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

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

In late 2019 going into 2020 the state of Colorado became what's believed to be the first to ban statewide the practice of booting an occupied vehicle, just what you’re about to hear in this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, with audio courtesy of the 911 call April 21 from Louisiana-based owner-operator Glenn Keller to dispatch in Gaston County, North Carolina, due west of Charlotte. Regular Overdrive readers may well be familiar with Keller from past coverage of his leased operation, some of it towing- and Gastonia-related, interestingly enough.

That's where Keller was when this happened, idling while sitting in the driver's seat in a place where there is no express prohibition on the onerous occupied-vehicle-booting practice. Keller was surrounded by three tow trucks, whose operators who demanded money, and Keller promptly involved the police when he realized there was no escape.  

In this edition of Overdrive Radio, we talk further with Keller about just what happened here, as it’s yet another example of tow and boot operators in some locales all around the country whose plenty aggressive tactics are inspiring angst among folks like him -- and not just angst, not just anger –- nay, rage might be a better word there. And there’s fear, for sure. Were it not for the police showing up when they did, well, things could have gone all sorts of sideways.  

Keller remains hopeful his post-incident efforts might have a lasting effect where this incident occurred –- in Gastonia, North Carolina.

See the following Charlotte Fox affiliate news report on the location where Keller was booted via: http://overdriveonline.com/15065549

Read more about the issue nationwide: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/14894396/truck-booting-and-towing-traps-in-light-of-eld-mandate

Could Colorado's ban on booting occupied vehicles be a model for the nation?: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/14897201/could-colorados-pending-vehicle-booting-regulation-be-a-model-for-the-nation

'What extortion looks like': Owner-operator Glenn Keller v. Parking Pirates, round 2

... and plenty more. At the East Coast Truckers Jamboree truck show early this month, Overdrive news editor Matt Cole spoke with these six owner-operators about a lot more than just the custom rigs they were showing (speaking of which, keep tuned to http://overdriveonline.com/custom-rigs for views on/videos of all mentioned here through the next weeks). 

A year following the depths of the early-pandemic downturn, it felt like a fine time to reflect on the experience of the past year. Here find perspectives on the trials, and some joys, of trucking through the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as thoughts on where truckers go from here in terms of addressing the biggest issues of the present well into the future, chief among them the parking situation all around the country. 

Featured owner-operators here are:
**Robert Davis, out of Vermont, hauling Cabot Cheese in a 2012 Great Dane 53-foot slide and spread reefer, with a 1988 Freight FLC120. 
**Austin Kiser drives for his dad’s operation, Greg Kiser Trucking, based in Rosedale, Virginia. They pull mostly pneumatic tanks and some dump trailers: https://www.overdriveonline.com/custom-rigs/article/15065658/austin-kisers-2018-peterbilt-389-at-kenly-95-east-coast-jamboree
**Greg Eudy, owner of Greg Eudy Trucking, out of Monroe, North Carolina. Eudy hauls sand and rock to concrete plants for Reynolds Trucking out of Indian Trail, North Carolina, in a 2000 Pete 379 that he converted from a day cab to a sleeper: https://www.overdriveonline.com/custom-rigs/article/15065773/blank-canvas-daycab-to-stretched-flattop-2000-peterbilt-379
**Jeff Walters, owner of J&N Trucking out of Bath, New York. Walters hauls dry freight as an independent with his 2006 Pete 379 and 2019 Great Dane van. 
**Steve Johnson, based in Apple Valley, California. He’s currently leased on with Landstar and hauls pretty much anything that will fit on a flatbed in a flattop 2019 Pete 389.
**Daniel and Phyllis Snow, whom regular listeners will recall as owners of "Goose" custom Freightliner. Hear their contemporaneous pandemic-trucking experience tale from this time in 2020 via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/14897705/refusing-to-run-at-a-loss-a-solution-for-low-freight-rates

As the pandemic eases, owner-ops take stock of parking, biz pressures, more

Today, this special edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, part of our 60th-anniversary series, in part transports you back to a moment in time in the late 1970s, when owner-operator Gordon Alkire found himself in an old Astro 95 cabover with no brakes heading Southeast down the backside of Monteagle Mountain in Tennessee. It’s a situation that’s no exactly universal among truckers through the years, but not as uncommon as you might think. The occasion in 2019 when this part of my talk with Alkire originally ran was the fiery Lakewood, Colorado, crash of Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos, who lost control of his truck on a downhill grade and, ultimately, crashed, killing multiple people and sending multiple others to the hospital.

