Overdrive Radio

"Hard to keep something nice if you're in the hopper world. There's dust, gravel, mud, farms, small driveways. ..." --Little Z Transport owner-operator Lucas Zach, Gilman, Wisconsin Despite the difficulty, owner-operator Zach keeps his 2017 Peterbilt 389 and matching Timpte hopper pristine as can possibly be. He's put quite a lot of custom work into it with shop and fleet partners to cut a fine pi...

Overdrive's June Trucker of the Month Scott Smith, owner-operator of Sapphire Cartage out of Searcy, Arkansas, has a couple of secret weapons when it comes to bookkeeping, tax accounting and business analysis. The first is his wife, Stephanie, who after time in the health care field and then with Scott rearing four young children, found new work Scott Smith describes in this week's edition of Over...

"Remember to shake a stranger's hand. You might accidentally make a new friend." --Bill Weaver It's been a heavy week amid the Independence Day goings-on, trucking news and all the rest, but start this Overdrive Radio episode with a song with a whole lot of joy, sure to get the spirits up, as it’s writer, singer and performer -- the great Bill Weaver -- told the tale of its origins in the always-h...

Today in Overdrive Radio, walk through Kevin Bruns’ purchase of a 2019 Cummins-powered International LoneStar after several years of local dump truck ownership and work around quarries and construction sites in the Nashville, Tennessee, region. That followed early experience with authority hauling cars a couple decades back, based outside Chicago where Bruns is from originally, then pneumatic tank...

Off the top of this week's Overdrive Radio podcast is the voice of photojournalist James Year, commenting on an issue he feels holds potential to create alliances where few have existed in American culture and commentary. "In every market you can think there's a lot of disruptions starting to happen," Year said. "and it's one of those cases of strange bedfellows. ... Turns out truckers and actors...

"If you're not going to do it right the first time, don't do it at all. That's what I tell everybody in here." --2024 Small Fleet Champ Paul Rissler In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, listen in for a tour around the headquarters of Paul Rissler Transportation, current Overdrive Small Fleet Champ, on the old home place for the big Rissler trucking family. Overdrive Editor Todd Dills was the...

"If it continues like it's going, it'll probably be our best year. ... The way it started out and the way it's going so far, it'll be our best year." --Flatbed owner-operator Ollie "Rufus" Morris reflecting on the year thus far May Trucker of the Month Rufus Morris of Youngsville, North Carolina, was sounding a lot like April's honoree and fellow flatbed owner-op George Kincaid reflecting on the y...

At the top of the podcast, crank it up with a rare breed of a Caterpillar diesel in an on-highway truck, the V8 3408 motor in livestock hauler Troy Bolin’s 1979 Peterbilt 359, a 302-inch-wheelbase unit we got a close look at out at the Crossroads Truck Meet early last month in Missouri: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15747179 Tap that link or listen on to hear its story here, too, with its 6/4 tw...

Here's hoping the Memorial Day long weekend’s been a safe one for you. Today on the Overdrive Radio podcast, a special treat in the work of our own longtime Overdrive Extra contributor Long Haul Paul Marhoefer: https://overdriveonline.com/14865330 Marhoefer spent time at the Mid-America Trucking Show with a man who’s been well on his way toward a status of custom-truck royalty, you might say, thes...

This week’s edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast features C.W. Express small fleet owner Steve Wilson, reigning Small Fleet Champ in the 11-30-truck division after a bit of a growth spurt for the fleet followed Wilson’s brush with death in 2022. The team he’d built around the dry van fleet sustained while he was in hospital for the better part of that entire year, and in the aftermath has only c...

"This year, if it goes like it has this past month, it'll be phenomenal." --George Kincaid In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, an audio window on our feature story about flatbed-pulling owner-operator George Kincaid’s one-truck business, written attendant to the Quinwood, West Virginia-headquartered Kincaid getting the April Trucker of the Month nod from Overdrive: https://www.overdriveonli...

In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, we’re looking back at the long run of the W900 model from the Kenworth Truck Company. The W900's coming sunset has been among the biggest equipment news of the year -- uncovered ahead of the Mid-America Trucking Show, where the company unveiled the launch of the W900 Legacy Edition special series to close out the model's run. Kenworth plans are to build a...

