The Rural Dispatch

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! The countdown is on: we're one month out from a wedding and life is a mix of bottle calves, bin dust, broke down trucks and last-minute details. This week is a quick update plus we're asking for your best wedding/marriage advice. Send us your tips and I'll share them on the show!  Keep track of your income, expenses,...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! This week on The Rural Dispatch, Bryan and Rochelle Heiman join Aly and Smoke to share how they came to be Heiman Farm: A Raw Milk Diary in Iowa. With five kids under eight, four (going on six) milk cows, plus pigs, chickens, and turkeys, the Heiman family is living the full farm life while serving their community with fresh raw mil...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! In this episode of The Rural Dispatch, it’s just Aly + Smoke catching up on life, work, and everything in between. We kick things off the way most summer conversations in the Midwest do, talking about the weather. From there, we shift gears into family life with a recap of our annual trip to Branson, a streak of Behrens bad luck, an...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! This week on The Rural Dispatch, I sit down with Maury Eickman, a 97-year-old lifelong farmer from Templeton, Iowa, to capture nearly a century of farming history and wisdom. Maury shares stories from growing up during the Great Depression, surviving the unforgettable “year from hell” in 1936, and building a life on the farm with hi...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! This week I'm joined by Brandon Roering, third generation dispatcher for his family's livestock transportation business, Lambrecht Livestock Trucking, and the creator of Beef Hub — a brand-new app created specifically for the needs in the livestock transportation world.  Join us as we dive into Brandon's journey from...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! This week, we're joined by both the founders of Agar Transportation, Matt and Debbie Agar, and the current owners of Agar Transportation, Paul and Kindra Radloff.  Matt shares how he got started in trucking, and Debbie brings an honest look at what it's really like being married to, and raising kids with, an over-the-road...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! NEW: LEAVE US A MESSAGE Fresh off Day 1 of the Western Video Market’s biggest sale of the year, Rick Machado joins us for a boots-on-the-ground conversation in Reno. As an auctioneer, cattleman, and part owner of WVM, Rick shares how the video sale works, what makes it unique, and other industry insights. Plus, we’re joined by a cou...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! Catch up with us on the road this week. From behind the scenes of podcasting to the current cattle market and life lately, this episode is short and sweet and packed with a little bit of everything from our corner of the world.  Need livestock hauled? Give us a call: 712-790-3359 Suggestions for a podcast guest? Email Aly: behrensan...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! Ryan and Ryam Nelson joined us for a real, down-to-earth conversation about building their concrete business from absolutely nothing - literally. In this episode they share about the early days of Concrete Creators, how they figured it out as they went, and what drove them to start a business and work together. The two of them now a...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! In this episode, we are honored to have Mark Handlos on to share his story — a farm kid turned medical warrior whose life is rooted in resilience, hope, and an unshakable sense of humor. Mark opens up about what it was like growing up in rural Iowa and then facing a mysterious illness that began at age 15. With no diagnosis and no t...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! If the words “hedging,” “options,” or “basis” make your eyes glaze over — this episode is for you. Today I’m joined by Zach Tindall, a commodity broker with Producers Livestock and a farmer feeder himself, to break down price protection tools in plain English. We talk about the real-world side of managing market risk — not just the...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! In this episode of The Rural Dispatch, Aly sits down with farmer and cattle feeder Justin Heiman, a Carroll County native who built his own farming operation from the ground up. Justin shares how he got started with nothing but work ethic, a love for agriculture, and mentors who were willing to show him the ropes. We talk about the...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! This episode is for the dads — the ones who hauled cattle before sunup, made you work when you got in trouble, and taught you how to let things roll off your back like water on a duck. For this Father’s Day edition of The Rural Dispatch, we’ve pulled clips from past episodes where guests told stories about their dads — the things th...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! In this episode, Smoke and I sit down for a real-time check-in — no guest, just us. Following up last week’s episode with Rich Pudenz felt like a tall order, but we wanted to bring it back home and share what’s going on behind the mic. We talk about what it means to build a life and business together — especially when your past does...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! In this episode of The Rural Dispatch, we sit down with Rich Pudenz—a cattle feeder now in his 90s—who shares what it was like growing up in rural America during the Great Depression, feeding cattle alongside his brothers, and watching the livestock industry evolve over the past century. From early mornings in the feedlot to navigat...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! Sit down with us as we talk with Howard Curry, owner of Howard Curry Transport Inc, a brokerage business with deep roots in hauling livestock.  Howard takes us all the way back to 1953, when his dad first got into hauling livestock. Born into the business in 1962, Howard's been a part of the livestock world ever since. At 16 ye...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! In this episode, we sit down with Paul Radloff and Brittany Fenstemacher from Agar Transportation to talk about what it means to buy "blue sky" in the trucking industry. Paul bought the company with just $300 to his name but a whole lot of ambition to make it work. Brittany, the brains behind the scenes, helped bring struc...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! In this episode of The Rural Dispatch, we’re sitting down with James and Megan Holz—farmers, livestock producers, entrepreneurs, and one of the husband-and-wife duos behind Iowa Cover Crop. James and Megan share the story of how they ventured into feeding hogs and the lessons they’ve learned navigating that world, and how it differs...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! In this episode of The Rural Dispatch, we sit down with one of our longtime drivers, Marty Wilken -- a man whose roots in trucking run deep. With well over 40 years behind the wheel, Marty shares his unforgettable stories from the road.  We cover everything from his family's start in trucking, dating back four generations, to h...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! This episode is for the folks who don’t have time for two-a-days at the gym and green smoothies. Whether you’re hauling cattle, running a business, raising kids, or all of the above — this conversation with Josh Snyder will give you practical, doable ways to move your body, eat better, and feel stronger. Josh is the founder of FitNK...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! In this episode of The Rural Dispatch, we sit down with Will Epperly, 2022 World Livestock Auctioneer Champion and co-owner of Dunlap Livestock Auction, to talk cattle, markets, and mentorship.  From growing up in his family's sale barn in Virginia to becoming one of the top voices in the industry, Will shares the path that led...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! In this episode of The Rural Dispatch, we sit down with Denny Kluver, a retired livestock hauler who spent 30+ years driving for Jeff Behrens, the founder of Behrens Trucking. From the very first load to the day he hung up his keys, Denny witnessed firsthand the growth of a family-run business and the evolution of the livestock haul...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! In this week's episode of The Rural Dispatch, we continue last week's conversation with Smoke and Mark Toms to share more raw, (mostly) unfiltered stories from their younger years. From struggling to pay the bills to building successful businesses, these guys have been through it all, and today they're telling the sto...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! In this episode of The Rural Dispatch, I’m joined Smoke and guest Mark Toms—a man of many talents and endless stories. Mark takes us on a journey through his career, starting with how he got into the trucking industry and the unique challenges of pulling a tanker compared to hauling livestock. We also dive into his passion for prote...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! This week on The Rural Dispatch, we’re talking all things trucks, trailers, and the cattle industry with Smoke. From EPA regulations to the closure of the American Foods plant in Yankton, SD, there’s a lot shaking up the trucking & livestock worlds right now. Plus, we’re breaking down which brand is really best when it comes to...