Overdrive Radio

'Strike when the market's cold' -- it might be a maxim for the outlook on small business for Overdrive May Trucker of the Month Matthew Karr, coming off an excellent profit year hauling fuel leased to Quality Transportation out of Halltown, Missouri: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15448529/owneroperator-matthew-karrs-fuel-hauling-hustle-pays-off

Now's the ideal time, as he details in this podcast, to go back out on his own to do things entirely his way, keeping a past small-fleet failure high in his mind. During the height of the COVID market when Karr sold most of his small fleet equipment at a premium and went back to leasing, a friend was "wanting to buy a truck" and get in on the spot freight boom, "when the market was stupid," Karr said -- stupid high, that is, for equipment.

"Luckily, he listened to me" and didn't do it. "I said, 'Robert, I've been through these ups and downs and swings for 25 years. ... If you want to buy a truck and you want to get started" as an owner-operator, "do it when times are bad.' Now, things have slowed down a little bit, interest rates are going up. ... If you can make it in slow times, you will really flourish" when business cycles turn upward.

He’s banking on the wisdom in the maxim he’s shared with others about trucking as an owner-operator, with the new venture, working direct with fuel wholesalers. In today's Overdrive Radio edition, hear much more about Karr's history of ups and down and his recent success, including views from his wife, Koren, who nominated the owner in Overdrive's Trucker of the Year award program for 2023.

Nominations remain open via the form at this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/page/toptrucker

This edition of Overdrive Radio touches on a area of long-well-founded concern for owner-operators. That’s the importance of, when possible, fighting the stains on the motor vehicle record that can come in the form of tickets for moving violations of all types. Pay the fine, and it’s like pleading guilty and doing the proverbial time. A "conviction” will be paid for in a myriad ways beyond just the cash fine: higher insurance rates, marks on your company’s CSA SMS profile and its scoring, possible audit hassles given more violations on the record mean greater likelihood of prioritization by federal or state investigators for an audit.

Yet there's another, relatively new way anyone with motor carrier authority could pay, too –- Jeff Davis, longtime Fleet Safety Services compliance consultant, who supports mostly small carriers in the event of an audit, outlines it here.

Last year, FMCSA modified its safety rating methodology, Davis said. For the first time auditors will be able to include traffic-ticket convictions in a carrier's overall safety rating. That’d be the Satisfactory, Conditional, or Unsatisfactory system long in place and which the agency is set to put up for ideas for improving this year: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15382419/fmcsa-to-key-in-on-problems-with-conditional-safety-rating-limbo

A public affairs spokesperson again confirmed that with me just this week, in fact, noting an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking requesting industry and public input on the safety rating remains for this year as a possibility.

With traffic-law convictions on the table during audits, Davis notes in the podcast, that’s even more for owner-operators and small fleet owners and managers to keep in mind in case an audit is likely.

And: Further incentive to manage those convictions, too, for any violation for which you or one of your drivers receive a citation – recall, too, that citations successfully adjudicated by a court can be removed from the data profile in the CSA SMS and the broader MCMIS database itself –- you use the DataQs system to do that: https://www.overdriveonline.com/regulations/article/15063812/how-to-dataq-to-challenge-a-violation

More resources on fighting tickets: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/14891468/fighting-tickets-how-owneroperators-succeed

Jeff Davis at Fleet Safety Services: https://www.fleetsafetyservices.com/

'Owner-op business, start to finish' -- it could be the motto to describe Overdrive's annual coproduction with business services firm ATBS of the Partners in Business manual: http://overdriveonline.com/pib

And it was the broader topic of this talk with the great Red Eye Radio host Eric Harley at the Mid-America Trucking Show, on the occasion of the 2023 PIB book's release, now available for download via the previous link. The talk includes Overdrive Editor Todd Dills and longtime contributor and owner-operator coach Gary Buchs, along with PIB collaborator Mike Hosted from ATBS. It originally aired in its full form as part of the Red Eye Radio “Extra Mile” podcast extra series, available via https://www.redeyeradioshow.com/the-extra-mile-podcast/

Overdrive’s also released a series of short video excerpts of the talk via the YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc1lg9rs1dUBRbJKjvc7UUcJRRd4iI2v3

It’s a wide-ranging talk focused on vital aspects of owner-operator business practice, from basic task management from Harley, spinning out the metaphors to put things in perspective; Mike Hosted letting you know what you might well be giving up if you’re not paying close attention to the tax code; and Gary Buchs ever mindful of the absolute necessity of cost/revenue awareness, and real engagement with the numbers in as close to real-time as possible.

Hopefully it's an engaging back and forth for some new ideas for the long haul this weekend, this coming week, whatever the case may be. Here's wishing a great Memorial Day upcoming for you -- take time to honor, to remember.

