Overdrive Radio

Another edition here drops in Overdrive Radio's re-air of the Over the Road podcast series, coproduced by Overdrive and PRX's Radiotopia podcast network and hosted by 'Long Haul Paul' Marhoefer. Here, the host's "Long Haul of Fame” tells the stories of five of Marhoefer’s personal heroes -- longtime professional driver Idella Marie Hansen; owner-operator Big Jim Selkirk; trucker Ken “Shoestring” W...

In today's edition of Overdrive Radio, we hear selections from the new 'If Wishes Were Horses' long player out from Rylan Brooks, the songwriting duo of Chris Brooks (Philadelphia) and Nate Rylan (Nashville). Brooks is a former independent owner-operator trucking with authority and now one half of this songwriting duo truly doing great work here with their second record, a follow-up to 2018's 'Hal...

In this week's Overdrive Radio podcast episode, we drop into October of 2017, a key moment in trucking regulatory history over the last several years, given demonstrations on both coasts and some points in between against the electronic logging device mandate. Generally, out east, those demonstrations were comparatively small, but you can tie a direct line between them and the next year’s pursuit...

Chart-topping songs about trucking have been around for decades. But what was the first one to become a big hit? It was “Truck Driver’s Blues,” performed by the Texas Wanderers and sung by piano player Moon Mullican and at other times by Cliff Bruner, said Todd Uhlman. Uhlman's an assistant professor who’s specialized in U.S. socio-cultural history and has published a lengthy article about truckin...

Owner-operator Mike Crawford in this week's Overdrive Radio expands on some of the themes showcased earlier this week in our special-edition podcast in part about the ongoing safety utility, and the decreased cultural importance, of the CB in trucking. If you missed that 60th-anniversary podcast earlier this week and attendant coverage, visit http://OverdriveOnline.com/trucking-history access it....

This special edition Overdrive Radio is part of our celebration 60 years since the magazine's founding in 1961 -- as such, every Monday we’re looking back on various elements of the trucking business and culture as they’ve existed in the past and evolved on up through today via http://overdriveonline.com/trucking-history For this episode, we’re looking at the CB radio, both in the context of safet...

In today's edition of Overdrive Radio, we’ll hear from Captain Jon Olsen of Minnesota State Patrol's truck enforcement unit, one of many sources for Overdrive's reporting about the federal DataQs system that went live earlier this week: https://www.overdriveonline.com/regulations/article/15063803/criticism-of-dataqs-review-system-continues-to-rise Overdrive Editorial Director Max Heine and Senior...

In today's edition of Overdrive Radio, another in the run through our eight-episode Over the Road podcast series, coproduced for 2020 with PRX's Radiotopia podcast network. "Back home" featured our own Long Haul Paul Marhoefer, host of the show, and Over the Road contributing producer Lacy Roberts on a haul back through Lacy’s childhood as a daughter of a trucking family growing up in Montana. The...

In this edition of Overdrive Radio, take a tour down I-75 in Kentucky in search of an answer to the age-old question: Who has the best nanner pudding among the truck stops along that route, and which one of them was the first to advertise it on the CB? This week, we run back through some trucking micro-history with our own "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer via another edition in the Over the Road podcast...

In April 2019. Kenyette Godhigh-Bell was a company driver at Grand Island Express. Our own "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer met her for the first time at the company headquarters in Nebraska when researching and recording for what would become the Over the Road podcast. If you’re a regular Overdrive Radio listener, you heard that episode and met Godhigh-Bell from that time. Part of the episodes featured...

For today’s episode of the Overdrive Radio podcast, brace for a long run through the history of trucking with former household-goods-hauling owner-operator Finn Murphy, also a well-versed student of that history. Murphy is interviewed and much of the story is narrated by Overdrive contributing writer and reefer hauler "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer. This brief history of trucking in America tracks the...

What was the first recorded trucking song? According to Todd Uhlman, an assistant professor at the University of Dayton in Ohio, “Wreck on the Mountain Road,” recorded by the Red Fox Chasers in 1928, may well have set the stage for many such songs to come. Such trivia is only a small part of what Uhlman academic specialty has uncovered -- he places trucking songs in the context of U.S. socio-cultu...

