released ahead of the Spring 2024 Roadcheck event, initially. There are plenty references to that now-bygone inspection blitz event throughout, but nonetheless plenty to chew on from Davis. More brakes-related resources at OverdriveOnline.com/15753592

This week on the podcast we’re diving into the trends uncovered in the July report authored by our own Alex Lockie documenting the rise of the so-called “non-domiciled CDL” in recent years in the U.S. It’s a kind of license that many states can and do issue to those in the States from other countries and with temporary work authorization. If you haven’t downloaded our report for yourself as of yet, it’s available via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/15750917 Lockie painstakingly gathered non-domiciled CDL issuance data from most states in the nation, and put it all in a single, 20-plus-page report that's available now, even as federal officials work to begin and complete their own review of such CDL-issue practices. Context for it? As of but a year ago, very few around trucking had even heard the "non-domiciled CDL" term. That includes Raman Dhillon, head of the North American Punjabi Trucking Association, who tells his story in part in this episode. "I learned in the last seven, eight months or so" that such a license existed, he said. At once, as our own Alex Lockie reported in conversation with Dhillon in June, he could see the influx of people into trucking throughout the pandemic period, and continued issues on the CDL training front with fly-by-night schools rushing people into work behind the wheel: https://overdriveonline.com/15748790 The latter -- the inadequate CDL training issue -- is something he had personal experience with in years past, making it among principal issues for which he continues to advocates a fix. Personally, he’s heartened to see the recent federal attention to CDL issuance practices broadly speaking, and non-domiciled CDL issuance in particular. "It's not only a trucking issue," as Dhillon has it. "It's a national security issue. A person crosses the border. Within a couple of months they get their work permit, and within the next month they get their [commercial] license." More time, more training, more vetting, he said, is certainly in order for all kinds of reasons. In the podcast, Dhillon walks back through his own experience immigrating to the U.S. in the early-1990s after his father drove truck in Indian military as he was growing up, through to establishing the Primelink Express trucking company with family and other close trucking associates, then the NAPTA association, in 2018, in the wake of advocacy ahead of the ELD mandate. NAPTA isn't just for Punjabi-Americans, though, as you'll hear. It's set up for any trucking company owner or operator with discount buying groups for fuel, tires, and other parts, likewise back-office support services and more. Dive into the story today with both Raman Dhillon and Overdrive Executive Editor Alex Lockie, who chronicles just how he came to author the 20-page report documenting non-domiciled CDL issuance in most states around the nation. If you haven’t read the report yet, go give it a whirl: https://overdriveonline.com/15750917 As Alex Lockie puts it in the podcast, "i look at it as just kind of a factual framework," he said. "We have maps in the report. ... We have a detailed write-up of every single state and what they told me. Look at your state. See where your state is on this." You might just be surprised by what you find.

This week on the Overdrive Radio podcast, another entry in our 2025 Trucker of the Year competition: https://overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year You may have seen Matt Cole’s feature a couple weeks back now about longtime independent Ron Kelsey, who’s achieved something of an "owner-operator holy grail," as it were, trucking for decades now in a 1981 Peterbilt 359 and hauling direct freight for customers that date back three decades for the owner: https://overdriveonline.com/15751895 Kelsey’s recent-history experience, too, stands as testament to the bedrock value of direct-freight relationships when the proverbial you-know-what hits the fan. With a "freight recession" ballyhooed by prognosticators time and again over the last three years, and spot rates down over the same period, Matt Cole asked Kelsey how he’d fared through tough times of these recent years. "I really don't notice a change," Kelsey said, on the ground with his two principal customers. "I'm not No. 1 anymore" among independents hauling for them, given as he's progressed in his career he's not quite as consistently over-the-road as he was in past years. Yet general freight slowdowns he hasn't noticed. "I work when I want to work," and the loads are plentiful, always something availble, loading pipe outbound from the Phoenix and most often steel on the return. Invoiced, customers pay within days, too. "I'm very fortunate," he added, but there's more to his business prowess than just following the tides of fate, as you'll hear in the podcast. He’s well set-up to weather anything that comes, ultimately, and has come a long way himself from the young man who would end up inking a deal for his 1981 Pete after two-stepping with the owner way back in 1984. He’s hauled with it ever since, getting his authority 10 years later and building what the Kelsey's Trucking business remains to this day. Hear his story in his words in today's episode, starting like many an owner-operator in a straight truck in vocational operations before a trial by fire over the road in the late 1970s. Nominate your own or another deserving owner-operator business for the 2025 Trucker of the Year award via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/toptrucker

