2023 in review: The top 10 Overdrive Radio podcasts (plus 4) of the year

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today’s special edition of the podcast is a re-air of ATBS President Todd Amen’s semi-annual conference call with clients of the business services firm and other owner-operators that offers the opportunity for listeners to benchmark their own income performance against the averages of their peers that ATBS computes. Near the call’s beginning, though, Amen detailed the pressures that the Biden administration and Congress have renewed against the independent contractor model writ large. Fleets of all sizes are worrying more about it, as he shows, and some owner-operators are, too.

At once, the majority of ATBS’ owner-op clientele aren’t aware even of California’s A.B. 5 law, for instance, in place now for a year and a half and currently not applying to trucking, though that could change depending on pending court cases. The so-called ‘ABC test’ in that law in essence prevents an independent contractor relationship between a worker and a business if both parties are essentially in the same line of work, making current and traditional owner-operator lease arrangements with other motor carriers problematic in various ways. 

What’s abundantly clear from other surveys ATBS has conducted, though? When asked if leasing suddenly were not an option any longer, just what would ATBS client leased owner-ops do? 

Not even two in 10 would become company drivers, Amen noted results of his company's surveying. There’s a lot more where that came from in this episode, and a wealth of data on the topsy-turvy 2020 year’s income performance for average owner-operators among dry, reefer, flatbed and independent segments ATBS tracks. 

Read more about Amen's presentation: http://overdriveonline.com/15064950

Subscribe to Overdrive's daily newsletter for updates, news, views and analysis via http://overdriveonline.com

Owner-ops are not company drivers for a reason -- ABC test in practice, more data from ATBS

You probably think you know Wedowee, Alabama-based Brian Lindley. Not afraid to work, grew up on a farm, grew up 'round trucks – all are familiar aspects of many a story in the trucking business. But as with so many of the millions of stories out there, there’s plenty of twists and turns in the details when it comes to the tale Lindley has for you in today's edition of Overdrive Radio.

Having started out hauling chicken litter from poultry operations with this Mack daycab -- which had a trash body to begin with as part of one of Lindley's early-career efforts doing storm recovery and tree work -- Lindley is the owner of the now-20-truck LB3. He's got three owner-operators leased on, and the balance of the power units are operated in full-service lease arrangements with Penske. He's hauling mostly for direct customers.

In just under a decade, he's turned what was a very small operation into what he hopes is a "destination company," of a fashion, for the best in the business. He's doing dandy in that regard so far. During the March event of the Alabama Trucking Association, Lindley operators scored both number 1 and 2 spots in the association's driver of the year awards program. Nathan Heflin of Lineville took home the top spot, and LB3-leased owner-operator Jason Webber the second.

Brian Lindley’s wife, Valerie, was named Safety Professional of the Year for her work as safety director, and Maintenance Director Todd Martin was honored as Maintenance Professional of the Year. It all comes on the heels of near-disaster in early 2020, when the operation had part of its principal reefer contract undercut by a larger carrier just a month ahead of the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In today's podcast, hear how Lindley and company steered through it all, and much more. 

Also in the podcast: Following up with ATBS President Todd Amen's Q&A portion from the owner-operator performance benchmarking session we re-aired last week on the podcast. Amen address his thoughts on where fuel prices are likely to go the rest of the year, the outlook for owner-operator business viability long-term, several tax matters from per diem calculation to dealing with quarterlies and back taxes, and more.

Building a small fleet as destination for the best: Alabama-based Brian Lindley's LB3

A natural inclination for frugality is a winning quality for most anybody in the world today, and no doubt for an owner-operator. That's one of the central qualities Jay Hosty, our Trucker of the Month for April, put dead center of his now 41-year-long history of success as an owner-operator in trucking. As Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole wrote in our profile of owner-operator Hosty last week, he got his start in trucking as an owner pulling containers around New Orleans, Louisiana, at the young age of 19 in 1981: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15383689/frugality-focus-on-costs-pays-off-for-owneroperator-jay-hosty

Frugality's certainly served him well during the last year and a half’s rising costs, yet it only goes so far after a couple of years' worth of getting used to $4/mile freight. The squeeze is on, coming from both sides of the profit equation.

