Overdrive Radio

"Any small carrier should belong to something, some sort of trade orgnanziation so they have like-minded people to bouce ideas off of." --Small Fleet Champ finalist Otto Transfer CFO & safety director Kevin Otto

Off the top of the podcast this last week of October the voice Minnesota-headquartered Kevin Otto, owner and leader with his wife, CEO Liz Otto, of Otto Transfer, this year celebrating a whopping 80 years in business. He's a "big believer," he said, in those fundamentals of building a network on which you can rely for ideas in- and outside the box, in his case through active participation in his state trucking association.

Otto's been active in the Minnesota Trucking Association for years, even serving as chairman of its board in past, and as you’ll hear in this week's podcast the 16-truck fleet’s involvement continues very active indeed with local schools putting young drivers through the share-the-road paces with their equipment in various training efforts.

Over five-six years, hundreds of high-school students "have been a part of our 15-20-minute session, where we put them inside a tractor, show blind spots, have them walk around our long trialer, understand how to pass safely, understand following distance," as Liz put it.

Their 16-year-old has been through it, Liz added, and it gives the small fleet owners comfort to know this their fourth progeny starting out driving under their tutelage has gotten the education needed on safely sharing the road: https://overdriveonline.com/15833390

In this week's podcast, we're full speed ahead to the final round of this year's Small Fleet Championgship, to conclude Thursday at the annual conference of Champ sponsors the National Association of Small Trucking Companies. Otto Transfer is one of the four finalists traveling later this week to Nashville, joining another Transfer, David McKinney's Alabama-headquartered McKinney & Sons fleet in the 11-30-truck division bout.

In some ways, what Kevin Otto speaks to at the top of the podcast is the very goal of the Small Fleet Championship itself, to bring together owner-operated small fleets from disparate parts of the nation to share ideas, surface ways new and old of increasing profitability, and forge new connections that might not otherwise have ever been built. Congrats to our finalists, for certain, all making huge efforts this year to maintain and expand profits despite the many winds blowing hard against the grille.

Kevin and Liz Otto aren't sheltered from the storm. If you’re out at the NASTC event this week, ask him about the fuel spike early this year and what it did to his contracts. AI, too, and increasing "uberization" or "Amazonization" of freight -- outside of direct contracts, automation’s put real pressure on brokerage relationships the fleet has relied on for open-deck freight headed back toward the Minnesota home base.

"We get automated phone calls and obviously emails, and you don't build relationships anymore" with every brokers increasingly automating communication and vetting, carrier selection, Kevin said. Too often such brokers just say to themselves, "we've got a truck here, we're just going to use that one," he added. "That's not going to keep our roads safe."

The fleet’s doing a lot, at once, to counter the trend, to adjust to it with its own focus on safety and, truly, breaking through automation with hands-on customer service, in so many ways. Listen on for the Otto story as just a small piece of the many that have emerged from this Small Fleet Championship coverage. Find profiles of all the finalists and semi-finalists with plenty more to chew on via https://OverdriveOnline.com/small-fleet-champ.

Today on the podcast, I’m handing the mic over to my esteemed colleague and longtime Overdrive Extra contributor Paul Marhoefer and the many truckers he spoke to out at the 2026 edition of the TenFour D.C. truck show and driver appreciation and advocacy event out on the National Mall.

If you missed our coverage of Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administrator Derek Barrs’ appearance for a talk and town-hall affair there with owner-operators in attendance, read that here: https://overdriveonline.com/15836570

And listen for some of the audio of Barrs' talk, likewise plenty voices among truckers in attendance. Marhoefer canvassed owner-operator participants with a couple of a different questions on his mind. Namely:

Just what motivated them to spend the three days out on the Mall with their fellow operators?

And what were among the biggest issues on their minds?

Many in attendance, including Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh, sought to counterbalance to big weight more monied interests bring to advocacy and lobbying in the nation’s capitol.

"For far too long," as Pugh put it, "the reason nothing gets done in this town is because mega carriers and the American Trucking Associations were successful in convincing folks there was a massive driver shortage."

