In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, drop into our conversation with OOIDA Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh at the Mid-America Trucking Show. Pugh was fresh off a whirlwind round of a whole lot of other talking himself, including a MATS-opening breakfast panel discussion you heard here a couple weeks back, then prior to that on Wednesday the week of the truck show in the halls of Congress where he joined a panel of trucking and other industry reps to talk through significant issues ahead of the highway bill reauthorization due next year.

Pugh made headlines for his urging of federal reps to get a handle on the scope of so-called “non-domiciled CDLs” issued to residents of foreign countries by states here in the U.S. for work OTR or in other industries on a temporary basis. It’s an issue that’s risen to prominence this year as attention to it has increased. It’s but one of the issues Pugh addressed in Congressional testimony, likewise in what follows in the podcast, yet one we heard about also from trucker Teresa Brittain in the wake of MATS.

English proficiency violations used to be treated by the Comercial Vehicle Safety Alliance of inspectors and industry as an out of service violation, yet when CVSA removed that out of service violation about a decade ago now, FMCSA subsequently relaxed guidance on how to enforce the violation itself. Paired with some DOT changes for states around non-domiciled CDLs that happened later, it seems to have gotten simpler for foreign country residents to come into the country to work over the road with a CDL. How many such people are working in the U.S. today? Nobody can really answer that question, as has been evident from Overdrive’s Alex Lockie’s ongoing reporting around the issue: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15741322/

Brittain flagged the importance of the English language proficiency regs, though, particularly when it comes to roadside inspections. She noted a conversation at MATS she herself had with Kentucky state truck enforcement about the issue. “How does any state law enforcement officer do an inspection on the truck if the driver cannot follow instructions to inspect it?” she asked.

Inspectors told her essentially they can’t inspect such an operator’s truck, she said, “for their own safety. They told me they give 15 minutes after the initial request for the driver to contact their company and provide driver's license and required paperwork, then just let them go if the paperwork is compliant.”

No inspection for the truck.

Considering such dynamics, Terea Brittain then quipped, “Next inspection, I’m speaking Martian!”

OOIDA along with some from the law enforcement community petitioned CVSA to return English proficiency to the out of service criteria, and CVSA’s spring Workshop event is but one week away. Pugh noted owner-operators might stay tuned for any news on that front in the coming couple of weeks.

Also in the podcast: RaceTrac Travel Centers Marketing Manager Nick LaFalce details growth in his company’s mostly Southeast regional network of truck stops in what was once mainly just a fuel-stop network for automobile drivers. Since 2018, the RaceTrac company’s been expanding high-flow diesel options and acquiring land to even add parking options within the network.

As mentioned in the podcast:

**Recent coverage of the parking issue: https://overdriveonline.com/15742614

**Detail from recent Congressional hearing: https://overdriveonline.com/15741287

**More from MATS: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4372607

This week's edition of Overdrive Radio is another in our series highlighting contenders for 2025 Trucker of the Year, with Overdrive Senior Editor Matt Cole’s talk with Virginia-headquartered two-truck straight dump owner-operator business Dice Mayhem’s Trucking, headed up by owner-operator Hunter Hubbard and her husband, Tim.

Hunter’s just about six years into truck ownership herself, her husband a good bit longer, yet clearly she’s harnessed a quality that current reigning Trucker of the Year Alan Kitzhaber sees in all successful people when it comes to business. As he put earlier this year in his “Plan for better business,” authored for our Overdrive Extra blog, “99.9% of success is desire.” That is, those who have a clear case of the want-tos, ultimately, probably will do whatever it is they set out to accomplish: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15712314

Cue Hunter Hubbard’s own advice for any aspiring truck owner when it comes to success in business for themselves. "If you have your mind set to do it, go for it. Nothing's stopping you but yourself, and the worst thing you can do is fail. But at the end of the day, nobody wants to fail. You're going to figure it out one way or another." Some days will be awful, but "you'll sit back a month down the road, two months down the road, and be like, 'that was rough, but hey we're still here.' You just gotta keep digging on it."

