Overdrive Radio

K&D Transport third-generation owner/manager Adam Johnson in this Overdrive Radio edition narrates the beginnings of his grandfather’s time trucking with a 1946 Brockway he purchased without the seats to save a little on the price. – It was a different time, and Johnson’s grandfather was back from World War II, where he was a POW for 18 months, Johnson said, a story he told in part attendant to ou...

Owner-operator Steven Massat is today headquartered in Addison, Illinois, and leased to nearby small fleet T Max Transportation with quite a special truck. Regular Overdrive readers may well have seen his story at OverdriveOnline.com a couple weeks back now: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15546000/ownerop-overcomes-physical-challenge-for-successful-career There, owner-...

For this edition of Overdrive Radio, DAT Freight and Analytics' Chief Marketing Officer Jeff Hopper, who’s been with the company now for decades, notes the undeniable spike in double brokering, in identity theft and hop-in, hop-out "take the money and run" and other schemes that has led to a doubling of staff in DAT’s compliance department as well as a host of other in-process security enhancement...

Chris Dowdy counts he and his wife, Paula, and their family among the lucky ones. The subject of this edition of Overdrive Radio is one ripped right from the last month or so of a myriad headlines -- the bankruptcy and ceasing operations of Yellow, The LTL giant finally shut after being propped up by an astounding amount of loaned money straight from the U.S. taxpayer in recent years. That followe...

Trucker-songwriter leading light Tony Justice's new "Greatest Shifts" record features six new tracks, five originals plus a fantastic rendition of Jerry Reed's classic "Eastbound and Down," and 14 previously released highlights from four records -- "Apple Pie Moonshine," "Brothers of the Highway," "Stars Stripes and White Lines," and "18 Gears to Life." Those records comprise a decades' worth of m...

Today we’re peeking through a window onto a conference in its second year and coming up down in Houston, building on a thus-far-four-year journey of one New Jersey-based Rahmel Wattley, host of the 2019-founded Truck N' Hustle podcast. That's right, for this edition of Overdrive Radio, it’s host-to-host, as it were. Truck N’ Hustle, well-known among entrepreneurs of a variety of stripes all around...

She does just about all of it, Crystal Rives, when it comes to the maintenance of her one-truck Texas-intrastate car-haul business. She's put a big emphasis on solid partnerships through the years, whether with a trusted engine/major mechnical shop or a growing stable of customers. That's particularly so since she went out on her own with authority to haul cars in 2016. The move followed almost a...

We ask again: What's the worst stretch of road on your routes? Let's keep a spotlight on where state DOTs should put all those tax dollars -- dial 615-852-8530 to weigh in. Here,something of a lightning round of owner-operator responses to our prior call, put out attendant to the podcast several weeks back about the terrible toll I-40 in Arizona is taking from owner-ops' pocketbooks in repairs. Ro...

Today on the podcast, the captivating story of a truck -- and its owner-operator, Kate Whiting of Wisconsin. The rig, a 1973 Kenworth W900A, turned a half-century old this year of the Kenworth company's centennial. Whiting piloted the rig, "Cherry Pie," in the 100th-anniversary parade in Chillicothe, Ohio, back in June: https://www.overdriveonline.com/custom-rigs/article/15541257/kenworth-celebrat...

In today’s early special edition of Overdrive Radio for podcast subscribers, another installment in the Trucking’s State of Surveillance multipart series: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15541635 If you missed Long Haul Paul Marhoefer’s talk with Karen Levy in the previous edition of the podcast, track back to it -- it dropped Friday, July 7, to the Overdrive Radio feed. Levy’s "Data Driven" book,...

For this Overdrive Radio edition, a bit of a special preview of a special report dropping this coming Monday, July 10. It’s called “Trucking’s State of Surveillance” and follows Overdrive’s surveying of our owner-operator, small fleet and company driver readers about remote monitoring- and/or tracking-capable technologies used in the business. We asked readers assess the techs they use -- from sma...

This week on Overdrive Radio, we reintroduce June’s Trucker of the Month, Debbie Desiderato, in conversation with our own Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole. Cole’s story about Desiderato’s long trucking career is live as of earlier this week at the website: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15541324/independent-debbie-desideratos-keys-to-trucking-success Today, we’ll hear p...