Longtime independent Artie Daniel Jr. drew the David and Goliath metaphor between the ragtag group assembled and big lobbying interests Pugh and Daniel himself invoked. Strides have been made, at least, as the shortage narrative has certainly blown apart at the highest levels of government, at least, over the last year.

And plenty other issues reared their heads from owner-operator participants in the event, from federal moves toward new broker transparency regulations to the notion of truly banning autonomous trucks and more basic well-being, given ever-tough economic conditions.

As one operator put it, simply: "I want a better liife. I'm missing something. I'm not happy anymore."

Daniel Snow, a longtime owner-operator whose "Goose" custom Freightliner has been well-known to regular Overdrive readers and listeners, outlined his thoughts on the biggest issues going given the inflation of the last several years.

“I think bad decisions are at the top of the list," he said. "There’s lots of things we can do to offset some of the cost -- the cost for operations is way too high. So I think we need to be smart about the decisions we make that eventually do cost us money.”

There’s a lot more where that came from.

Walk through it all with Marhoefer, who threads the needle through advocacy and activism at an event initially inspired by the 2017 ELD mandate protests, through on-the-ground realities that need change for the better for small fleets and independents, and through history, too, ultimately, with a collection of folks who’ve for almost 10 years now refused to sit as cynical observers on the sidelines when it comes to trucking improvement.

Off the top of this week's Overdrive Radio edition, a little of the voice of owner-operator Robert Forsyth, not bragging one bit about a very long career that stretches back to the 1970s and his pre-CDL chauffeur’s license, log-truck driving and more.

With as many times as he's traveled coast-to-coast over those decades, if he doesn't know how to get to where he's going without a GPS assist, he said, I "really don't need to go."

It's just a manner of saying there's not much he hasn't done when it comes to a reefer route throughout the U.S., today running the lane between Dallas-Fort Worth and Lewiston, Maine, for lontime biz partner brokers, then seasonal platform work between Maine and Florida for direct customers.

Forsyth was Overdrive's Trucker of the Month for September, and this week's podcast features parts of his talk through the biz and his history trucking with Senior Editor Matt Cole: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15836233/

In Cole's feature story about Forsyth last month (link above) he detailed what’s remained a well-profitable operation through fuel’s 2026 run-up, as Forsyth benefits from trust in those cusotmer partnerships built through years of high-quality service, and frank conversations about costs. He keeps watch of fuel's fluctuation and adjusts rates accordingly, renegotiated as often as possible. "They understand, they're buying fuel every day themselves," he said of his longtime customers.

With an agreement between two businesses, then, follow through, perform. It’s just a simple truth that owner-operator Forsyth keeps high in mind in everything he does. His theory of success, working now for him in business for decades, is based on simple core principals drilled into him at a young age.

"You're only as good as your word," he said. "If you agree to something, whether you're going to lose at it or not. You've got to honor what you say. If you make a bill, you've got to pay the bill."

Listen on for Forsyth's journey to a home base at the veritable center of the United States in Missouri after a Canadian childhood, then growth to multiple trucks only to find his perfect trucking business size at one man, one truck.

And no small number of miles trucked cost to coast and back between it all.

As mentioned in the podcast:

**The Partners in Business guide to beating back "predatory" tow rates and practices: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15737212

**Michelin's Advantage service/tire network for small fleets and owner-ops: https://business.michelinman.com/advantage

**The full collection of Trucker of the Month honorees in addition to Forsyth for 2026 so far: https://overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year

With this episode for Oct. 5, 2026, we're marking the big 10-4 day over the weekend with a look back at the 2017 ELD mandate protests that would inspire the very founding of the TenFour D.C. truck show and advocacy event on the Mall, just concluded for the '26 installment: https://overdriveonline.com/15836570

With the post that features the podcast at OverdriveOnline.com, find our own Long Haul Paul Marhoefer’s lookback on the D.C. events with a small fleet owner who was there, Mintu Pandher, owner of the Akal Energy fleet and truck stop, headquartered in Wyoming: https://overdriveonline.com/15836627

As Marhoefer noted of the time, the D.C. protest events in particular reverberated well beyond the city -- it was a moment when “good ol’ boy truckers joined forces with drivers from every race and creed to protest the mandate. Groups that hadn’t really spoken much before were in alignment."

