Overdrive Radio

We’ve got a bit of a special edition of Overdrive Radio for you this week. There’s a guest host of sorts, who’s going to walk us through a conversation with Chace Barber, cofounder of Edison Motors. If Barber's name sounds familiar, you may have read Overdrive Executive Editor Alex Lockie’s reporting of some of what Barber’s been doing with a diesel-electric concept that’s similar to the way locomotive work. The system features effectively an on-board diesel generator serving only to charge in this case a lithium ion battery powering an electric motor capable of monster loads of both horsepower and torque. In the case of Barber and company's prototype, that's all inside a beautiful and beautifully tough old 1969 Kenworth they call, simply, Old Blue.

Log hauler, writer, and podcaster Gord Magill recently drew out more of Chace Barber’s company’s origin story and plenty about just where his electric-drive trucks stand to be best applied in his Voice of GO(R)D podcast.

Gord’s roots, like Chache Barber’s, are in Canada, though Magill now calls the United States home, as our own "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer wrote in his Faces of the Road series talk with Magill: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-extra/article/15289327/faces-of-the-road-gord-magill

As noted, Barber’s Edison Motors has been making a name for itself by taking advantage of big strides in battery technology to repurpose something of an old general concept for new application, with big potential. It’s not exactly a hybrid diesel-electric in the manner of much of the hybrid technology in cars today, as he told Magill, and over-the-road trucking benefits are decidedly less than more intense applications like log hauling. Yet OTR could benefit in form of fuel savings to the tune of a potential 5-10 percent or more.

There’s some perhaps non-obvious benefits, too -- think things that might fall into the "weird government" classification Magill mentions in the podcast (electric-drive trucks ELD/road tax-exempt?) -- spelled out the podcast.

Find the full two-hour conversation in the Voice of GO(R)D podcast via this link to Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/01IBVRZ1pokC94ZXvguJfR

Here on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/voice-of-go-r-d/episode/old-trucks-new-tech-how-a-b-c-logger-is-making-electric-trucks-less-cringe-211086897

Here on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/voice-of-go-r-d/id1663362014

Magill's writing, featured elsewhere in outlets like Newsweek among many others, is also accessible via his Substack page at this link: https://autonomoustruckers.substack.com/

Alex Lockie's reporting on Barber and his Edison Motors cofounder Eric Little: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15301066/loghauling-truckings-toughest-niche

With today's edition of Overdrive Radio we’re going to drop into conversation with a man who’s been making a name for himself around the Atlanta-area trucking community the last decade or so while building a small fleet -- Mike Nelms, owner of Keep Trucking Transportation. The 20-or-so-truck fleet pulls reefers and dry vans with a mix of brokered and direct business, made up mostly of owners leased on, including many owner-operators. Mike Nelms has just a few trucks of his own.

Nelms has brought instincts for raising up those around him with an interest in the trucking business, incorporating distinctly educational efforts directly into operations. All employed there approach relationships with contracted owners with an educational mission in mind, hoping to set up all owners for future success as they remain leased on or, eventually, go out on their own with authority.

And last year Nelms debuted a first-time event in Atlanta to connect owner-operators and others with newer trucking businesses with potential funding sources, whether truck loans or other needed lending, in the form of a mixer on a downtown rooftop. The second such event is coming up March 4, 2023, on top of the Ascent building, from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. There’s more to it than just funding, ultimately, too -- a chance to network with stakeholders in trucking with a wide range of experience. Hear all about Nelms' now-almost-decade-long journey into and through trucking in the podcast.

