After years of scheduling needed preventive maintenance and sitting out the Roadcheck blitz, last year Mike "Mustang" Crawford hauled through his first Roadcheck in years. As we did after last year's 72-hour inspection blitz, we’ll be riding along again in this Overdrive Radio edition through three days’ worth of scale reports from our friendly on-highway chicken-house correspondent. Regular listeners may well recall that last year on runs from the Midwest all the way down to Florida, Mustang di...
May 17, 2024•29 min
"Time is money," as the old saying goes, and as such "time management is money management." That was how the great Red Eye Radio host Eric Harley put it near the beginning of this our last in a series of Partners in Business short podcasts on Overdrive Radio, talks excerpted from a long roundtable conducted at the Mid-America Trucking Show this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khKP2WHZjfg&list=PLc1lg9rs1dUBRbJKjvc7UUcJRRd4iI2v3 Time should be a factor in your analysis of any load to tru...
May 15, 2024•16 min
This week's Overdrive Radio podcast edition features primarily the voice of Overdrive April Trucker of the Month, owner-operator Gary Schloo. The three-decade-plus owner's headquartered in Austin, Minnesota, leased to Long Haul Trucking out of relatively nearby Albertville. Today, Schloo runs dedicated to a particular customer in Long Haul Trucking’s network and can make a regular round in a day’s time, keeping him not far from his two-acre property throughout his week. It’s been his bread and b...
May 13, 2024•28 min
Today on the podcast, a brief look back into a little bit of Overdrive’s recent history, as you'll hear Canada-headquartered owner-operator Josh Giesbrecht intimate up top. Giesbrecht notes Overdrive gave him his "first big break" on the road to expanded influence around the world for his daily/near-daily series of video blogs he's hosted for nigh on a decade and a half at this point. His "Trucker Josh" Youtube channel to this day continues to bring the bedrock in-cab reality of Canadian and U.S...
May 03, 2024•20 min
Here find 2024's third mid-week special edition in Overdrive Radio's series of Partners in Business shorts culled from a long owner-operator business-focused talk at the Mid-America Trucking Show last month with Eric Harley of Red Eye Radio. This episode extends from the first couple, expanding on the necessity of close business analysis in near-real-time to keep tabs on costs and profits, the start-up necessity of stocking that pantry and doubling down on saving when markets are hot for the lea...
May 01, 2024•11 min
Last week we heard Part 1 of a long talk with Gill Freightlines small fleet owner Surinder Gill, with four trucks owned and headquartered out of Manteca, California, where Gill’s following in the draft of his owner-operator father’s 60-year trucking legacy. (As you can see in the cover image for this week's Part 2 of that talk, the long legacy is honored on the back of Gill Freightlines’ dry vans.) The Convoy brokerage's quick collapse last Fall nearly spelled out a death sentence for the small ...
Apr 29, 2024•23 min
Manteca, California, Gill Freightlines small fleet owner Surinder Gill's family's trucking lineage traces back through 60 years of OTR work done by his father, Gurmail Singh Gill, over more than one continent. The elder Gill hauled first in his native India, some in the Middle East, and finished out his career in the United States. Surinder Gill had dipped his feet in trucking as a dispatcher by the time his father passed in 2018. "I wanted to do something to honor my father," Gill said. "How do...
Apr 22, 2024•22 min
In today’s world, the kind of choosiness with brokers owner-operator Candace Marley practices is an absolute must for many independents. "I don't jump in with just any broker out there," she said. "There's too many scammers out there, too many double brokers, too many frauds." In this edition of Overdrive Radio, Marley details the relationship-building strategy for freight in her Iowa-based one-truck business -- Calliope, LLC. The independent business takes its name from a muse in Greek Mytholog...
Apr 12, 2024•24 min
Here find 2024's second mid-week special edition in Overdrive Radio's series of Partners in Business shorts culled from a long owner-operator business-focused talk at the Mid-America Trucking Show last month with Eric Harley of Red Eye Radio. This one digs into more of the routine business analysis practice participants in the discussion began to touch on in the last edition, about the importance of stocking the pantry when markets are hot to weather inevitable soft-freight downturns like what w...
