Overdrive Radio

When we polled owner-operators about a year ago on recent-history improvement, or lack thereof, in detention time along their routes and at their customers, a huge majority noted the situation they'd seen at docks hadn’t improved to any noticeable degree in recent years. Forty percent of all poll respondents at the time in fact said detention had gotten worse for them: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-extra/article/15544369/how-to-calculate-detention-rate-for-owneroperator-business

If the American Transportation Research Institute's new look at detention is correct, though, waits to load/unload are getting at least marginally better for the average driver out there, if not the majority of Overdrive’s largely independent owner-operator readers.

In this week's Overdrive Radio edition, track back through Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole's reporting on ATRI's "Cost and consequences of truck driver detention" study: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15683714/how-detention-time-impacted-trucking-companies-drivers-in-2023

The ATRI study's topline finding estimated trucking writ large lost $15 billion to detention at shippers and receivers in 2023. Yes, $15 billion with a B. If you consider the American Trucking Associations' annual revenue figure for the entirety of the trucking industry at nearly a trillion (ATA's 2023 estimate was $987 billion), that $15 billion is worth a full 1.5% of the entire revenues generated by trucking companies.

In the podcast, we break down the headline-grabbing numbers and how ATRI got to them with its 2023 detention-impacts estimate, likewise what owners and operators can do to put a dent in their own detention problems. Some of it’s obvious -- drop/hook situations, such as you can engineer them, will help -- but a lot is difficult, particularly the customer relations management that might truly make shippers and receivers feel the burden of their inefficiencies with detention fees charged.

And then actually collected.

As it stands today, trucking writ large tackles this issue by half measures, quite literally collecting invoiced detention fees only about half the time, ATRI found.

More on the detention subject:

**Recent OOIDA member survey: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15665203/ooida-member-surveys-on-detention-time-rates-deliver-ops-insight

**FMCSA plans new study, quandary for owner-ops working with brokers: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-extra/article/15638339/ownerops-weigh-in-on-fmcsas-detentiontime-study-efforts

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.

"Some guys customize their truck via paint, chrome, lights, and things like that. I customize my truck to make it a more comfortable place to be, a more profitable truck, a more efficient truck." --Owner-operator Alan Kitzhaber

It's another rewinder of sorts for this week in the Overdrive Radio podcast series. If you missed the news last week Tuesday, owner-operator Alan Kitzhaber out of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, was honored as our August Trucker of the Month, putting him in the running for Overdrive’s Trucker of the Year award with his three-plus decades trucking and 4 million miles logged behind the wheel of his long-running 1995 Kenworth T600: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15681362/meticulous-maintenance-efficiency-trucker-of-the-month

Listeners have heard Kitzhaber in recent memory, of course, when he passed the 4-million-mile mark on the T600’s odometer in May we aired this talk originally in July: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15679534/4-million-miles-in-a-95-kw-t600-owneroperator-alan-kitzhaber

For those who missed the talk, this week hear Kitzhaber on his approach to keeping that rig running right these past decades and so many miles.

And: we’re at the final sprint for the Trucker of the Year award program for 2024. Nominations will close at the end of the month, and we’ve got just two semi-finalist slots left for a chance to win a brand-new seat, up to a $2,500 value, from Trucker of the Year award sponsor Bostrom Seating, a trip to and recognition at the Mid-America Trucking Show, various other prizes, and more. If you or another deserving owner want to put your business in the running, visit https://OverdriveOnline.com/toptrucker to do that.

Kitzhaber's not the first owner Overdrive Radio listeners have heard who's done similar -- "Mustang" Mike Crawford crossed 4 million in his 1994 Freightliner (12.7 Detroit-powered) back in 2022: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/15291488/mike-mustang-crawfords-1994-freightliner-4-million-safe-miles

(Incidentally, Overdrive editor Todd Dills spoke with Crawford July 1 as he hitting the Prime yard in Springfield at the end of his final run before retirement with a grand total of 4,159,910 miles in the rear view of the Freightliner. More on Crawford’s final run in a future podcast.)

Owner-operator Alan Kitzhaber’s career stretches back to 1990, his time as owner-operator some years on with Millis Transfer, where he first took the reins of the then-brand-new 1995 Kenworth T600 as a company driver. He bought the truck from the company itself, then, a few years later.