More about Keep Trucking Transportation and the Atlanta event: https://www.keeptruckingtransportation.com/

Also in the podcast, hear about one of Nelms leased-on invested truck owners and how she approaches her driver, the "quarterback" of the whole operation, as such puts it, with a healthy flat pay package and more: http://overdriveonline.com/15305792

**And a discussion of FMCSA's interim dispatch provider guidance, relevant to just when any independent dispatch operation needs broker authority at present, and when it doesn't. Find details on that guidance via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/regulations/article/15303162/fmcsa-guidance-on-when-dispatch-services-need-broker-authority

In a previous edition of Overdrive Radio, News Editor Matt Cole dug into the American Transportation Research Institute's close look at the life-cycle emissions associated with the production and operation of diesel, battery-electric and hydrogen-powered trucks. As noted in the very title of that past episode, the research in some ways cut through the politics and PR that surrounds electric-vehicle technology, showing such vehicles would be no true "zero emissions" panacea when production-associated demands are considered, particularly for battery-electric trucks: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15292003/how-politics-and-pr-cloud-zero-emissions-trucks-reality

In today's edition, Cole talks with Jeff Short, ATRI VP, about follow-up research that poses something of a counterfactual on the way toward throwing more cold-hard reality on top of the politics and PR around vehicle electrification. If the entirety of the U.S. vehicle fleet, from owner-operators' heavy tractor-trailers on down to passengers cars, were to suddenly be transitioned to battery-electric, what level of electric power generation would it take? What new materials demands would be required to make all those batteries? What, fundamentally, would the implications be for truckers’ operational realities (including the hours of service) and the infrastructure needs to support them?

As Cole notes at the top of the edition, that infrastructure would necessarily include a whole lot of new electrified parking spaces. "If every truck has to stop and charge," he said, "obviously you've got to have a charger pretty much at every parking spot across the country, and there's already a parking shortage."

Further, if every tractor out there had to stop to charge on the regular for hours at a time, "that parking shortage is only going to look a whole lot worse."

Find ATRI's full "Charging infrastructure challenges for the U.S. electric vehicle fleet" report via this link: https://truckingresearch.org/2022/12/06/new-atri-research-evaluates-charging-infrastructure-challenges-for-the-u-s-electric-vehicle-fleet/

This time a year ago, well before the extent of the coming year's cost-inflationary pressures were fully known, owner-operators delivered mixed signals for the coming year of 2022, though 65% predicted income to be better or about the same as prior year 2021. This year, the script has most certainly flipped on the 2023 outlook, with 61% looking out and seeing worse or level conditions to come.

Among commenters reflecting the near-majority fearing worse conditions ahead was one who, though fuel prices have moderated a bit in the last month or so, expected more hikes in the future: "With no end in sight on fuel prices going up, taking away from the bottom line, then '23 is definitely going to be worse than '22."

Today on Overdrive Radio, we're re-airing a September talk with Glen and Karla Horack, Glen named Owner-Operator of the Year in March of 2022. Horack's diligent approach to reserve-account savings is instructive for anybody looking to hedge against the chance of a big downturn.

As Richard Davis noted in comments under the poll, reflecting on the spot-market boom year of 2021, "What goes up must come down."

Another day, another year nearly in the books -- here's our annual Overdrive Radio year-in-review. Thanks for hanging in with us through yet another big year for trucking as an owner-operator, one with absolutely huge challenges, for sure. We’ll hear about a lot of them again today. But hopefully, by the end, there’s something that sparks a new idea, or urges you on to completion of an old goal with new rigor, with new vigor.

2022 was a big one for Overdrive Radio, too -- thanks to longtime contributor and trucker-songwriter Long Haul Paul Marhoefer and the pros at Muscle Shoals Music Marketing we got an updated theme in Marhoefer's "Legend of the Snakeman," for one, an ode to the legendary guitarist who featured on Marhoefer's cut of the track, Travis "The Snakeman" Wammack.

The podcast also got the nod for Best Podcast from the business journalism folks behind the Jesse H. Neal Awards early in the year: https://www.overdriveonline.com/regulations/article/15291438/fmcsa-updating-household-goods-regs-with-new-recommendations

That wouldn’t be possible of course but for the very fact of you -– the listeners, the stories so many among you entrusted to us to air through the course of the year.

