In the relative calm before a storm that walloped Lexington, Ky., as the first day of the Expedite Expo let out last month, Overdrive Radio sat down with the two finalists and ultimately runners-up for the Expediter of the Year award: AD Transportation driver Nancy Hudson and cargo van small fleet owner and Class 8 straight truck owner-operator Eric Escobar. The two shared insights from decades in business between them, Escobar after a prior career in the Army and Hudson following long work in a...
Aug 10, 2018•24 min
This Overdrive Radio edition checks in with a more complete introduction to Clifford Petersen’s leased operation with Christenson transportation, headquartered near Springfield, Mo., with more than 100 power units hauling mostly dry freight, Petersen notes. For regular Overdrive readers, Petersen probably needs no introduction, as he’s written several blog posts in recent times in which he draws on his experience over a few decades now in and out of trucking. His last time away, from 2005-15, th...
Aug 06, 2018•32 min
Cargo van owner-operator Tim Paxton, leased to Arkansas-based Barrett Directline, is the 2018 Expediter of the Year, and in this edition of Overdrive Radio, recorded prior to the announcement of his award July 21 at Expedite Expo, Paxton lays out a variety challenges faced by his and others' small-vehicle trucking operations. He's got an eye on the successes, too, though, from a healthy income for his family to a growing community he's helped spearhead via Youtube channel and, more recently, the...
Jul 27, 2018•18 min
As of press time, more than a month after the One20 company ceased operations entirely, and nearly three months after the owner of an affiliated business, the single-truck One20 Trucking, resigned his position as head of One20 Inc., owner-operators Lee and Lisa Schmitt, contracted to One20 Trucking, were still owed money for loads booked and hauled for the company, they say. The former One20 Trucking owner, Christian Schenk, says he's working on settling their accounts soon. In telling their sto...
Jul 19, 2018•16 min
Hose was put out of service with a false-log violation in Missouri early in June, as his One20 ELD was giving him problems en route a couple weeks prior to the company stopping support for the device on June 18. For Hose, his run with that particular ELD is one marred by inexplicable automatic duty-status changes and other malfunctions he can’t explain to this day, His story is one of difficulty, generally, as a direct result of selection of an ELD provider. This talk with him reveals how inspec...
Jul 12, 2018•33 min
Pam Young's thoughts on produce rates post-ELD mandate and how the Food Safety Modernization Act's new sanitary transportation requirements led her to develop a new automated reefer washout effort lead this podcast discussion with the produce broker, following up on parts of the discussion in last week's Overdrive Radio edition.
Jun 29, 2018•30 min
A brief run through the mailbag with disheartened haulers affected by the shuttering of the One20 F-ELD just a couple months beyond the April 1 out-of-service enforcement date for the ELD mandate. And a more extensive talk with produce broker Pam Young, well-learned in old-school ways, preferring the personal touch to digital standoffishness when it comes to building relationships with carriers. Among subjects of discussion: Adjustment (or lack thereof) to mandated ELDs, honesty in transactions,...
Jun 22, 2018•31 min
Ahead of her Rotella SuperRigs performance in Raphine, Va., June 16, Australia singer-songwriter Jayne Denham sat down with us in Nashville to talk in-roads with the U.S. trucking community, her new "Calamity" record, the "Lights on the Hill" memorial for fallen haulers taken before their time in Australia and more. Also: Bonus update from the scene with the custom rigs on offer at White's Travel Center with Overdrive's own Matt Cole. Rotella SuperRigs continues through Saturday, June 16.
Jun 15, 2018•25 min
This edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast picks up in part from where we left off in the intro last week with a note from Carolyn Carroll on the utility she finds in paid parking reservations. You can find our report, “ELDs up the ante on parking”, on the growth in those (reviled by many but appreciated by many as well) and much more besides at OverdriveOnline.com. In our talk Carroll lays out her now seven-year tour in trucking both in team and solo operations, as a company driver for a time ...
Jun 08, 2018•21 min
More tales of private parking enforcement via booting and towing result in what James Smith of Jackson, Ga., calls a "very expensive Kentucky Fried Chicken meal." Further perspective on the utility of paid-reserved parking, the demise of truck-dedicated parking at the Walmart in Aurora, Colo., and some predictions from panelists at last week's Truckstop.com's user conference in Dallas on just how long good economic conditions will last in the wider economy -- and in trucking.