In the wake of the tragedy for all involved, including the driver, charged with vehicular homicide among other counts, the recriminations were quick in coming for him from fellow truckers, with no small amount of finger-pointing to this or that cause.

Alkire, retired owner-operator of Riley, Kansas, at the time reached out with a considered piece about such finger-pointing that you can read in full via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/14896300/in-wake-of-colo-crash-reserve-judgment-says-gordon-alkire-recounting-a-70s-monteagle-brake-failure 

He ultimately asked his fellow drivers to check their condemnation and take a close look at themselves. “Ask yourself if that could have been you,” he wrote. “A downgrade, a loaded trailer, no brakes. Confusion, fear, and panic.” He's been there, and he tells that story here.

Also: Shortly after airing Alkire’s tale in the Spring of 2019, we heard from South Carolina-based owner-operator Lee Epling about his own, more recent no-brakes run. You'll hear that one here, too, and find the original editions of Overdrive Radio featuring these stories in the post that houses this podcast at OverdriveOnline.com: http://overdriveonline.com/14896300

Tales of three runaway trucks: Crises endured and averted, lessons learned

There's good likelihood you know how the story goes. Code says a sensor is malfunctioning? Replace the sensor. Two weeks or two days later, same code, same sensor. Previous shop must have passed a bad part or otherwise messed up the install. Replace again, and "hey why don't we try" X or Y until, some weeks later, as happened in the story of owner-operator John Osinga, visual inspection reveals a mechanical issue. Turns out what seemed like a sensor malfunction wasn't really that at all: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-extra/article/15064088/detecting-the-diesel-exhaust-aftertreatment-demons  

Hundreds or thousands of dollars later, eureka moments like these are cold comfort, and owner-operators who've experienced these problems always look back and wonder what they could have done differently to spur enterprising (or not so enterprising) mechanics toward an accurate diagnosis and repair, the first time around. There's a lot to be said for picking your maintenance partners wisely, but there's more to it, too. 

In this edition of Overdrive Radio, a wide-ranging discussion is intended in part to pick the brains of two diesel pros on these issues -- Bruce Mallinson of Pittsburgh Power and Gray's Garage owner Jeff Gray, both men with a wide breadth of experience that spans the evolution from purely mechanical diesel engines through electronic controls and, now, increasingly complicated emissions controls. Much of the discussion is a re-air for the podcast audience of our live online broadcast Q&A held May 20, hosted by Overdrive Senior Editor Todd Dills and contributor Gary Buchs. Subjects range from the basic importance of fuel-filter changes to Pittsburgh Power's Max Mileage Fuel Borne Catalyst fuel treatment to ways to mitigate condensation in the exhaust system, exhaust leaks, phantom codes and so much more.

Fine the archived webcast of the original discussion via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/equipment/article/15065467/bring-your-emissions-systems-questions-to-this-live-qa-may-20

Subscribe to Overdrive's daily newsletter for owner-operator business news, views and more: https://randallreilly.dragonforms.com/loading.do?omedasite=ov_subscriptions

Diesel emissions maintenance: Getting the right diagnosis, and repair, the first shop visit

"The freedom to eat what I want, when I want, and how I want to make it." --Decker Truck Line-leased owner-operator Thomas Remington, on outfitting his 2020 Volvo VNL740 (auto transmission, mid-roof, spec'd for Decker's flatbed operation) for versatility in cooking on the road. 

In this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, a window on Remington's leased business as well as tips on inverter power electric cooking appliances, propane-powered tools for cooking on the deck, and so much more. 