"it's hard to come back to the reality of $2/mile freight," Hosty said, and thus far in 2023 he's a bit behind in net income where he was this time last year. In part, it's the luxury of being freight-choosy at work there. He's spent more time sitting at the house in Diamondhead, Mississippi, this year, waiting on profitable loads from one of couple of nearby Landstar agents he works with regularly to take him outbound.   

Hosty’s been leased to Landstar now for most of the last two decades, pulling today in a 2006 Western Star that replaced a 2000 model, after the truck was destroyed in Hurricane Katrina, when he and wife, Katt, were living in Gulfport, Mississippi. They lost their house there, too, with the direct hit, and the comeback from that disaster is made all the more remarkable by the family the Hostys have fostered throughout their entire four decades together. 

We’ll hear much more about that in today’s edition, likewise a 2022 Western Star daycab Hosty’s been sitting on for a year with plans to outfit the rig with a custom sleeper built to his needs, as he’d done with the 2000 that Katrina sent to the graveyard. That frugal nature he mentioned has kept him from moving forward with it to date, given pricing he’s gotten from some of the big sleeper manufacturers. For the builders in the audience, he put out a call, too: 

"If there's anybody out there who can point me in a good direction of getting a custom sleeper built" without sacrificing an '"arm and a leg" on the build, as it were, he said. "I'm looking to find somebody." 

Hosty's Trucker of the Month designation puts him in the running or Overdrive's 2023 Trucker of the Year award. You can enter your own business or put forward another 1-3-truck owner-operator via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/page/toptrucker

Also in the podcast: Heads-up on an online seminar upcoming on Tuesday, May 23, part of a series sponsored by the Bestpass company — it will dive into the topic of work-life balance over the road as an owner-operator, particularly in a down market like the present, and features two men who’ve been in those shoes over the decades. You can register to attend it live at 1 p.m. Central, May 23, via this link.. What we aim to deliver are tactics, strategies to gauge and achieve balance to improve quality of life for yourself -- and/or your operators if you’re managing a small fleet. That's whether you’re a one-truck owner leased to a carrier or with authority, or a small fleet owner hoping to deliver better balance to drivers and, ultimately, to yourself. 

The two presenters regular Overdrive Radio listeners have heard here on the podcast before: Innovative Logistics Group founder and managing director Adam Wingfield and Overdrive's 2021 Small Fleet Champ Jason Cowan, founder and leader of Silver Creek Transportation out of Henderson, Kentucky.

Join us: https://randallreilly.zoom.us/webinar/register/2716820986241/WN_h9CP6dZ0QOq-bkpG1spTOw#/registration

Frugality only goes so far after getting used to $4/mile freight, but Jay Hosty's staying choosy

Truck show platform personalities come and go, but Hope Zvara's mission to improve truckers' quality of life with a program that leans on small, incremental changes in their daily routines continues to gain traction. Founder and CEO of Mother Trucker Yoga, Zvara's the author of "Trucking Yoga: Simple Fitness for fhe Long Haul," a book in which Zvara gives us an unvarnished account of how her own struggles with addiction and depression drove a personal need to get healthy. 

"I've struggled with depression and anxiety on catastrophic levels," she said. "Yoga, and movement, saved my life." 

Included in the book, too, is a regimen of down to earth, practical yoga exercises adapted to the ergonomics of a semi-tractor. At the Mid-America Trucking Show, as you can see in the thumbnail image for today's edition of Overdrive Radio above, she led our own Long Haul Paul through a few of them. And in Paul and Zvara's talk here, she offers answers to these questions relative to notions of a mental-health crisis all around the nation.  "What if it's not a mental health crisis?" she said." What if it's a movement crisis?" 