Jun 01, 2018•42 min
The first in what will ultimately be two podcasts sharing portions of a trucking-insights panel held at Truckstop.com’s third Connected user conference, held earlier this week in Dallas. Insights on rates growth post-ELD mandate, economic conditions and just when we might look out for a downturn, automation in trucking and brokerage and much more were on offer from Tucker Company Worldwide broker Jeff Tucker, Truckstop.com Chief Economist Noel Perry, and Stifel’s John Larkin. This edition featur...
May 25, 2018•25 min
Independent owner-operator W. Joel Baker's W. recent blog post about business opportunity, rate improvement and other conditions since the ELD mandate was the jumping-off point for this edition of Overdrive Radio. Baker trucks in an ELD-exempt 1999 International, and he’s had difficulty keeping up with is customers’ demand for RV delivery lately, given the double whammy of an improved economy and the availability constraints around trucking that have resulted from the mandate. He was writing on ...
May 18, 2018•27 min
Owner-op Jim Bardsley believes about the best thing that could happen to trucking, from perspectives of safety and so much more, is the spread of the brotherhood virus, a return of some semblance of honor to the hiring practices, follow-on training protocols and more in place today at carriers large and small. Bardsley, in this edition of Overdrive Radio, reflects on his three-decade-plus career and the years-long dormancy of the brotherhood virus, among other subjects covered, from ELDs, a 1980...
May 11, 2018•29 min
A run through the mailbag with contrarians and true believers around the question of whether the ELD mandate has exacerbated parking issues around the nation. And: A little detail on an hours-enforcement-with-ELD situation that begged for officer leniency when none was to be had.
May 04, 2018•14 min
No sooner did we receive word of an amendment proposed to the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill that seemed to be designed to grease the skids for some sort of regulatory hours of service action by the FMCSA than we heard the opposite, at least according to an aide to the amendment's sponsor, Arkansas Rep. Rick Crawford. Overdrive News Editor James Jaillet, TruckersNews.com Editor David Hollis and Overdrive Senior Editor Todd Dills talked about the amendment yesterday for the ...
Apr 26, 2018•45 min
The last of three separate seminars at the Mid-America Trucking Show conducted by Sirius XM radio host and owner-op coach/consultant Kevin Rutherford was billed to focus on surviving the first year under your own authority as an owner-op. Rutherford in recent years has pushed the idea that owner-operators with authority pursuing relationships with brokers to move freight could make for the most efficient models in trucking, as long as all parties are honest with each other. As any regular reader...
Apr 20, 2018•32 min
When they booked a load going from one Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas to another in Edwardsville, Ill., Gary and Ondena Caraway had some indications all would not be well for the couple's van trailer on the other end. Problem is, they missed the fine-print indication on the load listing that 12-48 hours would be required for unload. When that 48 hours turned into a week.... Well, let's just say they were not happy. The Caraways' story is this week's Overdrive Radio edition.
Apr 12, 2018•27 min
This talk with owner-operator and OOIDA board member Tilden Curl of Washington State touches on the option available to (mostly large) motor carriers to self-insure, whose implications "run deep," Curl says, from issues of training and substandard pay to safety and more. Curl also weighs on the central theme in this week following all the hours of service/ELD angst percolating among haulers of all stripes -- "It seems like the small working man doesn’t get heard anymore, even if they get the cha...
Mar 29, 2018•31 min
It was a knock-out performance by 2016 Trucker Talent Search winning trucker-singer-songwriter Jason Lee Wilson of Maryville, Tenn., including his infamous “Truck Stop Betty” in homage to a waitress at the old Monteagle Truck Stop, and a track those of you who’ve been dealing with those persnickety ELDs might relate to. This performance occurred at the Progressive Commercial booth in the North Wing at the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Ky., March 23. Opening on the harmonica: Joe Harew...