Truck show platform personalities come and go, but Hope Zvara's mission to improve truckers' quality of life with a program that leans on small, incremental changes in their daily routines continues to gain traction. Founder and CEO of Mother Trucker Yoga, Zvara's the author of "Trucking Yoga: Simple Fitness for fhe Long Haul," a book in which Zvara gives us an unvarnished account of how her own struggles with addiction and depression drove a personal need to get healthy.

"I've struggled with depression and anxiety on catastrophic levels," she said. "Yoga, and movement, saved my life."

Included in the book, too, is a regimen of down to earth, practical yoga exercises adapted to the ergonomics of a semi-tractor. At the Mid-America Trucking Show, as you can see in the thumbnail image for today's edition of Overdrive Radio above, she led our own Long Haul Paul through a few of them. And in Paul and Zvara's talk here, she offers answers to these questions relative to notions of a mental-health crisis all around the nation. "What if it's not a mental health crisis?" she said." What if it's a movement crisis?"

Find more about Zvara's tools for OTR drivers via her website: https://www.mothertruckeryoga.com/

Also in the podcast: An audio diary from owner-operator Mike "Mustang" Crawford, who poses his own answers to what was a pressing question no doubt for some during this week of the CVSA's annual Roadcheck inspection event: Is it possible to get through the entire blitz week without passing an open scale? After Overdrive editor Todd Dills talked to the longtime flatbedder last week, his plans to spend much of the May 16-18 event at home in Long Lane, Missouri, changed. He finished what he needed to do at home early and the freight called him out. After he passed two closed scales early Tuesday, the first day of the blitz, on his way toward Chicago from the Springfield, Missouri, area, he started calling in with reports from the road.

Three days later in Florida, then ....

And: On the diet side of the health/quality-of-life equation, at MATS the CDL Drivers Unlimited group hosted family-practice physician Ken Berry, who spoke to principles of what he sees as the PHD, or “Proper Human Diet,” akin in some ways to a Keto high-fat, very-low-carb diet. Trucker and CDLDU founding driver council member Scott Reed introduced Berry at MATS with some detail of his own experience with the diet. Reed's dropped well more than 100 pounds over the course of a year into it. Find CDL Drivers Unlimited via this link: https://www.cdldu.com/

More from Overdrive Radio on the world-famous http://OverdriveOnline.com

This week on the Overdrive Radio podcast, a bit of a double feature. We'll hear from General Transportation and ART Trucking's Jason Decker. Regular Overdrive readers will recall reporting on some of Decker’s talk at the Mid-America Trucking Show back in March that was something of a rallying cry for a “whole of trucking” battle approach to the fight against double brokering, leaching money from the freight markets through fraud as it is:

Rates are bad enough already, it’s sure, as Decker emphasized.

Fraudulent actors insert themselves into a freight transaction, disappear with a fuel advance or the entire load’s payment. If the trucker’s paid at all, then, it’s a double payment on the part of whoever was the original broker and/or shipper on the load. That's but one double-brokering scenario. Perhaps worse than that, in Decker’s and I know many owner-operators’ views, legit brokers who knowingly "give the load to another brokerage," Decker said. "They are double-dipping. Rates are tight enough as it is that one hand in the pot is one too many."

Two? Three? Market distortion is all the worse for it, with the trucker on the short end of the stick.

Listen for ways owner-operators can recover payment after getting involved in a scam, but more importantly, ways to be fundamentally proactive to avoid and shut out the fraudsters, and those double-dippers, to begin with.

Also: Peterbilt’s sunsetting of the iconic Model 389 and introduction of the new 589. Our colleague with CCJ, editor Jason Cannon, took a test drive of the unit out in Texas and offers up a walkaround talk with Peterbilt’s Jacob White, detailing some of the unique features of the 589.

Find Cannon's test-drive story via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/equipment/article/15382918/test-drive-of-the-peterbilt-model-589

Deron Salmon's Truck'N "Trucker Networking" app for broker look-ups and reviews you can read/hear about via this past podcast: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15383844/closer-look-at-new-truckn-broker-review-nav-and-accounting-app

A natural inclination for frugality is a winning quality for most anybody in the world today, and no doubt for an owner-operator. That's one of the central qualities Jay Hosty, our Trucker of the Month for April, put dead center of his now 41-year-long history of success as an owner-operator in trucking. As Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole wrote in our profile of owner-operator Hosty last week, he got his start in trucking as an owner pulling containers around New Orleans, Louisiana, at the young age of 19 in 1981: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15383689/frugality-focus-on-costs-pays-off-for-owneroperator-jay-hosty

Frugality's certainly served him well during the last year and a half’s rising costs, yet it only goes so far after a couple of years' worth of getting used to $4/mile freight. The squeeze is on, coming from both sides of the profit equation.