In this edition of Overdrive Radio, we count down to 2023 with 10 episodes that garnered the most ears throughout the year, with an extra five too that got quite close to the top-10 cut -– honorable mentions, as it were.

Themes emerge in cost challenges with fuel-market insanity and ongoing other inflation. We’ll hear about double brokering and other freight fraud, and how lax enforcement to combat it de facto enables it. We’ll hear a variety of perhaps unpopular opinions about regulations, and plenty and plenty in the way of brass-tacks owner-operator business advice gleaned from long experience, and in-depth analysis too.

It was a wild year, as Alex Lockie’s year-in-brief Wednesday this week made plenty clear: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/15304914/fmcsas-new-agenda-wild-inflation-owners-who-braved-a-bloodbath-2022-in-review

For all the guests on the podcast, 2022 was perhaps no more both difficult as well as fortunate than it was for 2022 Small Fleet Champ contender Bryon Stoll of Surprise Trucking. Stoll suffered a heart attack even as Overdrive was in the midst of putting together a profile of the 10-truck fleet: https://www.overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ/article/15115044/suprise-truckings-long-road-to-resurrection

A couple of quick-thinking professionals saved his life, a story he told in a September edition of Overdrive Radio: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15297166/hindsights-2020-after-nearfatal-heart-attack-for-bryon-stoll

We're happy to report Stoll’s recovery has gone well but is ongoing, he says. At once, he’s feeling hopeful about the prospects for full recovery. Our hope’s right there with his. Hear part of his story as well as 15 others revisiting recent history in today's podcast. Full versions of each featured episode you can find via this link: https://soundcloud.com/overdriveradio/sets/2022-in-review-the-top-10-plus

And so much more, no doubt. Here’s a big Merry Christmas to everybody to start off this week’s edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast. We drop in on quite an experience Overdrive Executive Editor Alex Lockie had just a little more than a week ago at the Danbury, Connecticut, stop on the Wreaths Across America convoy tour from Maine down to Arlington National Cemetery for the big central wreath-laying event. It's but one among thousands around the country at veterans’ cemeteries designed to pay respect to those who’ve served the nation.

Lockie there met Hampton Roads Moving and Storage owner-operator Steven Meyer and his 1998 Freightliner FLD, pulling a custom wrapped Kentucky trailer of his own design and dedicated to honoring distinct individuals. Together, through Meyer's narration their histories chart a story of achievement, of sacrifice, and ultimately of elemental things about human nature. For both men in the moment, the story delivers a measure of hope for the future of humanity.

Read Lockie's reporting from the event via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/15304350/what-wreaths-across-america-means-to-trucking-and-all-of-us

When 11 years ago Overdrive first talked with Jared Flinn, operating partner of the BulkLoads.com load board specializing in bulk freight, that business was at the two-guys-in-basement stage, following Flinn’s work trucking himself a little, then managing logistics for a big commodities outfit. He comes to the BulkLoads.com project with a passion to serve small fleets and owner-operators, the 1-5-truck carriers that he notes in today’s Overdrive Radio podcast are the board’s primary customers (in addition to the brokers and shippers posting freight there).

Today, the company employs 45 people, hosting tens of thousands of load posts daily for freight moving in hoppers, pneumatic tanks, liquid bulk tanks, end dumps and more. The growth of BulkLoads isn't the instigating reason we spoke to Flinn recently, however. He's also the author of a brand-new series of children’s books, featuring the hauling exploits of one Semi Sam, a freight-hauling tractor personified in the manner of, say, the "Thomas the Train" series many of you will be familiar with.

