troys stuff

Count down to the new year with this playlist featuring the most-listened-to editions of the Overdrive Radio podcast, from No. 17 to No. 1, covering trucking businesses and on-highway issues, music by and for highway haulers, and so much more.

2021 in review: The top Overdrive Radio podcasts of the year

A round-up of Overdrive Radio's business-focused podcasts since 2013, including exclusive interviews, presentations and more geared to owner-operator and small fleet owner businesses among listeners.

Trucking business

Today’s special edition of the podcast is a re-air of ATBS President Todd Amen’s semi-annual conference call with clients of the business services firm and other owner-operators that offers the opportunity for listeners to benchmark their own income performance against the averages of their peers that ATBS computes. Near the call’s beginning, though, Amen detailed the pressures that the Biden administration and Congress have renewed against the independent contractor model writ large. Fleets of all sizes are worrying more about it, as he shows, and some owner-operators are, too.

At once, the majority of ATBS’ owner-op clientele aren’t aware even of California’s A.B. 5 law, for instance, in place now for a year and a half and currently not applying to trucking, though that could change depending on pending court cases. The so-called ‘ABC test’ in that law in essence prevents an independent contractor relationship between a worker and a business if both parties are essentially in the same line of work, making current and traditional owner-operator lease arrangements with other motor carriers problematic in various ways. 

What’s abundantly clear from other surveys ATBS has conducted, though? When asked if leasing suddenly were not an option any longer, just what would ATBS client leased owner-ops do? 

Not even two in 10 would become company drivers, Amen noted results of his company's surveying. There’s a lot more where that came from in this episode, and a wealth of data on the topsy-turvy 2020 year’s income performance for average owner-operators among dry, reefer, flatbed and independent segments ATBS tracks. 

Read more about Amen's presentation: http://overdriveonline.com/15064950

Subscribe to Overdrive's daily newsletter for updates, news, views and analysis via http://overdriveonline.com

Owner-ops are not company drivers for a reason -- ABC test in practice, more data from ATBS

Wisconsin-based owner-operator Jason Hurley, a former Schneider- leased owner-operator, made a move earlier this year to the young operation of CloudTrucks. The Texas-based company, with some operations in California, pitches to owner-operators as a "virtual carrier," operating less like a traditional asset-based carrier and more like a support company, basically. Cloud puts emphasis on its technology and systems in place to support otherwise independent businesses.

Yet they're no broker or dispatch service -- it's CloudTrucks’ motor carrier authority under which an owner leased there runs.

And though its model generally is tech-assisted self-dispatch for how owner-operators run there, it does field a functional support staff on the back end to smooth out the rough edges of any carrier-broker transaction. The brokered freight market comprises the large majority of its freight universe. Since founding within the last years, they’ve grown quickly. They were up to more than 70 owner-ops leased as of the company’s most-recent MCS-150 federal update earlier this year.  

Hurley was attracted initially for a percentage contract for compensation much lower than is traditional for asset-based companies taking care of leased owners' liability insurance. CloudTrucks allots 5 points of its 15%-per-load fee to the owner-operator's liability insurance, Hurley said, leaving a 10 percent fee otherwise for access to the company's freight platform and support networks. What he's found so far there? Find out in this podcast. 

Read about CloudTrucks' "Road to Independence" partnership with third-party leasing companies to offer a path to truck ownership for company drivers through fair lease-purchase programs: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15065768/alabama-truckers-fight-truckonly-toll-proposal-in-mobile

More from Overdrive Radio: http://overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio

Real success leased to a 'virtual' carrier: Owner-operator Jason Hurley and CloudTrucks

The context for the conversation you'll hear in today's 60th-anniversary special edition of Overdrive Radio, conducted at the Great American Trucking Show in 2019, was twofold, centered around both driver training and history. 

Over the course of the 20th century, as you'll hear, the licensing required for a driver to operate interstate tightened. In the early days of motorized transport, an 18-year-old had no problem being licensed for interstate operation of what passed for the big trucks of the day. 

They weren't, of course, very big at all by today's standards. The picture here is one of of Walter Thompson of Shelburn, Indiana, grandfather of Jay Thompson, now an independent consultant to various trucking and natural gas interests through his Transportation Business Associates company.

As I wrote at the time of this conversation's original airing two years ago, Thompson’s been quite a resource for me when it comes to owner-operator and trucking history in general. He grew up in rural Indiana and starting his working career driving big trucks, a route taken by the generations of men in his family as well, all the way back to his grandfather.

Walter Thompson had a chauffer’s license enabling him to move freight as early as age 18, in 1917. And given debate continues around training and potentially opening up interstate operations, perhaps in a limited fashion, to some drivers younger than 21, Thompson's thoughts do more than just gives us a window on trucking's history through the lens of one family's experience.

We were also talking at the time about the potential potential for a pilot program for under-21 CDL drivers, then under intense debate, as we sat down to ferret out a little bit of the history there.

As Thompson says, history often repeats itself in various ways … 

Find more installments in Overdrive's 60th-anniversary series of lookbacks on history via http://overdriveonline.com/trucking-history

What came before the CDL? 18 years old and hauling interstate in 1917

The thumbnail image with today's podcast was the product of the 2019 groundswell of grassroots advocacy that rose leading into the ultimate passage of the AB 5 law in California, which codified a controversial court decision that applied the ABC contractor test in the state. That test, to say the least, is problematic for owner-operator lease arrangements with motor carriers as they've traditionally been drawn up -- and federally recognized now for decades in the Truth in Leasing regulations. 

