Overdrive Radio

Trucker-songwriter leading light Tony Justice's new "Greatest Shifts" record features six new tracks, five originals plus a fantastic rendition of Jerry Reed's classic "Eastbound and Down," and 14 previously released highlights from four records -- "Apple Pie Moonshine," "Brothers of the Highway," "Stars Stripes and White Lines," and "18 Gears to Life." Those records comprise a decades' worth of music from Justice, excluding unfortunately his first trucking-themed record, "On the Road," for reasons he explains in this Overdrive Radio edition. Herein, Overdrive Radio host Todd Dills' recent conversation with Justice about the new material on the album and the background behind the production is interspersed with plenty opportunity to hear some of the new music.

("On the Road" you can hear via this link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5gsluBHAVUqMjotVyxbvli?si=VJklYb17TVWsm9KFMnjt-A )

Among previously released material is a "dance remix" of Justice's “Last of the Cowboys” tune, first featured a couple of albums and a few years ago now. It’s arguably his greatest shift in terms of its general popularity out there, as he notes in the podcast. But in other ways, as he also notes, all of these tracks have a special meaning for him. Listen on for more, all of it remastered and sweetened in various ways. Find links to conversation with Justice about most of his prior records, too, via the links below:

"18 Gears to Life": https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15066892/tony-justices-18-gears-to-life-record-inside-the-music

"Stars, Stripes and White Lines": https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/14892637/audio-tour-through-tony-justices-new-stars-stripes-and-white-lines-album

"Brothers of the Highway": https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/14890756/podcast-tony-justices-brothers-of-the-highway-the-trucking-brotherhood-reinforced

"Apple Pie Moonshine": https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/14885429/podcast-behind-the-new-tony-justice-record-more-song-samples-too

Today we’re peeking through a window onto a conference in its second year and coming up down in Houston, building on a thus-far-four-year journey of one New Jersey-based Rahmel Wattley, host of the 2019-founded Truck N' Hustle podcast.

That's right, for this edition of Overdrive Radio, it’s host-to-host, as it were. Truck N’ Hustle, well-known among entrepreneurs of a variety of stripes all around trucking and transportation, pitches to owner-operators and small fleets in a variety of trucking niches, among other transport pros. Freight Fest, then, is Wattley and company’s conference upcoming next month in Houston, building on the success of his podcast in bringing together disparate communities around the business.

Among presenters there are anyone from reps at freight-factoring company OTR Capital, a sponsor of the event, and voices many of you will be familiar with from Overdrive Radio, too, like Innovative Logistics Group founder Adam Wingfield, whose tale of his start trucking as an owner-operator and subsequent growth featured on the podcast earlier in the year: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15540815/owneroperators-can-master-worklife-balance-in-trucking

Rahmel Wattley hopes Freight Fest is a place where small fleets and owner-operators, specifically, can lay the groundwork for a fundamental goal of many -- growth.

Along the way, we’ll also hear his own story in trucking, from his first experience getting a CDL in the early part of this century to dispatching for, then managing a small fleet and opening his own businesses aimed at putting CDL drivers in a position to garner longer-term employment with fleets, and more.

With all of his endeavors, he’s always got growth in his own mind, but also other concerns, too. One trucking media talking to another, the subject came up of Overdrive’s 60-plus-year history, reaching way back to times well before your friendly neighborhood Overdrive Radio host’s birth. Wattley's, too.

For longevity in any business, Wattley noted, the desire for growth is necessarily tempered by greater needs. He hopes Truck N' Hustle is laying a steady, solid foundation such that it, too, will be around come 2079.

Find a list of presenters scheduled to speak at Freight Fest via the event website: http://freightfest.com

Listen on for more detail on how Wattley envisions the event, in part inspired by the SHE Trucking expo back in 2021 in Chattanooga: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15279870/growing-trucking-influence-of-minorityowned-business

Find Truck N' Hustle wherever you listen to podcasts.