This week's edition of Overdrive Radio takes a deeper dive into Overdrive's relatively new Load Profit Analyzer tool: https://overdriveonline.com/load-analyzer Go there and pull up the analyzer to follow along with this detailed walk-through with owner-operator business coach and longtime Overdrive contributor Gary Buchs. As regular readers will likely recall from when it was introduced late in 2024, the Analyzer was in part inspired by Buchs’ own efforts at individual load profit analysis, tracing back to his decades as owner-operator himself. (Gary retired from the road in 2019, yet continues private efforts as a mentor/business coach to other owner-operators.) I brought Gary on to talk us through a few divergent load examples in hopes that more owner-operators in the audience might benefit from what is in essence a fairly simple calculator, but might also be a powerful personal accountability tool for business performance long-term. So, with this episode, get to a spot where you can pull out the mobile device or laptop and go to https://OverdriveOnline.com/load-analyzer We'll run through the three cost-input fields you see there, namely: **Fixed cost per day under load **Salary per day under load and **Variable cost per mile Then analyze results for three different loads all originating in Dallas with offers at wildly different rates: $2.30, $3, and a whopping $10/mile on a short haul. When it comes to profits, though, results from the analyzer might be surprising if you closely take into consideration the impacts of time spent on each load. Set up with all those different cost metrics, considering your contribution to your home budget's needs in the salary on the expense side of the equation, fundamentally the analyzer is set up to help you do that with a close eye on business profits. There are always dozens of variables at play in load selection and post-delivery analysis, but engaging with your own numbers with the tool we hope helps yield better profit results over time, as Gary likes to say, as you "touch those numbers" routinely. Give it a whirl with today's podcast. More from Gary on the topic of negotiations in this past Overdrive Radio edition: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15736582

Track back through last week’s big trucking-issues hearing convened in Senate Commerce's Subcommittee on Transportation, Freight, Pipelines and Safety to work through some of the pressing issues ahead of the next highway bill, due in 2026. Featured trucking witnesses before the subcommittee and their full written testimony: **Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh: https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/9B1EF7F2-DB30-4A08-9844-DC9F237282D5 **American Trucking Associations’ leader Chris Spear: https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/FA35E84B-5DB2-4784-AD1F-0F0BD0065EC8 **Teamsters Union president Sean O'Brien: https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/1B7508C5-A25B-4ACF-94BD-EBC2F83711FA In the podcast, featuring audio from the hearing, witnesses debat driverless or otherwise automated truck development and regulation, likewise automation's role in safety, which regular Overdrive readers may have caught also in the initial report from the hearing last week: https://overdriveonline.com/15751214 You’ll hear about the huge rise in cargo theft the subcommittee also addressed in a hearing early in the year, aided and abetted by identity theft and double brokering and other forms of fraud in freight markets increasing plied by organized rings. You’ll hear about other techs like automatice emergency braking, some mention of flexibiltiies in the hours of service, about ELDs, unauthorized immigration and credentials fraud with practices like CDLs illegally procured for cash. What you won’t hear is any mention of the term "non-domiciled CDL," though in response to a question from Senator Bernie Moreno (Republican of Ohio), Teamsters President O'Brien referenced carrier recruiting drivers for temporary work in the U.S. from overseas. The non-domiciled CDL is one that U.S. states can issue to such drivers, who don’t have permanent immigration status in the U.S. but rather hold temporary work authorization. Some states don’t issue these CDLs, and many others haven’t been issuing non-domciled CDLs this way for very long, but the practice has certainly taken off over the last several years. Overdrive's own Alex Lockie's recently released research showed that recent-years growth in states all around the nation with a 50-state accounting -- download the 20-page report via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/15750917 There’s a whole lot more than just CDL issuance issues to chew on when it comes the next highway bill, of course. In this week's podcast, we let the tape roll on the hearing. Catch your elected representatives and the associations that represent trucking business owners and operators in action, interrogating a wide array of trucking and broader transportation issues.