In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, we’re going to drop into the annual Symposium event hosted by Overdrive sister fleet publication CCJ. This past Wednesday in Birmingham, Alabama, at the event, CTA CEO Shawn Yadon described what he saw with his own eyes on the ground in 2019 as that groundswell of advocacy rose. The result of that advocacy – a myriad of carveouts in the law by the legislature aimed at a laundry list of professions, but not for trucking, not for owner-operators.

That set up the Supreme Court case Yadon and CTA filed Monday, and here we get more on potential outcomes from both Yadon and transportation attorney Greg Feary of the Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary law firm. Both men had much more to say about the history of how we got to this point, with owner-operators and their contracting motor carriers still playing the high-stakes waiting game on the outcome. 

Read more about the session in this report from the scene Wednesday: https://www.overdriveonline.com/regulations/article/15113768/the-california-conundrum-independent-contractor-state-of-play

And more about the 2019 advocacy efforts here: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/14897067/rumblings-of-protest-out-west-in-wake-of-california-contractor-law

Owner-ops' big role out West as AB 5 wound toward this week's Supreme Court filing

In this edition of Overdrive Radio, hear the musical entries of, and interviews with, the three songwriters who are finalists in this year’s Overdrive Red Eye Radio Trucker Talent Search. It's something of a preview of the big finale, set for September 16, at 5 p.m. Eastern time, and streaming from OverdriveOnline.com. 

Find out just how to tune in live that date and sign up for email reminders just before the broadcast via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-talent-search/article/15066153/trucker-talent-search-final-competition-set-for-september-16

In the podcast, we'll hear from trucker Mike Sheffield of Kentucky coal country, from Michigan-based Grassmid driver Rich Scripps, and Dayton, Ohio-based Guy Archer. All are featured in conversation, too, with the great Eric Harley, host of Red Eye Radio, Overdrive's partners in the program, now in its 8th year.

This year's event's proved to be a special one, no doubt, with these excellent songwriters with incredibly diverse styles.

Read more about Guy Archer via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-talent-search/article/15065701/trucker-talent-search-finalist-covers-chesneys-anything-but-mine

Mike Sheffield: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-talent-search/article/15065572/mike-sheffield-performs-original-song-hammer-down-again

Rich Scripps: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-talent-search/article/15065636/trucker-talent-search-competitor-covers-hawaiian-christmas-song

Trucker Talent Search preview: Sheffield, Scripps, Archer square off September 16

Helping carriers dealing with the 'fun' that can come with safety and compliance during federal or state audits is at least a good part of the life of Fleet Safety Services consultant Jeff Davis, the principal voice in this edition of Overdrive Radio. After starting in trucking as a driver, Davis eventually made a career helping mostly small motor carriers through those compliance reviews. 

At the annual conference of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies this past week in Nashville, Davis offered information into new audit activity related to the relatively new drug and alcohol testing results Clearinghouse maintained by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration -- and common slip-ups carriers are making with required pre-employment and other checks there. 
Too many, he said, are getting dinged by auditors for violations that are ultimately easily prevented, as he tells it. There’s a lot happening in terms of the Clearinghouse, too, that Davis rounds up in what follows here, certainly germane to those of you in the audience who employ or lease with one or more drivers or owner-operators. 

Also in the podcast: We'll dive into the Small Fleet Champ awards presentation Thursday night to the record-setting group of NASTC attendees at its annual conference – according to President David Owen, attendance at the event nearly doubled prior years’ registrations, truly something to behold. 

Congrats again to finalists Hallahan Transport and Professional Transportation Services Inc. – and the ultimate Small Fleet Champ in Silver Creek Transportation. This isn't the last we'll hear from owners Rob Hallahan, Nick Hewitt and Jason Cowan, be assured. 

Read more about each of the finalist fleets:
Hallahan -- https://www.overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ/article/15280238/hallahan-transport-thriving-on-lessons-learned-from-the-past
PTSI: https://www.overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ/article/15280537/trucking-legacy-of-nick-hewitt-and-platform-hauler-ptsi
Silver Creek Transportation: https://www.overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ/article/15115043/diversification-silver-creek-transportations-growth-secret

'Fun' with safety/compliance: Low-hanging fruit to avoid drug/alcohol Clearinghouse violations

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 readers 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

Secret weapons for bookkeeping, biz analysis: Trucker of the Month Scott Smith

"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 

Truck-ownership traditions staying alive: Owner-operators Lucas Zach, Harlan Martin

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 testimonies: 
**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 debate 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 increasingly plied by organized rings. You’ll hear about other techs like automatic 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 carriers recruiting drivers for temporary work in the U.S. from overseas. The non-domiciled CDL is a credential 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 last-week-released research showed 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.

OOIDA, ATA, Teamsters scrum in Senate hearing: CDL fraud, training, driverless trucks, more

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

Three loads -- $2.30, $3, $10/mile: Which haul would you choose? Profit analysis might surprise you

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

Freight recession? Trucker of the Month Ron Kelsey just hasn't seen it with two direct customers

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