In this week's Overdrive Radio podcast edition we’ll hear more of our talk with August Trucker of the Month Alan Kitzhaber, and a good bit about one particular subject near and dear to the 4-million-mile owner of a 1995 Kenworth T600 he's piloted since it was new.

"I've been very religious about investing my money instead of spending it, and it's put me in a position where I can feel comfortable retiring." --Oakridge Transport owner-operator Alan Kitzhaber: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15681362/meticulous-maintenance-efficiency-trucker-of-the-month

Part 1 of this two-part podcast: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/podcast/15679534/4-million-miles-in-a-kw-t600-trucker-of-the-month-alan-kitzhaber

His long-term retirement investment strategy, suffice it to say, has owner-operator Kitzhaber well-positioned for an exit, making good on his view of his truck and the trucking business itself. As he notes in today's podcast, trucking's always been a vehicle, a tool to "get me somewhere else," he said. "I want to generate profit from it."

After squandering retirement savings from his work in the 1980s, mostly in his 20s, running a Radio Shack store, he's managed multiple qualified retirement accounts and other investments soundly. Nearing the end of a nearly 35-year run of consistently putting aside 15%-20% of his income, he’s nearly gotten to that "somewhere else," where he truly wants to go -- that’s retirement, setting out on a variety of projects, including building a house on his property in Eau Claire, Wisconsin; pursuit of photography and videography hobbies; taxidermy; and more.

As some of you heard in the podcast last week, Kitzhaber achieved a significant milestone in May this year -- he’s passed 4 million miles behind the wheel of a Cat-powered truck, his 1995 Oakridge Transport Kenworth T600, pulling since 2010 for a single shipper.

As is sometimes the case in the profiles we write of our Trucker of the Year contenders, that shipper, the Midwest home-improvement chain Menards, headquartered nearby to Kitzhaber in Eau Claire, was a little slow to get back to us fully. Yet respond the company did, with a bit of a tribute to their long-running partner in Kitzhaber you can hear in this week's edition, too.

**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

Entries to the 2024 program are open through September.