As she well acknowledges, challenges will present themselves day-in, day-out, but those who keep digging will get through to the other side. Clearly, Hubbard herself has been one of those sorts these last years in business. "I might be a little stubborn sometimes," she said.

She and Tim have built a steady base of customers for their two-truck straight dump business in and around their Virginia home base, weathering an array of their own customer challenges in recent years when a buyout of one of their main customers and integration of the two business left their own trucking company in an uncertain position for hauling work, given the company's small size.

Last year, she pivoted to a certain extent, with purchase of an older Peterbilt tractor, utilizing mechanical prowess with a new shop, too, to get it in working order and standing up a new, one-truck business for livestock hauling regionally: Dice Logistics. Yet dump work remains the Hubbards’ bread and butter, and the seasonality of both businesses continues to inspire the occasional second-guessing of their commitment to niche specialization. They could be hauling food, which always has to run, Hubbard notes, telling her story to Cole in this episode. They could be, that is, but "I didn't really choose that route. Everything's seasonal, everything depends on the weather," she said. "You just wait it out."

They’re doing more than just waiting, that’s sure.

As also mentioned in the podcast:

**Matt Cole's two-part feature on ways to save on insurance at renewal: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15740305

**Learn how you can put your own or another owner-operator business in the running for the 2025 Trucker of the Year honor, with a chance to win a new seat from sponsor Bostrom Seating and Commercial Vehicle Group: https://overdriveonline.com/toptrucker

In 2024, finally, as regular Overdrive readers will know, owner-operator income was up on a year-over-year basis. ATBS Vice President Mike Hosted makes that abundantly clear in this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, featuring the business services firm's March 25 update offering an economic outlook for the year ahead as well as lessons within the benchmarking data ATBS dervies from its tens of thousands of owner-operator clients' performance. If you missed our report from the session as MATS got under way, find it via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/15741374

The small boost in average income is certainly a first in what’s been an exceedingly tough three and more years now as freight demand’s declined, revenues and income falling for many owner-operators as costs just rose through much of the period. The 2024 income gain also comes despite even further rates and revenue declines last year, a sure sign that successful owners are tightening the operation, increasing fuel efficiency to reduce costs as much as possible.

Today in the podcast, we essentially let the tape roll on Hosted’s presentation. You can follow along by downloading Mike Hosted’s slides via this link, or watch the Youtube version up top or on Overdrive's Youtube channel to listen along with the presentation of the slides.

Download all the slides from Hosted's presentation via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15741380

Yet another bit of positivity to emerge from the ATBS session had to do with the spot market, particularly for flatbed freight, in year 2025 so far. The moves up and down in the spot indices Hosted sees as particularly valuable as near-term indicators of demand in the market. Though the positivity there is tempered by a big degree of uncertainty made even bigger by the President’s tariff announcements this past week, if the surge in flatbed freight and demand seen so far this year doesn’t just prove to be a result of a kind of importers’ pre-buy to beat a variety of tariffs on goods coming across U.S. borders, we could be headed in a longer-term positive direction.

Recent trucking market performance recalls Gary Buchs’ advice around freight, around customer identification and the time to strike, likewise when some measure of a kickstart might truly arise. It came back in late September 2024, before elections’ outcomes were known, and following the fed’s moves to begin to ease off the cost of borrowing with interest rate cuts.

Buchs advised to set a calendar reminder for 4-6 months out from the time of the fed's cuts. “Odds are,” he said, “that is about the time business will change, as it takes time for companies to have confidence" to place orders, others to respond to those orders with their own confidence, "and the cards begin to fall and make things move....”

Here we are, four-to-six months on. Looking at the stock market since the Trump tariff announcement last week we can’t say business confidence is 100% the rule. Yet flatbed freight’s been moving up, as noted, and a couple weeks back dry and reefer rates and volumes finally joined in. Maybe Buchs was right on the timing. And maybe in the freight economy, things are in fact changing for the better.

