Another edition here drops in Overdrive Radio's re-air of the Over the Road podcast series, coproduced by Overdrive and PRX's Radiotopia podcast network and hosted by 'Long Haul Paul' Marhoefer. Here, the host's "Long Haul of Fame” tells the stories of five of Marhoefer’s personal heroes -- longtime professional driver Idella Marie Hansen; owner-operator Big Jim Selkirk; trucker Ken “Shoestring” Waugh; overnight radio D.J. Marcia Campbell; and, finally, a tribute to one of those heroes who’s passed on, New York-based Fast Freddie Lieb, the “Pope of Pompano” running out of the Florida Pompano Beach market and up and down the East Coast, where Marhoefer knew him best. 

What emerges over the course of the episode is an indelible take on recent trucking history through these individual stories, including that of Marhoefer himself. 

Also in the podcast: Highlights from the week's news, which you can keep tabs on daily via Overdrive's daily newsletter. Subscribe via http://overdriveonline.com 

Find all editions of Over the Road via this playlist collecting our re-airs: https://soundcloud.com/overdriveradio/sets/the-over-the-road-podcast-on 

Hear more from the Radiotopia network via http://radiotopia.fm

Indelible trucking portrait -- Long Haul Paul's 'Long Haul of Fame' through highs, lows of history

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

From a songwriting session in early 2019 with Nashville-based John Allan Miller, Airgas company driver Guy Archer, based in Dayton, Ohio, determined to get back to Music City to continue work in songwriting later that same year. Yet a back injury derailed that plan, then COVID happened in 2020, and getting back into his truck after unloading one night Archer happened to hear an advertisement early in 2021 for the Overdrive-Red Eye Radio Trucker Talent Search. 

As many regular listeners will know, Archer went on to win the competition, and early in November, he was back in Nashville at the Jay’s Place recording studio with producer-engineer Jay Vernali laying down five of his original tracks, all of which you can listen to via this playlist he was kind enough to share with us: https://soundcloud.com/overdriveradio/sets/2021-trucker-talent-search-winner-guy-archers-prize-recording-session 

For this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, we’ll take a tour through some of those results as well, likewise a long talk with Archer about his life in music, and trucking but of course.

He got his start in 1992 with J.B. Hunt and has done a little bit of everything, including driving massive articulated dump trucks off-highway, on up to his current work for Airgas. His wife, Linda, joined him on the trip the Nashville for the session, where Vernali brought in Tony Graci on percussion and, on guitar, a player with a little trucking-music lineage behind him. Guitarist Chris Leuzinger’s pretty famous for his long and exhaustive work with country music leading light Garth Brooks, but he also played on one of the most famous trucking songs of all time, “18 wheels & a dozen roses” by Kathy Mattea. 

Results from the session are spectacular.

Catch Archer's winning Talent Search performance on video here: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-talent-search/article/15114790/guy-archer-named-trucker-talent-search-winner

Trucker-songwriter Guy Archer's journeys with heavy loads, right back to Nashville

The “People’s Convoy” continues to roll toward the area of the nation’s capital, at upward of 100 trucks as of yesterday, with multiple hundreds more personal vehicles as of Thursday, March 3, on a route to Ohio before a final trip into the D.C. area planned for Saturday this weekend. 

The convoy, as we’ve noted at Overdrive, has a stated aim of ending the national emergency footing on which the U.S. government has found itself the last two years as it relates to COVID: https://www.overdriveonline.com/life/article/15288864/us-convoy-aims-to-end-national-emergency-covid-declaration

Those kinds of emergency declarations bring with them new discretionary funding opportunities for federal agencies to direct to states, the ability to impose restrictions in some instances -– in the U.S. that’s primary been seen at the local and state levels when comes to restrictions on travel and gatherings, particularly early on in the pandemic but continuing in some measures today. At the federal level, we’ve got the cross-border vaccination requirement for non-U.S. citizens coming in, and Canada has imposed that measure for border crossings on U.S. haulers, too. 

Yet there’s more that can come along with an emergency declaration – we see it routinely in the event of a hurricane or other weather-related disaster for relief haulers. Namely, regulatory flexibility. The supply-chain challenges that have continued to shift and in some cases intensify since the beginning of the pandemic prompted the FMCSA to waive certain parts of the hours of service for haulers of a big list of commodities that were being moved in direct-assistance efforts. Those have included the emergency restocking of items as uncommon as emergency medical treatments or as common as basic groceries. 

With the waiver’s extension earlier this week through the end of May, on today's edition of Overdrive Radio we talk with the Trucker Nation group’s regulatory affairs lead Andrea Marks about progress on her organization’s data-collection effort around independent carriers' use of the hours of service waiver. That collection effort is aimed at providing a base from which to study its connection to bedrock safety metrics. 

That is, what’s the safety record, what’s the crash record say about all manner of haulers who’ve effectively been "self-regulating" lo these two years? 

The end result might go some way toward further enhancing hours of service flexibility, a subject we take up again in more detail in today’s podcast. Listen back to this prior episode for more from Marks on the subject before her independent data-collection started: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15114806/how-the-covid-hours-waiver-could-disentangle-hos-rigidity

Further, with People's Convoy growing and the U.S. government in more ways than one signaling a slow return to normalcy as the latest COVID wave subsides, what's the likelihood of a further extension beyond May of parts of this waiver? Take a listen to find out.

Will the national emergency declaration's COVID hours of service waiver extend again?

The nimble nature of businesses working the expediting niche of the trucking world, particularly those powered by smaller pieces of equipment like cargo vans, is well-known to longtime industry participants. Atlanta-based Breon Thomas was initially attracted to cargo van expediting for that very reason, yet he quickly learned there was more to successful business ownership than working hard and running miles. 

Today, after telling his story and sharing with others frequently on social media, "Bre the Xpediter" Thomas is driven by a passion to give a hand up to the next generation of owners from his community coming up behind him. In today's edition of Overdrive Radio, the Chattanooga, Tennessee-born cargo van hauler recounts his journey from early battles with dyslexia to a military career and the tough transition back to civilian life. It's there, though, that he located a significant aptitude for serving as a kind of translator of the language of business/entrepreneurship to the aspirational among all sorts of folks who’ve gotten a glimpse of the cargo van expediting niche and the business ownership potential within it. 

Part of his source material? Near the end of our last conversation, one of two leading up to this podcast, he noted that, among other resources, he’d found Overdrive’s Partners in Business manual and online series to be particularly useful for aspiring business owners.

You can download the updated 2022 edition of the book via this linke: http://OverdriveOnline.com/pib

Read more about the cargo van expediting niche via this link to a feature series originally published in 2019: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/14896131/the-lowdown-on-downsizing-hauling-in-the-cargo-van-ownerop-niche

Find Breon Thomas via his Youtube channel -- https://www.youtube.com/brethexpediter -- and Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SEEHimEnterprise/

Limits to the cargo-van hustle: Bre the Xpediter stresses business-systems value to break through

When Florida-based small fleet owner Chris Porricelli started his CAP Trucking company as a one-truck business, he was still in his 20s, and struggled for the first six months. But 11 years into it today, the five-truck fleet has excelled in North-South LTL reefer lanes with mostly direct customers for produce headed north from Florida and South Georgia, and a bevy of commodities headed south.