Also in this edition, on a bittersweet day for Overdrive staff as longtime editor Max Heine officially retires as of the first of July, a special message from host Todd Dills going out to Heine, fundamentally an editor with guts, with integrity, and a real sense of care when it comes to telling the story straight, whatever it is. 

We'll do our best, Max, to keep it pro out here.

For the video with Remington mentioned in the podcast, follow this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/15066100/a-parkinglot-lunch-with-ownerop-and-incab-chef-thomas-remington

Access Thomas Remington's original "Recipes for the Road" via https://www.overdriveonline.com/authors/contact/15064418/thomas-remington

Deckplate diner diaries: The ins and outs of this leased owner-operator's in-cab kitchen

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 principal conundrum of advanced driver assist systems like collision mitigation, lane-keeping and more was summed up well by Nussbaum Transportation driver Clark Reed as part of the panel featured in this edition of Overdrive Radio: "The more we take the driver away from the driving experience ... [the greater the potential] they're going to become lackadaisical. ..." Put another way, we're talking about, in a word, "complacency" -– the strong temptation to let the equipment take the responsibility for the work of safe operation from the hands of those to whom it truly belongs. 

That’s the operator, of course, and Reed would go on to say much more than that in the talk with longtime independent owner-operator Henry Albert, a former Overdrive Trucker of the Year, in a panel moderated by TCA chairman and D.M. Bowman chief Jim Ward. 

In today’s podcast, that discussion is featured in more depth than we've covered at OverdriveOnline.com as yet: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15065920/how-to-think-about-advanced-assist-systems-as-an-owneroperator

It's invaluable for real-world perspective on the space where increasingly sophisticated driver-assist technologies meet the realities of the road. 

We ran into both Reed and Albert last week at the Walcott Truckers Jamboree, as it just so happens, where both showed the next-generation Cascadias they pilot in efforts for the Freightliner Team Run Smart program. Both rigs are outfitted with every bell and whistle you can think of. 

Also at the Walcott show was the exact opposite, of course, one example being the 1982 Peterbilt 359 of an owner-operator who's a contemporary example of where the truck owner-operator comes from in American history. W. Tim Miller has been in the business of trucking and farming for 40 years, mostly these days hauling his own product more than anything else, just as owner-operators of old. Miller farms around 300 acres of corn and beans, hauling exclusively with an early 1980s classic rig he told me about in what follows in the podcast.

Catch more views of Miller's rig via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15066572

'Routine, day's end, on the way home': Getting there, even with advanced assist tech

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

Trucker Nation Director of Communications Andrea Marks is our guest for this edition of Overdrive Radio. Marks is no stranger to the regulatory process -- or the ins and out of running a small trucking business. She has livestock haulers in her family’s small fleet. 

She's sharing here what she sees as a golden opportunity for hours of service flexibility advocates lying in plain view, in the form of the COVID-19 emergency declaration, waiving regs for emergency relief haulers of particular commodities since the beginning of the pandemic in March of 2020. 

There’s not just opportunity therein, though, but danger, given the September 1 changes to the emergency waiver seem to her to be designed to discourage use of the exemption and give regulators a way to control the narrative around its use. She wonders whether they anticipate a serious challenge to the efficacy of the hours of service rule itself. 

Any serious challenge might depend on how many carriers are running under the exemption, and how often – a question we’ve been asking at Overdrive this week. 

If you haven’t weighed in on your use of the COVID exemptions as yet, you can find the poll embedded in the post that houses this podcast here: 

Also there, find responses to questions put directly to FMCSA that were promised at by end of day Friday the 16th by the agency -- early next week at the latest. Those questions: 
1: What is the reasoning behind shifting the COVID-19 emergency and its waiver to exempting only the drive-time limits of the hours of service, and not the other regulations previously exempted? 

2. With regard to the reporting requirement or ask of carriers – is it really a requirement or merely a voluntary ask? 

3. What information exactly is being asked of carriers to report? Will FMCSA be requesting number of trips, specific logs of trips, or merely attestation that the declaration was relied on, period? 

4: Has the agency considered examining crash rates of carriers who’ve used the declarations to date extensively versus other carriers who haven’t? 