Smal fleet owner-operator Mintu Pandher was among those speaking for truckers in D.C. that year, his pristine blue 2016 Pete staged outside the White House with a nearby sign that said, simply, “The independent trucker: We will not go away.” Looking back on it, in some ways Pandher sees that protest event not exactly as futile, but possibly mistargeted, as you'll hear in the podcast.

Yet there was a clear outcome, and not just of advocacy conducted in Washington, D.C. Way out West in California, the protest showing by Punjabi-American truckers was absolutely huge, inspiring newfound respect with the D.C. event as well, as then-trucker Binda Atwal told us for the Over the Road podcast you’ll hear today, too, originally published in 2020 and hostd by Long Haul Paul.

As mentioned:

**Coverage of ELD protest outcomes from the time: https://overdriveonline.com/14893319

**Mintu Pander's Akal Energy fleet: https://overdriveonline.com/14893826

**More of the Marhoefer-hosted Over the Road 2020 podcast series: https://overdriveonline.com/tag/over-the-road-podcast

"You've got to do something for your own fuel, or accept the consequences of not." --Howes lead chemist Jed Talbot

How do you know that what you’re getting from your neighborhood No. 2 diesel pump is quality fuel? The $6-and-more-per-gallon price isn’t going to tell you much, that’s for sure, and chemist Jed Talbot is on a mission to make sure it’s abundantly clear.

For this week’s Overdrive Radio podcast, we're dropping in with Talbot and Howes Products marketing lead Rich Guida for plenty detail about a brand-new diesel study showing wide variance in performance characteristics across the United States.

Early this year during the winter period, Howes sent three members of the company's long-running trucking-living-legend Hall of Fame out across the country -- Canada, too -- to collect diesel fuel samples straight from the pump:

**Trucker-songwriter Tony Justice, well-known for longtime Overdrive Radio listeners: https://overdriveonline.com/15832127

**Owner-operator Kate Whiting, known for her 1970s pristine W900 "Cherry Pie": https://overdriveonline.com/15542803

**"Trucker Josh" Giesbrecht, likewise an owner-operator with a huge Youtube following himself: https://overdriveonline.com/15670149

Back at the lab, Talbot and team then tested each sample for a variety of characteristics -- cloud point and cold filter plugging point, lubricity, biodesel and water content, flash point. Measurements varied widely. Full results via https://howesproducts.com/blog/article/diesel-fuel-test-what-15-diesel-pump-samples-revealed

All samples were labeled No. 2 diesel, yet some should have said something different, according to Talbot. One of the samples had a whopping 6% of biodiesel in it, and should have been labeled B5, for instance, and in terms of water content results weren’t much better, with big implications for wear parts in the fuel system. Fuel filters, too.

"Water in fuel, particularly in very tight tolerances," said Talbot, is "like molecular sandpaper. It's not good. It's really abrasive, particularly under pressure," also contributing to microbial growt. "So microbes don't grow in diesel. It won't support them. But if you've got a lot of suspended water now you've got a place for microbes to live all fat and happy."

What can you do about it? Listen on for ways to establish a baseline with treatments, in use by a majority of owner-operators in Overdrive’s audience year-round, according our research.

"When you think about the journey of fuel from the refinery to when you're pulling the handle," Rich Guida said, "it's on railcars. It's stored in places for a little while. Maybe it sits in warm temperature and then gets gets to a cold temperature and then it's in a truck traveling overland. So there's tons of ways water" and other contaminants could be introduced.

Various in lubricity measures, too, while none were truly out-of-spec with an HFRR wear scar above the standard, the variation was huge. In that case, the lower the better. Treatment can help reduce that measure, offering potential for extended life for injectors, fuel pumps, cylinder heads all.

