Overdrive's 2023 Trucker of the Year contenders

Countdown to 2025: The top podcasts of 2024 in review

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

Trucking business

In this edition of Overdrive Radio, the clarion voices of the spectacular pair of owner-operators behind Chicago-area-based, two-truck Rita’s Absolute Trucking. That’d be Roger and Rita Wilson, who made a match with marriage in 1998 after separate histories trucking, Rita toting butter up and down the Eastern seaboard, Roger with an OTR history that stretches back to hauling swinging meat in 1970 his first time out over-the-road. 

Through the 1980s, he worked with a friend in LTL consolidation out of the Chicago area, growing to 50 trucks there before venturing out on his own with five. Then Rita brought two of her own to the operation, becoming Rita's Absolute early this century and growing to 15 units. They’ve had big ups and downs managing fleets both, but after a slow period of downsizing over more than decade are now settled squarely into a super-sweet niche moving reefer trailers full of finished chocolate mostly between Chicago and Pennsylvania, for a single customer. 

The pair were our Truckers of the Month for September, and regular Overdrive readers may recall their story recently published at OverdriveOnline.com: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15635072/lifes-a-lot-easier-ownerops-find-sweet-spot-with-two-trucks 

In that story, we heard from a Ryder System rep directly about the Wilsons’ work with their warehousing customer in Blommer Chocolate Company, who've been the Wilson's customer for two decades now. Ryder had nothing but praise for Rita’s Absolute Trucking, for sure. Yet after the story published, we also heard back finally from a rep from Blommer. Janie Moore called Rita and Roger Wilson’s Absolute Trucking the “Absolute best. If I could have more carriers like them it would be a joy!”

Moore has worked with the pair for eight years, she said, and they’ve “helped simplify managing" and now totally dominate "the Illinois to Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania to Illinois lanes. Locally,” too, Rita has been a godsend, she added. “There were times we had more loads to move than they could manage legally in a day. Rita would go out of her way and rent a trailer for preloading purposes. This was not a Blommer request, but instead a decision she made to assist. And for that we are forever grateful.”

In eight years, Moore said, “I can count on one hand the times where they were late or delayed. While we know things happen beyond the carrier’s control, they have been more than proactive and giving us advance notification on mishaps, transportation delays, breakdowns, and etc.”

A worthy pair to honor, no doubt. And, clearly, they’ve found a sweet spot hauling chocolate.

Super-sweet spot hauling chocolate for Roger and Rita Wilson's two-truck operation

Today on the podcast we’re featuring Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole’s talk with October Trucker of the Month John Schiltz, nominated for the Overdrive 2023 Trucker of the Year award by his wife and now fully-minted, CDL-holding business partner, Sarah Schiltz: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15637523/owneroperator-john-schiltz-a-keen-eye-on-maintenance 

The pair run a two-truck fleet as a team and pull alongside each other in a pair of Kenworths (a 1999 W9 and a 2013 T660) running fresh vegetables to canning operations in the Midwest during harvest season, flatbed and RGN platform freight much of the rest of the year. You can probably guess just what they’ve been up to in recent times out of their Wisconsin home base as vegetable harvests wrap up.  

What emerges from this talk with both John and Sarah, though John officially gets the Trucker of the Month nod, is a spotlight on the teamwork it truly takes to excel as an owner-operator business. John’s quick to credit Sarah with a large part of his recent-years’ success, buttoning up the biz to where it is today.

More from the Trucker of the Year program this past year: http://overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year

Find all Overdrive Radio episodes featuring 10 Truckers of the Month for 2023 via this playlist: https://soundcloud.com/overdriveradio/sets/overdrives-2023-trucker-of-the

Owner-operator John Schiltz's top-notch team with business and life partner: Trucker of the Month

This edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast features a roundtable of sorts with four small trucking businesses among 2023 Trucker of the Year contenders. We’re in the process of wrapping up judging of 10 semi-finalists for the final award, with a huge amount of operational diversity among them -- from food-grade and hazmat tanker to car-haul, flatbed and step deck, reefer, hopper, dry van and more. 

Here, owner-operators John and Sarah Schiltz with their independent Veteran Transportation Services business were joined by fellow independents and now-four-truck Tim and Shelley Pulli of Pulli Express, owner-operator Matthew Karr of K-Mac Trucking, and Texas-based car-haul owner-operator Crystal Rives. 

It’s been been a tough year on the customer front for Rives’ car-haul operation, yet as with many an owner-operator, a stick-to-it-iveness, hustle and quick-on-her-feet nimble quality as a business owner yielded new opportunities, even in this market. 