"Hard to keep something nice if you're in the hopper world. There's dust, gravel, mud, farms, small driveways. ..." --Little Z Transport owner-operator Lucas Zach, Gilman, Wisconsin Despite the difficulty, owner-operator Zach keeps his 2017 Peterbilt 389 and matching Timpte hopper pristine as can possibly be. He's put quite a lot of custom work into it with shop and fleet partners to cut a fine picture on those duty gravel roads in and out of farm operations, keeping his father's Tim Zach Trucking business's customer base rocking and rolling alongside his own operation. Catch a few views of the rig with Harlan Martin's 2023 389, too, via https://overdriveonline.com/15751123 In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, Zach details the lengths to which he's gone in recent times to keep the 2017 out of the danger of those rock chips, dust and dirt with the story of a load of corn he picked up on a farm in South Dakota. Arriving for the load, the farm's owner urged him to follow the owner's pickup down a gravel and dirt road. "We just gotta go up the road about five miles," the farmer said. Zach continued the story: "He made it five miles up the road and I was only doing 10-15 mph, and he's long ahead of me doing 50 mph in his truck. ... He takes a right and goes another five miles to the east, then there's another five miles. ..." All told, Zach traversed 18 miles' worth of gravel to get to the load point, slow and slower, as it were. "He's anxious to get me loaded," he said, yet "here I am trying not to rock-chip everything all up." Hear much more from Zach about the truck and his operation in the podcast, along with a fellow owner-operator likewise keeping family truck-ownership traditions alive in Wisconsin. Little Brothers Transport owner Harlan Martin was just 22 years old when we spoke to both he and Lucas Zach at the Crossroads Truck Meet in Missouri in May: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15745021 Martin's the youngest of three co-owner brothers in Little Brothers Transport, with which owner-op Zach's business contracts on occasion to haul cattle, supplementing LB's 13 running units (with some owner-operators leased on) and about twice as many trailers of a variety of types to serve a diverse and growing customer base, long the province of many a successful small fleet. Speaking of successful small fleets, for the small fleet owners among you time is running out to enter to compete in Ovedrive’s 2025 Small Fleet Championship, open to companies of 3 to 30 trucks this year and sponsored again by the great folks at the National Association of Small Trucking Companies – for four finalist fleets there’s a trip to the late-October annual NASTC conference in Nashville on the line, likewise the Small Fleet Champ title belt in two categories. Get your entries in by July 31 via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/2025sfc

Overdrive's June Trucker of the Month Scott Smith, owner-operator of Sapphire Cartage out of Searcy, Arkansas, has a couple of secret weapons when it comes to bookkeeping, tax accounting and business analysis. The first is his wife, Stephanie, who after time in the health care field and then with Scott rearing four young children, found new work Scott Smith describes in this week's edition of Overdrive Radio. Stephanie's built accounting expertise as support for a small-biz accounting software system, and her expert handling of the Sapphire Cartage back office has taken that load off of the independent. The second of those secret weapons regular reader encountered in the June 30 feature detailing Smith’s history trucking: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15749527/trucker-of-the-month-bets-on-equipment-diversity-as-failsafe Namely, it’s a custom spreadsheet the owner-operator built himself to effectively analyze per-ton rates in the hopper-bottom freight business when it comes to load offers. But not only that -- it's his go-to tool for week-to-week business performance as well. As was detailed in the story, Smith uses the spreadsheet to set revenues against not only hard costs like those for fuel but his weekly home needs, his own personal driver salary, if you will. What he needs to contribute to household take-home figures as an expense there, on a weekly basis. What he describes in the podcast brings to mind in some ways Overdrive’s own Load Profit Analyzer tool you can access at any time to game out rate scenarios or compare load offers: https://overdriveonline.com/load-analyzer With that tool, using your own fixed cost per day, variable cost per mile and that self-pay salary figure per day to then compare as many loads as you like for profit potential, you too can set those driver-pay needs to be calculated on the expense side of the profit analysis. For June Trucker of the Month Scott Smith, though, it’s his own system that accounts for all of it -- indeed a now not-so-secret weapon we'd wager many owners out there might do well to emulate in whatever form works best for the operation. In the podcast, hear more about Smith's operation and history trucking from the start, back in the early 2010s when like many out there he just happened into a love for the road via work in a different sector than the hopper- and flatbed-hauling work he does today. Nominate your own or another business to contend, like Smith, for Overdrive's 2025 Trucker of the Year award: https://overdriveonline.com/toptrucker Read about all of our 2025 Truckers of the Month via https://overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year