"So it really boils down to this," Guida said. "It's kind of a crapshoot with what you're getting. And the best way to avoid that is to, to treat consistently and get into a routine."

Arbritrary. Capricious. Those two words are a principal basis for owner-operator Jorge Rivera Lujan and fellow petitioners’ challenge to FMCSA’s non-domiciled CDL rule. The rule itself is strongly supported by most Overdrive readers, and the petitioners’ challenge saw significant action in the D.C. federal appeals court last week Tuesday, September 15.

Tip of the hat to Overdrive’s own Alex Lockie for this early coverage of the discussions, laying out the reasoning plaintiffs' attorneys utilized to argue the arbritrary and capricious nature of the rule in efforts to knock it down entirely: https://overdriveonline.com/15834913

He's done a voluminous amount of work around the non-domiciled CDL phenomenon since the full extent of those licenses for foreign non-immigrant visitors to the United States became known last year. He did the research, offering this first attempt at a comprehensive public accounting of active non-domiciled lincenses last year: https://overdriveonline.com/15750917

And since then, with FMCSA’s moves to restrict eligibility last Fall, Lockie’s covered in-depth the legal ramifications as challenges emerged from non-domiciled operators themselves, including the named plaintiff on this case in Jorge Rivera Lujan. Regular Overdrive Radio listeners here have heard from Lujan directly, including this past Spring at the Mid-America Trucking Show. The owner-operator is a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipient, and he’s been in the U.S. since he was a child, yet remains a non-citizen.

Today on the podcast, sit in on the discussion amongst who argued last Thursday on his behalf, and in defense of FMCSA, before a three-judge panel in the D.C. federal appeals court. We learned a good bit from FMCSA’s attorney from the Justice Department, Simon Jerome, about the history of the non-domiciled CDL rules for non-citizens. Jerome noted the "safety gap" in foreign driving records the agency lived with until last year, when they sought the change after a series of crashes by non-domiciled drivers.

Fundamentally, as suggested above, the case hinges on what FMCSA did or didn’t do to adequately justify the rule that strips an estimated 194,000 non-citizen drivers from CDL eligibility. In the podcast, hear the crosstalk in full. It makes for a fascinating window on legal proceedings at work, with the fate of FMCSA’s rule change hanging in the balance.

As mentioned in the podcast, a timeline of events that led to the court proceeding last week: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15833346

Off the top of the podcast, the voice of Overdrive’s August Trucker of the Month Dee Zeeman, in a business partnership with wife, Bev, in the back office and hauling for now close to a decade now with authority as White Pine Transport. The name’s a combination of a couple different horse farms he remembers from his youth growing up in Utah, and as he tells up top, a name that just worked.

Yet for this installment of our Trucker of theYearr contenders’ series of podcasts, we’ll emphasize, of course, that’s there’s much more to a one-truck business than the name. The Zeemans have made real strides as independents in this their second such tour through business following their first in the 1990s. They truly follow through on promises made, doing the hard work and doing it right, in spite of all the challenges the business and life itself throw at them.

"We've developed a reputation, and we really try to get stuff there when it's supposed to be there," Bev noted.

If there is ever a problem, "we're old-school," Dee said. "We believe in commuinication" early and often.

Challenges have been real over what’s been a roughly 6M-mile, 40-plus-year career behind the wheel for Dee since he got his chauffer’s license in the early 1980s.

Roughly six years ago, he suffered what would ultimately be a mild stroke, in fact, and attributes a quick recovery, back on the horse in just several days, to more than the fact that Bev got him to the hospital near immediately.

"Intestinal fortitude," he said. "I wasn't going to let it get me down. To put it simply, I cowboy'd up and fought through it."

It wasn't the first time the pair have worked together through a big life change,as you’ll hear in their story.

The Zeemans were named Overdrive's August Truckers of the Month, the recognition putting them in running for the 2026 Overdrive Trucker of the Year award. Read our first feature story about them via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/15833020

Get your own business in the running through the end of this month: https://overdriveonline.com/toptrucker

Off the top of this Overdrive Radio edition, the voice of Atlantic Logistics CEO Rob Hooper talking about trust, responding specifically to a question about whether all the shipper, broker and carrier friction in today’s freight markets is driving wedges between the relationships.