In this edition of Overdrive Radio, hear Porricelli's story in his own words, with part of our conversation with the owner attendant to his company’s semi-finalist recognition in Overdrive’s 2022 Small Fleet Championship: https://www.overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ/article/15296127/cap-trucking-refocuses-asset-business-in-ltl-reefer

CAP Trucking is one of five semi-finalists in the 3-10-truck category for the program this year, with five more contenders also in the 11-30-truck category.

Last week, Overdrive started running stories about all 10 of the fleets (with four live so far) and will continue that through the end of the month. Finalists will be announced in early October, with the winner named in a ceremony at the annual conference of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies October 20-22 in Nashville, Tennessee. (NASTC is the Small Fleet Champ awards' principal sponsor): http://overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ 

Whether or not you missed the story earlier this week about CAP Trucking, you'll hear in this week's podcast a man in clear control of his business. He's got a real acumen for all the planning and thinking that goes into consolidation of LTL loads, with his family’s lineage extending back four generations in the wholesale produce business at Hunts Point Market in New York City. There, Porricelli cut his teeth as a night receiving foreman before venturing into over-the-road trucking on his own in the early part of the last decade.

Getting to where he is today was in no way an easy path for the young man, though. Recent years presented a trifecta of difficulties with a stolen truck, an expensive brush with scam artists, and no shortage of self-reflection after taking on a little too much. It all led him to stark choices that have allowed the business to re-emerge all the better for it. 

Also in the podcast: 
Porricelli explains his rationale for moving the business, now in its 12th year, into a S Corp structure for the tax savings and simplification enjoyed there. If you're unfamiliar with the structure, generally it makes sense for an owner-operator when net income exceeds a certain level (the $70,000 annual net figure is often offered as a rule of thumb). Read much more about it in this how-to coverings the questions of why, when and how to make the switch: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15282000/how-to-set-up-an-owneroperator-llc-to-file-as-an-s-corp
  
Hear also about how the owner's refocusing moves in recent years have allowed him to reduce debt loads considerably, and much more.

A stolen truck, a freight scam and a big re-evaluation on the road to small fleet success

"The goal of this program is to take one truck and figure out how to squeeze the maximum amount of profit out of that truck." --Kevin Rutherford on NASTC's ROTC joint effort with his business

Kevin Rutherford's Let's Truck and other initiatives are likely well-known to Overdrive readers. We last heard his voice here in Overdrive Radio from the conference of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies at the 2023 event. He made a case to small fleets and owner-operators in attendance for just how they might get through, even thrive in, the down freight markets then ongoing: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15658960 

He was back at the NASTC event in Nashville in November last year with some news of a joint venture with the association, bringing his focus through many years helping owner-operators in business with coaching, and with tools like his ProfitGauges software and more ...  news about how that singular focus would be coming to a NASTC work in progress, according to association president Dave Owen. 

It goes by a nifty acronym, ROTC, or “Remarkable One Truck Company,” ROTC. (There's an alternate for that, too, Rutherford quipped during his and Owen's NASTC 2024 presentation: the "Rutherford Owen Training Curriculum.") It will be the end product of a closer relationship Rutherford and Owen have built over a couple years now. These two leaders in small trucking hope to be able to combine forces to help business owners with resources, tools and education.

"The number 1 reason for failure in small trucking is growth," said Owen. "And the number 2 reason for not succeeding, after you make the decision to get a second truck, is not growing."

It's a paradoxical reality the association sees many one-truck independents fall prety to when they move beyond the single unit, without the infrastructure in place to manage the biz when you’re no longer in complete control of the response to every single thing that can, and will, go wrong. NASTC exists to help provide that infrastructure, as Owen notes. These two men are hoping to fully launch the ROTC program as a training effort in some ways modeled on Rutherford’s long-running programs designed for one-truck owners to maximize efficiency and profitability. Those lessons then can be applied across any small fleet owner’s business as well, to enable better competition with peers -- the big boys, too. 

As you’ll hear on the podcast today sharing some of their freewheeling conversation with a roomful of NASTC conference attendees in November, owner-operators and nimble small fleets do in fact bring a cost advantage to trucking over their big-fleet counterparts in numerous individual cases. Minus diver pay and benefits, according to the American Transportation Research Institute’s 2024 cost analysis, it's costing the big fleets 1.30/mile. Meanwhile, one owner in attendance at the NASTC session with Rutherford and Owen noted his cost to operate, not considering his own compensation, was below a dollar a mile. 

We made a comparison using Overdrive’s new Load Profit Analyzer calculator: https://overdriveonline.com/load-analyzer 

The profit result on a hypothetical four-day, 2000-mile run offered at $2.25 per mile for the rate rate was about 30 cents a mile in profit to the Remarkable One Truck of that owner-operator’s business, plus nearly $2,000 worth in salary to himself for the four-day run. The average fleet’s truck, on the other hand, loses a couple $20 bills’ worth of cash -- the only one profiting there is the driver, earning that nearly $2,000 in salary. 

As mentioned in the podcast, Kevin Rutherford shared this form questionnaire designed to get you thinking about the areas where you want to improve when it comes to efficiency and business analysis, and signal your interest in the new NASTC ROTC curriculum: https://kevinonxm.wufoo.com/forms/welcome-to-the-rotc-breakout-session

How to build the 'Remarkable One Truck Company': NASTC, Kevin Rutherford on ROTC progress

How might truckers get back a measure of flexibility in the hours of service rules, such as that enjoyed by so many owner-operators of past generations? That is, the ability to split the 10-hour required rest period into two periods of any length they want. That’s the option favored by a whopping 88% of readers who responded to Overdrive polling around the subject this time last year, with results published earlier in the year showing most readers wanted the ability just to split as they saw fit, fundamentally. 

Since the 14-hour duty window came into play more than two decades ago, well before the time of electronic logging device mandate's implementation in 2017, greater duty-window and/or rest period flexibility has been owner-operators' cardinal ask of regulators when it comes to the hours of service. 

After trucker appreciation week last week, we might see a path forward to it. In this Overdrive Radio edition, Chief Editor Todd Dills and Matt Cole break down the details of the DOT and FMCSA's announcement to start truck appreciation week last week of two proposed pilot programs to fully test two different options for split flexibility. 

It’s not often we start the annual appreciation week with something other than a free soda at a truck stop or other deal from a vendor or supplier to write about. Yet that was the case for Cole last week Monday, when DOT announced formal proposals to conduct those safety-efficacy studies. One's the split-as-you-see fit option of up to 5/5-hour sleeper splits, the other a daily up-to-three-hour pause button, spot to speak, for the 14-hour clock. 

The news wasn't entirely unexpected, nontheless. The formal proposals had been teased back in June as part of what the DOT called a “Pro Trucker” package of efforts. The formal proposals open up a comment period on how regulators might set up and conduct the programs, each of which will be open to more than 250 drivers to participate: https://www.overdriveonline.com/hours-of-service/article/15755537/what-fmcsas-hoursofservice-flexibility-pilot-programs-could-look-like

We’re certainly months out from interested participants being able to apply to take part, and given each test could take years to bring to fruition, it could be quite some time before any subsequent regulatory action is taken. That is, unless another federal body pushes the ball more quickly forward, as Cole puts it in the podcast, and "Congress were to get involved." 