"Remember to shake a stranger's hand. You might accidentally make a new friend." --Bill Weaver It's been a heavy week amid the Independence Day goings-on, trucking news and all the rest, but start this Overdrive Radio episode with a song with a whole lot of joy, sure to get the spirits up, as it’s writer, singer and performer -- the great Bill Weaver -- told the tale of its origins in the always-headed-home aspects of work OTR, since the moment he conceived it: “I’m Rollin’.”: https://www.overdriveonline.com/14889662 Yet it also brings a bit of a tear to the eye this week. Bill Weaver passed away Monday, June 30. For "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer, the news came by way of a mutual friend, Tony Justice, who shared his own recollections of Bill. Justice’s words I know ring out for so many who knew Weaver: “I can't even begin to find the words to express what he meant to me,” Justice said. “Best word would simply be friend, family kinda friend, my best friend. ... Hard telling the miles me and ol’ Bill covered while trucking and talking on the phone, a few hundred thousand easily, or how many times he made me laugh. He is irreplacable, and will leave an empty spot in my heart that will never be able to be filled again.” And he finished this way: "Till we embrace again on the other side I’ll be jamming your music, brother. This aint good-bye, its a see you later.” Weaver leaves behind his wife, CarolAnn, and so many friends and family members. Our hearts are with them all no doubt. In the podcast, celebrate with us some of what Bill Weaver leaves behind, with reairs of two podcasts featuring his "Every mile I drive" and "Burning the old school down" records, from 2016 and 2018 respectively. CarolAnn Weaver said she’s planning a memorial service for Bill likely for early August, and had Weaver’s International in the shop for service looking at a likely sale fairly soon. It wasn’t due for service, she said, yet it’d been sitting for a year. Questions about the rig CarolAnn referred to Taylor Barker, fellow trucker-songwriter and also a great friend to Weaver. The truck, CarolAnn said, was Weaver’s pride and joy. CarolAnn offered these words to mark his memory. “Bill was very special character who impacted everyone he met,” she said. “He never met a stranger and greeted everyone with open arms of compassion. I am so thankful and blessed that I had him in my life for 16 years and he helped me become a better and stronger person. He helped me find my way back to God, and to me that is priceless. I want to say thank you to all his fans that supported his love of music and appreciated his honest, heart-written words he shared through songwriting. He had a brilliant mind, so smart yet humble. I kid with everyone that he was my encyclopedia.” CarolAnn went on to reference something Tony Justice also noted in his recollection of Weaver. It’s true that he said it near every time we ever spoke to him in person, most often delivered right before you were ready to part ways: “Remember to shake a stranger’s hand. You might accidentally make a new friend.” Bill, thank you for being one to us, that's certain. Long Haul Paul's tribute to Weaver: https://overdriveonline.com/15750036

