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 two trucks of their own and with another owner-operator leased on. They’re in the competition for Overdrive's 2023 Trucker of the Year award, and as a husband-wife team of a business, it’s close collaboration in their drive to success that sets them apart. Though since their marriage in 2005, it hasn’t always been that way, exactly.
Shelley herself wasn’t so involved in the business before Tim flipped the switch to get his authority around 2012 and the pair, together, moved toward a contract with the Sweetener Supply liquid-sugar manufacturer in their area, a contract that more than sustains the business to this day with good rates, a healthy fuel surcharge built into everything they do, and in general a real appreciation for their work.
That includes Shelley, today, too, behind the wheel. While Tim’s been driving in various roles since the turn of the century, Shelley made moves to get her CDL for the first time in 2018, after the pair’s fourth and youngest child entered kindergarten. Growth in revenues, and profits, for the business have proceeded since then, with plans for more on the way. With three trucks running full-time now, they do own four big Walker food-grade tanker trailers, after all.
You can enter your own owner-operator business or nominate another for Overdrive's 2023 Trucker of the Year competition via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/page/toptrucker
Nominations will be accepted throughout the first half of 2023.