Absent Congressional directive to take regulatory action, further hours flexibilities for all drivers aren’t likely in the cards before the next decade rolls around after these studies conclude -- depending on results, of course. That timeline takes us into whatever administration follows the current one.

"Personally I don't see this as necessarily a partisan issue," said Cole. "If a Democratic Administration were to come in" come 2029, he felt FMCSA wouldn't be likely to wholesale abandon work put into potential new flexibilities. After all, some of groundwork for the 2020 split-sleeper enhancements was put in under the Obama administration. 

If these two studies show positive or even neutral safety impacts for participating truckers, it might really get things moving toward change for the next administration's FMCSA.

Where to read and comment on the proposals, through mid-November: **Split-sleeper program: https://www.regulations.gov/document/FMCSA-2025-0193-0001 
**Split-duty program: https://www.regulations.gov/document/FMCSA-2025-0194-0001

More on the 2020 split-sleeper change, which itself offered a boost in duty-pause and split flexibility: https://www.overdriveonline.com/partners-in-business/safety-compliance/video/15737159/significant-hos-change-fmcsas-2020-splitsleeper-provisions

Sleeper berth: Will truckers be able to split as they see fit? FMCSA opens potential path forward

One of the trucking industry's biggest events, the biennial Guilty by Association Truck Show at 4 State Trucks in Joplin, Missouri, is officially under way at Exit 4 off I-44.

With hundreds of trucks in attendance (organizers expect 800+ to participate in the Saturday night convoy), the massive show sprawls across multiple businesses, including 4 State Trucks itself, the Joplin 44 Petro and Pilot truck stops across state highway 43, and more.

No matter what your taste in trucks is, you're certain to find what you like on display. There's no shortage of antiques, cabovers, Peterbilts, Kenworths and everything in between. Most of the trucks are no doubt workers, but there are also some true showpieces on display: https://www.overdriveonline.com/custom-rigs/podcast/15767972/guilty-by-association-truck-show-under-way-in-joplin

In addition to the beautiful iron exhibited, there's plenty to do around the show, including big-rig burnouts, a truck and tractor pull, concerts, Trucker Olympics and more. Friday morning, officials from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration were on hand for a Q&A with attendees. See more from that next week. For now, drop into this Overdrive Radio conversation with Overdrive Senior Editor Matt Cole, on hand covering the show after a round of rough weather had participants hard at work day 1 Thursday, September 26. 

As noted in the show: 
**The big news from DOT around non-domiciled CDL issuance to foreign drivers: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15767991
**David Foster's 2005 W900L as pictured way back in 2017 (with rainbow): https://www.overdriveonline.com/custom-rigs/article/14891552/dave-fosters-2005-kenworth-w900l
**Enter Overdrive's Pride & Polish by October 1 to compete in our own virtual truck show: https://www.overdriveonline.com/page/2025-pp

Guilty by Association Truck Show rolls into Joplin

No news has been bigger in trucking this year than the DOT’s announcement Friday, September 26, of changes to the rules around non-domiciled CDL issuance, effective now: https://www.overdriveonline.com/regulations/article/15767991/fmcsa-to-force-nearly-200k-nondomiciled-cdl-holders-out-of-trucking

New restrictions on issuance hold potential to limit foreign-domiciled CDL drivers' ability to work OTR in the U.S. The influx of asylum seekers into the country in recent years has meant a lot of those asylum seekers ended up getting those non-domiciled CDLs. Going forward, they won’t, unless they have an employer-sponsored visa for temporary work in the United States. 

The same day DOT announced the changes, likewise initial results from its ongoing audit of state CDL programs around non-domciled CDL issuance, our own Matt Cole was out at the Guilty by Association Truck Show in Joplin, Missouri, where he reported from a sort of listening session hosted at the event by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association and featuring questions and commentary from owner-operators in attendance. Responses came from FMCSA’s own Senior Policy Advisor Michael Hampton. 

This week's episode features a good near-hour’s worth of audio from the session, and applause lines weren't hard to come by -- rare for a regulatory session, that's certain. One came fairly early on in response to a commenting owner-operator's contention that, as was noted by many Overdrive readers earlier this year, maybe a non-domiciled CDL shouldn’t even exist, particularly as an option for a non-immigrant in the country with temporary status: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15747114  

Perhaps the biggest applause line, though, came when FMCSA's own Michael Hampton contended that more hours of service flexibility would result in better safety, as the agency readies two studies of flexibility enhancements we highlighted two weeks back here on the podcast: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15755974 

Hampton urged truckers to participate in those studies when they get rolling -- the agency will need data to help it get further changes to the split-sleeper rules, and/or a 14-hour clock pause button, across the finish line in future. Participation’s going to be paramount to analyzing safety impacts and, with any luck, truly showing that Hampton in his contention is in fact correct. 

As also mentioned in the podcast:
**Big congrats to Overdrive's four 2025 Small Fleet Champ finalists! Recent announcement: https://overdriveonline.com/15768558
**DOT OIG's audit of oversight of CDL skills testing and training: https://overdriveonline.com/15755980 (second brief down the page)

FMCSA's GBATS session: Truckers' applause for Trump DOT moves not hard to find

Off the top of this week's Overdrive Radio episode one thing's clear. Longtime Alaska-based truck driver Lisa Kelly is now a business owner. That's right, in the very long time since Overdrive editor Todd Dills last spoke to her (though not the last time you read about her in Overdrive), she bought a 2019 Peterbilt 389 and leased on with a company to work Alaska's Dalton Highway (the "Haul Road," as its known): https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/14874578/haul-road-to-the-himalayas-interviewing-lisa-kelly

It's also the 389 she's hoping to earn money enough to either repair or replace as shown in episode 1 of the brand-new season of the History Channel's "Ice Road Truckers" franchise, back after a long hiatus. Owner-operator Kelly's got long history with the show, part of the first seasons that were filmed in Alaska after it got its start along routes partially on frozen lakes in far northern Manitoba in 2007. 

She couldn't talk publicly about the fleet she's leased to today, per an agreement with the owner when she decided to go back to IRT, yet she was willing to share her own business's name. "I'm Arctic Fox Trucking," she said, and yeah, there's a story there. 

"Back in the day when we were filming in Alaska, Season Three," she said, the Arctic Fox moniker was bestowed upon her by a young woman among the show's producers, one among many nicknames passed around for cast and crew on the show. "She thought it would be funny," Kelly added, yet "I didn't get it" at first. Finally, though, she did, perhaps when Esquire magazine dubbed her the "sexiest trucker alive" in a headline back in 2010, coupled with photos of Kelly and the Kenworth she drove for well-known Alaska-headquartered Carlile Transportation.  

For all such attention she got back in those days, it was another quality that stood out perhaps more prominently -- a no-nonsense attitude toward the work of trucking. It all ended with her in a role as something of a de facto ambassador to the world for North American hauling. 

