In this week's Overdrive Radio podcast, drop into the second and final part of this series re-engaging with Overdrive's 2024 Trucker of the Year competitive field of owner-operators, with check-ins on how the year shaped up for each individual owner. Likewise, you'll hear plenty considered advice from each business owner for peers, particularly those with only short history in the trucking business or looking to get their start. Part 1, ICYMI: Words of encouragement, too, drawing on lessons lear...
Dec 16, 2024•30 min
Today on Overdrive Radio, after a year's worth of talks featuring Overdrive's Truckers of the Month, all of whom remain in the running for the top 2024 Trucker of the Year honor, the first of two final talks featuring a bevy of contenders. Call this and next week's podcast edition the “Exit Interviews” series, if you will, as judges work through the process of determining a set of three finalists we’ll announce later this month, then a winner in the new year. At once, the perseverance and excell...
Dec 09, 2024•31 min
When Donald Trump first came into the White House back in 2017, an express deregulatory agenda yielded various moves most owner-operators could count as wins. Though the administration famously did not act to block implementation of the Congressional electronic logging device mandate later that year, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's then-pursuit of a speed-limiter mandate, for instance, soon disappeared from the Department of Transportation's regulatory calendar. With another Tr...
Dec 01, 2024•31 min
When truck owner Garrett Steenblik was in the throes his personal body-transformation journey toward losing, ultimately, 200 lbs. over-the-road, he was hauling with Boyle Transportation, it was his birthday, and he got a message over the Qualcomm from operations wishing him a happy birthday. Such was his commitment to working physical activity into his daily routine, then teaming with his wife, that he'd garnered a particular reputation with folks at the company, including its customers. "I was ...
Nov 24, 2024•33 min
It’s one of our favorite opportunities covering the trucking world these last several years -- the annual conference of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies, for four years now the sponsor of Overdrive's annual Small Fleet Championship, recognizing and sharing the stories of business excellence for owner-operators who hit and/or cross that 3-truck threshold. On November 7 this year, Overdrive Radio host Todd Dills announced winners in two categories, recognizing four total finali...
Nov 18, 2024•46 min
Here’s wishing all United States military veterans in the audience a happy Veterans Day with this edition of Overdrive Radio. To mark the day, we bring you this dive into the work of the Farmer Veteran Coalition, an organization that got its start back in 2009 with a goal of a then California/Mexico produce farmer to help support returning military servicemembers in bids to enter the business of feeding the nation. We’ll hear today Overdrive Radio's talk with Jeanette Lombardo, current Farmer Ve...
Nov 11, 2024•25 min
In this Overdrive Radio, we catch up primarily with owner-operator Daryl Zimmerman of Belgrade, Minnesota, co-owner with his brother, Nelson (also featured in the podcast), of two-truck Zimmerman Ag. Daryl was looking out the windshield glass on a bright and sunny day running between Minneapolis-St. Paul and his area in Central Minnesota bound for a feed mill that has been a principal customer of his business for much of its nearly 10-year history. Since launching as one man, one truck in 2015, ...
Nov 04, 2024•27 min
"The driver shortage is dead, long live the driver shortage." That’s sort of the message you might get digging into a recent truck driver compensation study and the "driver shortage" narrative’s longest proponent’s response to it. That compensation study was conducted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine at the request of FMCSA. FMCSA itself was tasked to commission the study by Congress in the 2021 Infrastrucutre Investment and Jobs Act, the early Biden-era highway in...
Oct 28, 2024•35 min
The expert singing voice of Marine veteran and Nashville-headquartered singer-songwriter Sal Gonzalez warms up and brings to fruition a special celebration event held last week by Rush Truck Centers in Nashville, Tennessee, in this edition of Overdrive Radio. Rush was announcing the big winner of the quite expensive, final, only 2025 build of a Peterbilt 389. A 389X, to be exact, that Rush Truck Centers won the final 389 build slot for, with Pete retiring the model for good. As Rush Enterprises ...
Oct 21, 2024•25 min
"He's such a hard worker. He's always helping his family to help get their own authority. He'll let them lease on for a while ... until they get on their feet and get their own authority. ... He's just a good person all around." --Messina Holguin, speaking to reasons she nominated her husband, owner-operator Rene Holguin, for Overdrive's Trucker of the Year award Rene Holguin is well on his way toward cementing a legacy with his El Paso, Texas-headquartered R&M Transportation business, part ...
