Off the top of the Overdrive Radio podcast this week is the voice of fuel-payments provider Wex's Vice President of Global Anti-Financial Crimes William Fitzgerald, laying out a 1 in 12,000 transaction rate for detection of fraud over the company's entire fuel-payments network. That is, 1 in every 12,000 purchases are flagged as suspiscious, potentially fraudulent, and blocked in automated fashion among its millions upon millions of fuel transactions facilitated annually.

Translate that incidence to the roughly 350,000 fuel transactions National Association of Small Trucking Companies President David Owen knows move through the association’s own Quality Plus fuel network any given month, and that’s right at 30 transactions being held up by the system. William Fitzgerald was speaking at NASTC's annual conference to outline the evolving landscape of fuel fraud/theft for attendees and showcase tools within Wex's (and some other card providers') networks that are increasingly successful in helping carriers of all shapes and sizes eliminate fraud's impact. Along the way, too, the company's been able to reduce the rate of so-called "false positives," legimate fuel purchases held up by the card provider's systems. Fitzgerald's well aware such hold-ups can be particularly annoying, and unproductive. Illustrating the huge financial impact of stolen fuel, though, he asked this hypothetical question to a room of NASTC conference attendees:

"What would be an acceptable false-positive rate in your minds?" he asked. "How many good transactions would you be OK with me stopping to prevent a bad one?"

The goal is zero false positves, of course, as Wex and other card providers calibrate a variety of techs operating in the network's background to get there, in addition to more human-focused efforts aimed at education to prevent account takeovers and the like that can bring the biggest hits to a fuel buyer’s bottom line. Results from ongoing efforts at Wex in particular have been good in recent months, he said. "We've got overall, over the last 10 months, a 25% reduction in losses, a 32% reduction in false positives," and a big increase in detection, too, he said.

Those results he attributed largely to technical innovations in company’s network, some described in part in a recent paper authored by the company you'll find at this link: https://www.wexinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/WEX-Closed-Loop-Fleet-Card-White-Paper.pdf

But the human element in fraud prevention might be the biggest factor any size carrier can address to make the most gains in preventing losses, empowering themselves through self-education and passing that on to team members for those of you with more than just a single truck under your management. "We've seen the most yield" in fraud prevention, he said, "with education and empowerment."

Fitzgerald described efforts of Wex to illustrate the kinds of schemes that might result in infiltration of its own backend, including simulated phishing attacks through targeted fake emails designed to get a user to provide access to their login data with a goal of compromising accounts. Wex sends such emails to its own employees on occasion to lure them in, thus serving an educational purpose in awareness. Their most "successful" such an effort? An offer of "free Taylor Swift tickets. Everybody clicked on that," Fitzgerald said.

In the podcast, track through Fitzgerald's entire NASTC talk, tracking through those backend upgrades but also plenty more you can do to work with the company's team and tools in its system, like its SecureFuel solution, to prevent fuel theft. Likewise, should the worst, to work with law enforcement to apprehend the thieves.

Mentioned in the podcast:

**'Personal cyber hygiene' in age of social engineering hacks: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15755615

**More from NASTC's conference on insurance, ELD data: https://overdriveonline.com/15770374

This week's Overdrive Radio edition puts a wrap up our series featuring 2025 Trucker of the Year contenders with the story of Orleans, Indiana-headquartered John Penn, his one-truck business operating with authority and hauling finished furniture on multistop runs West and/or South from his home base, other brokered freight back.

He’s the owner of another power unit, too, that he keeps as a spare, both rigs Freightliner Cascadias he details in the podcast and in this in-depth feature about his business, where he was named the October 2025 Trucker of the Month: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15770500/trucker-of-the-month-reaps-10mpgplus-rewards-learning-growing

Both Cascadias feature specs that help him achieve maximum fuel mileage -- upward of nine miles per gallon in the older unit (10-speed manual transmission) and more than 10 mpg in his current 2019 model, with the DT12 automated manual transmission.

We didn’t know it when he entered our Trucker of the Year competition, but he’s also the newest member of Freightliner’s Team Run Smart group of owner-operators sharing their own successes in various ways with their Freightliner equipment for the benefit of anyone interested. Team Run Smart hadn’t yet officially intro’d him as part of the crew there when we published the above story about him. Reps confirmed he was going to be a part of it for sure, but what they didn’t tell us was they’d post his official intro video to their Youtube networks that very same day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFyerQQX7lY

Find him now at his profile page on the Team Run Smart site: https://www.freightliner.com/team-run-smart/pros/john-penn/

I’d encourage you, too, to track back through all of our Truckers of the Month and Trucker of the Year contenders for 2025 at the main page for the competition: https://overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year Plenty business best practice examples there, plenty to learn from in the stories of 10 exemplary owners this year. Keep an eye out there for the 2026 competition's entry page, where you can get in the running yourself in the coming weeks.