The same can be said for others in the roundtable, including Karr, who when he was featured as our Trucker of the Month in May was playing the waiting game on final registrations, insurance and more to go back out under his own authority after a big profit year leased in 2022.

The conversation amongst the four businesses was centered on the year just passed -- the challenges faced, and just how they chose to overcome (or at least start the process of overcoming) the worst of them throughout 2023. 

Stay tuned next week for the remainder of the 2023 Trucker of the Year contenders. Read about all of them via http://overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year 

Catch a playlist, too, featuring all 10 of the contending operations via https://soundcloud.com/overdriveradio/sets/overdrives-2023-trucker-of-the

Overdrive 2023 Truckers of the Year: The 'exit interviews' toward the finale, Part 1

"Don't be afraid to ask questions." --Owner-operator Steve Massat: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15546000/ownerop-overcomes-physical-challenge-for-successful-career

This Overdrive Radio podcast features Part 2 of our “exit interviews” with 2023 Trucker of the Year contenders. All put a special emphasis on short-term tactics, on proven long-term strategies, others might also adopt on the drive toward success with healthy profits.  

This exemplary group, too, delivered a strong current of advice for aspiring owners.

Owner-operator Chris Smith operates Dreamline Trucking, our February Trucker of the Month with his wife and team owner, Ruth, leased to Southern Pride. Smith, as with Massat, advised not to get too starry-eyed out custom equipment with a big price tag associated starting out. "That's not what's going to make you money," he said, noting decades of hard work led to where he and Ruth Smith are today, pulling in veritable custom showpiece, a move made after considerable research and deliberation: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15307364/how-this-owneroperator-team-earned-success

Massat, who pulls with a vintage 1989 Marmon tractor, does as much work on his rig as he can himself, stocking parts he knows he'll need when he sees deals on them. He reduces both his cash outlay and, given ready availability in his truck and/or at his home shop (he's home every weekend), costly downtime, too. Massat was Trucker of the Month in September. 
 
Rita and Roger Wilson preside over the two-truck Rita’s Absolute Trucking, Truckers of the Month for October: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15635072/lifes-a-lot-easier-ownerops-find-sweet-spot-with-two-trucks

The pair have downsized considerably from early parts of this century when they were consolidating LTL freight from a Chicago-area warehouse with a much more sizable small fleet. Though we caught up with them on Sunday, what Rita called the Wilsons' "no-truck day" in efforts to build in the work-life balance that eludes so many over-the-road, she was also quick to note the necessity of giving it 110% for new owners to get past rough early days. 

South Mississippi-based Jay Hosty kept his eye on the finsh line, with a tip particularly for younger starting owners to set up a retirement investment account and contribute as much as you can to it from the get-go. The Roth IRA, in particular, he finds attractive given it's not taxed when you pull the money out in retirement. " Hosty pulls dry vans leased to Landstar, and pulled in the monthly nod in April: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15383689/frugality-focus-on-costs-pays-off-for-owneroperator-jay-hosty

Finally, with advice to simply “never give up” on the mission for those choosing the owner-operator route in trucking, Walkabout Transport independent Debbie Desiderato, based in Virginia today, was our Trucker of the Month for June: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15544055/direct-freight-can-provide-consistency-in-topsyturvy-market As with others in this roundtable, she noted owners are best served when they devise ways to make themselves more valuable to whoever happens to be their customer. In her case, that's lately come in the form of trailer purchases to better serve one in particular on some new lanes out of her area. 

The story of how Desiderato came to that direct customer as an independent might be a veritable testament to the "never give up" mantra. Read more of that story in this feature from early in the year: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15541324/independent-debbie-desideratos-keys-to-trucking-success

Those were but a small sample, a few little bites out of the apple of advice from this brain trust, though. Find more in the podcast and via all 10 of the 2023 Trucker of the Year profiles: http://overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year

'Never give up' in drive to trucking success: New owners' pitfalls, best advice for the long term

By the mid-late 1980s, when Jay Hosty was in his mid-20s, he'd been through three trucks -- a 1971 gas-powered International and then two cabovers bought used -- hauling containers for Brown Transport in and around New Orleans. He then made a move his elder container-pulling owner-operators in the Southeast told him was going to be a career killer in the out-and-back niche. 

