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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just be prepared for anything. 

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

That haul alone is a massive undertaking, no doubt. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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