What's life been like for her since? Catch plenty more about all of that, including a good bit of time away from the road before buying that Peterbilt, in the podcast. The current "Ice Road Truckers" season -- find two episodes available for streaming today via this link: https://www.history.com/shows/ice-road-truckers -- features a cast of two other haulers with Kelly working for Operations Manager Bill Dahn's Muskie Creek Ltd. company, hauling north on six weeks' worth of winter roads to communities otherwise cut off from land routes. The first episodes also features Harris and Sons Transportation owner and operator Shaun Harris and his sons Riley and Zach, as they survey ice that just doesn't seem to be firming up fast as usual, with the work piling up for the season west in Saskatchewan.

As always for the reality-TV franchise, there’s plenty drama in those first couple episodes, offering an entertaining window into a brand of trucking that’s certainly more man v. nature than most.

In the podcast, drop into Kelly's story of how she came to truck ownership some years after the end of the "Ice Road Truckers" original run, as the owner-operator takes us back to her time as a Carlile Trasportation company driver, then all that’s happened since. Short version, as it were, of a long, long story. 

"A lot happened, and nothing happened," she laughed, to start it off.

Ice Road Truckers' Lisa Kelly, back in action -- new show season, new biz

This week's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast features the semi-annual ATBS owner-operator income benchmarking session delivered in late September by ATBS Vice President Mike Hosted. The audio contains the full presentation, but know that there's a video version accessible via the Youtube version at this link: https://youtu.be/CYxCHAb1RnY

To follow along with the audio here, download a bevy of detailed slides charting cost, revenue and income trends among ATBS's tens of thousands of owner-operator clientele at this link: https://overdriveonline.com/15769723


There’s plenty in the way of trends analysis showing where we've been up to the present moment in the wider freight economy in Hosted's talk. Since the COVD run-up in freight and rates, though, we suspect most owner-operators know where that’s gone. Hosted put it pretty plainly, looking at contract freight volumes and rates at a certain point in the presentation that you’ll hear. 

"Now we've been contractingi in frieght volume for the last two and a half years," he said. It’s been about the longest contraction (though not always happening quickly these last years) that he and many others have ever seen. There’s hope in some ways for a turnaround, given what he called a measure of stability freight-volume-wise seen in some of the numbers lately. Likewise, hopes for a hit to trucking capacity via the Trump administration's foreign-domiciled drver credentialing rule changes -- or another factor. Not that Hosted plays much of the old prognosticating game this time around. 

"I keep hearing middle of next year, second half of next year," he said, but "i've been hearing that for three years now. I'm tired of saying that. I don't know when things are going to get better," fundamentally. Control what you can control, he added, to rein in costs and keep an eye on generating revenue above and beyond them. 

Hosted has made an effort in recent times to emphasize what’s know as contribution margin, a measure of total revenues incoming minus variable costs incurred. That’d be your fuel costs, tires, maintenance generally, anything you spend to keep the equipment moving down the road to generate that revenue. The contribution margin figure can be used monthly or weekly to help determine just when you’ve met your fixed costs for the same period. Fixed costs are incurred at time intervals and are what they’re called in the very name – fixed, predictable. Know your contribution margin as closely as possible and you can, on an ongoing basis, know when you’ve met your fixed costs for a given month, for instance, and all the contribution margin earned thereafter during that period is pure profit. 

"The important thing is when you hit that fixed cost, your profit per mile is through the roof," he said.  

Owner-operators think about costs, revenues and profit in so many ways, but Hosted wagers this approach could help in choosing freight, and motivating an owner-op to strike when the iron is hot, as it were, not in the freight market broadly but in the run of your own day-to-day business. 

ATBS is coproducer of Overdrive's Partners in Business, which you can access via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/pib

The owner-operator business services provider is accessible via its website: https://atbs.com

Taking control: Owner-operator cost, revenue, income and wider trucking trends update with ATBS

"Be on-time, put out the extra effort. ... No matter what you're going to be in life, be the best." 
--Owner-operator John Treadway on his motivation through the years

Raised to “be the best” at whatever he did, owner-operator John Treadway is clearly working hard to achieve that lofty goal with his one-truck business. It's a two-truck business, actually, with Treadway trucking with his own authority mostly in a stunningly beautiful 1998 Peterbilt 379 he calls "Teal Appeal," but with a 2006-model Pete kept as a spare to run in winter, and as a failsafe to serve his central customer. Treadway was Overdrive's Trucker of the Month for September, featured in this story by Senior Editor Matt Cole, whose long talk with Treadway makes up the bulk of this week's podcast: https://overdriveonline.com/15767883

Owner-operator John Treadway hauls flowers year-round for a greenhouse operation near his base in Kokomo, Indiana, with his Tway (prounced TEE-Way) Rose Transport, now with authority for going on a decade after some decades more leased to other companies. His story stretches back to his start trucking with the 1990 purchase of a 1985 Kenworth Liberty Edition cabover he used to haul grain with his older brother, eventually moving on to pull flatbeds and a variety of other trailers. It’s reefer work these days for the flower operation, and since we saw his tractor at MATS early this year he’s put work into a 2017 Great Dane reefer to match the lines and colors of "Teal Appeal" 1998 Pete, as you’ll hear in the podcast today. 

Yet so much of Treadway’s approach to trucking he traces to the time before he ever held a steering wheel, his life built in the business on top of those be-the-best values instilled at an early age along with admiration of truck drivers whose names he may have never known but from whom he garnered examples to which to aspire. Along with business brass tacks he keeps early lessons learned ever at the front his mind about what it takes to build success as a one-truck owner, and to have a little fun along the way. 

"One of my good friends told me a long, long time ago, 'To be an owner-operator, that's a 364-day-a year job,'" Treadway said. "You're driving through the day, you're hauling the loads, but it doesn't stop. The weekend comes, and you've got repairs to do, and then on top of that if you want to add a piece of chrome or something, you have to try to fit all that in. There's just a grind to it. You've just gotta keep grinding, and keep moving forward." 

Read about all of our 2025 Truckers of the Month, contenders for the annual prize of a Bostrom seat from Trucker of the Year sponsor Commercial Vehicle Group and a custom replica of the winner's tractor: https://overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year

Also in the podcast: 

Shout to Overdrive's Small Fleet Champs announced Thursday, October 23, at the National Association of Small Trucking Companies’ annual conference in Nashville with fellow finalists on hand with the hundreds assembled for the opening night dinner and program: https://www.overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ/article/15770012/overdrives-2025-small-fleet-champs-tfx-oberman-come-out-on-top 

Keep tuned for a roundtable talk with all in attendance conducted just ahead of the event in a near-future Overdrive Radio edition. No shortage of wisdom shared amongst this group, no doubt. 