Since then, he's been laser-focused on turning that truck into a profit-making machine, and meticulous with record-keeping in no small way. As suggested by the quote at the top, too, plenty modifications through the years have allowed him to excel to the point of achieving well more than 8 mpg for a fuel mileage average several years running this past decade.

There’s a lot to those modifications he’s made, for certain, detailed in today’s episode. And 4 million miles is a very long way. More than 8 times to the moon and back. At roughly 60 miles per hour it’d take you well past the hard end of the 14-hour clock to do it at 66,666 hours. We’ll track back through Kitzhaber’s history a little more quickly than that today on the podcast, along the way learning plenty about just how the owner-operator kept that Cat-powered T600 humming efficiently for so very long.

As mentioned in the podcast, Caterpillar's interview with Kitzhaber for its Million Mile Club when he crossed 3 million: https://www.cat.com/en_US/articles/cat-truck-engine-articles/million-miler-alan-kitzhaber.html

Gordon Alkire's closed greasing system: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/14877182/csa-proofing-part-two-closed-greasing-system

With the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s annual Brake Safety Week inspection initiative kicking off August 26 with stepped-up brake checks and inspections, generally, in jurisdictions across North America, we’re looking back at a podcast from earlier in the year – February 2024 to be exact. The episode featured Wisconsin-headquartered owner-operator Warren McCurdy and a central point of view about what he feels the roadside inspection system was designed for. Something that’s, well, gotten a little off track with how states, the FMCSA, and some fleets treat so-called “safey scores” derived from inspections and associated violations.

As you’re hauling this week, if you get a quote unquote “assist” from an inspector out there, take note of the approach he or she takes. Is it “prevention” of accidents that is the ultimate goal?

McCurdy, at the top of the podcast, made clear his bone to pick with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's CSA scoring program and all its ripple effects throughout trucking and roadside inspection systems. After a trailer tire lost air in transit sufficient to take the tire off the rim -- the trailer empty, the tire problem unnoticed by McCurdy before inspection -- the owner-operator's leasing carrier assessed points for the violation modeled on the FMCSA's internal Driver Safety Measurement System nearly enough to void McCurdy's lease.

This sort of "accountability" isn't, the owner-operator felt, what roadside inspections were designed for. The inspector in this case in Washington State did his job to the letter, and caught the in-transit flattened tire in plenty time to save any real damaging outcome.

For all that, McCurdy is thankful. "I think that these inspections are good. They should be preventative things," he said. "Nobody wants to go down the road with flat tires."

Yet, he added, "I don't think we should be penalized for something that is not something that you did intentionally." That goes for the motor carrier as well. There's a reason carriers like his own assess those points -- because they are incurring the same level of severity weighting in the Carrier SMS.

Potential changes to the Carrier SMS notwithstanding (FMCSA isn't looking at those same changes for the Driver SMS), the podcast this week dives back into what’s at issue in cases like these, in which carriers subject to the severity weighting system for violations pass that on, with their own systems to hold drivers and owner-operators to a degree of accountability themselves, relying on the federal points system to assess and prevent damage to their own scores.

Susan McCurdy tried her hand at the DataQs system in a vain attempt to contain the damage in this case by challenging the violation. But given the inspector was doing what he should have done here -- alerting McCurdy to the problem tire on his trailer, conducting an inspection, then reporting the results into the federal system as required -- there was nothing DataQs was going to be able to help correct about the fundamental nature of the situation.

More fundamentally, though, it’s the very nature of the CSA scoring system that makes accountability problematic for owner-operator McCurdy here. Nobody indeed intends to run around with flat tires. With respect to any violation, McCurdy urges regulators take a long hard look at what they’re holding carriers and drivers accountable for by scoring them as they do.

More in Overdrive's long-running CSA's Data Trail series: http://overdriveonline.com/csas-data-trail

Find plenty in the way of brakes-related maintenance and inspection resources at this page: https://www.overdriveonline.com/maintenance/article/14875428/tractor-trailer-maintenance-for-ownerops-to-outrun-inspectors

It was no doubt a bittersweet last weekend in Waupun, Wisconsin, at what could well be the final edition of the decades-running Waupun Truck-N-Show, where Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole was on hand talking to many among the owner-operators and other truckers in attendance: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-extra/article/15681420/final-waupun-trucknshow-kicks-off

One such was Dane Wisniewski, owner of three-truck small fleet HDR, LLC, headquartered there in the state. Owner Wisniewski recalled fondly his time attending the show during every single one of his years in business from the time he started with just one truck.