It was 1987. "I never thought I'd own a new truck that soon," said Hosty, yet it was working out right -- the trade-in value on the old cabover he was pulling with, the cost of the 1987 International 9300 he was about to replace it with... "Associates Finance -- they were famous for doing commercial vehicles, they took me on in the very beginning" for the financing, he said, much to his surprise.

His rate for revenue at the time, as he told: "72 cents a mile, loaded and empty."

He was working with Brown and related companies with a lot of older men. They called him a kid. Owner-operators who've been around a long time may remember Brown for a kind of mascot that was the company's emblem. "They called him 'the Brownie,'" said Hosty. "He looked like a little Robin Hood or something, a little character."

Those seasoned experts amongst the prior generations at Brown got one look at the kid's sharp new 9300 and "started asking me what my payments were," Hosty added -- $1,400 every month, for five years. "They said, 'You are never going to make it pulling these containers for 72 cents a mile. You're going to have to go over-the-road.'" 

What they meant: The young upstart owner-operator Jay Hosty would have to make that truck his life -- "to go out [OTR] and stay out," he said. His young wife wouldn't go for that, he knew, and for as much as he loved the work, he didn't want that sort of life, either. Besides, owner-operator Hosty had done the math, knew his costs back and forth, and was confident he could in fact make it work.

"I can make it, and I will make it," he told himself.

"And I did," he says today, telling the story as part of this week's special edition of Overdrive Radio, and proving wrong the naysayers in process. The tale showcases a quality held by many a successful owner -- willingness to think outside the box, to push the envelope to find just what's possible, for themselves. It's a quality Hosty made good on time and again throughout his 40-plus-year career at the helm of the Jaybyrd Express business he pilots behind the wheel of a Detroit Series 60-powered 2006 Western Star.

That's among many reasons Hosty, we're happy to announce, is Overdrive''s Trucker of the Year and will sit at that pinnacle for the next 12 months.

With a big congrats due to Hosty, we'll also invite you to put your business in the running for the 2024 award, which you can do via the form at this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/page/toptrucker Owner-operators with up to three trucks are eligible, and if you've controlled costs and maintained revenues amidst inflation and freight-market difficulties in the last years, you’re no doubt a worthy contender.

Also read Matt Cole's April 2023 Trucker of the Month profile of Jay Hosty: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15383689/frugality-focus-on-costs-pays-off-for-owneroperator-jay-hosty

The 2023 Trucker of the Year field was crowded and the gap between most of the contenders extremely small, even tighter between the top three finalists highlighted again earlier this week in Hosty’s Jaybyrd Express, Veterans Transportation Services of John and Sarah Schiltz, and Tim and Shelley Pulli's Pulli Express. Read about them, and the remaining contenders profiles throughout the last year, via the Trucker of the Year section of the website: https://overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year

Other voices featured in the podcast: 
**Hosty's longtime friend from his time on OOIDA's board, current OOIDA VP Lewie Pugh
**Vice President of BCO Retention at Landstar, where Hosty's leased, Gregg Nelson

They said he'd fail, but he proved them wrong: Overdrive's Trucker of the Year Jay Hosty

Manteca, California, Gill Freightlines small fleet owner Surinder Gill's family's trucking lineage traces back through 60 years of OTR work done by his father, Gurmail Singh Gill, over more than one continent. The elder Gill hauled first in his native India, some in the Middle East, and finished out his career in the United States. 

Surinder Gill had dipped his feet in trucking as a dispatcher by the time his father passed in 2018. "I wanted to do something to honor my father," Gill said. "How do I honor my father and his legacy? So we purchased a truck and got a trailer, and I put his photo on the back."

His trailers to this day feature that photo and the "In loving memory" text for Gurmail Singh Gill.

"He'll always be on the road, in a way," as his son puts it in this edition of Overdrive Radio, telling that story but much else besides. Small fleet owner Gill was in part the subject of Overdrive Executive Editor Alex Lockie's reporting on the now-infamous collapse of the Convoy company as a going brokerage concern this past Fall. That reporting told the tale of a variety of owner-operators and small fleet owners just like 28-year-old Surinder Gill who, months following the abrupt shuttering of Convoy in October, remained unpaid for in some cases thousands’ worth of work hauling: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15666087/convoys-unpaid-carriers-signing-back-up-to-haul-loads 

In Gill’s case, unpaid invoices were to the tune of around $35,000 in dedicated contract loads his several company drivers and a larger number of owner-operators pulled for big names in canning and food generally, like the Post company. 

