Overdrive Radio

Former CVSA president Steve Vaughn, currently vice president of field operations for PrePass, stressed asking the tough questions about technology and all the infrastructure put in place to support it when it comes to roadside inspections and over-the-air communication from the truck to law enforcement. Getting answers to those questions, some of which he details in today's edition of Overdrive Ra...

With some of the signs flashing red, as it were, on the prospects of bona fide economic recession, the indicators remained mixed for owner-operator business performance as of a couple weeks ago, the time of ATBS Vice President Mike Hosted's year benchmarking presentation Overdrive originally reported on at this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/partners-in-business/article/15296973/ownerop-rev...

it’s been a tough few weeks for small fleet owner Bryon Stoll of New London, Wisconsin. In today's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, Stoll recounts the myriad things that went just right on his evening trip to the hospital for what turned out to be emergency surgery to clear a near total blockage of a coronary artery, the reason for the heart attack the 48-year-old longtime truck owner and o...

Wade Bontrager, CEO of National Truck Protection, came to the now more than four-decade provider of used-truck warranties to owner-operators and small fleets owners around the time of NTP's 2018 purchase of Premium 2000, a fellow used-warranty provider. The following years have seen a systematic improvement process for the company, which still offers both NTP and Premium 2000 warranty brands but w...

When Florida-based small fleet owner Chris Porricelli started his CAP Trucking company as a one-truck business, he was still in his 20s, and struggled for the first six months. But 11 years into it today, the five-truck fleet has excelled in North-South LTL reefer lanes with mostly direct customers for produce headed north from Florida and South Georgia, and a bevy of commodities headed south. In...

In this Part 2 edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast featuring conversations with Owner-Operator of the Year Glen Horack, the Missouri-based hauler elaborates on themes of preparation broached in Part 1 last week. Asked for his most salient advice for any new or aspiring owner in this day and age, he made reference to the grand cyclical nature of the economy -- and trucking specifically of course...

This edition of Overdrive Radio features Owner-Operator of the Year Glen Horack, based in Elkland, Missouri, and so named in Overdrive’s coproduction of the awards program with the Truckload Carriers Association at the TCA annual conference in March in Las Vegas. Horack teams with his wife, Karla, a hauling partnership whose in-cab portion at least started after the one year -- 'knock on wood," Ho...

Ahead of Brake Safety Week 2022, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance weeklong outreach and inspection initiative focused on braking systems and starting this Sunday, Aug. 21, we're listening back to the 2021 Overdrive Radio podcast talk with Pennsylvania-based former local-department officer and long-certified DOT inspector Andy Blair. Looking at the landscape for commercial truck inspections g...

Today we hand it off again to "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer to walk us through the moving, sometimes hilarious, writing of trucker-songwriter Coby Langham & the Citizen Band, whose 2019 “Years on the Road” record made plenty waves around his native Kentucky and beyond. Langham drives for likewise Kentucky-headquartered Downey & Sons, a pallet supplier out of Springfield, and he’s a proud father of th...

This edition of Overdrive Radio features a talk with Charlie Deull, third generation in the family behind longtime Broadway show hauler (among other touring acts) Clark Transfer, based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Today, the company is principal in touring work all around the nation hauled by owner-operators leased on to the company, in addition to a network of outside agents, including many owner...

In this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, we'll drop into an interview Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole conducted with Arrive Logistics Chief Strategy Officer J-Ann Tio, about the broker-3PL’s “We Deliver Flexibility” program. The trial run for the program is getting its footing as a connection engine between independent owner-operators and small fleets in Arrive’s network and larger private...

Dayton, Ohio-based Airgas tank-truck operator Guy Archer has come out of his big win in 2021's Overdrive-Red Eye Radio Trucker Talent Search with renewed energy around his songwriting efforts -- he’s been much more than tinkering around the edges of those efforts with some recording activity this year we’ll hear him detail in this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, dropping in on Archer’s tou...

