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

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

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

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

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