Convoy's debt to Gill alone is nearly half of the worth of the required $75,000 bond any broker is required to have to cover claims. As you'll hear in the podcast, Gill believes that bond amount shouldn't but a static number but rather dependent on the amount of business a broker handles. Larger the broker, larger the bond. 

Convoy, readers will recall, had a valuation in the billions, according to pre-collapse reports. Given the volume of freight -- and money -- that flowed through the broker, Gill asks, shouldn't they be required to hold a bond much, much higher than $75,000? By the time he got to the bond company with his own claim, the full amount in the surety had already been kicked to court deliberation on just who would get paid, and how much. 

As of this past week, Gill remained entirely unpaid for those final loads, though the small fleet owner offered up a bit of information he'd learned since the conversation featured in this podcast. Contact made with the Hercules Capital company, responsible for business debt incurred by Convoy, yielded a name there for everything having to do with the shuttered brokerage. 

“I have reached out to Hercules Capital,” Gill said, “and was given the contact of a Greg Peterson” for everything Convoy-related with the company, a venture funding company that took control of all of the imploded company but for the technology platform. That platform, also previously reported, was sold to Flexport and rebooted for freight brokered through them, a fact that frustrates Gill and others among the unpaid carriers who’d worked with Convoy for years, as you'll hear.

Should freight brokers' required bond amount vary according to company size?

Last week we heard Part 1 of a long talk with Gill Freightlines small fleet owner Surinder Gill, with four trucks owned and headquartered out of Manteca, California, where Gill’s following in the draft of his owner-operator father’s 60-year trucking legacy. (As you can see in the cover image for this week's Part 2 of that talk, the long legacy is honored on the back of Gill Freightlines’ dry vans.) The Convoy brokerage's quick collapse last Fall nearly spelled out a death sentence for the small fleet, as it was mostly built around dedicated hauling for Convoy's shipper customers. 

Gill’s still owed around $35,000 for loads hauled just prior to the collapse, and the collapse of his fleet's work soured relationships with a small group of owner-operators whom he previously worked with. The difficulties, in part at least, extend from what he acknowledges as a classic mistake in business.

"I guess it goes back to the age-old saying of 'don't put all your eggs into one basket,'" as he put it. 

Yet as detailed in Part 1 of the talk, he profferred the notion that, given how many carriers' work went unpaid in the Convoy collapse and the company’s tech platform’s quick sale to another brokerage/forwarder, bigger brokerages ought to be required to have larger bonds in place based on the amount of business they do: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15669109/should-freight-brokers-bond-vary-according-to-company-size 

In Part 2 here, you'll get a window into what Gill’s doing in the aftermath, pivots he’s making toward more direct business, and his hope that so many shippers’ attitudes toward working with small carriers in their immediate physical vicinity, regardless of size, might change for the better.

He's got a distribution center he can physically lay eyes on with nothing more than a step out the door to his office, for instance. "I can see them, phyiscally, they can see me physically," he said, "yet where it confuses me is they would rather give work to these kids right out of college who work for [INSERT BIG BROKER NAME HERE] in Chicago or Atlanta or wherever their office is and trust these kids to go vet these carriers who might be carriers or chameleon carriers. ... But they won't give it to me," with just a few trucks. That's even though, of course, Gill's "right down the street."  

Though load boards and brokers themselves rose out of the need of owner-operators and small carriers to connect to freight they otherwise might not have access to, Gill feels the entire culture around brokerage has devolved with Wolf of Wall Street-type tactics now so dominant that independents become essentially "bottom feeders" in a market like the current one. Volumes have been down in a big post-pandemic readjustment, and demand has sunk back to pre-2020 levels and below, some would say, for an extended period.

Yet he's in it for the long run. He's fully invested in driving change in his own approach to customers. He recognizes his and other independents’ shortcomings, and is committed to being part of a change to re-engage direct customers, really put in the work on building relationships toward better long-term opportunity outside of this or that fancy new brokerage network’s app. "It's going to drive a change" around trucking, he feels, "and I want to be there for it." 

Mentioned in the podcast: Past Overdrive Small Fleet Champ Jason Cowan's recent talk on building relationships, with customers or otherwise: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15668024/how-to-leave-trucking-better-than-you-found-it-with-jason-cowan

Enter the 2024 Small Fleet Championship via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/2024SFC

Hey shippers, we're out here: Small fleet resolved to sharpen biz on long haul for change

With the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s annual Brake Safety Week inspection initiative kicking off August 26 with stepped-up brake checks and inspections, generally, in jurisdictions across North America, we’re looking back at a podcast from earlier in the year – February 2024 to be exact. The episode featured Wisconsin-headquartered owner-operator Warren McCurdy and a central point of view about what he feels the roadside inspection system was designed for. Something that’s, well, gotten a little off track with how states, the FMCSA, and some fleets treat so-called “safey scores” derived from inspections and associated violations. 

