Jason Lee Wilson's winning performance of "Truck Stop Betty," dedicated to Betty Thomas, former proprietor of the Monteagle Truck Plaza at the top of the rock in Monteagle, Tenn. Wilson, resident of Knoxville, came out on top in the 2016 edition of the Overdrive/Red Eye Radio Trucker Talent Search.
Snyder's performance in the Aug. 26, 2016, Overdrive/Red Eye Radio Trucker Talent Search finals in Dallas, Texas.
Minnesota-based trucker and songwriter Will Perry's performance of this song at the Overdrive/Red Eye Radio 2016 Trucker Talent Search. Perry was one of three finalists in the annual competition.
Owner-operators have a distinct advantage over company drivers in manipulating conditions toward better income, and that's cost management, says ATBS' Richard DeForest in this presentation, delivered at the Aug. 26, 2016 Overdrive/ATBS Partners in Seminar at the Great American Trucking Show. DeForest also laid out his case that the much-talked-about "driver shortage" issue is not a shortage at all, a subject also covered in-depth in Overdrive earlier this year: http://www.overdriveonline.com/the...
Knoxville-area-based Jason Lee Wilson delivered this performance on the final day on the 2016 Great American Trucking Show in Dallas. It followed his live rendition of his own "Truck Stop Betty" the prior day during the Overdrive/Red Eye Radio Trucker Talent Search competition, which he won. Also played here is his "From Lynchburg to Nashville" original song, including on his "Big Gun" 2010 record, available via this link: https://www.amazon.com/Big-Gun-Jason-Lee-Wilson/dp/B005UGX8US
Bill Weaver's "Every Mile I Drive" record turned heads in early 2016 for its strong Southern-rock flavor backing an honest approach to songwriting that tracks heavily in themes of the hazmat-hauling driver's day-to-day life on the road. Here, Weaver delivers renditions of some of those songs and dedicates the Leon Everette-recorded "Hurricane" to flood-stricken residents of Louisiana. Hear more from "Every Mile I Drive" via this Overdrive Radio podcast: http://www.overdriveonline.com/podcast-tak...
At the Great American Trucking Show in Dallas Saturday, Aug. 27, Keith Snyder's performance built on his prior-day run through his original "Walking the Alligators" in the Trucker Talent Search competition. Read more about the Minn.-based reefer-hauling independent owner-operator and songwriter via this link to the Eric Harley's Red Eye Radio interview with him: http://www.overdriveonline.com/walkin-with-grace-the-red-eye-radio-interview-with-trucker-talent-search-finalist-keith-snyder/
Paul Marhoefer's performance at the Great American Trucking Show in 2016 followed on the heels of two night rounds of shows with Bill Weaver at Fair Park in the hospitality area of the truck-parking lot for the event -- likewise release of Marhoefer's "Old Black Epiphone" record. Read more about the album and part of its recording at Muscle Shoals Music with Alabama session players via this report from Spring 2016: http://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-paul-marhoefer-live-from-muscle-shoals-mus...
Will Perry's "Coast to Coast" was the first trucking-related song the Wayne Transportation driver ever wrote, and here he well delivers it to the crowd out at the Trucker Talent Search all-stars performance Aug. 27 at the 2016 Great American Trucking Show. Blessed with a dynamic tenor voice honed over many years, Perry's got a record under his belt and, as of this performance, was at work on another. Find more about him via his website: http://willperryband.com/
NASTC's Dave Owen urges small fleets to use computer-assisted logs, "before they make you turn it into an ELD" by syncing with the engine, to do what they're designed to do as a "spellcheck for logs": solve the problem of form-and-manner mistakes represented in safety scores and stats. Read more via this link: http://overdriveonline.com/dave-owens-case-for-electronic-hours-of-service-compliance
In spite of the softness of the freight market at the midpoint of 2016, owner-operators' income has actually tracked upward on average, says Todd Amen, ATBS President, in this podcast from the Overdrive/ATBS Partners in Business seminars at the Great American Trucking Show. More insights from ATBS' analysis of its 10s of thousands of owner-operator client business performance in this podcast.