Though owner-operator Penn's modest about his success, it’s clear the owner’s doing quite a lot right with a very low operating ratio given his business’s efficiency, and with a home life that’s benefiting, too, as a result. Dive in with Penn from the very beginning, when he first got his CDL around the turn of the century, the start of a journey toward maximum trucking efficiency.

Today, a special edition of Overdrive Radio marks the federal Veterans Day holiday, commemorating the military service of so many around the United States. In the podcast, in particular, we'll honor the stories of two vets -- Army and Navy, respectively -- who are equally clear-eyed emphasizing what their service meant for their long careers in trucking business ownership.

After medically retiring from the Army as an E6 Staff Sergeant following deployment to Iraq during Desert Storm trucking as convoy security, Florida-headquartered (Ocala area) owner-operator Scott Reese operates Reese Services with his own authority, utilizing a 2021 Freightliner Cascadia. Reese also runs a box truck with a driver employed for it that operates more locally.

Roger Burdgette, meanwhile, is headquartered near the Savannah ports in Georgia as CEO of Podium Logistics. He's built the fleet to now 50 trucks, serving the container port but also flatbed needs of customers in the area.

Both business owners happen to be beneficiaries as veterans of the SelecTrucks Freightliner-affiliated dealer network’s "Proud to Serve" benefit program for veterans, offering essentially a cash credit on purchases of power units, factory-backed warranties and more at one of the now 44 SelecTrucks locations nationwide: https://www.selectrucks.com/special-offers/veterans-discount/

That program celebrates a significant milestone in its eight-year run since Proud to Serve was launched in 2017 as a way to give back to military servicemembers among SelecTrucks customers. As Daimler Trucks Remarketing President Chris Backeberg noted, the program’s now delivered more than $1 million worth in savings to military vets.

Each veteran’s used-truck purchase comes with $6,500 back with up to two options selected from:

**A down payment match

**A warranty upgrade

**And/or new tire purchase assistance.

In addition to the discount, SelecTrucks donates $500 for each qualifying truck purchase to a charitable organization supporting veterans. Total donations have reached more than $80,000 since 2022, including a $25,000 donation this year. Said Backeberg, “We’re proud to stand behind veteran entrepreneurs as they build their business. Saving these men and women over $1 million is our way of showing appreciation for their service and sacrifice.”

Via the podcast, dive into conversation with Scott Reese, whose partner dealer in Jacksonville, Florida, helped him out of more than one jam in recent years. That's in addition to delivering that $6,500 discount. The dealer was particularly helpful when Reese was diagnosed with cancer some years back and had to come off the road for a time.

Following Reese, Roger Burdette stresses how military service truly set him up with the self-discipline needed for a drive to entrepreneurship in trucking. The 50-truck Podium fleet isn't his first trucking-company rodeo, either, started up in 2018 after a previous fleet he grew to 30 trucks over more than a decade was sold to an interested buyer. Like Reese, he’s also benefited from the SelecTrucks "Proud to Serve" discount, with around 70% of his fleet procured from the dealer.

Both men offer recognition for the importance of Veterans Day for the country, and for them specifically, too. Roger Burdette personally remember those who gave much more than himself, as he put it, when the day rolls around each Fall. "When it rolls around I really think about those who had even more sacrifice than we did," he said. "There's a different day for that," he knows. Yet "there's different degrees of sacrifice, and that's huge."