She does just about all of it, Crystal Rives, when it comes to the maintenance of her one-truck Texas-intrastate car-haul business. She's put a big emphasis on solid partnerships through the years, whether with a trusted engine/major mechnical shop or a growing stable of customers. That's particularly so since she went out on her own with authority to haul cars in 2016. The move followed almost a decade and a half hauling cars for other companies, work in the Texas oilfield, end dump, side dump, pneumatic and liquid-bulk tank.

This Overdrive Radio tour through Rives’ business and history in trucking is part of our monthly series of podcasts and feature profiles of contenders for the 2023 Trucker of the Year award: http://overdrieonline.com/trucker-of-the-year

Rives is our July Trucker of the Month, in part recognized for a can-do approach to the work, a real do-it-yourself spirit in trucking and in life. She’s out of Cleburne Texas, south of Fort Worth, where she’s built a steady base of customers among used dealers, restoration specialists and others, hauling in a 2006 Peterbilt 379 she calls "Ruby." Yeah, the Pete's red, and powered by a 550 Caterpillar the previous owner overhauled right before she bought it in 2019.

Find some pictures of the unit hauling a load of classic autos to Mecum collectors’ auction in Houston this past April, via this link to the feature profile that announced her contention for Trucker of the Year: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15543167/trucker-of-the-month-crystal-rives-makes-hay-of-carhaul-work

She’s no doubt got the bull by the horns, so to speak, with the car-haul business today, though it hasn’t been without it's difficulty, particularly before she went out on her own to serve customers directly. At previous employers as a company driver, she was always the only woman behind the wheel, she said, and added, certainly unnecessary pressure was on in some ways.

Since putting out her own shingle, though, her customers believe in her, that’s sure, as she follows through on lessons learned from her grandfather and father about doing more than just talking the talk. As Overdrive Editor Todd Dills wrote in the profile of her business, “Just show them you can do it,” her grandfather always told her, “and that you can do it better than them."

The chips fall where you want them, then, more times than not.

You can enter the 2023 Trucker of the Year competition via the form at this ink: https://www.overdriveonline.com/page/toptrucker

We ask again: What's the worst stretch of road on your routes? Let's keep a spotlight on where state DOTs should put all those tax dollars -- dial 615-852-8530 to weigh in.

Here,something of a lightning round of owner-operator responses to our prior call, put out attendant to the podcast several weeks back about the terrible toll I-40 in Arizona is taking from owner-ops' pocketbooks in repairs. Rougher than a corncob? You bet: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-extra/article/15540092/arizona-i40-rougher-than-a-corncob-you-bet

Several viewpoints here from listeners who dialed into our podcast message line with their recommendations for places in the U.S. that especially need work, from more worst-roads "accolades" for I-40 to sections of I-10, I-20, I-74, U.S. 491 and others.

As noted in the podcast, some detail on one of those stretches with a big project ongoing in Ohio: https://www.transportation.ohio.gov/projects/projects/104668

Today on the podcast, the captivating story of a truck -- and its owner-operator, Kate Whiting of Wisconsin. The rig, a 1973 Kenworth W900A, turned a half-century old this year of the Kenworth company's centennial. Whiting piloted the rig, "Cherry Pie," in the 100th-anniversary parade in Chillicothe, Ohio, back in June: https://www.overdriveonline.com/custom-rigs/article/15541257/kenworth-celebrates-100th-anniversary-with-kenworth-truck-parade

That's not its only recent accolade, following the truck's first bit of national notoriety around the time of the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville last year. Overdrive's video from that show of the Cherry Pie 1973 Kenworth W900A has since been viewed tens of thousands of times: https://www.overdriveonline.com/custom-rigs/video/15291440/owneroperator-kate-whitings-1973-kenworth-w900a