As you’re hauling this week, if you get a quote unquote “assist” from an inspector out there, take note of the approach he or she takes. Is it “prevention” of accidents that is the ultimate goal? 

McCurdy, at the top of the podcast, made clear his bone to pick with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's CSA scoring program and all its ripple effects throughout trucking and roadside inspection systems. After a trailer tire lost air in transit sufficient to take the tire off the rim -- the trailer empty, the tire problem unnoticed by McCurdy before inspection -- the owner-operator's leasing carrier assessed points for the violation modeled on the FMCSA's internal Driver Safety Measurement System nearly enough to void McCurdy's lease. 

This sort of "accountability" isn't, the owner-operator felt, what roadside inspections were designed for. The inspector in this case in Washington State did his job to the letter, and caught the in-transit flattened tire in plenty time to save any real damaging outcome. 

For all that, McCurdy is thankful. "I think that these inspections are good. They should be preventative things," he said. "Nobody wants to go down the road with flat tires."

Yet, he added, "I don't think we should be penalized for something that is not something that you did intentionally." That goes for the motor carrier as well. There's a reason carriers like his own assess those points -- because they are incurring the same level of severity weighting in the Carrier SMS.

Potential changes to the Carrier SMS notwithstanding (FMCSA isn't looking at those same changes for the Driver SMS), the podcast this week dives back into what’s at issue in cases like these, in which carriers subject to the severity weighting system for violations pass that on, with their own systems to hold drivers and owner-operators to a degree of accountability themselves, relying on the federal points system to assess and prevent damage to their own scores. 

Susan McCurdy tried her hand at the DataQs system in a vain attempt to contain the damage in this case by challenging the violation. But given the inspector was doing what he should have done here -- alerting McCurdy to the problem tire on his trailer, conducting an inspection, then reporting the results into the federal system as required -- there was nothing DataQs was going to be able to help correct about the fundamental nature of the situation. 

More fundamentally, though, it’s the very nature of the CSA scoring system that makes accountability problematic for owner-operator McCurdy here. Nobody indeed intends to run around with flat tires. With respect to any violation, McCurdy urges regulators take a long hard look at what they’re holding carriers and drivers accountable for by scoring them as they do.

More in Overdrive's long-running CSA's Data Trail series: http://overdriveonline.com/csas-data-trail

Find plenty in the way of brakes-related maintenance and inspection resources at this page: https://www.overdriveonline.com/maintenance/article/14875428/tractor-trailer-maintenance-for-ownerops-to-outrun-inspectors

Brake inspection blitz this week: Roadside inspection system should be 'preventive,' not punitive

"Some guys customize their truck via paint, chrome, lights, and things like that. I customize my truck to make it a more comfortable place to be, a more profitable truck, a more efficient truck." --Owner-operator Alan Kitzhaber

It's another rewinder of sorts for this week in the Overdrive Radio podcast series. If you missed the news last week Tuesday, owner-operator Alan Kitzhaber out of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, was honored as our August Trucker of the Month, putting him in the running for Overdrive’s Trucker of the Year award with his three-plus decades trucking and 4 million miles logged behind the wheel of his long-running 1995 Kenworth T600: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15681362/meticulous-maintenance-efficiency-trucker-of-the-month

Listeners have heard Kitzhaber in recent memory, of course, when he passed the 4-million-mile mark on the T600’s odometer in May we aired this talk originally in July: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15679534/4-million-miles-in-a-95-kw-t600-owneroperator-alan-kitzhaber

For those who missed the talk, this week hear Kitzhaber on his approach to keeping that rig running right these past decades and so many miles. 

And: we’re at the final sprint for the Trucker of the Year award program for 2024. Nominations will close at the end of the month, and we’ve got just two semi-finalist slots left for a chance to win a brand-new seat, up to a $2,500 value, from Trucker of the Year award sponsor Bostrom Seating, a trip to and recognition at the Mid-America Trucking Show, various other prizes, and more. If you or another deserving owner want to put your business in the running, visit https://OverdriveOnline.com/toptrucker to do that.  