"it's hard to come back to the reality of $2/mile freight," Hosty said, and thus far in 2023 he's a bit behind in net income where he was this time last year. In part, it's the luxury of being freight-choosy at work there. He's spent more time sitting at the house in Diamondhead, Mississippi, this year, waiting on profitable loads from one of couple of nearby Landstar agents he works with regularly to take him outbound.

Hosty’s been leased to Landstar now for most of the last two decades, pulling today in a 2006 Western Star that replaced a 2000 model, after the truck was destroyed in Hurricane Katrina, when he and wife, Katt, were living in Gulfport, Mississippi. They lost their house there, too, with the direct hit, and the comeback from that disaster is made all the more remarkable by the family the Hostys have fostered throughout their entire four decades together.

We’ll hear much more about that in today’s edition, likewise a 2022 Western Star daycab Hosty’s been sitting on for a year with plans to outfit the rig with a custom sleeper built to his needs, as he’d done with the 2000 that Katrina sent to the graveyard. That frugal nature he mentioned has kept him from moving forward with it to date, given pricing he’s gotten from some of the big sleeper manufacturers. For the builders in the audience, he put out a call, too:

"If there's anybody out there who can point me in a good direction of getting a custom sleeper built" without sacrificing an '"arm and a leg" on the build, as it were, he said. "I'm looking to find somebody."

Hosty's Trucker of the Month designation puts him in the running or Overdrive's 2023 Trucker of the Year award. You can enter your own business or put forward another 1-3-truck owner-operator via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/page/toptrucker

Also in the podcast: Heads-up on an online seminar upcoming on Tuesday, May 23, part of a series sponsored by the Bestpass company — it will dive into the topic of work-life balance over the road as an owner-operator, particularly in a down market like the present, and features two men who’ve been in those shoes over the decades. You can register to attend it live at 1 p.m. Central, May 23, via this link.. What we aim to deliver are tactics, strategies to gauge and achieve balance to improve quality of life for yourself -- and/or your operators if you’re managing a small fleet. That's whether you’re a one-truck owner leased to a carrier or with authority, or a small fleet owner hoping to deliver better balance to drivers and, ultimately, to yourself.

The two presenters regular Overdrive Radio listeners have heard here on the podcast before: Innovative Logistics Group founder and managing director Adam Wingfield and Overdrive's 2021 Small Fleet Champ Jason Cowan, founder and leader of Silver Creek Transportation out of Henderson, Kentucky.

Join us: https://randallreilly.zoom.us/webinar/register/2716820986241/WN_h9CP6dZ0QOq-bkpG1spTOw#/registration

This Overdrive Radio podcast edition drops into our talk with Charlotte, N.C.-based owner-operator Deron Salmon about his brand-new Truck Networking application for iPhone and Android devices -- Truck’N for short. It's available now for a 14-day free trial with monthly subscription thereafter.

Iphone: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/truck-networking/id1606433569

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.semnexus.apps.truckn.truckn

The app’s origin story stems from a void Salmon felt like he saw in broker-lookup and review tools for owner-operators. There are some out there, for sure -- the big load boards are principal there -- yet Salmon wanted to take the concept further to allow for quicker, more inclusive ways to rate and review experiences. His thoughts on the matter stemmed from a brokered run some years ago with an appointment time that, nonetheless, had him facing the prospect of waiting quite literally all day for the pickup.

The broker offered nothing in the way of support in that regard, and after he canceled the load, driving back north toward home he wondered which of the southbound truckers across the median was about to get themselves into a situation on this load and with this broker they might do best to avoid.

What's the first thing a broker does when you call on a load? "They ask for your MC number," he said. "Why aren't we doing the same thing" for them.

They’re asking for your MC, of course, to validate that you have authority -- but also to access via third-party vendors other brokers' reviews and ratings of your service. With enough owner-operator uptake of Salmon’s Truck Networking app, owner-ops will be able to read such reviews about brokers as well, he envisions, and share their own experiences, as you’ll hear in the podcast.

That’s not all there is to the app, though. It’s got robust accounting and IFTA functionality, premium truck-specific navigation, and is all in all significantly aided by the reality that owner-operator Salmon has been behind the development of a lot of the tools himself.

With its release last month, owner-operator Salmon’s slowly transitioning away from the road himself, also training in aviation as a commercial pilot, but he’s still the proud owner of his last rig after a couple decades in the business -- a 2000 Kenworth W900 he told us more about as we spoke at MATS.

Read more about Truck Networking via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15382605/new-broker-authority-lookupreview-tool-two-trucknav-platforms

In this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, drop in with three operators for a panel discussion held at the Mid-America Trucking Show last month. The discussion was aimed at showing all the ways these three have done what once might have been unthinkable -- get to, and pass, the 10-miles-per-gallon mark in a Class 8 tractor-trailer hauling freight.