Oct 14, 2024•23 min
"If you're doing the right things ... if you're looking at your numbers, figuring out your fixed cost per day, your variable cost per mile, and choosing the best loads for yourself, you're going to weather this winter just fine like you have the last two years. And then when freight turns around, you're going to be in really good shape." --ATBS Vice President Mike Hosted When freight turns around. What every owner-operator out there's been waiting for for quite some time, and it's like as not to...
Oct 04, 2024•1 hr 1 min
In this week's Overdrive Radio edition, Part 2 of our "How to build business for trucking’s down cycles" online roundtable in late August. Among the questions flagged for panelists was just whether, and when, the long freight-rates slide of the last two years might turn the corner, or at least stabilize. Since the late-August time period, the march toward the presidential election and a modicum of certainty on that front continues, of course, but perhaps more importantly the Federal Reserve has ...
Sep 29, 2024•29 min
"The sweetness of low price is really fast, even though the sour of bad service lasts a lot longer. The sweetness is really tempting to jump in and take." --Silver Creek Transportation founder and president Jason Cowan At the top of this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, you'll hear the sage words of Silver Creek Transportation Founder and President Jason Cowan, excerpted above. The past Overdrive Small Fleet Champ was speaking to the difficulties of managing freight contracts with customers in...
Sep 23, 2024•34 min
When we polled owner-operators about a year ago on recent-history improvement, or lack thereof, in detention time along their routes and at their customers, a huge majority noted the situation they'd seen at docks hadn’t improved to any noticeable degree in recent years. Forty percent of all poll respondents at the time in fact said detention had gotten worse for them: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-extra/article/15544369/how-to-calculate-detention-rate-for-owneroperator-business If t...
Sep 16, 2024•30 min
In this week's Overdrive Radio podcast edition we’ll hear more of our talk with August Trucker of the Month Alan Kitzhaber, and a good bit about one particular subject near and dear to the 4-million-mile owner of a 1995 Kenworth T600 he's piloted since it was new. "I've been very religious about investing my money instead of spending it, and it's put me in a position where I can feel comfortable retiring." --Oakridge Transport owner-operator Alan Kitzhaber: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucke...
Sep 09, 2024•27 min
"Some guys customize their truck via paint, chrome, lights, and things like that. I customize my truck to make it a more comfortable place to be, a more profitable truck, a more efficient truck." --Owner-operator Alan Kitzhaber It's another rewinder of sorts for this week in the Overdrive Radio podcast series. If you missed the news last week Tuesday, owner-operator Alan Kitzhaber out of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, was honored as our August Trucker of the Month, putting him in the running for Overdri...
Sep 02, 2024•30 min
With the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s annual Brake Safety Week inspection initiative kicking off August 26 with stepped-up brake checks and inspections, generally, in jurisdictions across North America, we’re looking back at a podcast from earlier in the year – February 2024 to be exact. The episode featured Wisconsin-headquartered owner-operator Warren McCurdy and a central point of view about what he feels the roadside inspection system was designed for. Something that’s, well, gotten ...
Aug 23, 2024•31 min
It was no doubt a bittersweet last weekend in Waupun, Wisconsin, at what could well be the final edition of the decades-running Waupun Truck-N-Show, where Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole was on hand talking to many among the owner-operators and other truckers in attendance: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-extra/article/15681420/final-waupun-trucknshow-kicks-off One such was Dane Wisniewski, owner of three-truck small fleet HDR, LLC, headquartered there in the state. Owner Wisniewski re...
Aug 18, 2024•26 min
"As anti-automated driving as I am, I might almost rather see some robots. At least they're not going to be looking at screens" going down the road. --owner-operator and Overdrive July 2024 Trucker of the Month Mike Nichols: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15680591/trucker-of-the-month-mike-nichols-knows-limits-hones-strengths We're picking up where we left off in Part 1 of this talk with owner-operator Nichols -- https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcas...
Aug 11, 2024•34 min
This week on the podcast, we're diving in headfirst to the history of Wisconsin-headquartered owner-operator Mike Nichols, Overdrive's July Trucker of the Month and profiled recently in our Trucker of the Year semi-finalist series by Matt Cole: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15680591/trucker-of-the-month-mike-nichols-knows-limits-hones-strengths As Cole wrote about the owner, Nichols pulls leased to bulk carrier Wayne Transports, for most of the last six years runnin...