There are now three books in the series:

**"Semi Sam Helps With the Harvest": https://www.amazon.com/Semi-Helps-Harvest-Trucking-Adventures/dp/B0BKP8FWPH/

**"Semi Sam Delivers a Tractor": https://www.amazon.com/Semi-Delivers-Tractor-Jared-Flinn/dp/B0BMJS18Y1/

**And most recently "Semi Sam: Christmas at the White House": https://www.amazon.com/Semi-Sam-Christmas-Trucking-Adventures/dp/B0BMJGXVS1/

Flinn was driven to create the series after the experience reading books to his three children as they grew, drawing on his own interest in visual art and a recognition that there seemed to be a dearth of kids' literature involving the trucking industry. There’s some out there, and we've written about the occasional kids’ book that involves the business over the years. But generally, Flinn’s right. There’s not much, and response to the three "Semi Sam" books out as of now is testament to that.

He couldn't have realized "how good of an impact this would have. I've had so many people reach out," he said, noting "there needs to be more books like this."

If that describes your thoughts on the matter, stay tuned. For the series, it's three and counting, as it were.

Also in the podcast:

Flinn notes that inflated commodities prices have delivered generally a pretty good year for a lot of the ag-related bulk haulers, among others who utilize BulkLoads.com, and the freight niche generally. He also details in brief the board's expansion with a new factoring arm, likewise an insurance agency for small carriers and owner-operators (commercial auto liability and cargo, primarily), a bulk-freight-specific TMS and more.

Owner-operator Angelique “Tornado” Temple's one-truck Tornado Transport business, based out of Beaverdam, Virginia, follows a two-decade-plus career as a company driver hauling bulk liquid hazmat, much of it spent with Atlantic Bulk Carrier. If her name sounds familiar, it could be for a couple reasons. She sits on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's 2021-established Driver Advisory Subcommittee, for one.

For two, she's the latest inductee in the Howes Hall of Fame recognizing worthy participants in the Trucking and Farming industries that have supported that company now for more than a century.

Owner-operator Temple's story will no doubt strike a chord with anyone in the audience who’s tried to balance a true love of work on the road with pursuits back home, and the frustrations that come with that work, for that matter. One of those was well evident when Temple picked up the phone for our talk -- behind 25 other rigs in a line to get unloaded at a distribution facility.

That’s right, she’s not hauling bulk hazmat any longer. In 2021, she made good on a long-held aspiration to own and operate her own trucking business, purchasing a 2018 International LT and leasing to the CloudTrucks "virtual carrier," whose platform is geared toward maximum owner control of all aspects of the business's operation.

(Regular listeners may recall Overdrive's talk with reps from CloudTrucks as well as owner-operator Jason Hurley, who’d moved to lease there after years with Schneider: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15066489/ownerops-real-success-with-a-virtual-carrier )

There’s more to her plans for the future in addition to eventually getting her authority, too. Her youngest son, one among six children Temple raised through the course of those 20-plus years hauling hazmat tank, plans to get his CDL and join her on the road and in business. Dive in with Temple’s trucking history, her training, mentoring, membership on the federal advisory board, charity work and so much more in today's edition.

In this edition of Overdrive Radio, drop into a dry-bulk run in the Working Bobtail, 2015 & Newer category-winning rig in Overdrive's 2022 Pride & Polish competition, owner-operator John McCormick's 'Bandit' 2021 Kenworth W900L. It's the Oakley-leased owner-operator's bread-and-butter haul back and forth between Cresline Plastic Pipe in Henderson, Kentucky, near the McCormick home in Robards, and Westlake Chemical’s PVC complex in Calvert City.

Hooked to one of two Mac pneumatic tank trailers owned by all-owner-operator Oakley Trucking out of North Little Rock, Arkansas, McCormick’s Bandit Kenworth cuts a fine picture, whether offloading PVC powder into one of the silos at Cresline, where they turn that powder into pipe, or hauling along I-69 or 24 or elsewhere between the two principal points for most of his runs.

The 280-inch wheelbase KW features a 565-hp Cummins X15, an 18 speed transmission and 3.36 rears. Utilizing principal supplier Chrome Dome out of Haubstadt, Indiana, on I-64 north of Evansville, McCormick's added bright parts and more over the two years he's owned the truck -- including throughout the interior. He's added 8 cab lights, breather lights and plenty throughout the interior. Amber underglow lights are by Shift Products,

Drive fenders are from WTI, and custom-painted by a semi-retired artist in Robards McCormick knows only as "Chop." Chop's next project is already under way -- he's painting a Rockwood floor for the interior that McCormick gave the artist plenty of rope to produce. When asked what it was going to look like, "I'm not real sure," McCormick said. Basically I just give him free rein of it. He said he had a friend who does airbrushing. ... I told him, 'you know the truck, the theme of the truck, you can go from there.' ... Everything I've seen from him looks great."

It's that kind of trust in long-term business relationships that guide 48-year-old McCormick, whether in his choice of leasing partner (he's worked with Oakley for 15 years now) or his approach to general maintenance. Over the time he owned Western Stars prior to the Kenworth purchase in 2020, he established a solid partnership for basic preventive maintenance with a Detroit dealer right next to the Cresline facility, Clarke Power Services. "I'm sure people would wonder why I take a Cummins to a Detroit dealer to get the oil changed," he said. "It's one of those deals where you get a good working relationship with somebody and you want to stick with them."

Find plenty pictures from the run of the rig and the equipment in McCormick's history via https://www.overdriveonline.com/15303882

Read about all Pride & Polish winners via http://overdriveonline.com/pride-polish

This edition of Overdrive Radio picks up where Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole left on in his reporting from mid-late October around truck-involved crash statistics in the four years prior to, and the four years after, implementation of the FMCSA's electronic logging device mandate, which began in earnest right at the end of 2017: https://www.overdriveonline.com/csas-data-trail/article/15301876/crashes-injuries-and-fatalities-up-posteld-mandate

As many listeners and Overdrive readers have likely seen, Cole’s reporting illustrated clearly the generally higher rates of crashes post-mandate, even considering the 2020 year when statistics were way down with the big decline in motorist highway traffic amid the fear and uncertainty of the early COVID pandemic. So there’s a definite correlation between regulatory change in the ELD mandate and those negative safety impacts, but can we really determine there’s a cause there? Hard to say, given so many factors go into the cause of any crash, not least among those causal factors the “unprofessional” driving behavior of our four-wheeled friends.

Just refer back to the 2020 year noted just earlier for evidence of that.

The question of cause and effect around the ELD mandate, though, is certainly a conversation starter for Overdrive’s owner-operator audience. Attendant to Cole’s reporting, we surveyed owner-operators, and the overwhelming majority feel the mandate has at least contributed to safety-negative effects. In this podcast, hear a variety of viewpoints on the cause-and-effect question, both from contributing reporting from video editor Lawson Rudisll surveying owners about the ELD mandate and any safety connection, or lack thereof, and Matt Cole’s own interviews for the broader picture.

We can’t count Michigan-headquartered small fleet owner Bud Davenport among the majority who see some safety impact from the mandate, exactly. Yet Cole’s talk with Davenport is instructive when it comes to the state of play for driver training that other owners feel has been exacerbated by the mandate.

As referenced in the podcast, for some relief from the ticking-clock pressures of the 14-hour rule, the 2020-changed split sleeper allows for some mid-duty-period rest without losing duty time. Find something of a tutorial via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/14897907/how-to-log-the-new-73-splitsleeper-in-the-hours-of-service

PRIZE PACK OFFER FROM OVERDRIVE RADIO SPONSOR HOWES:

Leave a message on Overdrive Radio's podcast line at 615-852-8530 with your name and location, and we'll get back in touch for your shipping information for a Howes prize pack featuring both Diesel Treat and Lifeline anti-gel fuel treatments, the Howes Multipurpose penetrating oil, and more swag from the company. Again, that’s 615-852-8530.