ATBS is coproducer with Overdrive of the comprehensive Partners in Business playbook for owner-operator careers, start to finish, now in a new online content library format. Browse the new playbook: https://overdriveonline.com/pib

Back from the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Kentucky, this Overdrive Radio edition kicks off continuing coverage as all of us here at Overdrive spent the show fanning out across convention center grounds to cover just as much as possible. The fruits of that labor you’ve seen just a small sampling of to date, the lot of it collected with the MATS tag at OverdriveOnline.com: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4372607

Today we drop back to the very beginning of the show for an 8 a.m. Thursday, March 27, panel discussion that set the issues stage for the remainder of the event. It was moderated by Brent Hutto, longtime Chief Relationship Officer at Truckstop and now a senior advisor for the load board as he’s joined the staff of the Truck Parking Club company.

You’ll hear a variety of voices in the panel discussion, touching on freight market dynamics, small business struggles and ways to overcome, predatory towing, parking, fraud in the brokered-freight marketplace, cargo and payment theft and so much more. Panelists included:

**Jason Cowan, leader of 45-truck Silver Creek Transportation, as Overdrive’s Small Fleet Champ in 2021, since which plans for growth have come to fruition.

**Hell Bent Xpress owner Jamie Hagen, whose all-Mack fleet operates out of a South Dakota headquarters and which was one of two finalists in the 3-10-truck division of the Small Fleet Championship last year.

**Jessica Dotson, co-owner-operator of Dotson Transportation with her husband

**Tyler Johnston, Mercer Transportation's director of operations

**Lewie Pugh, Owner-Operator Independent Driver's Association executive vice president

As mentioned in the podcast:

**Overdrive's recent insurance renewal-related feature: https://overdriveonline.com/15740305

**Post-crash litigation series: https://overdriveonline.com/15287415

**Tow companies dominate DOT listening session: https://overdriveonline.com/15678174

**Overdrive's revamped Partners in Business start-to-finish playbook for owner-operator careers: https://overdriveonline.com/pib

In this Overdrive Radio edition, big news: We’re releasing today our brand-new Partners in Business playbook for owner-operator business, start to finish. The 2025 reboot of the PIB program is a total revamp designed with the decidedly mobile professional trucker in mind. You can access it today at https://overdriveonline.com/pib

For more than two decades, Overdrive's Partners in Business, coproduced with owner-op business services firm ATBS, has focused on training and continuing biz education. Today, you'll find a brand-new format for all of the content that last year made up the 100-plus-page manual -- and plenty in the way of new updates. For this year's release, PIB goes from a single-download format to a much more dynamic online content library, easily accessed on any smartphone, tablet or laptop or desktop computer.

The reorganization collects valuable tactics and strategies for long-term profitability in eight categories, charting the journey of owners from start-up all the way through to retirement:

1. The “Starting Line” section details the choice of business structures, motivating factors for different individual owners, and plenty to think about in terms of business and goal planning, choosing a freight niche, a motor carrier to lease to, and/or how and why to take another route altogether.

2. The “Equipment and Maintenance” category pulls on Overdrive and ATBS resources along with the accumulated knowledge of so many of our industry-participant contributors over the decades to detail the ways to acquire the best equipment at the most-favorable terms, down and dirty PM and repair tactics, and much more.

3. The third, “Business Management” section offers a wealth of insight on tracking costs, revenue and profits; building those profit and loss statements; and paying yourself for better business health analysis and load planning, among many other subjects germane to both beginners at the start of an ownership career and seasoned veterans in need of a business refresh.

These three sections contain more individual parts than the remaining five, and there’s a reason for that. They represent the bedrock foundation on which owners throughout history have built their success.

The remaining five sections in large part will be pretty self-explanatory when you see their titles, and all is aimed at a self-help assist for owners to, long-term, better enjoy the fruits of long labor put into the business. That last bit's a nod to the title of Part 2 of Overdrive Trucker of the Year Alan Kitzhaber’s “plan for better business” authored for Overdrive and published right around the time we announced Kitzhaber’s big win in January. He's looking ahead to being able to retire quite soon, actually, after more than three decades trucking, mostly as an owner-operator. He’ll be parking his truck amongst the rest of you at MATS this year, and I’m honored to be able to help host him at the show. If you won’t be there, keep tuned for much more from him and other longtime owners in our show coverage. Truth be told, all of us here at Overdrive lean on those among you who engage with us for ideas worth sharing, a lot of Partners in Business itself in fact made up of the accumulated wisdom of those in the readership who’ve shared their expertise with us over the decades. Here's huge appreciation for all of you.