Regular listeners well know what we're talking about -- cyber fraud and identity verificaitons pingpongig back and forth between the parties, slowing freight bookings as the opposite, distrust, breeds all around. Our big broker-and-carrier-vetting survey this year saw 66% of owner-operators name principally negative impacts after the rise in carrier vetting platforms specifically. Among them was roughly 1 in every 10 survey respondent owner-operators who called out as principal impact the wedge of distrust increased scrutiny continued to drive between them and brokerage partners.

Access the full survey results here: https://overdriveonline.com/15829986

In this week's Labor Day edition of the podcast, a look into the FTR Transportation Intelligence conference, an annual affair last week where late in the day Tuesday a rep from the National Motor Frieght Traffic Association, Joe Ohr, and the one and only Dale Prax, FreightValidate founder and now a strategic advisor to Truckstop.com, joined Hooper for this talk through issues of revenue fraud like double-brokering, increasingly sophisticated cargo theft rings, and what was on everybody’s mind Tuesday that first day of September after Departments of Transportation and Homeland Security announced the new White House fraud task force.

Prax gives some background on it from his perspective, and you can read a whole lot more about it from Overdrive's own Alex Lockie’s in follow-on reports:

**Initial announcement of CDL school sweeps, and task force: https://overdriveonline.com/15833705

**Targeted schools respond: https://overdriveonline.com/15834186

Prax calls back to 2023 when Vice President J.D. Vance was part of a group of Senators pushing for the idea of a fraud task force as a kind of “cop on the block” to police double-brokering and ID-theft-enabled revenue fraud, cargo theft by fraud, and the many other forms these interstate freight crimes take. Some credit can go to longtime transport attorney Hank Seaton for proferring the very idea of a task force years earlier, and for the current administration for advancing it in the current form: https://overdriveonline.com/15539812

Of course, as Prax also acknowledges, much of the meat of the announcement and subsequent press attention has been angled straight on policing CDL schools and immigration through English requirements and the like. Prax seems to read it as a way to garner more attention to the Dalilah’s Law legislation stalled in Congress and that would codify the FMCSA’s almost total ban of non-domiciled CDLs for non-citizens. The challenge against that rule is set for oral arguments in federal court just more than a week away at this point. Whether it will remain stading hangs in the balance.

Yet given Vance’s lead involvement on the task force, and the demonstrated concern expressed by the Senator in past over longstanding cargo-theft and revenue-fraud issues, here's hope we can expect at least more intense prosecutorial footing on those fronts in the coming years.

There’s plenty all truckers and other parties in legit freight transactions can do actively, too, as you’ll hear from Joe Ohr in particular in the panel. NMFTA has new threat-reporting and information sharing tools available that are free to participate in, detailed here.

**New NMFTA portal: https://nmfta.org/standards/cybersecurity/cybersecurity-resources/nmfta-threat-report-portal/

**Overdrive's guide to cargo theft prevention: https://overdriveonline.com/15769312

A tip of the hat off the top of this week’s Overdrive Radio edition to our social media coordinator Jazzmin Campbell, who shared yet another towing mishap occurring in the city of Charlotte, North Carolina. It bears all the hallmarks of a parking-lot trap, the driver reporting a bill for upward of $9,000 in fees after he said he exceeded a time limit at the lot on Sunset Road by about a half hour -- mind you, during the big winter storm that hit the city with record snowfall back at the tail end of January.

