This edition features a talk with Generations Express independent owner-operator Bryan Hutchens, and we’ll get to how he feels about the hours of service changes released just yesterday and set to go into effect es early as September. Regular listeners and Overdrive readers may well remember Hutchens from an organizing role he assumed with others around last year’s That’s a Big 10-4 on D.C. outreach effort on the National Mall in October. The last couple of months, he’s seen business slow down a good bit, as have so many, and sold the business’s second truck, a 2007 model, early in the pandemic period, reducing costs. His insurance renewal came up, too, and his agent was able to shop coverage around and found insurers rather aggressively competing with each other – he got a substantial reduction, so maybe, just maybe there’s a bright spot in all this. The owner-operator spent parts of Tuesday and Wednesday this week in D.C. with his 1996 Peterbilt 379 and 53-foot step deck parked with the assembled, he guesses, more than 100 trucks and probably double that of drivers and, in some cases, their families. Wednesday, notably, after Hutchens departed to pick up a load to take him back to his home base in Oklahoma, the group in D.C. was paid a visit by former North Carolina congressman Mark Meadows, President Trump’s Chief of Staff, and his security detail. As we reported yesterday at OverdriveOnline.com, Meadows pledged dialogue to continue, and insisted they had the administration’s attention on rates and transparency issues – though he stressed the reality, that, well, the entire country is hurting right now.

D.C., transparency, hours changes and more with independent Bryan Hutchens

The Overdrive Radio podcast is produced by Overdrive magazine, the Voice of the American Trucker for 60-plus years. Host Todd Dills -- with a supporting cast among Overdrive editors, contributors and others -- presents owner-operator business leading lights, interviews with extraordinary independent truckers and small fleet owners, and plenty in the way of trucking business and regulatory news and views. Access an archive of all episodes of Overdrive Radio going back more than a decade via this link: http://overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio