Counting down to 2021 with the most-listened-to Overdrive Radio episodes of 2020, from No. 14 to No. 1 and capped by the annual year-in-review special edition.

2020 in review: The top Overdrive Radio podcasts of the year

As with advancing driver-assist techs in chaotic on-highway situations and wild weather, perhaps, the real world intrudes on podcast recordings, too. While I spoke with Walkabout Transport independent Debbie Desiderato about her brief appearance in a documentary film on, and her skepticism about, the advancements in driver assist technologies, her dog Bubba was startled by a deer or other animal near the Virginia home she keeps today. Hear him bark toward the tail end of the audio, where we also ask: Ever had your business impersonated by a scammer with a broker? Desiderato and a vigilant broker recently had just such an experience. How such a scam runs: An individual misrepresents him- or herself as an independent to a broker in hopes of getting the load and a fuel advance, then disappearing into the ether. If you've ever been involved in an investigation of such a scam, leave a message on our podcast line at 530-408-6423 -- we'd love to hear from you about the experience.

Whose 'Autonomy'? The independent owner-operator and tech skeptic featured in new film

The voice of trucker Scott Carlson dominates this week's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, detailing a little piece of equipment he’s got in his truck, as do the rest of the trucks in the fleet he's driven for for 17 years out of New York state. This little device, he knows, likely saved his life last week.

The equipment? A simple carbon monoxide detector. An exhaust leak from his diesel-powered APU happened to have broken in the exact wrong spot, just below a vent for fresh cab air. Fortunately for him, the fleet’s trucks had been outfitted years earlier with detectors (Safe-T-Alert by RV-centric manufacturer MTI Industries) hardwired for power from the trucks' batteries and mounted low on the sleeper wall down near where Carlson lays his head when asleep -- recommended for these kinds of applications. The company's fleetwide investment in the units followed a leased owner-operator]s similar situation, though caused by a leak in the truck's primary exhaust system, that sent him to a four-day hospital stay. The consequences of carbon monoxide poisoning can be much worse than that.

$50 and a little install work could save your life: Trucker Scott Carlson's close call

Speaking to a gathering of the Specialized Carriers & Rigging Association last week in Charlotte, N.C., while digging in on a view that the ELD mandate is a safety-positive rule, FMCSA Acting Administrator Jim Mullen made it clear he believed the flawed rigidity of the hours rules needed significant modification for drivers, and trumpeted the agency's efforts to promote the true safety-plus image of trucking as we know it. Such efforts could help stem the tide of so-called "nuclear verdicts" sought by ambulance-chasing lawyers from carriers large and small unlucky enough to be involved in most any crash, whether at fault or not. Along the way, Mullen revealed viewpoints on other trucking subjects, including the CSA program, that some owner-operators will at the least find familiar, if not exactly laudatory. His talk, annotated by Overdrive Senior Editor Todd Dills, here.

In defense of truckers? FMCSA Chief Jim Mullen on hours, nuclear verdicts, more in Charlotte talk

Three examples of a new intensity of appreciation not only of professional drivers amid the COVID-19 crisis, but also from the professionals for those out there on the road with them in support, from fuel desk personnel to sanitary workers and so many more. Interviews: Ingrid Brown on hauling produce in and out of Hunt's Pont. Paul Marhoefer narrates the first two weeks' worth of the virus spread and the hoarding that's come with it.

'This thing is on': Methods amid the mess, madness around COVID-19

Owner-operators Daniel and Phyllis Snow have been off the road refusing to run at a loss for going on a month now as rates and available freight volumes have fallen. The crisis spurred by the COVID-19 coronavirus' spread, though, comes after a rough year of its own. To put everything in context, Daniel says, on the same miles run in 2019, the Snows were able to gross only around 60 percent of revenue they brought in 2013. Market deterioration has been the rule the past year, and they're not the only independent owner-op carriers who feel like the spot market is just broken. The pair have been in spend-reduction mode as they try to hold on for some return.