Apr 10, 2024•9 min
“Like a lot of young boys, I grew up in a farming and trucking environment, and as I stood on the stage a couple of years ago as our company accepted the 2021 Small Fleet Champion of the year award, it hit me that I had hit a pinnacle in my career. Because all I had ever wanted as a young boy was to get my own truck into Overdrive magazine.” --Silver Creek Transportation owner Jason Cowan Yet Silver Creek Transportation owner and Overdrive 2021 Small Fleet Champ Jason Cowan’s story doesn’t end t...
Apr 05, 2024•30 min
In this special-edition Overdrive Radio short, Red Eye Radio host Eric Harley relays an anecdote from a family relation, an owner-operator who lamented the difficulty coping with the hunger-sticken parts of the feast-or-famine business cycles in trucking. That's most certainly where the business has been for at least the last year -- some would say close to two years at this point in the game -- after post-pandemic highs. "Dollars and cents matter right now," said ATBS Vice President Mike Hosted...
Apr 03, 2024•12 min
"We're going to clean up the bad actors that are in our system now." FMCSA registration office director Ken Riddle. Ken Riddle's office handles applications for authority, updates to carrier and other entity data, third-party access to the system, BOC3 filers’ access, and more. In this podcast for April Fool’s Day, we’re not fooling around -- big changes to how carriers interact with the FMCSA’s registration system are on the way, aimed at rooting out bad actors FMCSA now at the least fully ackn...
Apr 01, 2024•36 min
"As I get older, I like electronic logbooks a lot better than I would have in my 20s. Now that I'm 63, I like that 10 hours off. My work ethic really started to wane when I found out that feed mills are open at noon. You didn't have to be there at 7 o'clock in the morning. You can get there at noon and still unload." --LNL Trucking small fleet owner Larry Limp, reflecting on big changes in trucking over his four-plus decades in the business Good humor? Yep, LNL Trucking small fleet owner Larry L...
Mar 22, 2024•24 min
Independent owner-operator Debbie Desiderato, long hauling with her authority as Walkabout Transport, probably needs no introduction to regular Overdrive readers. Her insight around customer relationships and so much more has featured in Overdrive multiple times through the years, and last year she was one of our Truckers of the Month in the Trucker of the Year program: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15541324 At the top of the podcast, Desiderato describes the seven years that have elapsed sinc...
Mar 15, 2024•26 min
In this edition of Overdrive Radio highlighting February Trucker of the Month Doug Viaille, listeners get a clear sense for the understated, homespun sense of humor of the owner-operator today hauling as Goat’s Transport. Viaille’s been in business for himself as an owner-operator for most of his 30-plus years in trucking thus far, and was nominated for the Trucker of the Year award by a fellow owner who calls him "Mr. Overdrive," in fact, after we called on Viaille’s experience in years past in...
Mar 08, 2024•24 min
Indiana-headquartered owner-operator, and father of five, Dan Koors invokes a big number at the top of the podcast this week -- 27%, the approximate percentage of drivers running without health insurance. That's inclusive of company drivers, many with ready access to carrier benefits packages. Among owner-operators, the percentage is certainly higher than 27%. Overdrive’s most recent estimate with polling of the owner-operator audience this past month put the number at 40%. While that’s not the ...
Mar 01, 2024•31 min
"So we're going down the road, we've got a mudflap missing, and we've got an ABS lamp on the trailer lit up. What does that mean?" This edition of Overdrive Radio starts with that question, leading to just a small bit of the wisdom of the many years of experience of former truck operator and longtime compliance consultant Jeff Davis. With his Fleet Safety Services business, operating out of a home base in Ohio, Davis has been a regular presenter at the National Association of Small Trucking Comp...
Feb 24, 2024•30 min
The mood among truck owner participants in Peterbilt's sixth-ever, invite-only Pride & Class parade event and truck show in Denton, Texas, this past October might have been marred by the freight demand situation. As Texas fleet owner and custom-truck builder Troy Massey of Massey Motor Freight put it, "If you're not struggling in trucking, you better be real quiet about it." Certainly don’t tell anyone just how you're achieving your success, Massey went on from there to say. If you do, chanc...
Feb 16, 2024•24 min
With this week’s installment of Overdrive Radio, hear the story of Overdrive's first Trucker of the Month for 2024. That’d be owner-operator Leslie Bitterman, who’s remade the independent Bitterman Trucking in her own image since the passing of her business partner and husband, Dale Bitterman, in 2010. Voices you’ll hear telling just a small part of Leslie Bitterman’s story are her own, but also that of Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole, who’s detailed the Bitterman history in more depth in the re...