Kitzhaber's not the first owner Overdrive Radio listeners have heard who's done similar -- "Mustang" Mike Crawford crossed 4 million in his 1994 Freightliner (12.7 Detroit-powered) back in 2022: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/15291488/mike-mustang-crawfords-1994-freightliner-4-million-safe-miles

(Incidentally, Overdrive editor Todd Dills spoke with Crawford July 1 as he hitting the Prime yard in Springfield at the end of his final run before retirement with a grand total of 4,159,910 miles in the rear view of the Freightliner. More on Crawford’s final run in a future podcast.)

Owner-operator Alan Kitzhaber’s career stretches back to 1990, his time as owner-operator some years on with Millis Transfer, where he first took the reins of the then-brand-new 1995 Kenworth T600 as a company driver. He bought the truck from the company itself, then, a few years later. 

Since then, he's been laser-focused on turning that truck into a profit-making machine, and meticulous with record-keeping in no small way. As suggested by the quote at the top, too, plenty modifications through the years have allowed him to excel to the point of achieving well more than 8 mpg for a fuel mileage average several years running this past decade.

There’s a lot to those modifications he’s made, for certain, detailed in today’s episode. And 4 million miles is a very long way. More than 8 times to the moon and back. At roughly 60 miles per hour it’d take you well past the hard end of the 14-hour clock to do it at 66,666 hours. We’ll track back through Kitzhaber’s history a little more quickly than that today on the podcast, along the way learning plenty about just how the owner-operator kept that Cat-powered T600 humming efficiently for so very long. 

As mentioned in the podcast, Caterpillar's interview with Kitzhaber for its Million Mile Club when he crossed 3 million: https://www.cat.com/en_US/articles/cat-truck-engine-articles/million-miler-alan-kitzhaber.html

Gordon Alkire's closed greasing system: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/14877182/csa-proofing-part-two-closed-greasing-system

Trucker of the Month Alan Kitzhaber: 4 million miles, ever greater efficiency for his '95 T600

Happy New Year! This final Overdrive Radio podcast for 2024 -- or the first for 2025, whenever you happen to be catching it -- looks back on the year that has been, a certainly sluggish one when it comes to business for many, though with a degree of optimism heading into 2025 with a new administration incoming and hope for business-friendly policy yielding freight improvement all around. 

Here’s how this one is going to go: Earlier this month, we charted the top 10 podcasts of this year, including a few two-parters this time around featuring extended talks with working truckers, whether small fleet owners like Gill Freightlines’ Surinder Gill on the collapse of the Convoy brokerage, or some among our owner-operator Trucker of the Year contenders offering business advice gleaned from their wealth of experience. We’ve got a short concert-haul run in-cab, a guide to beating back predatory tow invoices, and much more among hot topics and business dissection throughout the year.

So count down through the 10 most-listened-to podcasts of 2024, plus an extra three just outside that top 10 for a lucky 13, all the way to No. 1, to ring in the new year right.

Find a playlist of all the episodes excerpted via this link: https://soundcloud.com/overdriveradio/sets/countdown-to-2025-the-top

Or tune in for our latest via https://overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio

4 million miles toward optimism for a new year: Overdrive Radio's countdown to 2025

Overdrive's June Trucker of the Month Scott Smith, owner-operator of Sapphire Cartage out of Searcy, Arkansas, has a couple of secret weapons when it comes to bookkeeping, tax accounting and business analysis. The first is his wife, Stephanie, who after time in the health care field and then with Scott rearing four young children, found new work Scott Smith describes in this week's edition of Overdrive Radio. Stephanie's built accounting expertise as support for a small-biz accounting software system, and her expert handling of the Sapphire Cartage back office has taken that load off of the independent.  

The second of those secret weapons regular readers encountered in the June 30 feature detailing Smith’s history trucking: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15749527/trucker-of-the-month-bets-on-equipment-diversity-as-failsafe 

Namely, it’s a custom spreadsheet the owner-operator built himself to effectively analyze per-ton rates in the hopper-bottom freight business when it comes to load offers. But not only that -- it's his go-to tool for week-to-week business performance as well. As was detailed in the story, Smith uses the spreadsheet to set revenues against not only hard costs like those for fuel but his weekly home needs, his own personal driver salary, if you will. What he needs to contribute to household take-home figures as an expense there, on a weekly basis. What he describes in the podcast brings to mind in some ways Overdrive’s own Load Profit Analyzer tool you can access at any time to game out rate scenarios or compare load offers: https://overdriveonline.com/load-analyzer 

With that tool, using your own fixed cost per day, variable cost per mile and that self-pay salary figure per day to then compare as many loads as you like for profit potential, you too can set those driver-pay needs to be calculated on the expense side of the profit analysis.