'Be the best': Lofty goals, success in execution mark owner-op John Treadway's long career

This week's edition of Overdrive Radio drops into our awards ceremony October 23, 2025, with four Small Fleet Champs -- the owners of Clifford Hay Inc., Thomasville Funiture Xpress, Turnage & Sons, and Oberman Logistics all on hand for the event in Nashville, Tennessee. Before the dinnertime program got started that fine Thursday evening, Overdrive editor Todd Dills had the chance to sit down with all of the owners, with results in this wide-raning roundtable talk around what TFX co-owner Scott Denmark pointed out was more of a rectangular table in fact. Be that as it may, the pair of Scotts (Scott Cruthis is Denmark's co-owner) is joined here by Clifford Hay and Wes Oberman, likewise Robbie Turnage, all swapping stories and biz advice in response to two principal questions: 

1. What's been your biggest business challenge in recent years, and how are you working to overcome it? 
2. What's the best piece of advice you might give an aspiring small fleet owner? 

Topics range across matters of trucking insurance hikes, investment to handle tire maintenance in-house for sizable savings and no small number of breakdown headaches and towing horror stories met head-on. Both Cruthis and Turnage own their own fifth-wheel tow hooks, giving the fleets capability to rescue a rig sidelined without getting dinged with a huge tow bill (and saving on maintenance by doing necessary work in-house,too). 

Turnage told the story of a near $15K tow bill for a grand total of four miles of towing for a job the tow company claimed required a rotator and a hefty "EPA clean-up fee." Turned out the tow operator didn't even own a rotator and certainly didn't use one for this particular job. Turnage found it out when he showed up in Pennsylvania with an appointment to pick his truck up, and the tow operator put him off and put him off for hours before finally relinquishing the equipment. 

How'd he get out of that one? Hear more about it in the podcast, along with a variety of other war stories from each of the individual owners. All are certainly doing a lot right, and with similarities amongst each other in many respects, though their operations couldn’t be more different. Turnage and Sons operates all company-owned equipment, hauling milk in big tankers. Thomasville Furniture Xpress run less-than truckload -- yes, furniture, with a mix company and owner-operator equipment. Oberman Logistics is all owner-operator, mostly platform freight run through brokerage partners, and Clifford Hay up in New York has six owned trucks and probably couldn't be more diverse in terms of trailers owned and utilized for a wide variety of freight. 

Along the way, hear Overdrive's Dills introduce each fleet from the stage,  and plenty advice from the champs about preparing to make any big move from one truck to many. There’s also an anecdote about a 579 that gets misstated as a vintage, just 1-million-mile Pete 359 -- with plenty of surprise, laughter and obvious camaraderie amongst the owners assembled, that’s certain. A lot to glean from the long careers of these five, and here's big congrats to all four and a note of thanks for joining us and event sponsor NASTC in the effort. 

More about the finalists and the winners: https://www.overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ/article/15770012/overdrives-2025-small-fleet-champs-tfx-oberman-come-out-on-top

NASTC named its America's Best Drivers, Best Broker and Transportation Ambassadors at the conference as well, detail here: https://www.overdriveonline.com/life/article/15770618/nastcs-americas-best-drivers-team-new-ambassadors-named-for-2025

Roadside war stories, camaraderie, truck-ownership advice: Small Fleet Champs deliver

Today, a special edition of Overdrive Radio marks the federal Veterans Day holiday, commemorating the military service of so many around the United States. In the podcast, in particular, we'll honor the stories of two vets -- Army and Navy, respectively -- who are equally clear-eyed emphasizing what their service meant for their long careers in trucking business ownership.

After medically retiring from the Army as an E6 Staff Sergeant following deployment to Iraq during Desert Storm trucking as convoy security, Florida-headquartered (Ocala area) owner-operator Scott Reese operates Reese Services with his own authority, utilizing a 2021 Freightliner Cascadia. Reese also runs a box truck with a driver employed for it that operates more locally.

Roger Burdgette, meanwhile, is headquartered near the Savannah ports in Georgia as CEO of Podium Logistics. He's built the fleet to now 50 trucks, serving the container port but also flatbed needs of customers in the area.

Both business owners happen to be beneficiaries as veterans of the SelecTrucks Freightliner-affiliated dealer network’s "Proud to Serve" benefit program for veterans, offering essentially a cash credit on purchases of power units, factory-backed warranties and more at one of the now 44 SelecTrucks locations nationwide: https://www.selectrucks.com/special-offers/veterans-discount/

That program celebrates a significant milestone in its eight-year run since Proud to Serve was launched in 2017 as a way to give back to military servicemembers among SelecTrucks customers. As Daimler Trucks Remarketing President Chris Backeberg noted, the program’s now delivered more than $1 million worth in savings to military vets. 

Each veteran’s used-truck purchase comes with $6,500 back with up to two options selected from: 
**A down payment match
**A warranty upgrade
**And/or new tire purchase assistance. 

In addition to the discount, SelecTrucks donates $500 for each qualifying truck purchase to a charitable organization supporting veterans. Total donations have reached more than $80,000 since 2022, including a $25,000 donation this year. Said Backeberg, “We’re proud to stand behind veteran entrepreneurs as they build their business. Saving these men and women over $1 million is our way of showing appreciation for their service and sacrifice.”

Via the podcast, dive into conversation with Scott Reese, whose partner dealer in Jacksonville, Florida, helped him out of more than one jam in recent years. That's in addition to delivering that $6,500 discount. The dealer was particularly helpful when Reese was diagnosed with cancer some years back and had to come off the road for a time. 

Following Reese, Roger Burdette stresses how military service truly set him up with the self-discipline needed for a drive to entrepreneurship in trucking. The 50-truck Podium fleet isn't his first trucking-company rodeo, either, started up in 2018 after a previous fleet he grew to 30 trucks over more than a decade was sold to an interested buyer. Like Reese, he’s also benefited from the SelecTrucks "Proud to Serve" discount, with around 70% of his fleet procured from the dealer.

Both men offer recognition for the importance of Veterans Day for the country, and for them specifically, too. Roger Burdette personally remember those who gave much more than himself, as he put it, when the day rolls around each Fall. "When it rolls around I really think about those who had even more sacrifice than we did," he said. "There's a different day for that," he knows. Yet "there's different degrees of sacrifice, and that's huge."

How military service set these trucking entrepreneurs straight on course to biz success

This week's Overdrive Radio edition puts a wrap up our series featuring 2025 Trucker of the Year contenders with the story of Orleans, Indiana-headquartered John Penn, his one-truck business operating with authority and hauling finished furniture on multistop runs West and/or South from his home base, other brokered freight back. 

He’s the owner of another power unit, too, that he keeps as a spare, both rigs Freightliner Cascadias he details in the podcast and in this in-depth feature about his business, where he was named the October 2025 Trucker of the Month: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15770500/trucker-of-the-month-reaps-10mpgplus-rewards-learning-growing

Both Cascadias feature specs that help him achieve maximum fuel mileage -- upward of nine miles per gallon in the older unit (10-speed manual transmission) and more than 10 mpg in his current 2019 model, with the DT12 automated manual transmission. 