Run through the new PIB at https://overdriveonline.com/pib

As mentioned in the podcast, here's the registration link for ATBS's live update scheduled for March 25 charting 2024 owner-op income performance: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/3349075480558501214

And keep tuned for our MATS coverage later this week and certainly in the weeks to come here: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4372607

Also in the podcast: MATS-preview retreads from three interviews from the last several weeks with Jamie Hagen, Hotels4Truckers.com proprietor Dan Fuller, and trucker-songwriter Tony Justice.

This week’s edition of Overdrive Radio starts with a brief part of "Truck Stop," earmarked by today's guest for a special place in his heart the last time we hosted him. That'd be trucker-songwriter Tony Justice, who back then in 2023 spoke to the inspiration the song took from Justice’s mother’s long work at a couple of different East Tennessee truck stops you’ll hear him mention in today’s podcast.

Yet it’s with a bit of heavy heart, here, that we get this edition rolling, given Sharon Justice passed in November last year. It’s no small number of truck drivers -- and one trucking magazine editor at least -- that were touched by her life, that’s sure, Tony Justice and his late father chief among them.

"She felt like she was still taking care of dad," Justice said, noting how much Momma J, as she was known to so many, loved the work she did over the last nearly two decades of her life. "You wouldn't find a cleaner shower on the interstate, or a more warming smile to meet you when you walked into the door."

Fellow trucker-songwriter Bill Weaver, Justice said, summed it up best once noting he didn't "know anyone who was called Momma by so many different people."

Tony Justice is back on Overdrive Radio this week for a bit of preview of his big headlining concert upcoming next week Friday, March 28, at the end of the day at the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Kentucky. Find more about MATS happenings via the collection at this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4372607

If you're unfamiliar with Tony Justice’s music, know that for a decade and a half and more now it's been nothing if not steeped in his life over-the-road, joined in the journey by his wife and chief promoter, Misty Justice. For many years he trucked with Everhart Transportation out of Greeneville, Tennessee, among others prior, yet these days enjoys not having to deal with shippers and receivers so much behind the wheel of his own tour bus.

And if you’ve not seen Tony Justice live, get ready for a spectacle at MATS, that’s sure. He performs with a crack group of players, and it’s always a great show.

Dive into a conversation with Justice that touches on plans for the big show with Colt Ford at MATS March 28, the Justices' huge Large Cars & Guitars Truck Show event in East Tennessee in May (at a new location this year), and the legacy of Momma J, the late Sharon Justice.

The voice you'll hear at the top of this Overdrive Radio edition is that of Overdrive's February Trucker of the Month Kenny Wingate. Clearly, he knows of what he speaks when he invokes the feeling -- "nothing like it," he said -- that he associates with best of trucking as an owner-operator, running your own game when times are good. It's part of what drove him to take the leap back from company work he was doing to launch his Southpoint Exchange businss with one truck and his own authority in 2019. He’s up to two trucks today, headquartered in Auburndale, Florida: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15738560/how-truckings-supposed-to-be-done-meet-kenny-wingate

He's the proud owner of two sharp Peterbilt 579s and stainless reefers, and he's been focused throughout the company's relatively short six-year history on business brass tacks, building a team around him for freight with regular brokers, many of whom he’s known going back decades. Likewise on the accounting, bookkeeping and general business management side of Southpoint Exchange, and he's set up for further growth after a lifetime spent trucking, as you’ll hear in the podcast.

He's 55 years young today and relishes that long history in the business, though many of the men he learned from, and some of those he came up with in trucking, have passed on.