This week on Overdrive Radio we track back to the Mid-America Trucking Show and the big news for the trucking community from podcast sponsor Howes. The Howes Hall of Fame added its 12th member when it honored Mother Trucker Yoga proprietor and fitness and wellness coach Hope Zvara at the show. You heard part of Zvara’s story when she was featured here on Overdrive Radio in conversation with Long H...

In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, drop into our conversation with OOIDA Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh at the Mid-America Trucking Show. Pugh was fresh off a whirlwind round of a whole lot of other talking himself, including a MATS-opening breakfast panel discussion you heard here a couple weeks back, then prior to that on Wednesday the week of the truck show in the halls of Congress...

This week's edition of Overdrive Radio is another in our series highlighting contenders for 2025 Trucker of the Year, with Overdrive Senior Editor Matt Cole’s talk with Virginia-headquartered two-truck straight dump owner-operator business Dice Mayhem’s Trucking, headed up by owner-operator Hunter Hubbard and her husband, Tim. Hunter’s just about six years into truck ownership herself, her husband...

In 2024, finally, as regular Overdrive readers will know, owner-operator income was up on a year-over-year basis. ATBS Vice President Mike Hosted makes that abundantly clear in this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, featuring the business services firm's March 25 update offering an economic outlook for the year ahead as well as lessons within the benchmarking data ATBS dervies from its tens of th...

Back from the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Kentucky, this Overdrive Radio edition kicks off continuing coverage as all of us here at Overdrive spent the show fanning out across convention center grounds to cover just as much as possible. The fruits of that labor you’ve seen just a small sampling of to date, the lot of it collected with the MATS tag at OverdriveOnline.com: https://www.o...

In this Overdrive Radio edition, big news: We’re releasing today our brand-new Partners in Business playbook for owner-operator business, start to finish. The 2025 reboot of the PIB program is a total revamp designed with the decidedly mobile professional trucker in mind. You can access it today at https://overdriveonline.com/pib For more than two decades, Overdrive's Partners in Business, coprodu...

This week’s edition of Overdrive Radio starts with a brief part of "Truck Stop," earmarked by today's guest for a special place in his heart the last time we hosted him. That'd be trucker-songwriter Tony Justice, who back then in 2023 spoke to the inspiration the song took from Justice’s mother’s long work at a couple of different East Tennessee truck stops you’ll hear him mention in today’s podca...

The voice you'll hear at the top of this Overdrive Radio edition is that of Overdrive's February Trucker of the Month Kenny Wingate. Clearly, he knows of what he speaks when he invokes the feeling -- "nothing like it," he said -- that he associates with best of trucking as an owner-operator, running your own game when times are good. It's part of what drove him to take the leap back from company w...

Jamie Hagen's got the inside scoop, but won't divulge the name of the new Mack tractor model set to be debuted next month in New York in this year of Mack's 125th anniversary as a company. Small Fleet owner Hagen has actually driven one hand-built production model already around the company’s test track hidden behind the walls, and come June he expects to be leasing one of the first production uni...

In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, Hotels4Truckers.com proprietor Dan Fuller, former driver and independent owner-operator, details completion of a project years in the making. The website and now mobile app as well got its start simply as a cataloging of hotels around the nation where parking a tractor and 53-foot trailer was not only possible but welcomed, provided for by the hotel facil...

Today, a bit of a hypothetical that is really not hypothetical at all, though we’ll withhold names with multiple court cases pending. But consider the scenario: You engage with a broker you feel you know is legitimate for a load of copper moving toward the Northeast. You drop that load for $1,600, you ultimately get paid, and you go on about your business to the next piece of freight. Meanwhile, t...

In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, January Trucker of the Month Ken Brodeur, owner-operator out of Escondido, California, tells the tale of his circuitous path to trucking over three decades of prior IT tech and music-industry careers. He leased and then purchased his first and current truck in 2016, a new Kenworth W9 that he’s kept in great working order ever since, with a diligent mainte...

With this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, we pick up where longtime Overdrive contributor, former OTR owner and current business coach Gary Buchs left off on the Overdrive Extra blog last week: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15736116/ There, as regular readers will know, he penned and published notes on the "fine art" of rates negotiation, with a special emphasis on ways to counterbalance the...