Words to truck by: 'You will never, ever come out ahead running at a loss’

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

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

You read a little about this week's podcast subject last week, likely, with reporting around the Operation Safe Driver Week traffic-enforcement event (focused on motorists as well as professional operators) ongoing as we speak. Namely -- the Level 3 inspection and Kansas Highway Patrol trooper and Public Information Officer Nick Wright, whose advice related to how to prep for an inspection was delivered in this conversation from early March. He and I were talking in the context of the three-day Roadcheck inspection event, then scheduled for early May, where the full Level 1 driver and vehicle inspection is what often enough is the focus of the event. Before it was postponed, though, CVSA had named the theme of the annual event as driver-related violations, from medical certification status to ELDs and hours of service – the things hit on by those Level 3 inspections.

That just so happens to also be the inspection level most likely to accompany any roadside stop, which the Operation Safe Driver Week ongoing right now takes as its focus.

[related-post id="289339"/]So let’s go back in time to early March – the entire state of Kansas had just three confirmed cases of COVID-19, and, as KHP Nick Wright put it, as in my home base in Nashville, nary a bottle of hand sanitizer or roll of toilet paper could be found within a 100-mile radius of almost any city in America ... Along the way, Wright details answers to the following: 

**What are best practices for annotations of the log in an ELD when errors are made on the drive line, which can’t be edited in an ELD?
**What’s the best inspection-preparation advice he could give a driver beyond what’s obvious?
**Do states actually run out of those CVSA clean-inspection stickers?

And much more besides.

'We're supposed to be in this thing together': Level 3 inspection advice with Kansas trooper

With the Brake Safety Week upcoming August 23-29, tank doubles-pulling independent Martin Herman, based in Wyoming, is sure to be ready. In this edition of Overdrive Radio, we talk inspections, for sure, but more so his half-century-old 1970 Kenworth needlenose W925, quite an exceptional rig. Herman regular Overdrive readers may well recall as the owner-op who engineered replacement parts and even used a turbo from a Cummins N14 to retrofit to the Big Cam 3 that powered the KW. Since we last checked in with Herman, that motor is no more, as you’ll hear. ... Hear more in the podcast, and find pictures of the unit via http://overdriveonline.com/channel19

One Big Cam-powered 1970 KW's long transformation -- and the value of inspections

Are you ready for September 29? In this edition of Overdrive Radio, we’re diving into the specifics of the hours of service changes going into effect on that date with FMCSA's Joe DeLorenzo, something of a recap from our GATS Week session in late August a month ago, for the podcast audience. The talk centers on the new flexibilities, the particulars of just what constitutes off-duty time for an owner-operator, a variety of scenarios posed by those who were participating live in the discussion, and much more about the rule. 

Will roadside inspectors be ready? Will ELD providers? Are you?  

The original presentation DeLorenzo gave was broadcast with a few slides that it’s pretty easy to follow along with if you have them. You can download them here: https://www.overdriveonline.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2020/09/FMCSA-HOS-Outreach-Slides-Final-2020-09-25-11-43.pdf

Final review: Hours of service changes recap, detailed explanation with FMCSA

Answers to several hours of service questions in this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, including: 
1. Can I use a three-hour nap and not get penalized on it in the 14-hour rule? 
2. How do you log a 20-load back and forth load/unload trip where there's scantly a mile between load/unload sites? 
3. To use split sleeper, does it matter if the shorter period is longer than three hours? Is the pause value for the duty clock still there?

Also: a peculiarity of some ELDs that makes it seem as if the shorter of the sleeper/off-duty periods hasn't changed much at all when it comes to the ability to pause the 14-hour clock, and one provider's efforts to improve the split experience in their app. 

Bonus: Several voices -- and plenty horns -- from 'That's a Big 10-4 on D.C.' on the National Mall October 2 in D.C.

ELDs giving wrong impression to operators about short-split pause value

The title of this Overdrive Radio podcast sounds a little like the set-up for an inside-baseball joke of sorts, but for owner-operator Mike Landis and Ezlogz head and former owner-op C.J. Karman, that day was a serious one indeed. Directly and indirectly in a variety of ways, its culimination of the three-week Mayday-begun protest vigil outside the White House has had material effects in terms of getting the conversation going around enforcement and potential enhancement of the 49 CFR 371.3 transparency requirement for brokers when other parties in a freight transaction request it.