And with more show participation since the debut of Whiting and her team's immaculate custom-restoration, the accolades have just continued to pile up and pile up. On the podcast, we're joined by Rich Guida of the Howes company, Overdrive Radio’s sponsor, who describes the most recent such accolade. Howes inducted Cherry Pie and owner-operator Kate Whiting into the Howes Hall of Fame: https://www.overdriveonline.com/custom-rigs/article/15542307/cherry-pie-1973-w900a-owner-get-hall-of-fame-nod-from-howes

The truck features an old-school, reclaimed Double Eagle sleeper with heart-shaped windows on the sides, a Cat 3408 motor (just the second engine in its long history), and much more that you’ll hear about in today’s edition. Kate Whiting herself tells the story of how she became a part of a tight-knit custom truck restoration community in her immediate Wisconsin environs but also spread across the nation. It's that community, broadly speaking, that is represented by induction of the W900A into the Hall of Fame, Rich Guida said, a testament to the pride and camaraderie that just flows from the community like water.

All in the service of preservation, of a fashion, of the many histories tied up in any piece of truck equipment. Kate Whiting's story in trucking is a growing part of that, wrapped in passion for this and other trucks. Today she’s running in a different W900 for Jerry Linander's small fleet hauling mostly furniture in an operation that gets her back home most days to the farm on which she lives. She’s done plenty more OTR work, too, though, as Linander early on urged her to learn the business for herself before she found her way back to his operation. Hear her story in her own words in today's podcast.

Visit Howes' virtual Hall of Fame and make your own nominations for it via this link: https://howesproducts.com/hof

In today’s early special edition of Overdrive Radio for podcast subscribers, another installment in the Trucking’s State of Surveillance multipart series: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15541635

If you missed Long Haul Paul Marhoefer’s talk with Karen Levy in the previous edition of the podcast, track back to it -- it dropped Friday, July 7, to the Overdrive Radio feed. Levy’s "Data Driven" book, about how the ELD mandate changed the face of trucking in so many ways (magnified longstanding issues in others), really sets the stage for this talk with attorney Hank Seaton: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15541633

The final piece of the State of Surveillance special reports, too, is particularly germane. It's the story about the rather slow, though quickening, moves toward automation of roadside inspections: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15541828

This long talk with Nashville-headquartered transportation attorney Seaton connects some dots in his thinking about the roadside and investigatory enforcement programs of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration -- likewise its safety rating program. Several related advance notices of rulemaking lead him to a feeling that agency could be moving toward a new rating regime that relies heavily on motor carrier data and could, in some ways, just reinforce current issues for independent owner-operators and other very-small fleets.

The first that caught Hank Seaton’s eye: those proposed CSA Safety Measurement System changes put up for review early this year, which many felt offered a bit of a "kinder, gentler" approach with CSA SMS, in Seaton's words, with more of the smallest fleets likely to fly under the radar of the SMS's scoring metrics. Yet if automated inspections become a compulsory part of truckers' travels past scale houses and/or other mobile checkpoints nationwide, voluminous inspection/violation data collected could mean quite the opposite of "kinder" and "gentler."

Find full results of our State of Surveillance survey of Overdrive's owner-operator readers via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/home/document/15541779/state-of-surveillance

For this Overdrive Radio edition, a bit of a special preview of a special report dropping this coming Monday, July 10. It’s called “Trucking’s State of Surveillance” and follows Overdrive’s surveying of our owner-operator, small fleet and company driver readers about remote monitoring- and/or tracking-capable technologies used in the business. We asked readers assess the techs they use -- from smartphones and ELDs to truck and trailer telematics and various permutations of monitoring video cameras -- and rate what’s being given up in costs and/or being gained in benefits.

Reporting around those results yielded plenty in the way of how working owner-ops and other truckers view how techs are changing the trucking business and culture, as monitoring goes well beyond just fleets today and sits squarely in other business-to-business relationships with brokers and others.

But all of that reporting also followed attorney and academic Karen Levy’s book "Data Driven: Truckers, technology, and the new workplace surveillance," in which Levy tells the story of trucking during a time of transition, before and after federally mandated electronic logging devices came into play in late 2017. The book leans heavily on in-depth interviews with working drivers, and boatloads of other research besides, including leaning in part on Overdrive’s own chronicling of the ELD transition over the last decade and more.