"I hope that somebody maybe takes it over," he said about prospects for the show to continue past this year, offering a challenge to those among his own younger generation of truck owners. "The younger generation such as I that's coming through the ranks needs to step up."

This edition of Overdrive Radio podcast takes even more of the temperature among owners out at the Waupun show not only as it relates to the kind of wistfulness -- with a challenge to the next generation -- coming from owner-operator Wisniewski about the show's future prospects itself. August 22 is coming fast, and on that day we’re hosting an online session geared toward exchanging ideas around building trucking business to weather the inevitable ups and downs of the business cycles: https://fusable.zoom.us/webinar/register/7917212359500/WN_DKU8Uka_QVyvEVqCSBdAjA#/registration

Given that, Cole asked five owners you’ll hear from today some of the same questions: What have they done in response to the current, long-ongoing freight slump?

Is there any hope that this year’s presidential election’s conclusion might deliver certainty to the spenders out there such that freight might improve significantly in the years to come?

In other words, is there a chance the prognosticators foreseeing growth in 2025, rather than full-blown economic recession, could be right, with the better political certainty delivering freight market improvements?

Settle in for a lightning round on micro- and macro-trucking economics, as it were, from the point of an ag-heavy group of owner-operators at the Waupun show. We’ll hear along the way from:

**Brett Buske, hauling in a custom 379 that's part of his and his father's seven-truck small fleet.

**Owner-operator Brian Bucenell, leased to Drake Hauling pulling a hopper.

**The father and son small fleet of Dan and Daniel Linn, Linn Acres Farms out of Bucyros, Ohio.

**Wisconsin-headquartered HDR small fleet and HDL brokerage owner Dan Wiesniewski, who showed a 2007 Kenworth W900L at Waupun.

And finally, one Nate Stone, who shares at least one trait in common with our August 22-set panelist owner-operator ilya Denisenko in that he’s started his owner-operator business at perhaps the most opportune of inopportune times, if that makes sense. That is, right at the bottom of the market. It’s kind of like that old Frank Sinatra song about New York City. If you can make there, at the bottom, with profit to show for it ... well, you might be able to make it anywhere.

Read more about the August 22 panel discussion set for 1 p.m. Central time:

**https://www.overdriveonline.com/15680141

**https://www.overdriveonline.com/15681671

Register to attend live and/or catch the replay: https://fusable.zoom.us/webinar/register/7917212359500/WN_DKU8Uka_QVyvEVqCSBdAjA#/registration

"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.

This week on the podcast, we're diving in headfirst to the history of Wisconsin-headquartered owner-operator Mike Nichols, Overdrive's July Trucker of the Month and profiled recently in our Trucker of the Year semi-finalist series by Matt Cole: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15680591/trucker-of-the-month-mike-nichols-knows-limits-hones-strengths

As Cole wrote about the owner, Nichols pulls leased to bulk carrier Wayne Transports, for most of the last six years running. And the owner well knows his strengths and weaknesses, and has built his business to hum with that in mind. His prioritization of effective partnerships (both on the freight side and with a trusted maintenance partner nearby his home, among other business areas) have his one-truck business plenty profitable even through the difficulties of these last years.

Wayne Transports, where he’s specialized in the dry bulk division, is a big part of that.

His was a long road to get to this point, though, and today we’ll run through the twists and turns of a career that stretches back to his first taste of truck ownership almost four decades ago.

As mentioned in the podcast:

**Nichols isn't the first owner-operator to benefit from Wisconsin's unique Lemon Law and its application to commercial trucks: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/14875197/lemon-aid

**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.

More, today, from Overdrive Editor Todd Dills's run with Josh Gentry. Gentry’s the son of country music titan Alabama’s founding member and bassist Teddy Gentry. Today, we dive into the history of the band with some of the hands at its headquarters in Ft. Payne, Alabama, around which all three founding members -- Gentry, lead vocalist Randy Owen, and the late guitarist Jeff Cook -- all grew up and kept ties to over all the years of chart-toppers, touring, and all the trucking involved with the operation.