We didn’t know it when he entered our Trucker of the Year competition, but he’s also the newest member of Freightliner’s Team Run Smart group of owner-operators sharing their own successes in various ways with their Freightliner equipment for the benefit of anyone interested. Team Run Smart hadn’t yet officially intro’d him as part of the crew there when we published the above story about him. Reps confirmed he was going to be a part of it for sure, but what they didn’t tell us was they’d post his official intro video to their Youtube networks that very same day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFyerQQX7lY

Find him now at his profile page on the Team Run Smart site: https://www.freightliner.com/team-run-smart/pros/john-penn/

I’d encourage you, too, to track back through all of our Truckers of the Month and Trucker of the Year contenders for 2025 at the main page for the competition: https://overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year  Plenty business best practice examples there, plenty to learn from in the stories of 10 exemplary owners this year. Keep an eye out there for the 2026 competition's entry page, where you can get in the running yourself in the coming weeks. 

Though owner-operator Penn's modest about his success, it’s clear the owner’s doing quite a lot right with a very low operating ratio given his business’s efficiency, and with a home life that’s benefiting, too, as a result. Dive in with Penn from the very beginning, when he first got his CDL around the turn of the century, the start of a journey toward maximum trucking efficiency.

J.P. Transport: Building max trucking efficiency, with owner-operator John Penn

Off the top of the Overdrive Radio podcast this week is the voice of fuel-payments provider Wex's Vice President of Global Anti-Financial Crimes William Fitzgerald, laying out a 1 in 12,000 transaction rate for detection of fraud over the company's entire fuel-payments network. That is, 1 in every 12,000 purchases are flagged as suspiscious, potentially fraudulent, and blocked in automated fashion among its millions upon millions of fuel transactions facilitated annually. 

Translate that incidence to the roughly 350,000 fuel transactions National Association of Small Trucking Companies President David Owen knows move through the association’s own Quality Plus fuel network any given month, and that’s right at 30 transactions being held up by the system. William Fitzgerald was speaking at NASTC's annual conference to outline the evolving landscape of fuel fraud/theft for attendees and showcase tools within Wex's (and some other card providers') networks that are increasingly successful in helping carriers of all shapes and sizes eliminate fraud's impact. Along the way, too, the company's been able to reduce the rate of so-called "false positives," legimate fuel purchases held up by the card provider's systems. Fitzgerald's well aware such hold-ups can be particularly annoying, and unproductive. Illustrating the huge financial impact of stolen fuel, though, he asked this hypothetical question to a room of NASTC conference attendees: 

"What would be an acceptable false-positive rate in your minds?" he asked. "How many good transactions would you be OK with me stopping to prevent a bad one?"

The goal is zero false positves, of course, as Wex and other card providers calibrate a variety of techs operating in the network's background to get there, in addition to more human-focused efforts aimed at education to prevent account takeovers and the like that can bring the biggest hits to a fuel buyer’s bottom line. Results from ongoing efforts at Wex in particular have been good in recent months, he said. "We've got overall, over the last 10 months, a 25% reduction in losses, a 32% reduction in false positives," and a big increase in detection, too, he said.  

Those results he attributed largely to technical innovations in company’s network, some described in part in a recent paper authored by the company you'll find at this link: https://www.wexinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/WEX-Closed-Loop-Fleet-Card-White-Paper.pdf

But the human element in fraud prevention might be the biggest factor any size carrier can address to make the most gains in preventing losses, empowering themselves through self-education and passing that on to team members for those of you with more than just a single truck under your management. "We've seen the most yield" in fraud prevention, he said, "with education and empowerment." 

Fitzgerald described efforts of Wex to illustrate the kinds of schemes that might result in infiltration of its own backend, including simulated phishing attacks through targeted fake emails designed to get a user to provide access to their login data with a goal of compromising accounts. Wex sends such emails to its own employees on occasion to lure them in, thus serving an educational purpose in awareness. Their most "successful" such an effort? An offer of "free Taylor Swift tickets. Everybody clicked on that," Fitzgerald said. 

In the podcast, track through Fitzgerald's entire NASTC talk, tracking through those backend upgrades but also plenty more you can do to work with the company's team and tools in its system, like its SecureFuel solution, to prevent fuel theft. Likewise, should the worst, to work with law enforcement to apprehend the thieves. 

Mentioned in the podcast: 
**'Personal cyber hygiene' in age of social engineering hacks: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15755615 
**More from NASTC's conference on insurance, ELD data: https://overdriveonline.com/15770374

Trucking tools to prevent fuel fraud, from complex AI to simple cybersecurity self-education

December’s here, and it’s time for the big push through to 2026 and opportunity a new year always brings a business owner to set goals, to lay plans and start acting on them. Yet as you’ll hear in this edition of Overdrive Radio, it’s also true that in so many ways the time for all of that is now, for any small trucking business owner, at any given moment. Like a football coach responding to what the opposing team throws at his own, a quarterback changing the play at the line, successful owner-operators are nothing if not masters of the art of getting prepped for the unforeseen. It's an impossible ask of anyone in some ways, but also a reality you’ll hear through today’s talk with four Overdrive Trucker of the Year contenders for this year’s title. 

None less so than owner-operator John Treadway, our September Trucker of the Month. He delivered the shocking news of his pristine 1998 Peterbilt 379's October catastrophic engine failure. How might one prepare for that? Owner Treadway's long experience taught him, like others featured in this roundtable talk, the importance of the back-up plan, and not only could he afford what will ultimately be a reman Caterpillar crate engine powering the unit. The original Cat in the 1998 379 he's hopeful to rebuild with some close associates, furthermore, to in future repower his back-up power unit. 

That backup, a 2006 379, with plenty miles on the odometer itself, is yet another element of Treadways effective prep for the October catastrophe. It's enable him to continue serving his primary and other customers as Caterpillar works through issues with the engine replacement. 

His isn't the only update you'll get from owners in this podcast, where host and Overdrive Chief Editor Todd Dills put two principal questions to four owners: 

1. How's business looking as we head into 2026, and have any goals set early in year 2025 been brought to fruition? 
2.  Reflecting on your own history trucking, what's the single best piece of advice you might deliver to new and/or aspiring owner-operators to help on the long road to success? 

Featured, along with Indiana-headquartered Treadway: 
**John Penn, our most-recent Trucker of the Month in October, hauling LTL furniture principally: https://overdriveonline.com/15770500
**Similarly LTL-focused fresh meat reefer hauler Jason Shelly, based in Pennsylvania: https://overdriveonline.com/15753418 
**And two-truck dump fleet owner (with a third truck in more OTR work) Hunter Hubbard: https://overdriveonline.com/15741276

Overdrive's Trucker of the Year competition is sponsored for 2025 by Bostrom Seating -- there's a new seat on the line for the contenders. Consider this roundtable the "Exit interviews" with each ahead of announcements late this month of finalists, after the judging round. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more featured contenders.   

Catastrophic engine failure delivers customer calamity: How one owner-operator prepped for the worst

As you'll hear off the top of this week's Overdrive Radio podcast, this “exit interviews” part 2 in our final run to conclude Overdrive's Trucker of the Year competition for 2025 features an all-flatbedders group. You’ll hear a bit of what some call "bygone" driver-to-driver camaraderie amongst the four owner-operators featured around -- what else -- the subject of tarping. 