Feb 10, 2024•13 min
Owner-operator Warren McCurdy, headquartered with his wife and business partner, Susan, in La Crosse, Wisconsin, has a bone to pick with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's CSA scoring program and all its ripple effects throughout trucking and roadside inspection systems. After a trailer tire lost air in transit sufficient to take the tire off the rim -- the trailer empty, the tire problem unnoticed by McCurdy before inspection -- the owner-operator's leasing carrier assessed point...
Feb 02, 2024•30 min
In this episode, dive into the nitty gritty around the notion of "predatory towing," whether after a crash or disabling event at the roadside or in a parking-lot trap. The episode continues the conversation following the relatively new trucking resource you heard about a few weeks ago – the American Transportation Research Institute’s big report on the commonality of outsize tow bills and unethical practices, including ways to combat them: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/...
Jan 26, 2024•31 min
If you're not filing to FMCSA's DataQs system for crash preventability reviews, says compliance consultant Rick Gobbell in this edition of Overdrive Radio, you're "playing badminton in the dark" when it comes to the compliance game. Proprietor today of his Gobbell Transportation Safety compliance consulting business, Gobbell draws on long experience around trucks and trucking, first on the road as an enforcement officer, then in government directly. He's a past "head fed," as he put it, division...
Jan 19, 2024•32 min
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 valu...
Jan 12, 2024•45 min
Looking out at the year ahead, there's quite a bit more market pessimism among owner-operators in Overdrive’s audience than optimism, that’s sure, at the start of the new year here. Welcome to 2024: https://www.overdriveonline.com/voices/article/15660801/poll-ownerops-whats-your-business-outlook-for-2024 This Overdrive Radio episode features the voice of longtime former owner-operator and current biz coach Gary Buchs with what amounts to a series of potential New Year's Resolutions for you, whet...
Jan 05, 2024•41 min
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 the...
Dec 29, 2023•59 min
Overdrive Editor Todd Dills was at the conference of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies in Nashville, Tennessee, in November, in conversation with a small fleet owner there for the event, when the owner's phone rang. He glanced down at it, and tried to ignore it as the pair talked on. Then it rang again. “I've got to take this,” he said after glancing down, and wandered off to the side. Turns out, one of his drivers, pulling a big liquid tanker, non-hazmat, had been in an accid...
Dec 21, 2023•34 min
As we work toward counting down to the new year with our most-listened-to episodes of 2023, this special edition of Overdrive Radio episode separates one that stood out from the rest, our long talk with Tony Justice, who took listeners on a tour of his new record in August. Next week: A closer look with the American Transportation Research Institute at their big study on the prevalence of -- and countermeasures against -- predatory nonconsensual tow practices, whether after an accident or on the...
Dec 15, 2023•46 min
"Don't be afraid to ask questions." --Owner-operator Steve Massat: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15546000/ownerop-overcomes-physical-challenge-for-successful-career This Overdrive Radio podcast features Part 2 of our “exit interviews” with 2023 Trucker of the Year contenders. All put a special emphasis on short-term tactics, on proven long-term strategies, others might also adopt on the drive toward success with healthy profits. This exemplary group, too, delivered ...
Dec 11, 2023•39 min
This edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast features a roundtable of sorts with four small trucking businesses among 2023 Trucker of the Year contenders. We’re in the process of wrapping up judging of 10 semi-finalists for the final award, with a huge amount of operational diversity among them -- from food-grade and hazmat tanker to car-haul, flatbed and step deck, reefer, hopper, dry van and more. Here, owner-operators John and Sarah Schiltz with their independent Veteran Transportation Service...
Dec 01, 2023•39 min
"If you do what you've always done, you will only get what you've always gotten." --Kevin Rutherford Reticence to change has been the downfall of many a life, and many a business. Small fleets and owner-operators aren’t exempt, of course. If you recognize the name after the quote here, you’re probably not alone among Overdrive Radio listeners and Overdrive readers who’ve taken motivation from Rutherford in the past. The longtime radio host is a past contributor to Overdrive who found his particu...
Nov 24, 2023•1 hr 8 min