For June Trucker of the Month Scott Smith, though, it’s his own system that accounts for all of it -- indeed a now not-so-secret weapon we'd wager many owners out there might do well to emulate in whatever form works best for the operation. In the podcast, hear more about Smith's operation and history trucking from the start, back in the early 2010s when like many out there he just happened into a love for the road via work in a different sector than the hopper- and flatbed-hauling work he does today.

Nominate your own or another business to contend, like Smith, for Overdrive's 2025 Trucker of the Year award: https://overdriveonline.com/toptrucker 

Read about all of our 2025 Truckers of the Month via https://overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year

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

"Hard to keep something nice if you're in the hopper world. There's dust, gravel, mud, farms, small driveways. ..." --Little Z Transport owner-operator Lucas Zach, Gilman, Wisconsin

Despite the difficulty, owner-operator Zach keeps his 2017 Peterbilt 389 and matching Timpte hopper pristine as can possibly be. He's put quite a lot of custom work into it with shop and fleet partners to cut a fine picture on those duty gravel roads in and out of farm operations, keeping his father's Tim Zach Trucking business's customer base rocking and rolling alongside his own operation. Catch a few views of the rig with Harlan Martin's 2023 389, too, via https://overdriveonline.com/15751123

In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, Zach details the lengths to which he's gone in recent times to keep the 2017 out of the danger of those rock chips, dust and dirt with the story of a load of corn he picked up on a farm in South Dakota. Arriving for the load, the farm's owner urged him to follow the owner's pickup down a gravel and dirt road. 

"We just gotta go up the road about five miles," the farmer said. 

Zach continued the story: "He made it five miles up the road and I was only doing 10-15 mph, and he's long ahead of me doing 50 mph in his truck. ... He takes a right and goes another five miles to the east, then there's another five miles. ..." 

All told, Zach traversed 18 miles' worth of gravel to get to the load point, slow and slower, as it were. "He's anxious to get me loaded," he said, yet "here I am trying not to rock-chip everything all up." 

Hear much more from Zach about the truck and his operation in the podcast, along with a fellow owner-operator likewise keeping family truck-ownership traditions alive in Wisconsin. Little Brothers Transport owner Harlan Martin was just 22 years old when we spoke to both he and Lucas Zach at the Crossroads Truck Meet in Missouri in May: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15745021

Martin's the youngest of three co-owner brothers in Little Brothers Transport, with which owner-op Zach's business contracts on occasion to haul cattle, supplementing LB's 13 running units (with some owner-operators leased on) and about twice as many trailers of a variety of types to serve a diverse and growing customer base, long the province of many a successful small fleet. 

Speaking of successful small fleets, for the small fleet owners among you time is running out to enter to compete in Ovedrive’s 2025 Small Fleet Championship, open to companies of 3 to 30 trucks this year and sponsored again by the great folks at the National Association of Small Trucking Companies – for four finalist fleets there’s a trip to the late-October annual NASTC conference in Nashville on the line, likewise the Small Fleet Champ title belt in two categories. Get your entries in by July 31 via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/2025sfc 

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

Track back through last week’s big trucking-issues hearing convened in Senate Commerce's Subcommittee on Transportation, Freight, Pipelines and Safety to work through some of the pressing issues ahead of the next highway bill, due in 2026.

Featured trucking witnesses before the subcommittee and their full written testimonies: 
**Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh: https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/9B1EF7F2-DB30-4A08-9844-DC9F237282D5 
**American Trucking Associations leader Chris Spear: https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/FA35E84B-5DB2-4784-AD1F-0F0BD0065EC8
**Teamsters Union president Sean O'Brien: https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/1B7508C5-A25B-4ACF-94BD-EBC2F83711FA

In the podcast, featuring audio from the hearing, witnesses debate driverless or otherwise automated truck development and regulation, likewise automation's role in safety, which regular Overdrive readers may have caught also in the initial report from the hearing last week: https://overdriveonline.com/15751214 

You’ll hear about the huge rise in cargo theft the subcommittee also addressed in a hearing early in the year, aided and abetted by identity theft and double brokering and other forms of fraud in freight markets increasingly plied by organized rings. You’ll hear about other techs like automatic emergency braking, some mention of flexibiltiies in the hours of service, about ELDs, unauthorized immigration and credentials fraud with practices like CDLs illegally procured for cash. 