Part 1 of the podcast: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15680069/roll-on-alabama-ft-paynenashville-with-trucker-josh-gentry

As noted in Part 1, the Kenworth company is sponsoring Alabama’s current tour -- the "Roll On II North America Tour," using the name of Alabama's trucking-song classic "Roll On (18 Wheeler)." Kenworth’s sponsorship rekindles an old relationship between the band and the truck company. Founding member Teddy Gentry called the original relationship a product of necessity back during the height of the band’s popularity, when he said the tour was supported by as many as five tractor-trailers full to the gills with equipment the band’s operation toted from place to place. He can’t recall just how it started, but “we needed trucks," he said, "and we were exploding on the scene as far as the music goes." Teddy Gentry called it certainly a “good promotion for them,” Kenworth, too, with Alabama trailers festooned with band insignia pulled across North America by Kenworth.

It was good for the band, too, recalled Teddy Gentry, leading to Alabama featuring in the driver-tribute show year after year at the Mid-America Trucking Show through the late 1980s up through an official farewell tour in the early 2000s.

This rekindled sponsorship, Gentry added, has been great to “reunite a relationship that works, and especially that my son’s involved,” he said.

For Josh Gentry, his father felt, trucking with the band and family is like “a dream come true” in some ways.

Josh’s own words underscore that, to an extent, reflecting during our run in the single 2021 Kenworth T680 that powers the Alabama-controlled portion of the tour today that, like so many an owner-operator and driver the nation over, he takes pride in doing what he does.

If you missed last week’s podcast, you’re going to hear Josh Gentry today speaking on the Thursday ahead of Alabama’s Friday, July 19, show at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. The bulk of the talk was recorded in-cab with Gentry on the haul up to Nashville from band headquarters in Ft. Payne, where we also spoke with staff about their longevity working for the group and memories of the past supporting their relationship with their fans and the many, many tours.

And we’ll drop in at the load site in Nashville where Alabama’s gear is housed, and where the Josh Gentry hauled into to fill the wrapped 48-foot Great Dane show trailer to stage that Thursday night at Bridgestone. Tour operations managers and crew there spoke to all manner of aspects of Josh Gentry’s and their own work for the band, and the tight relationship between father and son Gentry as well.

Dive into this on-highway portrait of country music titans Alabama, with destination a show that would see something you don’t see every day, that’s sure. It opened with a Kenworth video that, in essence, is a tribute to the importance of American trucking. That video ended with a message, in this case sent out to 20,000 people all in one very, very big room: “Thank you to drivers everywhere,” it read. “Roll On.”

Also as noted in the podcast. Find where you can register for our live August 22 roundtable session detailing how to survive, even thrive through trucking down cycles: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15680141/how-owneroperators-can-build-business-for-truckings-down-cycles

Thursday, July 18, would be a short day of work for operator Josh Gentry, starting at a leisurely 10 a.m. in Fort Payne, Alabama, outside the Quality Inn in town. There, Gentry met Overdrive Radio host Todd Dills to get rolling, the pair starting the day in Gentry's Chevrolet en route to the site of an old auto dealership in town that, since the mid-1980s, has been the home base of the fan club for longtime country-rock group Alabama. It's also home base for the group's tour truck, in which Gentry was about to set out on a run.

Josh Gentry is son of one of the last two founding members in the band, bassist and harmony singer Teddy Gentry. Josh, after years pursuing music himself, then hauling grain around his home region (some of those years as an owner-operator), today serves as hauler of Alabama’s touring operation, moved in a single truck and 48-foot Great Dane show trailer emblazoned with the band’s insignia and the "Roll On II North America Tour" logo.

That truck, a 2021 Kenworth T680 detailed in this week's podcast, rekindles an old partnership between the Alabama group and the Kenworth company, dormant after an official farewell tour in the early part of this century. As you’ll hear on this run to Nashville to load in for Alabama's July 19 show at Bridgestone arena, Kenworth’s relationship with the band tracks back to the 1980s, when the tour operation was as many as four trucks and trailers, and the band was at the height of its popularity with big hits like "Mountain Music," "Tennessee River" and, yes, the classic "Roll On (18 wheeler)," in past named by Overdrive readers in the top five for best trucking song of all time: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/14875984/these-are-the-top-10-trucking-songs-of-all-time

Gentry's come full circle with his growing involvement in the tour operation, after a childhood spent enamoured by all things trucking and immersed in his father's band's music.

