Jamie Hagen's got the inside scoop, but won't divulge the name of the new Mack tractor model set to be debuted next month in New York in this year of Mack's 125th anniversary as a company. Small Fleet owner Hagen has actually driven one hand-built production model already around the company’s test track hidden behind the walls, and come June he expects to be leasing one of the first production units in an arrangement with Mack’s marketing arm -- it’ll add to his all-Mack fleet, South Dakota-headquartered Hell Bent Xpress, among finalists in 2024 for Overdrive’s Small Fleet Championship: https://www.overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ/article/15704803/small-fleet-champ-four-finalists-to-square-off 

The new truck will add 1 to Hell Bent's power-unit count, currently sitting where it was back when we last spoke around the Small Fleet Champ program’s conclusion in November, at 9 trucks, so there’s big things ahead for Hagen and Hell Bent, no doubt. Yet the new Mack wasn’t the principal reason we brought him in for this edition of Overdrive Radio -- rather, the forward-looking small fleet owner happens to be the first U.S. owner to install a new-to-the-U.S. auxiliary air-conditioning unit in the sleeper of one of his Macks. That’s the Fresco 9000 MaXX system built by an Italian manufacturer and powered by U.S.-based Dragonfly Energy’s Battle Born Batteries Lithium Iron Phosphate battery to deliver cooling power in the warmer months: https://www.overdriveonline.com/gear/product/15684579/autoclima-fresco-9000-maxx-batterypowered-auxiliary-ac-unit-hitting-us-shores 

Hagen walks through the unit’s design and, along the way, his rationale for jumping into the modular, portable system after years forgoing alternative A/C for his mostly upper Midwest regional fleet. (Yes, he’s got auxiliary heat in the form of Webasto bunk heaters.) 

If you’ll be in attendance at the big Mid-America Trucking Show later this month, too, Hagen will be part of a panel discussion opening the event on Thursday, March 27, about small trucking business issues. It also features a past Overdrive Small Fleet Champ in Silver Creek Transportation’s Jason Cowan, among many others: https://truckingshow.com/opening-breakfast/

Hear more about that in the podcast, likewise the story of how a 2023 Mack Anthem in the small fleet of Hell Bent Xpress came to be the first truck to get an install of the Fresco 9000 MaXX battery-powered alternative air conditioning system, performed by the way by Jim Fowler and his team at Michigan MD Alignment. 

Much more from in the way of MATS preview coverage at https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4372607


New battery-powered auxiliary A/C system: Small fleet owner looks to move truck-to-truck for better ROI

Back from the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Kentucky, this Overdrive Radio edition kicks off continuing coverage as all of us here at Overdrive spent the show fanning out across convention center grounds to cover just as much as possible. The fruits of that labor you’ve seen just a small sampling of to date, the lot of it collected with the MATS tag at OverdriveOnline.com: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4372607 

Today we drop back to the very beginning of the show for an 8 a.m. Thursday, March 27, panel discussion that set the issues stage for the remainder of the event. It was moderated by Brent Hutto, longtime Chief Relationship Officer at Truckstop and now a senior advisor for the load board as he’s joined the staff of the Truck Parking Club company. 

You’ll hear a variety of voices in the panel discussion, touching on freight market dynamics, small business struggles and ways to overcome, predatory towing, parking, fraud in the brokered-freight marketplace, cargo and payment theft and so much more. Panelists included:

**Jason Cowan, leader of 45-truck Silver Creek Transportation, as Overdrive’s Small Fleet Champ in 2021, since which plans for growth have come to fruition. 
**Hell Bent Xpress owner Jamie Hagen, whose all-Mack fleet operates out of a South Dakota headquarters and which was one of two finalists in the 3-10-truck division of the Small Fleet Championship last year.
**Jessica Dotson, co-owner-operator of Dotson Transportation with her husband
**Tyler Johnston, Mercer Transportation's director of operations 
**Lewie Pugh, Owner-Operator Independent Driver's Association executive vice president

As mentioned in the podcast: 
**Overdrive's recent insurance renewal-related feature: https://overdriveonline.com/15740305
**Post-crash litigation series: https://overdriveonline.com/15287415
**Tow companies dominate DOT listening session: https://overdriveonline.com/15678174
**Overdrive's revamped Partners in Business start-to-finish playbook for owner-operator careers: https://overdriveonline.com/pib


Freight markets and fraud, insurance, towing: Small-biz challenges dominate trucking-issues panel

This week's edition of Overdrive Radio is another in our series highlighting contenders for 2025 Trucker of the Year, with Overdrive Senior Editor Matt Cole’s talk with Virginia-headquartered two-truck straight dump owner-operator business Dice Mayhem’s Trucking, headed up by owner-operator Hunter Hubbard and her husband, Tim. 

Hunter’s just about six years into truck ownership herself, her husband a good bit longer, yet clearly she’s harnessed a quality that current reigning Trucker of the Year Alan Kitzhaber sees in all successful people when it comes to business. As he put earlier this year in his “Plan for better business,” authored for our Overdrive Extra blog, “99.9% of success is desire.” That is, those who have a clear case of the want-tos, ultimately, probably will do whatever it is they set out to accomplish: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15712314

Cue Hunter Hubbard’s own advice for any aspiring truck owner when it comes to success in business for themselves. "If you have your mind set to do it, go for it. Nothing's stopping you but yourself, and the worst thing you can do is fail. But at the end of the day, nobody wants to fail. You're going to figure it out one way or another." Some days will be awful, but "you'll sit back a month down the road, two months down the road, and be like, 'that was rough, but hey we're still here.' You just gotta keep digging on it." 