Arkansas-headquartered Scott Smith, owner-operator of Sapphire Cartage, described some new work hauling outbound to Atlanta with overlength freight. The rates are great with permits required, and lightweight, delivering fuel savings. Yet also: tarps required: "Putting on three tarps, putting three tarps' worth of bungees, taking off three tarps, folding up, putting up three tarps," he said. "Anybody got any sympathy?" Much laughter followed, of course. 

Also in the podcast: 
**West Virginia-headquartered independent George Kincaid: https://overdriveonline.com/15743659
**Longtime Kelsey’s Trucking owner-operator Ron Kelsey, who hauls in a beautiful 1981 Peterbilt 359 repowered in the 1990s with a C15 Cat and working with two principal direct customers upwards of three decades: https://overdriveonline.com/15751895 
**And Rufus Morris, out of North Carolina, leased to Material Logstics Management and for whom it’s been an eventful year for his equipment: https://overdriveonline.com/15747142

Much like the story you heard from John Treadway last week, an eariler-than-expected in-frame reared its head with a cracked head for his 2004 Peterbilt 379. Then: more troubles rose in the following weeks and months. His advice to any aspiring owner-operator: Be ready for anything, at any moment. 

Tough moments at roadside can be enough to make even a seasoned veteran like Morris question himself. 

"I've had plenty times this year when I was like, 'Man, is it worth it?'" Morris said. But taking stock further, staring at that beautiful 2004 379, and despite all of its problems, "it's a good life," he added. "Yeah, it's worth it." 

Just be prepared for anything. 

With that something of a “final thought,” as it were, from Morris, the end is in the beginning for this edition of Overdrive Radio, full speed ahead to 2026 for these four Trucker of the Year contenders, this year’s competition sponsored by Bostrom Seating, who will deliver a new seat to the winner, ultimately. 

Enter the Trucker of the Year competition at this link: https://overdriveonline.com/toptrucker -- we're in the process of updating the form page there for 2026, but know that all entries received before the end of 2025 will be considered for the new year's program. 

All of the Trucker of the Year 2025 profiles you can find at this link: https://overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year 


Trucker of the Year 'exit interviews,' Part 2: Flatbedders edition

"Every day had an episode like that along the way. It was just the high, and the low." --XPO driver David May, reflecting on the roller coaster of emotion hauling in the Maine-to-Arlington Naitonal Cemetery run of Wreaths Across America

Off the top of the podcast, we dive right into the experience of military veteran and longtime professional driver David May, trucking out of the Buffalo, New York, area and speaking the range of emotion delivered by his 2024 participation in what is the annual effort of Wreaths Across America. That's the Maine-headquartered organization that for many years now has been built momentum across the nation, every December honoring fallen U.S. military members by laying wreaths on graves in ceremonies at military cemeteries. Trucking plays a big volunteer role in it, for certain, with wreath deliveries from Maine to points far afield, this year reaching nearly 5,600 sites, according to Wreaths Across America organizers: https://www.wreathsacrossamerica.org/Home/News/1495 

The big day for the 2025 effort was this past Saturday, December 13, and for this Overdrive Radio podcast, we’re marking another big haul for participating truckers and trucking companies by revisiting David May’s experience as part of the 2024 convoy moving out from Maine toward Arlington National Cemetery for the big event held there annually. To give you an idea of the scale of that one, this year at Arlington, organizers noted, wreaths were placed on 265,000 individual headstones there through the work of 30,000 volunteers. 

That haul alone is a massive undertaking, no doubt. 

Honoring the memory of the fallen isn’t the only aim of the Wreaths organization. Here’s the goal in full: "Remember the fallen, Honor those who serve, and Teach the next generation the value of freedom."

Through our conversation with David May you'll hear quite a bit of all of that -- Remember, honor, teach -- yet also a window on just what his experience of the 2024 convoy toward Arlington was like. May’s hauled day-to day for XPO going back decades to when he was with Con-way Freight before the XPO buyout,. He’s a past America’s Road Team captain, where he first learned about Wreaths Across America in its early days. In 2024, he hauled wreaths in the convoy piloting the camouflage-wrapped “workforce heroes” truck of the road team, but it’s his individual experience, the veterans met and the fallen remembered, that most stand out. 

That includes memorable time spent with a Vietnam veteran in-cab, and much more besides. 

Just a few pieces of past coverage of the Maine-Arlington convoy, and other wreaths events around the country: 
**2023 interview with Don Queeney, Director of Transportation for the organization: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15304674
**2022 convoy stop in Connecticut: https://overdriveonline.com/15304350
**2021 in the San Joacquin Valley, California: https://overdriveonline.com/https://www.overdriveonline.com/15286668
**2014: Trucker Vince Strupp recalls prior-years' participation in the convoy: https://www.overdriveonline.com/14887458
**2013 in Nashville, Tennessee: https://www.overdriveonline.com/14885399

Wreaths Across America: Professional trucker David May's emotional highs, lows on mission to Arlington

Despite a record turnout in early December, trucker Noah Melton of small fleet Big P Express out of Southwest Michigan isn't 100% satisfied. Melton's one of the organizers of the Red Arrow Convoy, running 45 miles along the Red Arrow Highway near Lake Michigan every year for the past three, and growing in size and participation, that's certain. A grand total 89 trucks participated this year: https://www.facebook.com/groups/232190276570407

Yet "I want to break 100 trucks in the worst way," Melton told Overdrive Senior Editor Matt Cole in the conversation featured in this week's podcast to take you into the Christmas holiday. 

The Red Arrow Convoy's origins trace back to a fellow driver's efforts at its start to make a cheerful display for members of the wider community in the region, and to have a little fun among like-minded truckers -- the parade features all manner of straight trucks, tractors and trailers (even freight in some instances) dolled up with Christmas lights and other decorations offering plenty spectacle to set the stage for Christmas festivities. 

It's clear communities the trucks pass through along the highway have embraced the event, with many townships coordinating their official Christmas celebrations with it and "thousands of people from local communities" coming out just to see the parade, Melton said. "Some even have campfires next to the road."

Imagine it: "89 trucks all lit up with Christmas lights, horns blaring and jake brakes popping," Melton described the event. "You would see grown men and grown women jumping up and down like a kid in a candy store."  

From the start of the event, though, a main goal has been simply to "give the drivers something fun to do before Christmas, as some of us are on the road" during the actual holiday, Melton added, yet it's "also to raise awareness to the community that truckers are just regular people like them." 