Andrea Marks truly believes that the COVID exemption could be hours flexibility advocates’ best chance to demonstrate the safety effectiveness of more permissive drive-time regulations, if only that data can be mustered.

Could the COVID hours waiver be flexibility advocates' chance to further disentangle HOS rigidity?

This edition of Overdrive Radio features the voice of an owner-operator you may well recognize – Debbie Desiderato, now principally out of Virginia, and sometimes Long Island, New York. She's had quite a year a half or so, moving to sell her long-running and quite recognizable Kenworth in 2020 in a turn back to hotshot car hauling for a time, before she capitalized on opportunity hauling in support of logging operations around her Virginia base with a used purchase of a 2017 Western Star 4900. 

Less than a year after purchasing the rig, she’s now the recipient of a custom interior renovation by "Secret Celebrity Renovation" series star Jason Cameron. That was courtesy of the TransFix digital brokerage company after Desiderato won the TransFix My Rig sweepstakes, part of the company’s efforts to give back during National Truck Driver Appreciation week. 

It’s a pretty spectacular upgrade, not only for a feature wall at the back of the sleeper with plenty of "wow" factor in it – in the conversation featured here between Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole and the owner-operator, Desiderato spends a good deal more time pointing out more purely functional additions. There's now a whole lot more cold storage space for food, for one. That comes with a real bottom line impact for the business, given the ability to better prep for cooking in the truck. 

Read about Desiderato's brief 2020 turn to hotshot car hauling after trade-show freight she'd been hauling dried up with COVID: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/14897956/walkabout-transport-hotshot-as-refuge-from-the-pandemic

Also in the podcast:
FMCSA's last-week-promised answers to particular questions relative to the COVID-19 emergency declaration's hours of service waiver's now long existence. We've posted those answers in this post for last week's podcast with an update: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15114806/how-the-covid-hours-waiver-could-disentangle-hos-rigidity

Recently former Acting FMCSA Administrator Wiley Deck also offers his own perspective on the future likelihood (or not) of any tie between proven safety through data and increased hours of service flexibility.

The big reveal: From a truck to a home, with owner-op Debbie Desiderato and 'celebrity renovator'

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

Happy New Year to all of you! For this final day of 2021, we've got a special edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast to count down to 2022 with a run back through our most-listened-to episodes of the year. That'd be a final 14 -- plus a 3-hour pause, say -- for a lucky 17 of our 2021 editions of the podcast.

We’re going to hear about the hours of service – particularly in the context of the COVID-19 emergency declaration and its hours waiver, now in place in some form for almost two years. We’ll hear about custom project rigs and restorations, about California’s AB 5 contractor law, now headed to the Supreme Court, about COVID and in-sourcing and cooking in-cab and on the road, as we count down the hours.

The year-in-review Overdrive Radio episode here works out to a reality-rules/sometimes-bites window on what truck owners were most concerned about over the course of the year. 

We've grouped Nos. 1-17 of the most-listened episodes excerpted there in reverse order in a playlist you can access in the post that houses this podcast: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15286794

Alternately, run back through them all via Overdrive Radio's SoundCloud profile: https://soundcloud.com/overdriveradio/sets/2021-in-review-the-top

Here's a wish for safe and profitable trucking to you, for 2022. See you on the other side. ...

A final 14 -- plus a 3-hour pause -- to count down to 2022: HOS, in-cab cooks, roadside trends...

For today’s episode of the Overdrive Radio podcast, brace for a long run through the history of trucking with former household-goods-hauling owner-operator Finn Murphy, also a well-versed student of that history. Murphy is interviewed and much of the story is narrated by Overdrive contributing writer and reefer hauler "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer. This brief history of trucking in America tracks the rise of the business from the 1920s up through today -– and the owner-operator's central role in it all. It was originally part of the Over the Road podcast series, Overdrive's 2020 coproduction with PRX's Radiotopia

We’ll hear form a past wildcatter about, among other thing, the Allis Chalmers "Purple People Eater" engine in one of his trucks; from Murphy about his post-deregulation career, made possible in part by the 1980 Motor Carrier Act’s removal of barriers to entry that kept many new ventures out of non-agricultural freight markets; and about the rise of the Teamsters in regulated markets from the 1930s on.