Live from the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center in Dallas, Texas, trucker and singer-songwriter Tony Justice delivered this performance Aug. 26, 2016, to an appreciative crowd made up primarily of truckers attending the Great American Trucking Show. It included the live debut of his "Stars, Stripes and White Lines" patriotic anthem, planned for release with his next record. To hear samples from his last, the 2016-released "Brothers of the Highway," check out this Overdrive Radio interview ...
Australian singer-songwriter Jayne Denham in her first trip to the U.S. performed live for attendees of the Great American Trucking Show August 26, 2016. Red Eye Radio's Eric Harley introduced her at the online station's booth here following Overdrive's brief interview about just what's she's seen so far (and hasn't -- the Pride & Polish floor, coming soon) at GATS. Hear more from the performance here and search her name at http://overdriveonline.com for further coverage.
The Great American Trucking is under way today, and we can't remember a better beginning to it for me than this treat, served up to several of us, including my friends the Parkers and an untold number of hangers-on, those who just so happened to walk outside the Omni hotel here in Dallas to catch the spectacle you'll hear in this podcast, trucker/singer-songwriters Tony Justice and Bill Weaver running through originals and several crowd-pleasers in an impromptu, unplugged front-porch sound sessi...
"Coast to coast," the song that got Will Perry to the finalist round of the Overdrive/Red Eye Radio Trucker Talent Search, was the first one he'd ever written directly involving trucking, Perry tells Eric Harley of Red Eye Radio in this podcast interview. What it's about: The industry he's spent the past quarter century in as a driver, with no small measure of pride evoked, he says -- in "the whole atmosphere of over-the-road driving and the trucks." Read more about him via this link: http://www...
"If I write a song, it ends up setting the stage for the path I take later on" often enough, says Jason Lee Wilson in this interview with Red Eye Radio's Eric Harley in advance of the RER/Overdrive Trucker Talent Search, happening later this week at the Great American Trucking Show. Having grown up around trucks and truckers in Monteagle, Tenn., Wilson wrote the "Lynchburg to Nashville" song that was the track in the talent search that got him to this point, in part about a friend's regular run ...
Red Eye Radio's Eric Harley here interviews 2016 Trucker Talent Search finalist Keith Snyder. At the Great American Trucking Show Aug. 25-57, Snyder squares off with fellow finalist singer-songwriters to compete for this year's grand prize. Snyder, an independent owner-operator, based in Minnesota, walks Harley through his past in music on the bar circuit to his current approach with Christian themes. Read more about Snyder via this link to Overdrive's profile of the owner-operator: http://www.o...
In this edition of Overdrive Radio, singer-songwriter and ETI driver Tony Justice walks us through several tracks on his new album, "Brothers of the Highway," from the title track duet with country legend Aaron Tippin to the anthem "We Drive Trucks." Find out here, too, just what's in store for the next one. Read more about just what went into making the album via links to past coverage at this story: http://www.overdriveonline.com/tony-justice-aaron-tippin-brothers-of-the-highway-music-video-re...
Hitting the road with Landstar-leased owner-operator Gary Buchs, of Bloomington, Ill., Overdrive Senior Editor Todd Dills' conversation with Buchs just prior to the July 4 holiday ranged across Buchs' own evolution from a Roadway driver in the 1990s to an owner-operator throughout much of the last decade and a half -- firmly in control of his own destiny -- to broader issues throughout the industry, from company driver pay to views on the federal pursuit of the speed-limiter mandate. Buchs views...
Around a decade ago, Brian Rudisell experienced something that is tragically common among truckers, as reporting by Carolyn Magner last year made abundantly clear. In this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, Rudisell details a "suicide by truck" event that derailed his dump bucket hauling for two years, which included reconstructive surgery on his ankle and, essentially, "learning to walk" again. But the physical aspects of recovery from the head-on crash weren't what was the most difficult ...