Our own Long Haul Paul Marhoefer early on in 2023 suggested interviewing Karen Levy. That was well before we began work on the special series of features you’ll find Monday on the state of surveillance in the trucking business (the link to the anchor story will be live Monday July 10): https://www.overdriveonline.com/15541635

Full results of our State of Surveillance survey of Overdrive's owner-operator readers: https://www.overdriveonline.com/home/document/15541779/state-of-surveillance

That interview with Karen Levy eventually did happen, and is certainly integral to what’s a big report in seven parts. Marhoefer and Levy, in this episode, take us back to the initial inspiration for the book with FMCSA’s first feints toward an e-log mandate more than a decade ago. The talk touches on added stress around hours accounting, added pressure on drivers of all stripes from supply chain parties, and dovetails with Overdrive’s reporting from late last year on crash-statistics since the mandate, too: https://www.overdriveonline.com/csas-data-trail/article/15301876/crashes-injuries-and-fatalities-up-posteld-mandate

At a fundamental level, Levy noted, truckers know the problems they face -- detention and parking, how they’re entertwined with making the hours of service regulations as onerous as they can be for many -- and that they’re all fundamentally problems of economy, of finances, of just compensation for the time put in. All of the time put in.

For all the rancor that the ELD mandate engenders, and all the technological intrusiveness it’s in some ways enabled, ELDs can play a role in that just-compensation fix. But as Levy has it, they’re certainly no panacea, much less any kind of magic safety tool.

This week on Overdrive Radio, we reintroduce June’s Trucker of the Month, Debbie Desiderato, in conversation with our own Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole. Cole’s story about Desiderato’s long trucking career is live as of earlier this week at the website: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15541324/independent-debbie-desideratos-keys-to-trucking-success

Today, we’ll hear parts of that in Desiderato’s own words. She’s built considerable value with the do-it-yourself approach to business throughout her well more than two decades as an independent owner-operator. If Debbie’s name sounds familiar, that’s because she’s been here on the podcast before – likewise in our coproduction with PRX’s Radiotopia network of the Over the Road series, which originally aired in 2020: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4405867

Active with the Make a Wish foundation’s Mother’s Day convoy events, the Real Women in Trucking advocacy group and other organizations, too, she’s made a name for herself as an independent not afraid to tell it like it is -- nor to give back in the form of advice for those coming up. Tools and business processes she’s built for herself through the years she readily shares with others as a familiar face at truck shows around the nation, online and elsewhere.

Her designation as Trucker of the Month for June, though, is as much a testament to her perseverance through the tumult of the last two decades as an independent with authority -- she attributes a lot of her success to that do-it-yourself spirit, particularly in the mechanical realm. Her growth as owner hasn’t always been easy, though, as she described the early years learning by trial and error that, depending on the destination, sometimes you’ve got to take your backhaul with you in the headhaul rate, as it were, among many other things of course. Through it all, you really get the sense that there's another title in Debbie Desiderato’s future. Listen on to drop right in with owner-operator, mechanic, salesperson, app developer, Overdrive June Trucker of the Month and veritable author Debbie Desiderato, writing the book on trucking as an independent.

As mentioned in the podcast, the story of Debbie Desiderato’s return to car hauling, of a fashion, in 2020 in a hotshot as pandemic refuge: http://overdriveonline.com/14897956

Her 2017 Western Star interior's custom reno as part of the Tranfix digital brokerage’s Transfix My Rig sweepstakes in 2021, conducted by "Secret Celebrity Renovations" star Jason Cameron: http://overdriveonline.com/15115013

Nominations remain open for Overdrive's 2023 Trucker of the Year award, open to owner-operators with up to three trucks via the form at this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/page/toptrucker

Asked by Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole for the stretch of road they felt could be described as the absolute worst in the nation, all but one owner-operator at Shell Rotella's SuperRigs show two weeks back in Wyoming didn’t flinch in singling out I-40 in Arizona. Others are calling it the absolute worst they’ve ever seen.

