"If you do what you've always done, you will only get what you've always gotten." --Kevin Rutherford

Reticence to change has been the downfall of many a life, and many a business. Small fleets and owner-operators aren’t exempt, of course. If you recognize the name after the quote here, you’re probably not alone among Overdrive Radio listeners and Overdrive readers who’ve taken motivation from Rutherford in the past. The longtime radio host is a past contributor to Overdrive who found his particular, singular talent for motivating and helping owner-operators in part through decades-past appearances in early installments of Partners in Business seminar series at the Mid-America Trucking Show. 

Since, Rutherford’s been a lot: in addition to a radio host a fitness and wellness coach, writer, owner-operator business advice man and group leader and more. 

But he started back in the 1980s just like so many here. One man, with one truck, and an ability to learn from mistakes made. 

This Overdrive Radio podcast drops into Rutherford’s story as he told it several weeks back now to attendees of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies’ annual conference here in Nashville. 

His mission that evening was to walk attendees through a plan to solidify the business base to take advantage of opportunities at the market's bottom to excel for long-term trucking at the top. Rutherford’s plan may be simple-sounding, but it's plenty complicated and variable in the execution. And he's a real pro at delivering it and making any trucking business owner think hard about how, and why, you do what you do.

A plan to not just survive -- but thrive -- through the bottom of the freight market

The Overdrive Radio podcast is produced by Overdrive magazine, the Voice of the American Trucker for 60-plus years. Host Todd Dills -- with a supporting cast among Overdrive editors, contributors and others -- presents owner-operator business leading lights, interviews with extraordinary independent truckers and small fleet owners, and plenty in the way of trucking business and regulatory news and views. Access an archive of all episodes of Overdrive Radio going back more than a decade via this link: http://overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio

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Here find 2024's third mid-week special edition in Overdrive Radio's series of Partners in Business shorts culled from a long owner-operator business-focused talk at the Mid-America Trucking Show last month with Eric Harley of Red Eye Radio.

This episode extends from the first couple, expanding on the necessity of close business analysis in near-real-time to keep tabs on costs and profits, the start-up necessity of stocking that pantry and doubling down on saving when markets are hot for the lean times. We’ve been in one of those, by some estimates, going on two years at this point. 

Voices we'll hear: 
**The great Eric Harley of Red Eye Radio. Find the full talk in an episode of Red Eye's Extra Mile podcast here: https://www.redeyeradioshow.com/the-extra-mile-podcast/ 
**Overdrive Editor Todd Dills
**ATBS Vice President Mike Hosted
**Overdrive contributor and now longtime business coach Gary Buchs 

The subject here is "work-life balance," of a fashion, though that term doesn’t do a whole lot for a small business owner, for whom those two elements – work, life – are virtually inseparable. Nonetheless, there’s plenty owners can do to set themselves up for life at home with the work, particularly as it relates to building long-term business with solid customer relationships. 

For more on that subject, catch Part 2 of Overdrive Radio's talk with Surinder Gill: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15669640/small-fleet-owner-determined-to-sharpen-value-to-direct-customers

Likewise, Jason Cowan's MATS talk about nurturing and maintaining relationships: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15668024/how-to-leave-trucking-better-than-you-found-it-with-jason-cowan

Garnering respect from customers over time, solidifying those relationships so that you don’t have to turn to dime-a-dozen brokered loads on the boards so often: It’s the little things described in this episode, pursued day-in, day-out, that serve the best chance of getting you there. 

Track back the Partners in Business series from the Red Eye Radio roundtables this year at MATS, and last, via this Youtube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcMsOnx-zFs&list=PLc1lg9rs1dUBRbJKjvc7UUcJRRd4iI2v3 

This special edition in the long-running Partners in Business program is sponsored by Rush Truck Centers, the 140-plus dealer location network for sales service and so much more. Find them via this link: https://rushtrkctr.com/4bLxbR4 

You can visit https://OverdriveOnline.com/pib to download the 2024 updated Partners in Business book and learn plenty more from our online series there, too, about so many topics germane to trucking as an owner-operator.

How to transform OTR 'work/life' division into real balance, unity with customers

Last week we heard Part 1 of a long talk with Gill Freightlines small fleet owner Surinder Gill, with four trucks owned and headquartered out of Manteca, California, where Gill’s following in the draft of his owner-operator father’s 60-year trucking legacy. (As you can see in the cover image for this week's Part 2 of that talk, the long legacy is honored on the back of Gill Freightlines’ dry vans.) The Convoy brokerage's quick collapse last Fall nearly spelled out a death sentence for the small fleet, as it was mostly built around dedicated hauling for Convoy's shipper customers. 

Gill’s still owed around $35,000 for loads hauled just prior to the collapse, and the collapse of his fleet's work soured relationships with a small group of owner-operators whom he previously worked with. The difficulties, in part at least, extend from what he acknowledges as a classic mistake in business.

"I guess it goes back to the age-old saying of 'don't put all your eggs into one basket,'" as he put it. 