In this week's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Chief Patrol Agent for the Laredo, Texas, sector Matthew Hudak has a message for the trucking community about what he’s seeing in the numbers since October 2020 when it comes to busted human smuggling operations. There's been a dramatic uptick in instances of drivers moving strange cargo in their dry van or...

A note for Overdrive Radio subscribers using some podcasting apps: We’ve got a new, redesigned website coming at http://OverdriveOnline.com – if you regularly listen via a podcasting app other than those offered by Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, or Apple or Google podcasts, we’re transitioning to a different principle RSS feed for Overdrive Radio. If you need to in your app, you can update the set...

Happy New Year! For this final 2020 edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, Daniel and Phyllis Snow are here, as is Rico Muhammad and Joe DeLorenzo and Jim Mullen and all the owner-ops and government administrators and brokers and drivers and others we talked to this year. We’re going to hear from a lot of them as we tour back through this oh-so-chaotic and pivotal of years trucking in America. We...

With this edition of the podcast, just two days out from Christmas, we’re starting a run back through a little high-quality road listening with Overdrive's podcast coproduction with PRX’s Radiotopia network. The Over the Road podcast ran originally between February and June 2020, and the principal eight-episode series was hosted by our own "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer. Therein, we hoped to give main...

Today's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast runs through the variety of hours of service issues addressed yesterday in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's third Q&A relative to the changes put in place as of Sept. 29. One particular question addressed a subject we've taken up before -- namely what happens if you need the 14-hour-clock pause value of a berth period to avoid a viola...

The 11 tracks on Long Haul Paul Marhoefer's new "Songs from a Truck" album -- available now via the streaming platforms and on a CD you can order via http://longhaulpaulmusic.com/merch -- cap what’s been quite a year for Marhoefer, as most of you will know pretty well. He was the voice of the Overdrive/Radiotopia coproduction of the Over the Road podcast earlier this year, which reached millions o...

The Transportation Intermediaries Association's August-filed petition is well-known for its request to FMCSA to essentially throw out the transparency reg in place since the early 1980s, and in other forms earlier than that. What's been discussed far less, however, is the second part of the broker group TIA's petition, that having to do with independent dispatchers.  TIA asks the agency to provide...

In this week's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, a little music and storytelling to take you through the weekend and into next, whether you're still off for Thanksgiving or on the road: **A tour through the Nashville session at Jay Vernali's Jay's Place studio on music row with our 2020 Trucker Talent Search winner, John Malayter. Hear the results of that session, as Malayter tells the stori...

For this edition of Overdrive Radio, we sat down with Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association President Todd Spencer and Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh in an attempt to forecast some answers to the question in the title. The conversation touched on potential Congressional and/or administrative initiatives around infrastructure (parking infrastructure being a principal component), inter...

Regular Overdrive readers may well recall the case of a William Hickey of Maryland last year -- Hickey was convicted of operating as a U.S. runner for a mostly overseas ring of identity thieves targeting both brokers and carriers in a double-brokering scheme that's sucking hundreds of thousands in freight payments out of trucking. In today's edition of Overdrive Radio, U.S. postal inspector Steve...

Is there an ideal size for an owner-operator as he/she adds trucks, drivers and freight? The answer to that question is probably, well, "it depends." It's certain, though, that whether leased or independent with carrier authority, any owner is bound to reach a point where administrative and/or sales/operational demands outstrip his/her ability to handle everything -- and still haul.  Cadle Truckin...

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s listening session on brokered freight transactions this past Wednesday, October 28, shone light from multiple viewpoints on regulation that today exists and that some feel is being circumvented by brokers to owner-operators', shippers' and the public's detriment. Others -- brokers, principally -- voice the view that the reg has outlived its usefuln...

An owner-operator's over-reliance on the path of least resistance to freight will like as not get him/her in trouble in a down market, notes longtime independent Artie Daniel, out of McKinney, Virginia. Not that he doesn't understand the attraction of today's online marketplaces and the speed and convenience they offer for freight. But he's built his business over time and through the years with a...