With the podcast, hear Cole's talk with Noah Melton about his trucking history, most of it with Big P Express, and the story of how the regional group of truck drivers having a little fun around the Christmas season quickly came to be the big undertaking that is the Red Arrow Convoy today. With plenty future plans, too. Drivers interested in participating next year can join the drivers' private group for planning purposes here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/705730534890286  


Michigan Christmas convoy sets sights on 100 trucks after record 2025 delivering holiday joy

Following news that the U.S. Senate included a measure that could hold import for change in cumulative on-duty limits with restart use, readers sounded off again on just where they feel the hours of service should be. Responses ranged from "leave well enough alone already" to an oft-repeated desire for a return to pre-14-hour-rule regs, when it was possible to split sleeper periods in any way desired. For more on the potential rule change, read this story: http://www.overdriveonline.com/senate-bill-clears-up-34-hour-restart-confusion-could-extend-hours-limits/

34-hour restart: Readers weigh in on hours as they are and could be

Hitting the road with Landstar-leased owner-operator Gary Buchs, of Bloomington, Ill., Overdrive Senior Editor Todd Dills' conversation with Buchs just prior to the July 4 holiday ranged across Buchs' own evolution from a Roadway driver in the 1990s to an owner-operator throughout much of the last decade and a half -- firmly in control of his own destiny -- to broader issues throughout the industry, from company driver pay to views on the federal pursuit of the speed-limiter mandate. Buchs views the last as unsafe, period, like so many Overdrive readers. Read more about the run via this link: http://overdriveonline.com/owner-operator-evolution-through-education

From 'tourist truck' to consummate professional: The evolution of owner-operator Gary Buchs

In this week's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, we get a clear window onto the fist Make-A-Wish convoy from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with former trucker George Ruelens. He was hauling for Ned Bard & Son at the time, with no idea what he and the 41 other truckers were doing that day would go on to become a veritable institution in the region around Lancaster County -- the annual Mother’s Day convoy benefiting the Make-a-Wish foundation. This year, the convoy featured 650 trucks in its 30th year, a huge amount of growth over the course of three decades from the first one. Ruelens narrates his experience of that first one, and looks back fondly on the day and subsequent editions of the convoy, which have created so many memories for children involved --  truckers, too, no doubt, and members of the community in that area. Also in the podcast: With highway-funding measures being introduced in the House, President Trump pledges not to work w/ Dems on it, objecting to ongoing investigations; OOIDA's infrastructure outreach discussed with OOIDA board member and small fleet owner Monte Wiederhold.

The first Penn. Make-a-Wish convoy, remembered, and: OOIDA highway-bill priorities

You’ll be hard-pressed to come across cooler heads than those of the husband-wife team pair of relative trucking newbies I had the pleasure of sitting down with in Hartsville, Tenn., several weeks back. Tommy and Linda Bryant have about a year over the road as a company team with Old Time Express, pulling a dry van and, generally, loving life together after their mid-life switch to the work. For this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, we drop into Hartsville Old Time office, where I met the Bryants. Before trucking, with the kids grown and out of the house, Tommy and Linda were already basically spending the vast majority of their days together running a small Hartsville café, the Early Bird, today owned and operated by a son. A road trip taken in a four-wheeler out west, though, gave them an idea of how they could get even closer, and for longer, maximizing as a unit that precious commodity of time, together, as Tommy puts it. What are you doing with work but selling your time to an employer, after all, whether that’s yourself, or, as is the case for the Bryants now, the Old Time Express fleet? And though Tommy and Linda may be new to trucking, it hasn’t taken them long to see, as both pointed out, the potential value of more flexible sleeper splits, beyond the 8/w split currently available. Particularly for their team operation.

More flexible sleeper splits: It didn’t take long for this newbie team to see potential value

As Michigan-based small fleet owner Leander Richmond said in the last edition of Overdrive Radio. No, it doesn’t happen to drivers of cars, it does not happen to campers – it does, often enough, happen to truckers. He was talking about the phenomenon of private-lot or other booting of trucks in which drivers are sleeping, most often during federally mandated rest periods, of course. As so many of you likely saw last week with a report from a Dandridge, Tenn., Speedway fuel-stop location, that can include tow trucks hooked up to you while you rest, with a fee required to unhook. Richmond, as he noted in the last podcast, believes there should be a prohibition on booting or hooking to an occupied vehicle in this manner, and it’s a subject we’ll be covering in more depth in a later issue of Overdrive. For now, in this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast some sound piece of advice before parking in any spot where you have doubt about the possibility of a tow-hook or boot in your future. And that is, if at an open location with any no-parking sign within eyesight –- do the reasonable thing and get out and ask a question in-store before you make a $300 or more costly mistake. That only works to an extent, of course. ... Some cases here where it most definitely didn't. And: Accounts from the one-truck businesses of Bryan Hutchens, Ruben Carrion, and Kit Spanfellner from That's a Big 10-4 on D.C. last month.

Occupied vehicle booting: No, it does not happen to cars; More 10-4 voices

Let’s get ready to say goodbye to 2019 on the Overdrive Radio podcast. Christmas is in the books and, soon, so will be the year, so we’re taking a trip down memory lane via the top 10 most-listened-to episodes of Overdrive Radio this year, with some honorable mentions, too, covering a boatload of ground all told: From trucking history to shutdowns and slow rolls, parking and booting, the ELD mandate and hours of service, small fleet business, working the spot market and so much more ... Bonus at the end: A special little sing-along with "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer. Run through the full top ten podcasts (in reverse order) via this link to a playlist rounding them up: https://soundcloud.com/overdriveradio/sets/2019-year-in-review-the-top-10

Countdown through a parking shortage, tech surge, truck boot ... 2019's Top 10 episodes

Questionable offer of easy money 'without asking for any business equity'

This year has no doubt been a wild ride in any number of different ways for every one of you, I’m guessing. Whether you’re leased to a carrier and newly dealing with regular customers’ facility restrictions and the necessity of new personal protective equipment on-site or at once routinely familiar and now sometimes ever-stranger-seeming truck stops along regular routes. Maybe you’re an independent who’s experienced the topsy-turvy rate situation along with that, from the highest of highs of late and those lowest of lows in April and May. Whatever your individual case, there's something for you in this talk with our own contributing writer Gary Buchs and well-known satellite radio host and fellow owner-operator coach Kevin Rutherford in large part on best practices in a time like the present. 

How can an owner-operator effectively manage the business when future market prospects are basically a crapshoot? Plenty of answers, here. Many of them re-emphasize tried-and-true business practice, no matter the exterior circumstances weighing on freight and society. Think of it as welcome grounding, perhaps, amid the high-flying cacophony of our time.

The talk was broadcast to Overdrive’s Facebook page live, as part of Overdrive’s GATS Week series of events in late August 2020, also part of our long-running Partners In Business seminar series. The PIB program includes an owner-operator business manual produced in conjunction with business services firm ATBS. PIB is sponsored by TBS Factoring Service.

How to manage for downside risk in turbulent trucking times

Owner-operators across the country probably remember the LTL doubles and triples hauler Viking Freight, before a buyout by FedEx folded the company under the FedEx Freight umbrella with another, American Freightways, in the early part of this century. A special treat for you today in this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast with Steve Sprenger, a commercial real estate broker for the last couple of decades following work in trucking with about a decade hauling for Viking from the mid-1980s. Sprenger's finally concluded what’s been a decade-and-then-some-long project in a full custom restoration of a 1983 single-drive-axle Kenworth cabover, a former Viking Freight truck he found in a yard in Northern California. Enlisting the initial help of NorCal Kenworth to make sure the rig was roadworthy for a trip back to his home area in Southern California those years ago, detail work commenced and took on a life of its own over time. The end result is a fitting tribute, he believes, to a company's drivers who took as much pride in what they did as him.

Custom cabover emerges as tribute to a driver's pride, from former Viking hauler

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

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