This week's edition of Overdrive Radio drops into our awards ceremony October 23, 2025, with four Small Fleet Champs -- the owners of Clifford Hay Inc., Thomasville Funiture Xpress, Turnage & Sons, and Oberman Logistics all on hand for the event in Nashville, Tennessee. Before the dinnertime program got started that fine Thursday evening, Overdrive editor Todd Dills had the chance to sit down with all of the owners, with results in this wide-raning roundtable talk around what TFX co-owner Scott Denmark pointed out was more of a rectangular table in fact. Be that as it may, the pair of Scotts (Scott Cruthis is Denmark's co-owner) is joined here by Clifford Hay and Wes Oberman, likewise Robbie Turnage, all swapping stories and biz advice in response to two principal questions:

1. What's been your biggest business challenge in recent years, and how are you working to overcome it?

2. What's the best piece of advice you might give an aspiring small fleet owner?

Topics range across matters of trucking insurance hikes, investment to handle tire maintenance in-house for sizable savings and no small number of breakdown headaches and towing horror stories met head-on. Both Cruthis and Turnage own their own fifth-wheel tow hooks, giving the fleets capability to rescue a rig sidelined without getting dinged with a huge tow bill (and saving on maintenance by doing necessary work in-house,too).

Turnage told the story of a near $15K tow bill for a grand total of four miles of towing for a job the tow company claimed required a rotator and a hefty "EPA clean-up fee." Turned out the tow operator didn't even own a rotator and certainly didn't use one for this particular job. Turnage found it out when he showed up in Pennsylvania with an appointment to pick his truck up, and the tow operator put him off and put him off for hours before finally relinquishing the equipment.

How'd he get out of that one? Hear more about it in the podcast, along with a variety of other war stories from each of the individual owners. All are certainly doing a lot right, and with similarities amongst each other in many respects, though their operations couldn’t be more different. Turnage and Sons operates all company-owned equipment, hauling milk in big tankers. Thomasville Furniture Xpress run less-than truckload -- yes, furniture, with a mix company and owner-operator equipment. Oberman Logistics is all owner-operator, mostly platform freight run through brokerage partners, and Clifford Hay up in New York has six owned trucks and probably couldn't be more diverse in terms of trailers owned and utilized for a wide variety of freight.

Along the way, hear Overdrive's Dills introduce each fleet from the stage, and plenty advice from the champs about preparing to make any big move from one truck to many. There’s also an anecdote about a 579 that gets misstated as a vintage, just 1-million-mile Pete 359 -- with plenty of surprise, laughter and obvious camaraderie amongst the owners assembled, that’s certain. A lot to glean from the long careers of these five, and here's big congrats to all four and a note of thanks for joining us and event sponsor NASTC in the effort.

More about the finalists and the winners: https://www.overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ/article/15770012/overdrives-2025-small-fleet-champs-tfx-oberman-come-out-on-top

NASTC named its America's Best Drivers, Best Broker and Transportation Ambassadors at the conference as well, detail here: https://www.overdriveonline.com/life/article/15770618/nastcs-americas-best-drivers-team-new-ambassadors-named-for-2025

"Be on-time, put out the extra effort. ... No matter what you're going to be in life, be the best."

--Owner-operator John Treadway on his motivation through the years

Raised to “be the best” at whatever he did, owner-operator John Treadway is clearly working hard to achieve that lofty goal with his one-truck business. It's a two-truck business, actually, with Treadway trucking with his own authority mostly in a stunningly beautiful 1998 Peterbilt 379 he calls "Teal Appeal," but with a 2006-model Pete kept as a spare to run in winter, and as a failsafe to serve his central customer. Treadway was Overdrive's Trucker of the Month for September, featured in this story by Senior Editor Matt Cole, whose long talk with Treadway makes up the bulk of this week's podcast: https://overdriveonline.com/15767883

Owner-operator John Treadway hauls flowers year-round for a greenhouse operation near his base in Kokomo, Indiana, with his Tway (prounced TEE-Way) Rose Transport, now with authority for going on a decade after some decades more leased to other companies. His story stretches back to his start trucking with the 1990 purchase of a 1985 Kenworth Liberty Edition cabover he used to haul grain with his older brother, eventually moving on to pull flatbeds and a variety of other trailers. It’s reefer work these days for the flower operation, and since we saw his tractor at MATS early this year he’s put work into a 2017 Great Dane reefer to match the lines and colors of "Teal Appeal" 1998 Pete, as you’ll hear in the podcast today.

Yet so much of Treadway’s approach to trucking he traces to the time before he ever held a steering wheel, his life built in the business on top of those be-the-best values instilled at an early age along with admiration of truck drivers whose names he may have never known but from whom he garnered examples to which to aspire. Along with business brass tacks he keeps early lessons learned ever at the front his mind about what it takes to build success as a one-truck owner, and to have a little fun along the way.