Magnanimous in manner, clearly on top of his game as a business owner, Wingate is also nothing if not grateful for all the help of those who came before him. He told the story of a recent encounter of an old friend at a dock. "Our generation is starting to be few and far between ... The other day I run across a gentleman I probably hadn't seen in 25 years, and we trucked together," Wingate said. "We sat down on an old wooden bench at the back of our trailers while we were getting loaded" remembering all those who came before but also "we just laughed, man, and just cut the fool, and it felt good. It felt good to see somebody that you trucked with years ago, you know, when when things were a little different."

At once, most of the folks the two men asked each other about were gone, he said, or at the very least off the road for good for health or other reasons. Wingate, 55, stays grateful for his own longevity, and looks ahead to the future and opportunities to build better business with Southpoint Exchange.

In the podcast, hear that perspective but also just how two-truck Southpoint Exchange is getting the work done with dedicated freight on lanes between Florida and Northern Ohio. After being nominated by one of his customers, he’s officially in the running for our 2025 Trucker of the Year award, which you can enter yourself or nominate another owner via https://overdriveonline.com/toptrucker

Jamie Hagen's got the inside scoop, but won't divulge the name of the new Mack tractor model set to be debuted next month in New York in this year of Mack's 125th anniversary as a company. Small Fleet owner Hagen has actually driven one hand-built production model already around the company’s test track hidden behind the walls, and come June he expects to be leasing one of the first production units in an arrangement with Mack’s marketing arm -- it’ll add to his all-Mack fleet, South Dakota-headquartered Hell Bent Xpress, among finalists in 2024 for Overdrive’s Small Fleet Championship: https://www.overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ/article/15704803/small-fleet-champ-four-finalists-to-square-off

The new truck will add 1 to Hell Bent's power-unit count, currently sitting where it was back when we last spoke around the Small Fleet Champ program’s conclusion in November, at 9 trucks, so there’s big things ahead for Hagen and Hell Bent, no doubt. Yet the new Mack wasn’t the principal reason we brought him in for this edition of Overdrive Radio -- rather, the forward-looking small fleet owner happens to be the first U.S. owner to install a new-to-the-U.S. auxiliary air-conditioning unit in the sleeper of one of his Macks. That’s the Fresco 9000 MaXX system built by an Italian manufacturer and powered by U.S.-based Dragonfly Energy’s Battle Born Batteries Lithium Iron Phosphate battery to deliver cooling power in the warmer months: https://www.overdriveonline.com/gear/product/15684579/autoclima-fresco-9000-maxx-batterypowered-auxiliary-ac-unit-hitting-us-shores

Hagen walks through the unit’s design and, along the way, his rationale for jumping into the modular, portable system after years forgoing alternative A/C for his mostly upper Midwest regional fleet. (Yes, he’s got auxiliary heat in the form of Webasto bunk heaters.)

If you’ll be in attendance at the big Mid-America Trucking Show later this month, too, Hagen will be part of a panel discussion opening the event on Thursday, March 27, about small trucking business issues. It also features a past Overdrive Small Fleet Champ in Silver Creek Transportation’s Jason Cowan, among many others: https://truckingshow.com/opening-breakfast/

Hear more about that in the podcast, likewise the story of how a 2023 Mack Anthem in the small fleet of Hell Bent Xpress came to be the first truck to get an install of the Fresco 9000 MaXX battery-powered alternative air conditioning system, performed by the way by Jim Fowler and his team at Michigan MD Alignment.

Much more from in the way of MATS preview coverage at https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4372607

In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, Hotels4Truckers.com proprietor Dan Fuller, former driver and independent owner-operator, details completion of a project years in the making. The website and now mobile app as well got its start simply as a cataloging of hotels around the nation where parking a tractor and 53-foot trailer was not only possible but welcomed, provided for by the hotel facilities. Within the last year, users of Hotels4Truckers.com, though, noticed some significant changes, boosting the seamless-experience factor with booking possible now, with discounts, right from the site itself.