Find more about Zvara's tools for OTR drivers via her website: https://www.mothertruckeryoga.com/ 

Also in the podcast: An audio diary from owner-operator Mike "Mustang" Crawford, who poses his own answers to what was a pressing question no doubt for some during this week of the CVSA's annual Roadcheck inspection event: Is it possible to get through the entire blitz week without passing an open scale? After Overdrive editor Todd Dills talked to the longtime flatbedder last week, his plans to spend much of the May 16-18 event at home in Long Lane, Missouri, changed. He finished what he needed to do at home early and the freight called him out. After he passed two closed scales early Tuesday, the first day of the blitz, on his way toward Chicago from the Springfield, Missouri, area, he started calling in with reports from the road. 

Three days later in Florida, then .... 

And: On the diet side of the health/quality-of-life equation, at MATS the CDL Drivers Unlimited group hosted family-practice physician Ken Berry, who spoke to principles of what he sees as the PHD, or “Proper Human Diet,” akin in some ways to a Keto high-fat, very-low-carb diet. Trucker and CDLDU founding driver council member Scott Reed introduced Berry at MATS with some detail of his own experience with the diet. Reed's dropped well more than 100 pounds over the course of a year into it. Find CDL Drivers Unlimited via this link: https://www.cdldu.com/

More from Overdrive Radio on the world-famous http://OverdriveOnline.com

A wrap on Roadcheck with the 'Mustang' | Introducing Mother Trucker Yoga proprietor Hope Zvara

DawgNation Daily-- the daily podcast for Georgia Bulldogs fans

Beginning of the show: I discuss my thoughts on Charles Barkley's appearance on the Paul Finebaum show and his words about Kirby Smart and the Georgia Bulldogs.

12-minute mark: I share some bold predictions submitted by viewers of DND.

16-minute mark: Former UGA QB Jake Fromm joins the show.

28-minute mark: I share my bold predictions for upcoming season regarding the Alabama Crimson Tide.

End of Show: Gator Hater Countdown

Episode 1958: Charles Barkley perfectly describes what makes UGA special

With this Overdrive Radio edition for June 16, 2023, points of view on the absolute necessity of respecting the needs for work-life balance for your personal sanity, and for the success of your business. That balance can be particularly elusive for independent owner-operators, as Silver Creek Transportation owner Jason Cowan well knows -- he spent much of his early career in those shoes with just a single truck himself, and in some ways balance might elude those of you who fit that bill more than anyone in trucking. 

In this edition, we’ll walk through a variety of strategies to achieve it, with a goal of healthy success. The podcast features the bulk of a late-May-held webcast presentation and discussion Overdrive hosted with Cowan, our big 2021 Small Fleet Champ winner, and Adam Wingfield, who’s head of the Innovative Logistics Group consultancy, also a past independent owner-operator himself: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15448347/worklife-balance-as-an-owneroperator-you-have-to-build-it 

Work-life balance isn’t all about home time and other personal-life concerns, though -- in part of the Q&A at the end of the webinar, sponsored initially by the Bestpass company for toll-collections management and 2290 tax solutions, among other services, Wingfield responded to a question about how to cope with the stress a down market puts on everyone, with the pressure to run. Direct that stress toward the right spot, he advised. 

Small fleet owner Cowan, throughout, offers plenty perspective on ways to build business with driver employees and owner-operator contractors in mind. He invoked the difficulties so many have attracting younger folks willing to stay in trucking as drivers. All trucking companies – from those who pay the most to those who pay the least, seem to need drivers 24/7/365. “Maybe this isn’t all about the money,” he said. While getting drivers home more often and/or on regular timetables is part of his mission as Silver Creek Transportation owner, that’s certainly not all there is to it. 

Overdrive radio podcast subscribers should note that a full, unedited video version of this podcast features the original May webcast on our Youtube and Facebook playlists for Overdrive Radio. Those video versions will be available starting Monday, June 18, when the podcast goes live on the world-famous OverdriveOnline.com. 