"One of my good friends told me a long, long time ago, 'To be an owner-operator, that's a 364-day-a year job,'" Treadway said. "You're driving through the day, you're hauling the loads, but it doesn't stop. The weekend comes, and you've got repairs to do, and then on top of that if you want to add a piece of chrome or something, you have to try to fit all that in. There's just a grind to it. You've just gotta keep grinding, and keep moving forward."

Read about all of our 2025 Truckers of the Month, contenders for the annual prize of a Bostrom seat from Trucker of the Year sponsor Commercial Vehicle Group and a custom replica of the winner's tractor: https://overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year

Also in the podcast:

Shout to Overdrive's Small Fleet Champs announced Thursday, October 23, at the National Association of Small Trucking Companies’ annual conference in Nashville with fellow finalists on hand with the hundreds assembled for the opening night dinner and program: https://www.overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ/article/15770012/overdrives-2025-small-fleet-champs-tfx-oberman-come-out-on-top

Keep tuned for a roundtable talk with all in attendance conducted just ahead of the event in a near-future Overdrive Radio edition. No shortage of wisdom shared amongst this group, no doubt.

This week's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast features the semi-annual ATBS owner-operator income benchmarking session delivered in late September by ATBS Vice President Mike Hosted. The audio contains the full presentation, but know that there's a video version accessible via the Youtube version at this link: https://youtu.be/CYxCHAb1RnY

To follow along with the audio here, download a bevy of detailed slides charting cost, revenue and income trends among ATBS's tens of thousands of owner-operator clientele at this link: https://overdriveonline.com/15769723

There’s plenty in the way of trends analysis showing where we've been up to the present moment in the wider freight economy in Hosted's talk. Since the COVD run-up in freight and rates, though, we suspect most owner-operators know where that’s gone. Hosted put it pretty plainly, looking at contract freight volumes and rates at a certain point in the presentation that you’ll hear.

"Now we've been contractingi in frieght volume for the last two and a half years," he said. It’s been about the longest contraction (though not always happening quickly these last years) that he and many others have ever seen. There’s hope in some ways for a turnaround, given what he called a measure of stability freight-volume-wise seen in some of the numbers lately. Likewise, hopes for a hit to trucking capacity via the Trump administration's foreign-domiciled drver credentialing rule changes -- or another factor. Not that Hosted plays much of the old prognosticating game this time around.

"I keep hearing middle of next year, second half of next year," he said, but "i've been hearing that for three years now. I'm tired of saying that. I don't know when things are going to get better," fundamentally. Control what you can control, he added, to rein in costs and keep an eye on generating revenue above and beyond them.

Hosted has made an effort in recent times to emphasize what’s know as contribution margin, a measure of total revenues incoming minus variable costs incurred. That’d be your fuel costs, tires, maintenance generally, anything you spend to keep the equipment moving down the road to generate that revenue. The contribution margin figure can be used monthly or weekly to help determine just when you’ve met your fixed costs for the same period. Fixed costs are incurred at time intervals and are what they’re called in the very name – fixed, predictable. Know your contribution margin as closely as possible and you can, on an ongoing basis, know when you’ve met your fixed costs for a given month, for instance, and all the contribution margin earned thereafter during that period is pure profit.

"The important thing is when you hit that fixed cost, your profit per mile is through the roof," he said.

Owner-operators think about costs, revenues and profit in so many ways, but Hosted wagers this approach could help in choosing freight, and motivating an owner-op to strike when the iron is hot, as it were, not in the freight market broadly but in the run of your own day-to-day business.

ATBS is coproducer of Overdrive's Partners in Business, which you can access via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/pib

The owner-operator business services provider is accessible via its website: https://atbs.com

Off the top of this week's Overdrive Radio episode one thing's clear. Longtime Alaska-based truck driver Lisa Kelly is now a business owner. That's right, in the very long time since Overdrive editor Todd Dills last spoke to her (though not the last time you read about her in Overdrive), she bought a 2019 Peterbilt 389 and leased on with a company to work Alaska's Dalton Highway (the "Haul Road," as its known): https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/14874578/haul-road-to-the-himalayas-interviewing-lisa-kelly

It's also the 389 she's hoping to earn money enough to either repair or replace as shown in episode 1 of the brand-new season of the History Channel's "Ice Road Truckers" franchise, back after a long hiatus. Owner-operator Kelly's got long history with the show, part of the first seasons that were filmed in Alaska after it got its start along routes partially on frozen lakes in far northern Manitoba in 2007.