Yet as detailed in Part 1 of the talk, he profferred the notion that, given how many carriers' work went unpaid in the Convoy collapse and the company’s tech platform’s quick sale to another brokerage/forwarder, bigger brokerages ought to be required to have larger bonds in place based on the amount of business they do: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15669109/should-freight-brokers-bond-vary-according-to-company-size 

In Part 2 here, you'll get a window into what Gill’s doing in the aftermath, pivots he’s making toward more direct business, and his hope that so many shippers’ attitudes toward working with small carriers in their immediate physical vicinity, regardless of size, might change for the better.

He's got a distribution center he can physically lay eyes on with nothing more than a step out the door to his office, for instance. "I can see them, phyiscally, they can see me physically," he said, "yet where it confuses me is they would rather give work to these kids right out of college who work for [INSERT BIG BROKER NAME HERE] in Chicago or Atlanta or wherever their office is and trust these kids to go vet these carriers who might be carriers or chameleon carriers. ... But they won't give it to me," with just a few trucks. That's even though, of course, Gill's "right down the street."  

Though load boards and brokers themselves rose out of the need of owner-operators and small carriers to connect to freight they otherwise might not have access to, Gill feels the entire culture around brokerage has devolved with Wolf of Wall Street-type tactics now so dominant that independents become essentially "bottom feeders" in a market like the current one. Volumes have been down in a big post-pandemic readjustment, and demand has sunk back to pre-2020 levels and below, some would say, for an extended period.

Yet he's in it for the long run. He's fully invested in driving change in his own approach to customers. He recognizes his and other independents’ shortcomings, and is committed to being part of a change to re-engage direct customers, really put in the work on building relationships toward better long-term opportunity outside of this or that fancy new brokerage network’s app. "It's going to drive a change" around trucking, he feels, "and I want to be there for it." 

Mentioned in the podcast: Past Overdrive Small Fleet Champ Jason Cowan's recent talk on building relationships, with customers or otherwise: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15668024/how-to-leave-trucking-better-than-you-found-it-with-jason-cowan

Enter the 2024 Small Fleet Championship via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/2024SFC

Hey shippers, we're out here: Small fleet resolved to sharpen biz on long haul for change

Manteca, California, Gill Freightlines small fleet owner Surinder Gill's family's trucking lineage traces back through 60 years of OTR work done by his father, Gurmail Singh Gill, over more than one continent. The elder Gill hauled first in his native India, some in the Middle East, and finished out his career in the United States. 

Surinder Gill had dipped his feet in trucking as a dispatcher by the time his father passed in 2018. "I wanted to do something to honor my father," Gill said. "How do I honor my father and his legacy? So we purchased a truck and got a trailer, and I put his photo on the back."

His trailers to this day feature that photo and the "In loving memory" text for Gurmail Singh Gill.

"He'll always be on the road, in a way," as his son puts it in this edition of Overdrive Radio, telling that story but much else besides. Small fleet owner Gill was in part the subject of Overdrive Executive Editor Alex Lockie's reporting on the now-infamous collapse of the Convoy company as a going brokerage concern this past Fall. That reporting told the tale of a variety of owner-operators and small fleet owners just like 28-year-old Surinder Gill who, months following the abrupt shuttering of Convoy in October, remained unpaid for in some cases thousands’ worth of work hauling: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15666087/convoys-unpaid-carriers-signing-back-up-to-haul-loads 

In Gill’s case, unpaid invoices were to the tune of around $35,000 in dedicated contract loads his several company drivers and a larger number of owner-operators pulled for big names in canning and food generally, like the Post company. 

Convoy's debt to Gill alone is nearly half of the worth of the required $75,000 bond any broker is required to have to cover claims. As you'll hear in the podcast, Gill believes that bond amount shouldn't but a static number but rather dependent on the amount of business a broker handles. Larger the broker, larger the bond. 

Convoy, readers will recall, had a valuation in the billions, according to pre-collapse reports. Given the volume of freight -- and money -- that flowed through the broker, Gill asks, shouldn't they be required to hold a bond much, much higher than $75,000? By the time he got to the bond company with his own claim, the full amount in the surety had already been kicked to court deliberation on just who would get paid, and how much. 

As of this past week, Gill remained entirely unpaid for those final loads, though the small fleet owner offered up a bit of information he'd learned since the conversation featured in this podcast. Contact made with the Hercules Capital company, responsible for business debt incurred by Convoy, yielded a name there for everything having to do with the shuttered brokerage. 

“I have reached out to Hercules Capital,” Gill said, “and was given the contact of a Greg Peterson” for everything Convoy-related with the company, a venture funding company that took control of all of the imploded company but for the technology platform. That platform, also previously reported, was sold to Flexport and rebooted for freight brokered through them, a fact that frustrates Gill and others among the unpaid carriers who’d worked with Convoy for years, as you'll hear.

Should freight brokers' required bond amount vary according to company size?