What you won’t hear is any mention of the term "non-domiciled CDL," though in response to a question from Senator Bernie Moreno (Republican of Ohio), Teamsters President O'Brien referenced carriers recruiting drivers for temporary work in the U.S. from overseas. The non-domiciled CDL is a credential that U.S. states can issue to such drivers, who don’t have permanent immigration status in the U.S. but rather hold temporary work authorization. Some states don’t issue these CDLs, and many others haven’t been issuing non-domciled CDLs this way for very long, but the practice has certainly taken off over the last several years. Overdrive's own Alex Lockie's last-week-released research showed recent-years growth in states all around the nation with a 50-state accounting -- download the 20-page report via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/15750917

There’s a whole lot more than just CDL issuance issues to chew on when it comes the next highway bill, of course. In this week's podcast, we let the tape roll on the hearing. Catch your elected representatives and the associations that represent trucking business owners and operators in action, interrogating a wide array of trucking and broader transportation issues.

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

This week's edition of Overdrive Radio takes a deeper dive into Overdrive's relatively new Load Profit Analyzer tool: https://overdriveonline.com/load-analyzer

Go there and pull up the analyzer to follow along with this detailed walk-through with owner-operator business coach and longtime Overdrive contributor Gary Buchs. As regular readers will likely recall from when it was introduced late in 2024, the Analyzer was in part inspired by Buchs’ own efforts at individual load profit analysis, tracing back to his decades as owner-operator himself. (Gary retired from the road in 2019, yet continues private efforts as a mentor/business coach to other owner-operators.)  

I brought Gary on to talk us through a few divergent load examples in hopes that more owner-operators in the audience might benefit from what is in essence a fairly simple calculator, but might also be a powerful personal accountability tool for business performance long-term. 

So, with this episode, get to a spot where you can pull out the mobile device or laptop and go to https://OverdriveOnline.com/load-analyzer 

We'll run through the three cost-input fields you see there, namely: 
**Fixed cost per day under load
**Salary per day under load
and **Variable cost per mile

Then analyze results for three different loads all originating in Dallas with offers at wildly different rates: $2.30, $3, and a whopping $10/mile on a short haul. When it comes to profits, though, results from the analyzer might be surprising if you closely take into consideration the impacts of time spent on each load. Set up with all those different cost metrics, considering your contribution to your home budget's needs in the salary on the expense side of the equation, fundamentally the analyzer is set up to help you do that with a close eye on business profits. 

There are always dozens of variables at play in load selection and post-delivery analysis, but engaging with your own numbers with the tool we hope helps yield better profit results over time, as Gary likes to say, as you "touch those numbers" routinely. Give it a whirl with today's podcast. 

More from Gary on the topic of negotiations in this past Overdrive Radio edition: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15736582

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

This week on the Overdrive Radio podcast, another entry in our 2025 Trucker of the Year competition: https://overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year 

You may have seen Matt Cole’s feature a couple weeks back now about longtime independent Ron Kelsey, who’s achieved something of an "owner-operator holy grail," as it were, trucking for decades now in a 1981 Peterbilt 359 and hauling direct freight for customers that date back three decades for the owner: https://overdriveonline.com/15751895 

Kelsey’s recent-history experience, too, stands as testament to the bedrock value of direct-freight relationships when the proverbial you-know-what hits the fan. With a "freight recession" ballyhooed by prognosticators time and again over the last three years, and spot rates down over the same period, Matt Cole asked Kelsey how he’d fared through tough times of these recent years.

"I really don't notice a change," Kelsey said, on the ground with his two principal customers. "I'm not No. 1 anymore" among independents hauling for them, given as he's progressed in his career he's not quite as consistently over-the-road as he was in past years. Yet general freight slowdowns he hasn't noticed. "I work when I want to work," and the loads are plentiful, always something availble, loading pipe outbound from the Phoenix and most often steel on the return. Invoiced, customers pay within days, too. 

"I'm very fortunate," he added, but there's more to his business prowess than just following the tides of fate, as you'll hear in the podcast. He’s well set-up to weather anything that comes, ultimately, and has come a long way himself from the young man who would end up inking a deal for his 1981 Pete after two-stepping with the owner way back in 1984. He’s hauled with it ever since, getting his authority 10 years later and building what the Kelsey's Trucking business remains to this day. 

Hear his story in his words in today's episode, starting like many an owner-operator in a straight truck in vocational operations before a trial by fire over the road in the late 1970s. 

Nominate your own or another deserving owner-operator business for the 2025 Trucker of the Year award via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/toptrucker

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

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