If you missed the original airing -- it'd be unsurprising, as it aired originally smack dab in the center of the initial surge of COVID-19 cases late last March that kept the entire nation on edge -- you're in for a treat. 

Also in the podcast, another special piece of history in Ohio-based Fred Bowerman's preservation of this 1978 Peterbilt 352, pictured during "That's a Big 10-4 on D.C." on the National Mall this past year, an event Bowerman's helped to organize three years running.

Find a distillation of owner-operator via this link to Overdrive Radio host Todd Dills' "Breaking Free" history, written attendant to Overdrive's 2011 50th anniversary: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/14876086/breaking-free-owner-operator-history-upon-overdrives-50th-anniversary

A special series highlighting elements of Overdrive's and trucking's history attendant to our ongoing 60th-anniversay year is available via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4406897

Hear more from the Over the Road podcast editions: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4405867

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

The OTR 'Brief history of trucking in America' -- and this preserved 1978 Pete 352

In this edition of Overdrive Radio, take a tour down I-75 in Kentucky in search of an answer to the age-old question: Who has the best nanner pudding among the truck stops along that route, and which one of them was the first to advertise it on the CB?

This week, we run back through some trucking micro-history with our own "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer via another edition in the Over the Road podcast series, originally produced by PRX’s Radiotopia in collaboration with us here at Overdrive. It’s a veritable caper of a episode, so hang on tight.

Also in the podcast: A fairly moderate amount of snow in and around Evanston, Wyoming, this season has put a bit of a damper on business for the Dustbusters provider of road de-icers and stabilizers for dusty gravel roads. It hasn't, however, stopped work in the shop on a beauty of a daycab 1980 Kenworth W900A owner-operator Martin Herman has put in with this crew -- Dustbusters owner Craig Prete, shop foreman Cole Potter, mechanic Kipp Knight and Austin Oliver. Regular readers may well recall Herman’s own 1970 model W900A from our detail of it back last summer: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/14898050/ownerop-talks-roadside-inspections-and-rig-restoration 

In the podcast, Herman details a good bit of the work put into Prete's 1980 after it had been more or less idle for many years. The daycab features a rolloff body Dustbusters will most likely use simply as a flatbed for hauling bagged product. (The tow companies in the area are keeping an eye out for stiff competition, nonetheless, Herman joked.) 

Near the end of this week's episode, too, a brand-new song from Marhoefer, in part inspired by the stories told here, in what was originally Over the Road episode 4, airing early last year. You can here the song in full via the following link, and keep tuned for more releases from Marhoefer from this session with cellist Michael Ronstadt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQuVqTy_4jU

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The best nanner pudding on I-75 -- and the custom restoration of this 1980 Kenworth W900A

In today's edition of Overdrive Radio, another in the run through our eight-episode Over the Road podcast series, coproduced for 2020 with PRX's Radiotopia podcast network. "Back home" featured our own Long Haul Paul Marhoefer, host of the show, and Over the Road contributing producer Lacy Roberts on a haul back through Lacy’s childhood as a daughter of a trucking family growing up in Montana. The tale, among the most-listened-to within the trucking community (the podcast was broadcast out to a general listening audience as well), offered a moving portrait of the sacrifices over-the-road drivers make balancing work and family life -- and the sacrifices, too, those back home endure.

Before we get there, though, Captain Jon Olsen of the Minnesota State Patrol offers some food for thought on the COVID-19 emergency declaration's exemption to the hours of service, still in place at least through the end of the month. He and colleagues note there seems to be a disconnect between those along the food supply chain as to just what loads qualify as "emergency restocking" and what loads don't. Also: dogs aren’t livestock, maybe. That should make sense momentarily.

Read more about claiming the emergency exemption via this link to early coverage of it: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/14897583/emergency-hos-exemption-guidance-for-owner-operators

Hear more from the Radiotopia podcast network, including Over the Road, via http://radiotopia.fm

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

COVID hours exemption not valid 'just because you're hauling food'; OTR's 'Back home'

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