Asked by Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole for the stretch of road they felt could be described as the absolute worst in the nation, all but one owner-operator at Shell Rotella's SuperRigs show two weeks back in Wyoming didn’t flinch in singling out I-40 in Arizona. Others are calling it the absolute worst they’ve ever seen. Danville, Virginia-based owner-operator Joey Slaughter, who runs the route...

With this Overdrive Radio edition for June 16, 2023, points of view on the absolute necessity of respecting the needs for work-life balance for your personal sanity, and for the success of your business. That balance can be particularly elusive for independent owner-operators, as Silver Creek Transportation owner Jason Cowan well knows -- he spent much of his early career in those shoes with just...

'Strike when the market's cold' -- it might be a maxim for the outlook on small business for Overdrive May Trucker of the Month Matthew Karr, coming off an excellent profit year hauling fuel leased to Quality Transportation out of Halltown, Missouri: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15448529/owneroperator-matthew-karrs-fuel-hauling-hustle-pays-off Now's the ideal time, a...

This edition of Overdrive Radio touches on a area of long-well-founded concern for owner-operators. That’s the importance of, when possible, fighting the stains on the motor vehicle record that can come in the form of tickets for moving violations of all types. Pay the fine, and it’s like pleading guilty and doing the proverbial time. A "conviction” will be paid for in a myriad ways beyond just th...

'Owner-op business, start to finish' -- it could be the motto to describe Overdrive's annual coproduction with business services firm ATBS of the Partners in Business manual: http://overdriveonline.com/pib And it was the broader topic of this talk with the great Red Eye Radio host Eric Harley at the Mid-America Trucking Show, on the occasion of the 2023 PIB book's release, now available for downlo...

Truck show platform personalities come and go, but Hope Zvara's mission to improve truckers' quality of life with a program that leans on small, incremental changes in their daily routines continues to gain traction. Founder and CEO of Mother Trucker Yoga, Zvara's the author of "Trucking Yoga: Simple Fitness for fhe Long Haul," a book in which Zvara gives us an unvarnished account of how her own s...

This week on the Overdrive Radio podcast, a bit of a double feature. We'll hear from General Transportation and ART Trucking's Jason Decker. Regular Overdrive readers will recall reporting on some of Decker’s talk at the Mid-America Trucking Show back in March that was something of a rallying cry for a “whole of trucking” battle approach to the fight against double brokering, leaching money from t...

A natural inclination for frugality is a winning quality for most anybody in the world today, and no doubt for an owner-operator. That's one of the central qualities Jay Hosty, our Trucker of the Month for April, put dead center of his now 41-year-long history of success as an owner-operator in trucking. As Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole wrote in our profile of owner-operator Hosty last week, he...

This Overdrive Radio podcast edition drops into our talk with Charlotte, N.C.-based owner-operator Deron Salmon about his brand-new Truck Networking application for iPhone and Android devices -- Truck’N for short. It's available now for a 14-day free trial with monthly subscription thereafter. Iphone: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/truck-networking/id1606433569 Android: https://play.google.com/stor...

In this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, drop in with three operators for a panel discussion held at the Mid-America Trucking Show last month. The discussion was aimed at showing all the ways these three have done what once might have been unthinkable -- get to, and pass, the 10-miles-per-gallon mark in a Class 8 tractor-trailer hauling freight. They included a man longtime Overdrive reader...

Happy Friday before Tax Day! Got those filings done? One suspects the answer is yes for our guests on today's edition of Overdrive Radio, Tim Pulli and his wife, Shelley Puzek-Pulli, our March Truckers of the Month: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15380625/path-to-profits-through-continual-adjustment-pulli-express The Chicago-area-headquartered owner-operators today run...

If you haven’t checked in at OverdriveOnline.com lately, get over to the Partners in Business section for our newly-updated, 2023 edition of the owner-operator business guide of the same name: http://overdriveonline.com/pib Weighing in at a grand total of 140 and more pages this year, the Partners in Business manual covers owner-operator business from start to finish, all the way from the basics o...

The freight spot markets are undeniably tough right now, that's sure, with rates continuing their slide for vans and reefers nationally in the last week, and profitability strained for all manner of independent owner-operators and small carriers with authority. Yet Adam Wingfield, whose talk early on the last day of the Mid-America Trucking Show Saturday, April 1, makes up the bulk of today's Over...