She couldn't talk publicly about the fleet she's leased to today, per an agreement with the owner when she decided to go back to IRT, yet she was willing to share her own business's name. "I'm Arctic Fox Trucking," she said, and yeah, there's a story there.

"Back in the day when we were filming in Alaska, Season Three," she said, the Arctic Fox moniker was bestowed upon her by a young woman among the show's producers, one among many nicknames passed around for cast and crew on the show. "She thought it would be funny," Kelly added, yet "I didn't get it" at first. Finally, though, she did, perhaps when Esquire magazine dubbed her the "sexiest trucker alive" in a headline back in 2010, coupled with photos of Kelly and the Kenworth she drove for well-known Alaska-headquartered Carlile Transportation.

For all such attention she got back in those days, it was another quality that stood out perhaps more prominently -- a no-nonsense attitude toward the work of trucking. It all ended with her in a role as something of a de facto ambassador to the world for North American hauling.

What's life been like for her since? Catch plenty more about all of that, including a good bit of time away from the road before buying that Peterbilt, in the podcast. The current "Ice Road Truckers" season -- find two episodes available for streaming today via this link: https://www.history.com/shows/ice-road-truckers -- features a cast of two other haulers with Kelly working for Operations Manager Bill Dahn's Muskie Creek Ltd. company, hauling north on six weeks' worth of winter roads to communities otherwise cut off from land routes. The first episodes also features Harris and Sons Transportation owner and operator Shaun Harris and his sons Riley and Zach, as they survey ice that just doesn't seem to be firming up fast as usual, with the work piling up for the season west in Saskatchewan.

As always for the reality-TV franchise, there’s plenty drama in those first couple episodes, offering an entertaining window into a brand of trucking that’s certainly more man v. nature than most.

In the podcast, drop into Kelly's story of how she came to truck ownership some years after the end of the "Ice Road Truckers" original run, as the owner-operator takes us back to her time as a Carlile Trasportation company driver, then all that’s happened since. Short version, as it were, of a long, long story.

"A lot happened, and nothing happened," she laughed, to start it off.

No news has been bigger in trucking this year than the DOT’s announcement Friday, September 26, of changes to the rules around non-domiciled CDL issuance, effective now: https://www.overdriveonline.com/regulations/article/15767991/fmcsa-to-force-nearly-200k-nondomiciled-cdl-holders-out-of-trucking

New restrictions on issuance hold potential to limit foreign-domiciled CDL drivers' ability to work OTR in the U.S. The influx of asylum seekers into the country in recent years has meant a lot of those asylum seekers ended up getting those non-domiciled CDLs. Going forward, they won’t, unless they have an employer-sponsored visa for temporary work in the United States.

The same day DOT announced the changes, likewise initial results from its ongoing audit of state CDL programs around non-domciled CDL issuance, our own Matt Cole was out at the Guilty by Association Truck Show in Joplin, Missouri, where he reported from a sort of listening session hosted at the event by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association and featuring questions and commentary from owner-operators in attendance. Responses came from FMCSA’s own Senior Policy Advisor Michael Hampton.

This week's episode features a good near-hour’s worth of audio from the session, and applause lines weren't hard to come by -- rare for a regulatory session, that's certain. One came fairly early on in response to a commenting owner-operator's contention that, as was noted by many Overdrive readers earlier this year, maybe a non-domiciled CDL shouldn’t even exist, particularly as an option for a non-immigrant in the country with temporary status: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15747114

Perhaps the biggest applause line, though, came when FMCSA's own Michael Hampton contended that more hours of service flexibility would result in better safety, as the agency readies two studies of flexibility enhancements we highlighted two weeks back here on the podcast: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15755974

Hampton urged truckers to participate in those studies when they get rolling -- the agency will need data to help it get further changes to the split-sleeper rules, and/or a 14-hour clock pause button, across the finish line in future. Participation’s going to be paramount to analyzing safety impacts and, with any luck, truly showing that Hampton in his contention is in fact correct.

As also mentioned in the podcast:

**Big congrats to Overdrive's four 2025 Small Fleet Champ finalists! Recent announcement: https://overdriveonline.com/15768558

**DOT OIG's audit of oversight of CDL skills testing and training: https://overdriveonline.com/15755980 (second brief down the page)

One of the trucking industry's biggest events, the biennial Guilty by Association Truck Show at 4 State Trucks in Joplin, Missouri, is officially under way at Exit 4 off I-44.