They included a man longtime Overdrive readers will well be familiar with -- 2007 Overdrive Trucker of the Year Henry Albert, running independent and as a longtime participant in Freightliner’s Run Smart program real-world-testing new truck and diesel technologies built toward boosting efficiencies. Albert was joined by owner-operator Joel Morrow and driver Clark Reed, the latter also part of the longtime Freightliner initiative. The trio fielded questions from Mike Roeth, a leader with the North American Council for Freight Efficiency: http://nacfe.org

(As Roeth notes in the podcast, Albert, Morrow and Reed were all part of NACFE's initial Run on Less campaign in 2017 -- find more about that and subsequent Run on Less efforts via https://runonless.com/ )

Questions centered on 10 different areas of fuel-economy improvement possibility, all to show how they add up to hitting that 10-mpg mark. Among what you'll hear about: Aerodynamics, of course, at which owner-operator Henry Albert has certainly excelled. Manufacturers' big strides in engine downspeeding, which yields maintenance dividends in the end for those persnickety emissions systems. Automated manual transmissions to help in the cruise RPM adjustments that come with significant downspeeding. 6x2 configurations, mechanical drag reduction generally, idling, speed, route planning, and much more.

Think you can’t get there? Think again -- with the right practices, and the right equipment, as these and other operators have shown, it's certainly possible.

How owner-operator Steve Kron got there, for instance: in a 2001 International no less: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-extra/article/15295717/how-steve-kron-took-his-2001-international-above-10-mpg

Happy Friday before Tax Day! Got those filings done?

One suspects the answer is yes for our guests on today's edition of Overdrive Radio, Tim Pulli and his wife, Shelley Puzek-Pulli, our March Truckers of the Month: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15380625/path-to-profits-through-continual-adjustment-pulli-express

The Chicago-area-headquartered owner-operators today run two trucks of their own and with another owner-operator leased on. They’re in the competition for Overdrive's 2023 Trucker of the Year award, and as a husband-wife team of a business, it’s close collaboration in their drive to success that sets them apart. Though since their marriage in 2005, it hasn’t always been that way, exactly.

Shelley herself wasn’t so involved in the business before Tim flipped the switch to get his authority around 2012 and the pair, together, moved toward a contract with the Sweetener Supply liquid-sugar manufacturer in their area, a contract that more than sustains the business to this day with good rates, a healthy fuel surcharge built into everything they do, and in general a real appreciation for their work.

That includes Shelley, today, too, behind the wheel. While Tim’s been driving in various roles since the turn of the century, Shelley made moves to get her CDL for the first time in 2018, after the pair’s fourth and youngest child entered kindergarten. Growth in revenues, and profits, for the business have proceeded since then, with plans for more on the way. With three trucks running full-time now, they do own four big Walker food-grade tanker trailers, after all.

You can enter your own owner-operator business or nominate another for Overdrive's 2023 Trucker of the Year competition via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/page/toptrucker

Nominations will be accepted throughout the first half of 2023.

If you haven’t checked in at OverdriveOnline.com lately, get over to the Partners in Business section for our newly-updated, 2023 edition of the owner-operator business guide of the same name: http://overdriveonline.com/pib

Weighing in at a grand total of 140 and more pages this year, the Partners in Business manual covers owner-operator business from start to finish, all the way from the basics of business planning before start-up to going independent, growing a small fleet and prepping adequately for a comfortable retirement.

New this year:

**A brief primer on avoiding -- and combating -- the huge rise in double-brokering of the past few years

**Further resources on saving taxes and gaining business management dividends via the S Corp tax filing structure for LLCs.

**Updates on lending markets given the rise in borrowing costs for new and used equipment purchases of the last year

**New strategies for how to approach fuel surcharges as an independent, and maximize efficiency whatever your operation, given 2022's historic fuel-price inflation

**New ways to protect your business and personal data from wholesale identity theft running rampant

**Updates on planning -- and saving -- for retirement.

And more. Today, sit back and listen in on our live seminar from the Mid-America Trucking Show’s Pro Talks stage that was held Friday, March 31. There’s a full video of session available at OverdriveOnline.com, but we wanted to make sure the podcast listeners had a window on it. Here's a link to the video and News Editor Matt Cole's report from the session: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15382511/how-to-boost-profitability-in-challenging-times-the-extra-load

And here's a link to where you can download the slide deck to follow along with the audio in the podcast: https://www.overdriveonline.com/partners-in-business/document/15382515/partners-in-business-presentation-at-mats-2023

Those slides feature huge amounts of data from business services firm ATBS on cost, revenue and income performance on average for owner-operators clients in the last year. ATBS is Overdrive's longtime partner on the Partners in Business project, and a Vice President there, Mike Hosted, presented at the seminar with our own contributor and longtime owner-operator, now retired from the road, Gary Buchs. Buchs also serves as mentor to aspiring and current owner-operators with an eye toward helping them sharpen their business performance.