Despite that long history, though, there's still opportunity for new experiences. By 11 a.m. Thursday last week he and Dills were pulling out with a lightly loaded trailer toward the Soundcheck facility’s docks to pick up more gear situated a very-short haul across the river from downtown.

As the truck and trailer merged onto I-59 toward Chattanooga from Ft. Payne that morning, just as Dills readying his audio recorder for the talk with Gentry, a voice came over the radio -- "Roll on, Alabama!" -- invoking the classic trucking song.

Gentry called tour manager Jeff Davis to mark the moment and give him an update on progress toward Nashville for load and staging. Yet the over-the-air atta-boy wasn’t the very first bit of attention the wrapped truck and trailer have gotten over going on two years Gentry's been guiding the tour, taking him as far as, most recently, North Dakota and into Manitoba and elsewhere in Canada.

Dive into Josh Gentry’s trucking history and otherwise in this first episode featuring Overdrive's talk with the operator, the principal interests of his life to date all coming together now in live entertainment hauling with the family business.

Catch more views of the truck and trailer, and from the Friday, July 19, live show in Nashville here: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15680069/roll-on-alabama-ft-paynenashville-with-trucker-josh-gentry

Find all episodes of Overdrive Radio via https://overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio

"Some guys customize their truck via paint, chrome, lights, and things like that. I customize my truck to make it a more comfortable place to be, a more profitable truck, a more efficient truck." --Owner-operator Alan Kitzhaber

May 2024 was a big month for owner-operator Alan Kitzhaber, running with his authority as Oakridge Transport out of a home base in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, now for getting on a decade and a half. That month, he celebrated with family the graduation of one of his brothers with a Master’s degree in counseling, that brother’s son’s completion of a PhD in chemistry, and graduation of the brother’s daughter from high school.

Owner-operator Kitzhaber himself, treated for prostate cancer earlier in the year, was celebrating an undetectable blood test marking his freedom from that condition. He put a light blue ribbon in the icing on a brownie cake he made as they all got together at his brother’s house to celebrate.

Just what else Kitzhaber put on that cake, which you can see in the cover image for this Overdrive Radio edition, is the reason you're hearing Alan today. Also in May, Alan Kitzhaber completed a remarkable feat in his 1995 Kenworth T600, Cat 3406E-powered. He crossed the 4-million-mile mark in that single truck alone, every one of the miles logged under his expert piloting.

Kitzhaber's not the first owner Overdrive Radio listeners have heard who's done similar -- "Mustang" Mike Crawford crossed 4 million in his 1994 Freightliner (12.7 Detroit-powered) back in 2022: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/15291488/mike-mustang-crawfords-1994-freightliner-4-million-safe-miles

(Incidentally, Overdrive editor Todd Dills spoke with Crawford July 1 as he hitting the Prime yard in Springfield at the end of his final run before retirement with a grand total of 4,159,910 miles in the rear view of the Freightliner. More on Crawford’s final run in a future podcast.)

Owner-operator Alan Kitzhaber’s career stretches back to 1990, his time as owner-operator some years on with Millis Transfer, where he first took the reins of the then-brand-new 1995 Kenworth T600 as a company driver. He bought the truck from the company itself, then, a few years later.

Since then, he's been laser-focused on turning that truck into a profit-making machine, and meticulous with record-keeping in no small way. As suggested by the quote at the top, too, plenty modifications through the years have allowed him to excel to the point of achieving well more than 8 mpg for a fuel mileage average several years running this past decade.

There’s a lot to those modifications he’s made, for certain, detailed in today’s episode. And 4 million miles is a very long way. More than 8 times to the moon and back. At roughly 60 miles per hour it’d take you well past the hard end of the 14-hour clock to do it at 66,666 hours. We’ll track back through Kitzhaber’s history a little more quickly than that today on the podcast, along the way learning plenty about just how the owner-operator kept that Cat-powered T600 humming efficiently for so very long.

As mentioned in the podcast, Caterpillar's interview with Kitzhaber for its Million Mile Club when he crossed 3 million: https://www.cat.com/en_US/articles/cat-truck-engine-articles/million-miler-alan-kitzhaber.html

Gordon Alkire's closed greasing system: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/14877182/csa-proofing-part-two-closed-greasing-system