Overdrive's 2015 Most Beautiful champ Brita Nowak, independent owner-operator of BratCat Express, here talks with Red Eye Radio host Eric Harley about her 14-year trucking career, following a decade of work in Hollywood as a body double and with the Star Trek Voyager Series. As she makes clear in the interview, she's returned to just a single 2005 Kenworth in her independent business after owning as many as five trucks, learning something many an owner-operator has found out during expansion. Ea...
In this "mailbag" edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, readers weigh in on the perennial issue of detention, or excess waiting time at shipper and receiver docks, following release of a new study by DAT that showed a majority of brokers didn't hold the issue in such high import as the carriers they deal with. Read more about that study via this link: http://www.overdriveonline.com/serious-excess-detention-issue-lost-on-many-brokers-survey-says/
Wayne VanHooser recounts an accident on I-70 and the subsequent litigation threat, defused working with his insurance company to counter misinformation with his close attention to detail at the scene.
Owner-operator Jennie Simpson, originally from Australia, penned and recorded this song about getting her U.S. citizenship after "wanting to do something like this for quite a while," she says. After working on the words for "quite a long time" she turned to fellow owner-operator and 2014 Trucker Talent Search participant Keith Sampson for assist with the melody. The song is available for download via iTunes, Amazon, CDBaby and other retailers. Find a music video via https://www.youtube.com/watc...
Carl Lambert, a Tennessee-based rep of the DOD's Employer Support of the Guard unit, reads the ESGR pledge at a July 1 U.S. Xpress event. Company president Eric Fuller signed the document, committing the company more effort spent in supporting military veterans' transition to civilian life. Read more about six specially dedicated and designed patriotic tractors and the military-veteran drivers handed the keys at the event: http://www.overdriveonline.com/u-s-xpress-launches-military-hiring-initia...
Independent owner-operator Howard Salmon is back this year ahead of the Mid-America Trucking Show with another recorded song -- a moving account of a soldier's struggle relationships, memory and more after combat. He's utilizing the song to donate proceeds to outreach efforts to U.S. troops. "War Within" was originally written by Dublin, Ireland-based songwriter Tom Byrne.
Indiana-based Paul Marhoefer "Old Black Epiphone" sessions in mid-May at the Muscle Shoals Music studio of Donnie Gullett in Tuscumbia, Ala., move the 2015 Trucker Talent Search finalist closer to a record. Here the roots songwriter talks about his inspiration for the choice of the studio and where he takes cues for his songwriting, in some cases his fellow drivers. Catch video and more from the session via http://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-paul-marhoefer-live-from-muscle-shoals-music-studi...
Requiring speed limiters for nearly all on-highway trucks would be a detriment to highway safety, readers say near universally in this mailbag podcast. And, as one reader noted, regulators "will never find out" unless "they get out on the road with us" to see for themselves. The most recent news saw the Senate appropriations committee sending something of a message to the DOT that they wanted the long-in-process expected rule proposal to mandate speed limiters now: http://www.overdriveonline.com...
Following news that the U.S. Senate included a measure that could hold import for change in cumulative on-duty limits with restart use, readers sounded off again on just where they feel the hours of service should be. Responses ranged from "leave well enough alone already" to an oft-repeated desire for a return to pre-14-hour-rule regs, when it was possible to split sleeper periods in any way desired. For more on the potential rule change, read this story: http://www.overdriveonline.com/senate-b...
Truck driver Bob Stanton, well-known for his work with his self-styled Truckers for a Cause driver/patient support and advocacy group, brought these three distinct proposals to FMCSA's Beyond Compliance listening session in Chicago attendant to the CVSA Workshop event. Read/hear more about the session via this link: http://www.overdriveonline.com/beyond-compliance-to-be-csas-8th-basic/