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc1lg9rs1dUAhK7CqgY23njy75EnGlqIU

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/watch/201594073189/366175185612296 

You can register and watch the webinar on-demand at this link, too: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15448190/catch-the-replay-worklife-balance-for-owneroperators-in-a-down-market 

Adam Wingfield’s Innovative Logistics Group: https://www.innovativelogisticsgroupllc.com/

Jason Cowan and Silver Creek Transportation: https://silvercreektrans.com/

Work-life balance as an owner-operator, small fleet owner: You have to build it

Asked by Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole for the stretch of road they felt could be described as the absolute worst in the nation, all but one owner-operator at Shell Rotella's SuperRigs show two weeks back in Wyoming didn’t flinch in singling out I-40 in Arizona. Others are calling it the absolute worst they’ve ever seen.  

Danville, Virginia-based owner-operator Joey Slaughter, who runs the route routinely on cross-country step deck hauls, was the man who brought this subject to our attention this Spring. Clearly, it’s not hard to find similar viewpoint on the stretch between Kingman and Flagstaff. The road’s condition has translated to hard dollars and lost time with equipment repairs. 

Slaughter's hopeful for movement on new pavement soon, but questions why the road was allowed to get so bad in the first place. Rough nature of the freeze-thaw cycles this past winter has something to do with, but that can’t be all, he feels. 

Other owners you'll hear in this edition: 
Cody Davis, coast-to-coast independent livestock hauler based in Cokeville, Wyoming, with three trucks in Davis Trucking
 
Jake Bast, Shoshone, Idaho, leased to RAM Transportation pulling a flatbed
 
Nichole “Nikki” Cheek, hopper hauler based in Rozet, Wyoming, leased to North Country Logistics out of Wyndmere, North Dakota

What gets your vote for the worst stretch of road in the nation? Tell us via the podcast message line at 615-852-8530. 

As mentioned in the podcast, there is at least some good news for the stretch of road in question. Here's a link to Arizona DOT's State Critical Pavement Repair projects, including some in the problem area: https://azdot.gov/statewide-critical-pavement-repair-projects

More I-40 projects are shown in the works in the recently released five-year project plan for improvements statewide: https://azdot.gov/sites/default/files/2023-06/2024-2028-Final-Five-Year-Transportation-Program.pdf

Trucking owner-operators call out the worst road in America

Trucker-songwriter leading light Tony Justice's new "Greatest Shifts" record features six new tracks, five originals plus a fantastic rendition of Jerry Reed's classic "Eastbound and Down," and 14 previously released highlights from four records -- "Apple Pie Moonshine," "Brothers of the Highway," "Stars Stripes and White Lines," and "18 Gears to Life." Those records comprise a decades' worth of music from Justice, excluding unfortunately his first trucking-themed record, "On the Road," for reasons he explains in this Overdrive Radio edition. Herein, Overdrive Radio host Todd Dills' recent conversation with Justice about the new material on the album and the background behind the production is interspersed with plenty opportunity to hear some of the new music. 

("On the Road" you can hear via this link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5gsluBHAVUqMjotVyxbvli?si=VJklYb17TVWsm9KFMnjt-A )

Among previously released material is a "dance remix" of Justice's “Last of the Cowboys” tune, first featured a couple of albums and a few years ago now. It’s arguably his greatest shift in terms of its general popularity out there, as he notes in the podcast. But in other ways, as he also notes, all of these tracks have a special meaning for him. Listen on for more, all of it remastered and sweetened in various ways. Find links to conversation with Justice about most of his prior records, too, via the links below:

"18 Gears to Life": https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15066892/tony-justices-18-gears-to-life-record-inside-the-music

"Stars, Stripes and White Lines": https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/14892637/audio-tour-through-tony-justices-new-stars-stripes-and-white-lines-album

"Brothers of the Highway": https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/14890756/podcast-tony-justices-brothers-of-the-highway-the-trucking-brotherhood-reinforced

"Apple Pie Moonshine": https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/14885429/podcast-behind-the-new-tony-justice-record-more-song-samples-too

The best of the best from trucker-songwriter Tony Justice: The story behind 'Greatest Shifts'

This week, a toast to the year that was (and still is for a couple more days, anyway). We’re counting down through 14 of the most-listened-to podcasts of the year, and to start off, part of a strong current of tactics aimed at building value for the business with customers, host Todd Dills shared an anecdote from a past Trucker of the Year, owner-operator Henry Albert. Looking to cement your value with a direct customer? (Or broker or your leasing carrier, for that matter ...) "Ask them what their toughest load to cover is. Ask them what nobody in their right mind ever wants to do for them? And, you know, there's a chance that you can. And if you can, you're going to have that guy for life." 