Gary Buchs -- longtime Overdrive contributor, former owner-operator now turned business coach for a myriad of both new and more experienced owners -- knows well of what he speaks with regard to the notion that first-time small business owners are like as not to fail that first time out. There's a reason he's where he is today after a successful owner-operator career, after all -- his first foray a...

The subject of retirement is always a hot topic among owner-ops -- the diligence it requires to set yourself up well to leave the road is such that it's not exactly easily achievable. Yet this well-matched pair of owner-operators -- Bruce and Kellie Cone of Redding, California -- have set themselves up well as they start to run out their last half-decade in business. That's the long-range plan, an...

It was 2017 when Mike Gaffin, aka "The Boston Trucker," received an email from Shell Rotella SuperRigs inviting him to join their team. Over the past several years, Gaffin, a second-generation operator with more than 30 years of experience behind the wheel, had been converting his lifetime love of trucking, and a decades long photographic curation of the business, into one of the largest following...

For this edition of Overdrive Radio, host Todd Dills is joined by Lee and Lisa Schmitt of Wisconsin. As regular readers may well be aware, Lee's requested as exemption from parts of the hours of service for himself -- it’s the first such exemption request for an individual owner we’ve seen hit the Federal Register and go up for comment, in quite some time, a testament perhaps to the methodical nat...

Small fleet car-haul owner-operator C.G. Soza of California's Central Valley has quite a lot on his plate these days, not the least of which is the $7-plus diesel sign he saw early this week in Madera, California, a first for the owner. He's also keeping a close eye on the Supreme Court, which is set to conference June 23 and possibly make its decision as to whether it will take up federal pre-emp...

The question begged in the title here points us down the road to the subject of this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, a notion voiced quite well also in last week's edition by Breon Thomas when he noted that entrepreneurship, broadly, is about creating systems of support for your efforts at success in business. Systems, indeed, of support to ensure you negotiate the next load at a level of...

The nimble nature of businesses working the expediting niche of the trucking world, particularly those powered by smaller pieces of equipment like cargo vans, is well-known to longtime industry participants. Atlanta-based Breon Thomas was initially attracted to cargo van expediting for that very reason, yet he quickly learned there was more to successful business ownership than working hard and ru...

Does a truly "zero-emissions" truck exist? Is it even possible in today's petroleum-powered world? Will it ever be? If you’ve counted yourself among skeptics when it comes to the notion that trucking might one day be an industry built on the foundation of big lithium-ion batteries powering electric motors, Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole's report this week on new analysis from the American Transpo...

It’s official –- well, it’s been official for a good while now -– fuel is absolutely out of hand. Spot market rates for vans and reefers have been sinking, and big carriers nonetheless seem bullish on long-term prospects, for once in the last couple of years. These years have been a boon by and large for the small, even with COVID-inspired difficulties: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/a...

Cliffside Transportation Services operator Bobby Coffey-Loy hauls in a team with his husband, Ricky, and in one of a couple dozen or so rigs Cliffside has dedicated to XPO Logistics freight in the network. In this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, Coffey-Loy speaks to the mission of his and cofounders’ LGBTQ+ Truck Driver Network, established within the last year and engaged in a variety of...

In today's edition of Overdrive Radio, trucker-songwriter and Overdrive Extra contributing writer "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer takes us through his interview at the Mid-America Trucking Show last month with longtime entertainment-industry-specialized trucker Chip Warterfield, now in a safety and operations role with Upstaging, Inc. Warterfield tells the story of what happened to the company when COV...

It’s "meet your regulator" day on Overdrive Radio -- there’s plenty to gain, particularly for those of you in the audience who engage with regulatory processes, in getting to know, of a fashion, FMCSA Acting Administrator Robin Hutcheson. For this edition of the podcast, we’ll hear Hutcheson speak at length to the notion of dwindling pride in trucking and investment in its restoration, plenty abou...

As Georgia-headquartered owner-operator Raeshawn Lucas has it, higher earning potential as an owner-operator is certainly a prime motivating factor for the decision to strike out on one's own as a business in trucking. Yet that's certainly not all when it comes bedrock goals. Respect, freedom of choice in so many aspects of how you do business... Truth is, owner-operators go into business for them...