In today’s world, the kind of choosiness with brokers owner-operator Candace Marley practices is an absolute must for many independents. "I don't jump in with just any broker out there," she said. "There's too many scammers out there, too many double brokers, too many frauds." 

In this edition of Overdrive Radio, Marley details the relationship-building strategy for freight in her Iowa-based one-truck business -- Calliope, LLC. The independent business takes its name from a muse in Greek Mythology and a species of hummingbird well-known for its nimble nature in flight, a quality that owner-operator Marley herself has shown in spades over the course of her time with authority, even just a few years in after being leased to Don Hummer Trucking. 

Today we’re running through Marley’s conversation with Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole, whose feature about the owner-operator also detailed her tenacity to thrive under the most challenging of circumstances: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15667438/independent-owneroperator-candace-marley-thrives-on-challenge

Overdrive’s Trucker of the Month for March, owner-operator Marley’s in the running for the 2024 Trucker of the Year honor, this year sponsored by Bostrom Seating with a new seat the ultimate prize for whoever comes out on top among 10 semi-finalists we’ll profile this year. Put your own business in the running via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/page/toptrucker  

For Candace Marley, it all comes after a year that's been a tough one, it's sure. As was the case for so many owner-operators, lower rates and high fuel (along with generally soft freight markets) had her trucking along fairly flat compared to the previous year. Then, six months out from finishing the note on her 2017 Kenworth T680, a major mechanical failure took the truck out from under her, necessitating a two-month transition to a 2020 Peterbilt 579 late in the year. 

She’s inherently optimistic, though, and it was just the kind of challenge maybe she even needed, as you’ll hear, to keep her on her toes and motivated to sharpen all aspects of the business. Just about six months after that big mechanical failure, she’s working her way back with the 579 delivering better fuel mileage than her previous unit. She’s closely monitoring costs and what she needs to meet profitability targets, and looking ahead to better freight markets where she’ll really make hay.   

The owner’s journey through trucking behind the wheel starts in 2009, when her then-husband had to come off the road due to an illness, and it’s a story she tells in full in the podcast. 

Nominate your own business or that of another owner-operator for Overdrive's Trucker of the Year award: https://overdriveonline.com/toptrucker

As mentioned in the podcast, 2023 Trucker of the Year Jay Hosty's acceptance of prizes at MATS with the award, including a custom model replica of his 2006 Western Star 4900EX: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15666987/new-seat-custom-replica-trucker-of-the-year-jay-hosty-recognized

Staying choosy about brokers -- 'too many scammers out there': Trucker of the Month Candace Marley

Here find 2024's second mid-week special edition in Overdrive Radio's series of Partners in Business shorts culled from a long owner-operator business-focused talk at the Mid-America Trucking Show last month with Eric Harley of Red Eye Radio. 

This one digs into more of the routine business analysis practice participants in the discussion began to touch on in the last edition, about the importance of stocking the pantry when markets are hot to weather inevitable soft-freight downturns like what we’ve been experiencing nigh on, if not more than, a year now: https://www.overdriveonline.com/partners-in-business/video/15667833/stock-your-trucking-pantry-against-famine-before-any-feast-ends 

Eric Harley teeing the topics up with a question about profit and loss statements and any owner-operator's necessary routine engagement with their own numbers. For ATBS clients, that's aided by the online hub where those owners can access monthly P&Ls with the simple push of a button. 

The P&L itself, though it can be voluminous in its detail, Harley noted, is “less intimidating” as a document “when you develop those good habits [and] those routines” and you’re “watching it at every step.”

The best owner-operators take it farther, noted ATBS Vice President Mike Hosted. “At least a few times a year, they look at their budget next to their P&L and say, ‘I’ve a roadmap in this budget. Now I’ve got a scorecard’” with real results in a P&L. The best assess performance in relation to achievement of profit goals that way. 

“Are my costs per mile changing?” Hosted asked. “Are my fixed costs changing? Are my home costs changing, and what do I need to do to make adjustments” in service of meeting/exceeding the goals and enabling the ability to save in the war chest for the next down cycle. 

Overdrive contributor Gary Buchs invoked the "Crucial Conversations" book and its subtitle: “Tools for Talking when Stakes are High” Take control of what you can control and "decide to decide" to get better at touching your own numbers regularly, Buchs paraphrased a central message of the book. 

It can be primary in wresting control of the business from market whims. 

Need help in that regard? Track back through our series of Partners in Business shorts form the Red Eye Radio roundtables this year and last at MATS: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc1lg9rs1dUBRbJKjvc7UUcJRRd4iI2v3 

Keep tuned, too, for the next one wherever you’re listening: https://overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio 

This special edition in the long-running Partners in Business program is sponsored by Rush Truck Centers, the 140-plus dealer network for sales, service and so much more. Find them at https://rushtrkctr.com/4bLxbR4 

Visit https://OverdriveOnline.com/pib to download the 2024 updated Partners in Business book and learn plenty more from our online series there, too, about so many topics germane to trucking as an owner-operator.

A plan to not just survive -- but thrive -- through the bottom of the freight market

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