Functionally, Fuller said, "We're like Hotels.com for the trucking industry now. Tell us where you're looking, you do your dates, and all the hotels come back" with a search, showing the discounted rate available to Hotels4Truckers users and with a built-in parking filter you can use to show only sites where parking's available.

The new website soft-launched back last Fall -- legacy users, Fuller added, will need to re-register if they haven't already -- and ever since he's been tweaking the design and adding hotel chains and truck parking-friendly facilities. In total, close to 13,000 rooms are represented within the platform (many with parking) among dozens of hotel brands. In Canada, too, with a very recent update for users up North.

That just so happens to be where Dan Fuller lives today -- he came off the road in 2017 after much of his life spent headquartered near Detroit. A second marriage to a Canadian health-industry specialist took up to rural far Northern Ontario, where he's been hard at work building out the new version of his longtime service. I'm willing to bet he's looking forward to warmer climes as he preps for an official launch of the new Hotels4Truckers.com upcoming at the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Kentucky, next month. (You'll find him in the North Lobby near the main registration -- attendees can sign up for the service there for free and with a special gift as part of the bargain. I think it will be worth the visit, I'll say, for now.)

In the podcast, Dan Fuller lays out his personal story trucking, likewise the 15 years or so he's spent at work building a network of discounted hotels and with, as noted, verifiable intelligence about whether tractor-trailer parking is available at any site.

Find Hotels4Truckers via https://hotels4truckers.com and via iOS and Android app stores.

More Overdrive Radio: https://overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio

Today, a bit of a hypothetical that is really not hypothetical at all, though we’ll withhold names with multiple court cases pending. But consider the scenario: You engage with a broker you feel you know is legitimate for a load of copper moving toward the Northeast. You drop that load for $1,600, you ultimately get paid, and you go on about your business to the next piece of freight.

Meanwhile, though, the same load of copper is being rebooked by the same “broker” – note the scare quotes, certainly safe use them in this scenario. The “broker” contracts with yet another owner to move the copper west to the center of the country, whereupon that owner drops the cargo and goes along his own merry way.

Yet again, the “broker” now has another owner-operator in his sites for the third move of the copper, this time with a destination in the Los Angeles area. The operator who picks this load up, though (promised a handsome rate for his work), along the way gets a good indication of just where the "broker" wants to send him. It's no kind of manufacturer who needs the coiled, finished copper for their products, rather the address for what looks to be the kind of place where old cars and trucks and scrap metal of various kinds are sent to die, to be reprocessed -- a salvage yard, in essence.

This operator obeys his spidey senses and calls the cops, opening a case that then winds its way back to the origin of the copper in the rural Southeast, where a rural detective IDs and then orders you, the owner-operator who picked up the load to begin with, arrested. You land in jail in your home region, spending several nights locked up before being bonded out for $50K.

The original crooks -- the “broker” on the load, likely impersonating a legitimate entity or otherwise part of a double-brokering ring of authorized entities -- meanwhile get to sit at their computers wherever they might be and keep up the "good" work. You and your leasing carrier face scheduled court dates that come and go, ongoing discussion amongst defense and prosecution, with no resolution to your charge.

When we first learned of a particular case fitting these parameters back late last summer, the arrest had just happened, with a September court date scheduled, which was then pushed to October. None of those court dates held for the owner, and still, there’s been no resolution as efforts to untangle the scheme continue. The charge? "Obtaining property by false pretenses in excess of $100,000," apparently for falling for a fake broker’s representation of himself as legitimate as he schemes with an unknown number of actually knowing accomplices to steal the copper.

How's that for personal risk?

Today on the podcast, a conversation with cargo-theft security firm Overhaul’s Danny Ramon about just what that company’s seeing in the so-called “strategic theft” landscape around the nation. That’s the kind of theft described in the scenario above, often with multiple layers of deception and misrepresentation involved to use entirely legitimate, unwitting operations to steal hot commodities.

As mentioned in the podcast:

**Alex Lockie's recent story about the FraudWatch system from Overhaul: https://overdriveonline.com/15737195

**Transportation attorney Hank Seaton's "Supply chain protocol": https://overdriveonline.com/15302784