Danville, Virginia-based owner-operator Joey Slaughter, who runs the route routinely on cross-country step deck hauls, was the man who brought this subject to our attention this Spring. Clearly, it’s not hard to find similar viewpoint on the stretch between Kingman and Flagstaff. The road’s condition has translated to hard dollars and lost time with equipment repairs.

Slaughter's hopeful for movement on new pavement soon, but questions why the road was allowed to get so bad in the first place. Rough nature of the freeze-thaw cycles this past winter has something to do with, but that can’t be all, he feels.

Other owners you'll hear in this edition:

Cody Davis, coast-to-coast independent livestock hauler based in Cokeville, Wyoming, with three trucks in Davis Trucking

Jake Bast, Shoshone, Idaho, leased to RAM Transportation pulling a flatbed

Nichole “Nikki” Cheek, hopper hauler based in Rozet, Wyoming, leased to North Country Logistics out of Wyndmere, North Dakota

What gets your vote for the worst stretch of road in the nation? Tell us via the podcast message line at 615-852-8530.

As mentioned in the podcast, there is at least some good news for the stretch of road in question. Here's a link to Arizona DOT's State Critical Pavement Repair projects, including some in the problem area: https://azdot.gov/statewide-critical-pavement-repair-projects

More I-40 projects are shown in the works in the recently released five-year project plan for improvements statewide: https://azdot.gov/sites/default/files/2023-06/2024-2028-Final-Five-Year-Transportation-Program.pdf

With this Overdrive Radio edition for June 16, 2023, points of view on the absolute necessity of respecting the needs for work-life balance for your personal sanity, and for the success of your business. That balance can be particularly elusive for independent owner-operators, as Silver Creek Transportation owner Jason Cowan well knows -- he spent much of his early career in those shoes with just a single truck himself, and in some ways balance might elude those of you who fit that bill more than anyone in trucking.

In this edition, we’ll walk through a variety of strategies to achieve it, with a goal of healthy success. The podcast features the bulk of a late-May-held webcast presentation and discussion Overdrive hosted with Cowan, our big 2021 Small Fleet Champ winner, and Adam Wingfield, who’s head of the Innovative Logistics Group consultancy, also a past independent owner-operator himself: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15448347/worklife-balance-as-an-owneroperator-you-have-to-build-it

Work-life balance isn’t all about home time and other personal-life concerns, though -- in part of the Q&A at the end of the webinar, sponsored initially by the Bestpass company for toll-collections management and 2290 tax solutions, among other services, Wingfield responded to a question about how to cope with the stress a down market puts on everyone, with the pressure to run. Direct that stress toward the right spot, he advised.

Small fleet owner Cowan, throughout, offers plenty perspective on ways to build business with driver employees and owner-operator contractors in mind. He invoked the difficulties so many have attracting younger folks willing to stay in trucking as drivers. All trucking companies – from those who pay the most to those who pay the least, seem to need drivers 24/7/365. “Maybe this isn’t all about the money,” he said. While getting drivers home more often and/or on regular timetables is part of his mission as Silver Creek Transportation owner, that’s certainly not all there is to it.

Overdrive radio podcast subscribers should note that a full, unedited video version of this podcast features the original May webcast on our Youtube and Facebook playlists for Overdrive Radio. Those video versions will be available starting Monday, June 18, when the podcast goes live on the world-famous OverdriveOnline.com.

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc1lg9rs1dUAhK7CqgY23njy75EnGlqIU

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/watch/201594073189/366175185612296

You can register and watch the webinar on-demand at this link, too: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15448190/catch-the-replay-worklife-balance-for-owneroperators-in-a-down-market

Adam Wingfield’s Innovative Logistics Group: https://www.innovativelogisticsgroupllc.com/

Jason Cowan and Silver Creek Transportation: https://silvercreektrans.com/