Aug 05, 2024•33 min
More, today, from Overdrive Editor Todd Dills's run with Josh Gentry. Gentry’s the son of country music titan Alabama’s founding member and bassist Teddy Gentry. Today, we dive into the history of the band with some of the hands at its headquarters in Ft. Payne, Alabama, around which all three founding members -- Gentry, lead vocalist Randy Owen, and the late guitarist Jeff Cook -- all grew up and kept ties to over all the years of chart-toppers, touring, and all the trucking involved with the o...
Jul 29, 2024•37 min
Thursday, July 18, would be a short day of work for operator Josh Gentry, starting at a leisurely 10 a.m. in Fort Payne, Alabama, outside the Quality Inn in town. There, Gentry met Overdrive Radio host Todd Dills to get rolling, the pair starting the day in Gentry's Chevrolet en route to the site of an old auto dealership in town that, since the mid-1980s, has been the home base of the fan club for longtime country-rock group Alabama. It's also home base for the group's tour truck, in which Gent...
Jul 22, 2024•27 min
"Some guys customize their truck via paint, chrome, lights, and things like that. I customize my truck to make it a more comfortable place to be, a more profitable truck, a more efficient truck." --Owner-operator Alan Kitzhaber May 2024 was a big month for owner-operator Alan Kitzhaber, running with his authority as Oakridge Transport out of a home base in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, now for getting on a decade and a half. That month, he celebrated with family the graduation of one of his brothers wi...
Jul 14, 2024•29 min
This week’s edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast drops into Overdrive editor Todd Dills' interview with Overdrive June Trucker of the Month Greg Labosky, the man who is master of the machine, in some respects, that is the Amazon loads platform Relay: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15678623/careful-prep-the-name-of-the-game-for-june-trucker-of-the-month Labosky’s operating with authority just a single truck in that system, which rewards those who maintain the highes...
Jul 06, 2024•32 min
This week's Overdrive Radio episode opens a window onto the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's virtual listening session held last week to discuss the agency’s efforts to potentially improve the safety rating system it uses for determining carriers’ fitness to operate in interstate commerce. Sit in on virtually the entire session, featuring a bevy of views from trucking stakeholders in response to chief areas of inquiry agency reps outlined near the top of the session. Regular Overdri...
Jul 01, 2024•58 min
In this podcast, the voice of former FBI counterintelligence assistant director Frank Figliuzzi, in conversation with Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole about the new book, "Long Haul: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers," a close look at the FBI's long investigation of almost 1,000 murders over decades collected and analyzed in its "Highway Serial Killings" database. As Cole writes in a story that will go live with the post containing this podcast on OverdriveOnline.com Monday, June 24, "This, for ...
Jun 22, 2024•47 min
Walking the giant hallway in the South Wing every year at the Mid-America Trucking Show, you’ll find benches that line the route, where people stop to rest. It's nice and quiet out there in general, compared to the show floor. On one Gary Buchs' walks down the hallways to or from this or that meeting, he happened to glance over and see four gentlemen chatting and smiling. (Those smiles stood out at this year’s show, as so many in trucking are struggling to keep their hope up for the careers they...
Jun 17, 2024•36 min
"The power demand, the power that's required to pull a truck down the highway ... the idea is to match the power that's produced by the engine to the power that's required." --Overdrive's May Trucker of the Month Alec Costerus on the bedrock principal behind achieving the best fuel economy Alpha Drivers Transportation two-truck fleet owner and operator Alec Costerus launched the company just a couple of years ago from his Denver, Colorado, home base following about eight years trucking as an own...
Jun 07, 2024•44 min
The Department of Justice’s Drug Enforcement Administration on May 20 officially published its notice of proposed rulemaking that, if finalized, would reschedule marijuana from a Schedule I controlled substance to Schedule III: https://www.regulations.gov/document/DEA-2024-0059-0001 The Biden Administration signaled its intent to move forward with such a proposal earlier this month, and the NPRM’s publication formalized that effort. The DEA’s proposal said moving marijuana from Schedule I to Sch...
May 30, 2024•20 min
As promised two weeks back, here's Part 2 of our talk with May Trucker of the Month Gary Schloo, longtime owner-operator leased to Long Haul Trucking for the last three decades of a five-decade trucking career. Schloo here tells a can't-miss story about how he and his wife and business partner, Terri, met. It' the "classic trucker-and-the-waitress thing" at a late-night diner early in Schloo's time as an owner-operator. And as most listeners are well aware, a big part of the Trucker of the Year ...
May 24, 2024•22 min