Today in Overdrive Radio, walk through Kevin Bruns’ purchase of a 2019 Cummins-powered International LoneStar after several years of local dump truck ownership and work around quarries and construction sites in the Nashville, Tennessee, region. That followed early experience with authority hauling cars a couple decades back, based outside Chicago where Bruns is from originally, then pneumatic tanker work as a company driver, all of it in prep for where the owner-operator is today, married with two young children and back out on his own with authority as Bruns Trucking. He restarted that authority a year and a half back, and with authority-age requirements so many brokers have today, up until recently he’s hauled power only with dry vans for several large outfits, now testing the waters with a step deck trailer fairly recently purchased, where he's seeing good rates with the trailer in service for just a couple of months. The owner-op's making plenty time for outside pursuits, too. One of the reasons we came together last week was his then-impending competition in this past weekend's Semi Stampede uphill truck drag race competition at Kunle Motorsports Park due south of Cleveland: https://overdriveonline.com/15748980 Bruns attended with his big-truck-fan son last year, and this year was planning to compete in the stock class, bobtail. "I don't need to throw my driveshaft out," he quipped. Indeed, and you can find a video from his competition here: https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1DXAzYJ5qF/ (Unfortunately, the LoneStar got outrun in that one by a Pete, but I’m certain the experience was nonetheless one to remember.) Listen on for Bruns’ trucking career in miniature, and his efforts to build the network in and around Gallatin, Tennessee, these past years for maintenance, for freight and for life and music, too. It's Nashville, after all, where he's now headquartered. Find music from the Singin Trucker via Bruns social profiles: https://www.facebook.com/kevinbrunsmusic/ https://instagram.com/singin_trucker For daily trucking news, visit https://overdriveonline.com or sign up for the daily newsletter for email delivery via this form: https://randallreilly.dragonforms.com/loading.do?omedasite=ov_subscriptions

Off the top of this week's Overdrive Radio podcast is the voice of photojournalist James Year, commenting on an issue he feels holds potential to create alliances where few have existed in American culture and commentary. "In every market you can think there's a lot of disruptions starting to happen," Year said. "and it's one of those cases of strange bedfellows. ... Turns out truckers and actors and all the people that are generally fighting like hell with each other ... turns out they've got a lot in common on this topic." Namely, he’s talking about automation, the import technology holds for work opportunity in a variety of fields. In trucking, where that’s perhaps most salient -- certainly grabbing the most headlines -- is in the operating of the trucks themselves. The jumping-off point for the podcast is Year's recent short documentary video published via the More Perfect Union video channels. It came with an ominous title, and a video cover image clearly designed to raise a safety specter with respect to unmanned trucks on public roads: https://www.stealingfire.tech/more-perfect-union-documentary The headline? "We chased driverless trucks in Texas. What we saw will scare you." There’s no scary crash in the video. There’s not even an unmanned, truly “driverless” truck in it. Rather Year, with a professional truck driver with him in a car, followed an Aurora Driver-outfitted truck that to start the trip actually had two operators in-cab late in April. Yet the pitch worked, clearly -- since release three weeks ago the approximately 15-minute video has been viewed nearly 2 million times, according to the Youtube counter. It all followed Year's long photojournalism project for his master’s work at Syracuse University. Year now teaches photography in Maryland. Misleading safety marketing isn’t just the province of view-hungry video platforms. Look no farther than the messages of autonomous truck developers themselves, in some cases. On the Kodiak Robotics company’s website, for instance, the first text block you encounter purports to reveal the safety case for the "Why" behind just what the company is building with its automated driving system. It offers this statistic: “More than 85% of truck crashes in the U.S. were caused by human error.” Whose human error? As any trucker familiar with crash causation stats that exist well knows, the majority of that 85% weren't caused by the error of the professional truck operator. Year’s work is less preoccupied with automated vehicle safety than employment and work prospects for the untold thousands of owner-operators and company drivers in the trucking industry today. The often disputed and debunked “driver shortage” narrative and how it plays into the sales pitch for automation is detailed, likewise the history of deregulation and the intense competition that resulted from the 1980s onward, all stories Overdrive readers will be largely familiar with. Year and his subjects assume autonomous tech companies will ultimately allow fleets to achieve real cost savings in safely removing the driver from the cab working on a large number of lanes. If so, what happens to all the individuals who might have otherwise done that work? We’ve posed it before. Some of the tech companies we’ve interrogated about it no longer in fact exist, having imploded after investment cash dried up or they made a mistake of one kind or another and spooked whatever investors they did have. Still existing tech companies like Kodiak, like Aurora Innovations and Plus.ai, among others, tend all to stick to the notion that if you’re driving today, you’ll be able to retire as a truck driver. Yet given fleets' clear interest in helping develop these systems, for owner-operators the better question may be when will we have to compete with them at scale? What's your take? Complete our survey via this link, where you'll find more reporting, too: https://overdriveonline.com/15749195

"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