Mar 27, 2018•10 min
With a new record out from Laughing Hyena records and available at many truck stops around the nation, Paul Marhoefer started the week of the 2018 Mid-America Trucking Show in Nashville, Tenn., where Overdrive Radio caught up with him for an impromptu run through several of his tracks at the Fiddler's Inn. "Long Haul Paul" also talks a bit here through his approach to a new irregular series he's penning on the Overdrive Extra blog, "Faces of the Road."
Mar 21, 2018•26 min
Todd Amen of ATBS is increasingly bullish on the prospects of income improvements for owner-operators in 2018 as capacity pressures mount and rates rise for independents and leased reefer, dry and flatbed haulers paid on a percentage of the load. Expect, he says, many of those paid per-mile to see pay-rate hikes this year, too. These are just a couple 2018 and forward predictions he makes in this special-edition Overdrive Radio podcast -- audio from the owner-operator business services firm's Pr...
Mar 20, 2018•50 min
The second half of Overdrive Radio's Todd Dills' talk with Leander Richmond, Eagle Express small fleet owner, about brokers' and truckers' often conflicting expectations, his own thoughts on the hours of service regulations now that ELDs are here, business conditions, an experience with double brokering and more. That follows a bit of a further mailbag round of voices on the potential for change in the hours of service.
Mar 16, 2018•21 min
Communication is important, for sure, but Leander Richmond of eight-truck small fleet Eagle Express, headquartered in Michigan, has uncovered no small amount of frustration in the very fiber of his being with increasingly pushy freight middlemen when it comes to proof of delivery. As you’ll hear here at the beginning of our talk, some go so far as to make it a contract stipulation that the carrier will be required to send proof of delivery within an hour of offload – or lose all claim to payment...
Mar 07, 2018•26 min
Herein a bevy of reader responses to OOIDA’s petition to FMCSA to add a three-hour pause button option to the 14-hour on-duty clock in the hours of service rule. Several readers viewed it as the kind of common-sense option that could add some flexibility to the rule to alleviate new stresses incurred as a result of the mandate to utilize electronic logging devices. The large majority of reader respondents you’ll hear here, however, took the notion of a pause button farther. It’s split-rest, or s...
Feb 16, 2018•15 min
In this edition of Overdrive Radio, a talk with trucker Stephen Michaels, who for 10 years this week has been proprietor of a website, BigRigTravels.com, through which people around the world have been able to ride along with Michaels through his windshield-cam live feeds. Among the more well-known among truckers who engage the public this way, Michaels reflects here on friendships made with his many "Road Crew" followers and collaborators as well as impact, from individual shifts in the percept...
Feb 09, 2018•28 min
The ICG ProfitCalc app for Android and iOS devices is a bidding app that allows owner-operator users to input their annual cost projections as a benchmark for load-by-load rate calculations to ensure a chosen profit margin. In this Overdrive Radio podcast, creator and small fleet owner Scott Jordan runs through some of the app's history with use in his own business. Also: Did you hear the one about the farmer, the fox and the butcher? ...
Jan 25, 2018•39 min
Though there's an ever-expanding rift between state law and federal law regarding marijuana use, the issue is clear for carriers and drivers, say Joe Rajkovacz, of the Western States Trucking Association, and Tim Doyle, VP of the Maine Motor Transport Association, both of whom reside in states where aggressive action is being taken to upend drug testing practices regarding marijuana use. Hear them discuss the latest on driver drug testing through the lens of state-level action on legalizing mari...
Jan 22, 2018•6 min
Listen to owner-operator tax experts Kevin Rutherford and consultants at ATBS discuss how 2017's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act impacts owner-operator businesses. Read more at OverdriveOnline.com.
Jan 17, 2018•11 min
"Planning better" will only get you so far when it comes to a 14-hour rule with rigid ends, says owner-operator Mark Kirbyson in this latest edition of Overdrive Radio. Kirbyson, and many other operators, find themselves this new year dealing with a variety of headaches with their last-minute switch to ELDs as mandate went into effect on December 18 -- issues discussed here range from the problematic nature of the hours of service to overwhelmed ELD vendors and more. The bonus -- quickly improvi...
Jan 16, 2018•33 min
CCJ Tech Editor Aaron Huff provides a high-level overview of how fleets are using the influx of data from in-cab systems to monitor, coach and score drivers.
Jan 11, 2018•13 min
