"As anti-automated driving as I am, I might almost rather see some robots. At least they're not going to be looking at screens" going down the road. --owner-operator and Overdrive July 2024 Trucker of the Month Mike Nichols: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15680591/trucker-of-the-month-mike-nichols-knows-limits-hones-strengths

We're picking up where we left off in Part 1 of this talk with owner-operator Nichols -- https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15681077/trucker-of-the-month-steers-business-with-reliable-partnerships -- conducted by Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole and featuring Nichols' perspective on recent-history revenue and income. "I made more in '22 than I did in '23," NIchols said, calling the reality, though, mostly a revenue boost and "artifact of the high fuel prices" that unprecedented year.

Fortunately, leased to Wayne Transports with his 2020 Freightliner Coronado glider pulling dry bulk, "we've got a good fuel surcharge," he said. "There isn't any Mickey Mouse games with detention," either, which couldn't be said in his days pulling a reefer around the turn of the century.

He's come a long way since with a careful approach to business, including his maintenance plan, approach to health insurance and retirement planning and perhaps the biggest challenge for OTR owner-ops going: bedrock safety on highways where distraction has become something of a norm.

"I'm a firm believer in 'loud pipes save lives,'" as Nichols put it, "because people aren't paying attention." Nichols' is a voice for change on that score, in word as in deed.

You can enter your own owner-operator business -- or that of another deserving owner -- in Overdrive's Trucker of the Year program, sponsored by Bostrom Seating, via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/TopTrucker

Also in the podcast: From the Large Cars & Guitars truck show in Tennessee this past May, a window on a stunning 2023 Peterbilt 389 in the small fleet West Lawrence Logistics of Town Creek, Alabama, piloted by three-year company hauler Jarad Mullinix.