As she well acknowledges, challenges will present themselves day-in, day-out, but those who keep digging will get through to the other side. Clearly, Hubbard herself has been one of those sorts these last years in business. "I might be a little stubborn sometimes," she said. 

She and Tim have built a steady base of customers for their two-truck straight dump business in and around their Virginia home base, weathering an array of their own customer challenges in recent years when a buyout of one of their main customers and integration of the two business left their own trucking company in an uncertain position for hauling work, given the company's small size.

Last year, she pivoted to a certain extent, with purchase of an older Peterbilt tractor, utilizing mechanical prowess with a new shop, too, to get it in working order and standing up a new, one-truck business for livestock hauling regionally: Dice Logistics. Yet dump work remains the Hubbards’ bread and butter, and the seasonality of both businesses continues to inspire the occasional second-guessing of their commitment to niche specialization. They could be hauling food, which always has to run, Hubbard notes, telling her story to Cole in this episode. They could be, that is, but "I didn't really choose that route. Everything's seasonal, everything depends on the weather," she said. "You just wait it out." 

They’re doing more than just waiting, that’s sure. 

As also mentioned in the podcast:   
**Matt Cole's two-part feature on ways to save on insurance at renewal: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15740305
**Learn how you can put your own or another owner-operator business in the running for the 2025 Trucker of the Year honor, with a chance to win a new seat from sponsor Bostrom Seating and Commercial Vehicle Group: https://overdriveonline.com/toptrucker

'Keep digging' with Dice Mayhem's Trucking, growing dump roots to long-term small fleet success

This week’s edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast features C.W. Express small fleet owner Steve Wilson, reigning Small Fleet Champ in the 11-30-truck division after a bit of a growth spurt for the fleet followed Wilson’s brush with death in 2022. The team he’d built around the dry van fleet sustained while he was in hospital for the better part of that entire year, and in the aftermath has only continued to not just sustain, but excel, on dedicated lanes for a central broker in Avenger Logistics. 

Wilson’s up to near 20 trucks and drivers today, and doesn’t have all his freight eggs in that single basket, as you’ll hear in today’s podcast, with customers in his area helping build lanes loaded both ways -- in one case out to Arkansas and back to the Louisville, Kentucky, area, where he’s headquartered in Sellersburg, Indiana. 

The podcast amounts to a tour around C.W. Express headquarters on Avco Boulevard in Sellersburg, right off I-65 and purchased and moved into in 2023, marking a significant upgrade to the former location. Wilson, a wear-all-the-hats small fleet owner for decades, continues to build out support for C.W.’s trucks and drivers with deft delegation, too, particularly on the time-consuming maintenance side of the business. He's added an expert lead mechanic you’ll hear hear who oversees the operation and a younger diesel tech, Clayton Higdon, to provide an assist and a well for education and growth, no doubt. 

Listen on for an update with reigning champ Wilson and C.W. Express.


Small Fleet Champ C.W. Express: Owner Steve Wilson, from new headquarters, assesses growing pains

"If you're not going to do it right the first time, don't do it at all. That's what I tell everybody in here." --2024 Small Fleet Champ Paul Rissler

In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, listen in for a tour around the headquarters of Paul Rissler Transportation, current Overdrive Small Fleet Champ, on the old home place for the big Rissler trucking family. Overdrive Editor Todd Dills was there in early May just ahead of Paul’s older brother John and younger brother Delton Rissler’s Crossroads Truck Meet show at the junction of U.S. 50 and Missouri state route 87 in California. Paul Rissler’s one of five Rissler brothers all with some tie to trucking -- in their family, it’s clear the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree. In the podcast, Paul details his father and mother’s small fleet history right from the spot where it all started for a young Paul, following in his father’s footsteps as a small fleet owner.

The fleet’s ranged over more than a couple decades now from just a few to eight trucks. Paul and Michelle Rissler were right at 6 when they brought home the Small Fleet Champ title belt from the NASTC conference last fall. When we visited in May, things were in a brief moment of flux with one longtime driver moving toward retirement to local work, and another leaving as well. In search of the right drivers to fill those spots, the all-reefer fleet was well-positioned still with steady LTL lanes out of Pennsylvania from consolidator Dutchland Refrigerated, and other customers back toward Missouri from Colorado. Paul and his wife, Michelle (with all three sons Justin, Josh, and Jordan involved in various aspects of the business), have clearly built a fleet that's sustainable, no matter what comes. 

We start in the company office, then get a look at the main shop and warehouse area for Paul Rissler Transportation, then at the Risslerbilt, LLC, custom truck shop operated now by Josh and outfitted with what might just be the biggest paint booth in the entire state of Missouri. All of it was built by the hands of, and the close bonds between, the Rissler family and close-knit trucking community they’ve brought along with them on their long run of success. 

As mentioned in the podcast, small fleets of 3-30 trucks can enter to compete for this year's title belt in Overdrive's Small Fleet Champsionship via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/2025sfc -- deadline: July 31. 

Find more images from Rissler headquarters and the Risslerbilt custom shop in the post that houses this podcast at https://overdriveonline.com/15748560



Doing it right the first time: Paul Rissler Transportation, Small Fleet Champ for the long haul

"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

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

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