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

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

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

Off the top of this week's Overdrive Radio podcast is the voice of photojournalist James Year, commenting on an issue he feels holds potential to create alliances where few have existed in American culture and commentary. "In every market you can think there's a lot of disruptions starting to happen," Year said. "and it's one of those cases of strange bedfellows. ... Turns out truckers and actors and all the people that are generally fighting like hell with each other ... turns out they've got a lot in common on this topic." 

Namely, he’s talking about automation, the import technology holds for work opportunity in a variety of fields. In trucking, where that’s perhaps most salient -- certainly grabbing the most headlines -- is in the operating of the trucks themselves. The jumping-off point for the podcast is Year's recent short documentary video published via the More Perfect Union video channels. It came with an ominous title, and a video cover image clearly designed to raise a safety specter with respect to unmanned trucks on public roads: https://www.stealingfire.tech/more-perfect-union-documentary

The headline? "We chased driverless trucks in Texas. What we saw will scare you." There’s no scary crash in the video. There’s not even an unmanned, truly “driverless” truck in it. Rather Year, with a professional truck driver with him in a car, followed an Aurora Driver-outfitted truck that to start the trip actually had two operators in-cab late in April. Yet the pitch worked, clearly -- since release three weeks ago the approximately 15-minute video has been viewed nearly 2 million times, according to the Youtube counter. It all followed Year's long photojournalism project for his master’s work at Syracuse University. Year now teaches photography in Maryland.

Misleading safety marketing isn’t just the province of view-hungry video platforms. Look no farther than the messages of autonomous truck developers themselves, in some cases. On the Kodiak Robotics company’s website, for instance, the first text block you encounter purports to reveal the safety case for the "Why" behind just what the company is building with its automated driving system. It offers this statistic: “More than 85% of truck crashes in the U.S. were caused by human error.” 

Whose human error? As any trucker familiar with crash causation stats that exist well knows, the majority of that 85% weren't caused by the error of the professional truck operator. 

Year’s work is less preoccupied with automated vehicle safety than employment and work  prospects for the untold thousands of owner-operators and company drivers in the trucking industry today. The often disputed and debunked “driver shortage” narrative and how it plays into the sales pitch for automation is detailed, likewise the history of deregulation and the intense competition that resulted from the 1980s onward, all stories Overdrive readers will be largely familiar with. Year and his subjects assume autonomous tech companies will ultimately allow fleets to achieve real cost savings in safely removing the driver from the cab working on a large number of lanes. If so, what happens to all the individuals who might have otherwise done that work?

We’ve posed it before. Some of the tech companies we’ve interrogated about it no longer in fact exist, having imploded after investment cash dried up or they made a mistake of one kind or another and spooked whatever investors they did have. Still existing tech companies like Kodiak, like Aurora Innovations and Plus.ai, among others, tend all to stick to the notion that if you’re driving today, you’ll be able to retire as a truck driver. 

Yet given fleets' clear interest in helping develop these systems, for owner-operators the better question may be when will we have to compete with them at scale?

What's your take? Complete our survey via this link, where you'll find more reporting, too: https://overdriveonline.com/15749195

When should owner-operators expect competition from unmanned, truly driverless trucks?

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

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

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

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

When should owner-operators expect competition from unmanned, truly driverless trucks?

Overdrive Radio

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