It was just a small part of No. 5 among the most-listened-to Overdrive Radio episodes of the year, our Partners in Business program roundtable moderated by Red Eye Radio’s Eric Harley at the Mid-America Trucking Show: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15448522/owneroperator-business-evolution-roundtable-on-overdrive-radio 

That anecdote, a little piece of advice acted upon years ago by owner-operator Albert to success, slotted into a discussion of building value in a year that has been most certainly a struggle for many. 

The year will likely go down as one most can be proud simply to have survived with some profit to show for it, as my colleague Alex Lockie suggested in his own Year in Review look at some of the biggest stories of the year: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/15660631/if-you-survived-2023-give-em-hell-in-24-truckers-year-in-review 

There's more here in the highlight reel, too: 
**How one owner-operator set himself up to weather the storm of declining rates in 2023 with years, even decades of preparation, cost control, bedrock frugality in business and life and a rig well-maintained, long paid off: https://overdriveonline.com/15447251 
**A little whip cream of reality on top of the May week that this year was the Roadcheck inspection blitz, with longtime independent “Mustang” Mike Crawford, when you fully expect the chicken houses not to be "locked up, nobody home"... Sometimes, luck is on your side: https://overdriveonline.com/15448049 
**No small amount of music, including the modern trucking classics of one Tony Justice, as regular listeners also recently got another taste of: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15660911/2023-retread-tony-justices-best-of-the-best-with-greatest-shifts-record
**Tales of learning the OTR work-life balance mismatch and building an operation to improve it long-term with direct customers on both ends of preferred freight lanes out of the home area to effectively achieve growth goals: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15540815/owneroperators-can-master-worklife-balance-in-trucking

And plenty more. Note that there’s a playlist that features the top 10 most-listened episodes as well as four honorable mentions just outside the top 10. Find it via this link: https://soundcloud.com/overdriveradio/sets/2023-in-review-the-top-10

Happy New Year! Here's wishing you a profitable 2024. And stay warm out there. ...

Closed coops, worst roads, weathering the storm toward value: Owner-operators' countdown to 2024

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

Thanks to the Tompkins Square record label and the man behind the voice you hear in the song at the top here, Will Beeley. Beeley's new “Highways and Heart Attacks” record is the singer-songwriter and hazmat pressurized tank hauler's third. Today, Beeley lives in New Mexico, with roots in Texas. His story in music reaches back to his youth in the late 1960s, runs through an iconic record label in Jackson, Mississippi and extends on up into the present day, with his new record following 40 years after his last, called “Passing Dream.” Nashville-based music writer Edd Hurt views that 1979 slab as an overlooked classic in the American songbook. On this edition of Overdrive Radio, take a run through parts of Edd Hurt’s and my own interviews with Beeley attendant to a special treat in the day to day of this trucking-business writer back in September. Beeley was in Nashville performing attendant to Americana fest.

'Highways and heart attacks' to trucker Will Beeley's place in the American songbook

In what has been perhaps the toughest week for trucking as an owner-operator in the last decade, this edition of Overdrive Radio offers some diversion via an interview with Haley Fohr of Chicago-based "Jackie Lynn," whose new record proceeds from a conception of the character for whom the band is named as a long-hauler with a particularly spectacular rig -- a mirrored vessel that carries the weight of the world it inhabits. The record, called "Jacqueline," is the group's second, among Fohr's other songwriting/performing projects. Also: Our own "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer offers two of his pensive, funny, and sometimes moving dispatches from the COVID-19 road, happy for the grocery, food and beverage loads but facing near impossible decisions in other ways ...

A tough week's diversion with music, trucking in pursuit of truth

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trucking owner-operators call out the worst road in America

Overdrive Radio

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