With hundreds of trucks in attendance (organizers expect 800+ to participate in the Saturday night convoy), the massive show sprawls across multiple businesses, including 4 State Trucks itself, the Joplin 44 Petro and Pilot truck stops across state highway 43, and more.

No matter what your taste in trucks is, you're certain to find what you like on display. There's no shortage of antiques, cabovers, Peterbilts, Kenworths and everything in between. Most of the trucks are no doubt workers, but there are also some true showpieces on display: https://www.overdriveonline.com/custom-rigs/podcast/15767972/guilty-by-association-truck-show-under-way-in-joplin

In addition to the beautiful iron exhibited, there's plenty to do around the show, including big-rig burnouts, a truck and tractor pull, concerts, Trucker Olympics and more. Friday morning, officials from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration were on hand for a Q&A with attendees. See more from that next week. For now, drop into this Overdrive Radio conversation with Overdrive Senior Editor Matt Cole, on hand covering the show after a round of rough weather had participants hard at work day 1 Thursday, September 26.

As noted in the show:

**The big news from DOT around non-domiciled CDL issuance to foreign drivers: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15767991

**David Foster's 2005 W900L as pictured way back in 2017 (with rainbow): https://www.overdriveonline.com/custom-rigs/article/14891552/dave-fosters-2005-kenworth-w900l

**Enter Overdrive's Pride & Polish by October 1 to compete in our own virtual truck show: https://www.overdriveonline.com/page/2025-pp

How might truckers get back a measure of flexibility in the hours of service rules, such as that enjoyed by so many owner-operators of past generations? That is, the ability to split the 10-hour required rest period into two periods of any length they want. That’s the option favored by a whopping 88% of readers who responded to Overdrive polling around the subject this time last year, with results published earlier in the year showing most readers wanted the ability just to split as they saw fit, fundamentally.

Since the 14-hour duty window came into play more than two decades ago, well before the time of electronic logging device mandate's implementation in 2017, greater duty-window and/or rest period flexibility has been owner-operators' cardinal ask of regulators when it comes to the hours of service.

After trucker appreciation week last week, we might see a path forward to it. In this Overdrive Radio edition, Chief Editor Todd Dills and Matt Cole break down the details of the DOT and FMCSA's announcement to start truck appreciation week last week of two proposed pilot programs to fully test two different options for split flexibility.

It’s not often we start the annual appreciation week with something other than a free soda at a truck stop or other deal from a vendor or supplier to write about. Yet that was the case for Cole last week Monday, when DOT announced formal proposals to conduct those safety-efficacy studies. One's the split-as-you-see fit option of up to 5/5-hour sleeper splits, the other a daily up-to-three-hour pause button, spot to speak, for the 14-hour clock.

The news wasn't entirely unexpected, nontheless. The formal proposals had been teased back in June as part of what the DOT called a “Pro Trucker” package of efforts. The formal proposals open up a comment period on how regulators might set up and conduct the programs, each of which will be open to more than 250 drivers to participate: https://www.overdriveonline.com/hours-of-service/article/15755537/what-fmcsas-hoursofservice-flexibility-pilot-programs-could-look-like

We’re certainly months out from interested participants being able to apply to take part, and given each test could take years to bring to fruition, it could be quite some time before any subsequent regulatory action is taken. That is, unless another federal body pushes the ball more quickly forward, as Cole puts it in the podcast, and "Congress were to get involved."

Absent Congressional directive to take regulatory action, further hours flexibilities for all drivers aren’t likely in the cards before the next decade rolls around after these studies conclude -- depending on results, of course. That timeline takes us into whatever administration follows the current one.

"Personally I don't see this as necessarily a partisan issue," said Cole. "If a Democratic Administration were to come in" come 2029, he felt FMCSA wouldn't be likely to wholesale abandon work put into potential new flexibilities. After all, some of groundwork for the 2020 split-sleeper enhancements was put in under the Obama administration.

If these two studies show positive or even neutral safety impacts for participating truckers, it might really get things moving toward change for the next administration's FMCSA.

Where to read and comment on the proposals, through mid-November: **Split-sleeper program: https://www.regulations.gov/document/FMCSA-2025-0193-0001

**Split-duty program: https://www.regulations.gov/document/FMCSA-2025-0194-0001

More on the 2020 split-sleeper change, which itself offered a boost in duty-pause and split flexibility: https://www.overdriveonline.com/partners-in-business/safety-compliance/video/15737159/significant-hos-change-fmcsas-2020-splitsleeper-provisions