Judging by the reporting from the Charlotte TV station that had the story first, it’s unclear where exactly on Sunset Road in North Charlotte the lot in question was, but it’s certainly not the first time we’ve picked up on towing and botting shenanigans in that city and surrounding areas:

WSOC-TV's report: https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/charlotte-trucker-hit-with-9000-bill-after-exceeding-parking-limit-by-30-minutes/7IFIEUXET5GLXFZMQCTK4T7DY4/

Tow companies in nearby Gastonia, N.C., to the west and south of Charlotte may well have originated the region’s parking-lot-trap dynamics, where in past booting was quite common: https://www.overdriveonline.com/14894396

Just last year, the state of North Carolina explicitly banned the booting of commercial vehicles, regular readers will remember, yet private-tow tactics for parking enforcement clearly remain available to towing companies: https://overdriveonline.com/15749716

2025 Small Fleet Champ semi-finalist Mark Ledford’s small fleet early this year experienced a similar incident in Charlotte he and his driver were able to work their way out of utilizing the very terms of Charlotte’s towing ordinance: https://www.charlottenc.gov/cmpd/Community-Involvement/Local-Ordinances

If the lot or the tow company in question violates signage and other regs there, that could be a very simple way out of an incident with involvement of the authorities -- if the truck hasn't already been towed, of course.

And listen on for small fleet owner Robbie Turnage’s story of a tow gone bad -- and how he was able to, similarly, turn state law in Pennsylvania to his favor. Turnage’s tale is part of the roundtable conversation we conducted just prior to the 2025 Small Fleet Champ awards presentation at the National Association of Small Trucking Companies annual conference last year. We’re right in the middle of the 2025 entries research and judging round -- with announcements coming soon of the full slate of semi-finalist small fleets, certainly an exemplary, diverse group of owners this year.

For now, dig into this conversation with Turnage and his Turnage & Sons milk-tanker fleet, Scott Denmark and Scott Cruthis of Thomasville Funiture Xpress, Wes Oberman of Oberman Logistics, and the small fleet named for and owned by Clifford Hay.

As mentioned in the podcast:

**Overdrive’s guide to beating back outrageous tow invoices: https://overdriveonline.com/15737212

**Our Small Fleet Champ updates with all of the owners featured in the re-air portion of the podcast from November 2025: https://overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ

This week’s Overdrive Radio features Overdrive Senior Editor Matt Cole's talk with our July Trucker of the Month. Based just outside Baltimore, owner-operator Jeffrey Crise runs open-deck freight, loading equipment quite often out of the port there and, as Cole wrote in his story late last month, the owner’s smack dab in the middle of a business fresh start: https://overdriveonline.com/15831345

Care to guess how the "Crise" last name is pronounced? He and Overdrive Editor Todd Dills had a bit of a laugh over that this past weekend as he worked to put this episode together.

It's not like "crease," but another familiar word. Jeffrey "Cries," like a baby. Yet owner-operator Crise is nonetheless quick with a little chuckle remembering his first decade-plus-long run at a small fleet. Plenty others got a little bit of a laugh out of his company name and insignia on the doors during that first run at a small fleet. "People loved it," he said of the Hot Shootin's Haulin logo, Yosemite Sam featured prominently, on the sleeper of his units.

The name of the biz nodded to his start with an F450 hotshot more than a decade ago, growing to five units and drivers at its high point before tough conditions drove him to shutter the operation just a couple years ago now.

Today he’s back to hotshot flatbed work, pulling himself mostly with a Ram 3500, but likewise a Pete 579 now with a driver employed and at the wheel. His drive to push toward trucking success responds to improving conditions he felt he could see after just eight months away from the road.

He could have retired, he said, but past failures didn’t sit well with him -- he knew opportunity was knocking when freight markets looked like they were turning in 2025.

And Crise had learned plenty along the way, of course, maintained freight contacts with both familiar brokers and direct customers in the interim, all built on past performance -- bedrock on-time delivery and consistent communication, he stressed.

If you take one thing from owner-operator Jeffrey Crise’s experience, here's hope that particularly the multi-truck current and aspiring owners can really feel the energy behind a top goal of his -- to truly serve the drivers. Serve them better than he did with the prior version of his fleet.

He’s feeling good about prospects for that this year, he said.

There’s stll time to get your own business, or that of another owner you admire, in the running for the Trucker of the Year award 2026. We’ve got three more Trucker of the Month semi-finalists coming through October. Make a nomination, or enter your own 1-to-3-truck business, at https://OverdriveOnline.com/TopTrucker