Here, Landis and Karman nonetheless narrate the story of how the two came to be on the same page in talks over the issue with the White House chief of staff in May 2020.

FMCSA recently extended the comment period on three petitions and the transparency regulation in general through November 18. Find a link to where you can comment at Regulations.gov directly in this recent coverage of the extension: https://www.overdriveonline.com/fmcsa-extends-comment-period-on-broker-transparency-petitions/

The day an ELD mandate protestor and ELD provider visited the White House to talk brokers

An owner-operator's over-reliance on the path of least resistance to freight will  like as not get him/her in trouble in a down market, notes longtime independent Artie Daniel, out of McKinney, Virginia. Not that he doesn't understand the attraction of today's online marketplaces and the speed and convenience they offer for freight. But he's built his business over time and through the years with a mind on serving a customer (whether broker or shipper) toward building a solid connection, with close communication and more. "You've got to build relationships with people who you can trust, to make it work," he said. If you don't have that, "you're at their mercy."  Plenty more from Daniel's history and about his 1982 Kenworth W900A, bought a few years ago from an original owner who'd put only scant miles on the unit over decades as his personal truck.

Sell service, haul value -- word to the wise of the next generation, from longtime independent

Regular Overdrive readers may well recall the case of a William Hickey of Maryland last year -- Hickey was convicted of operating as a U.S. runner for a mostly overseas ring of identity thieves targeting both brokers and carriers in a double-brokering scheme that's sucking hundreds of thousands in freight payments out of trucking. In today's edition of Overdrive Radio, U.S. postal inspector Steve Cohen of the federal U.S. Postal Inspection Service offers clarity on how the scheme operates, and just what brokers and carriers can do to put a stop to it. As he well knows, Hickey's capture and conviction was just a blip -- as the scheme is still well in operation as thieves adapt. 

Given limitations on extradition in the countries where these rings operate, Cohen and his team, including local and state partners around the nation, are mostly limited themselves to targeting the money launderers operating here. Over the phone lines where the ID thieves ply their trade, though, it's you that can have the biggest impact.

Read more about these issues via our early 2020 "Broker Reforms" feature series: http://overdriveonline.com/tag/broker-reforms

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Double-brokered freight fraud: How to prevent, with a U.S. postal inspector who cracked case

For this edition of Overdrive Radio, we sat down with Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association President Todd Spencer and Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh in an attempt to forecast some answers to the question in the title. The conversation touched on potential Congressional and/or administrative initiatives around infrastructure (parking infrastructure being a principal component), interest (or not) things few in trucking want to see like insurance hikes and speed-limiter mandates, the recent and potentially further hours of service changes, the profile of the brokered freight transparency issue, and much more. 

Find further editions of Overdrive Radio via our Trucking Business playlist here on SoundCloud or via http://OverdriveOnline.com/OverdriveRadio 

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What can owner-operators expect from a Biden administration?

Happy New Year! For this final 2020 edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, Daniel and Phyllis Snow are here, as is Rico Muhammad and Joe DeLorenzo and Jim Mullen and all the owner-ops and government administrators and brokers and drivers and others we talked to this year. We’re going to hear from a lot of them as we tour back through this oh-so-chaotic and pivotal of years trucking in America. We’ll be counting down the top 10 podcasts of the year along the way, and hearing from some other editions besides, from chaos of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic to the hours of service changes, the Biden election and more. 

Find a playlist of 14 shows, including that top 10 and a four-way tie for the 11th spot, in the Channel 19 blog post that houses this podcast: http://overdriveonline.com/channel19 

There, you can hear in full any of the editions. 

Subscribe to Overdrive's newsletter for daily updates five days a week: http://overdriveonline.com/newsletter-signup

Brass tacks, bad brokers, big loads to count down the hours with a long run into 2021

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