Overdrive Radio

Now Lansing, Michigan-based operator Toby Bogard is on a mission. That mission is multifold, as you’ll hear in today’s edition of Overdrive Radio, where we catch back up with the driver, now hauling for Heartland Express after about a year and a half away from the road.

Bogard’s return to the road follows a million-plus-mile career prior, and he's newly involved in efforts to push along an idea for something of a feel-good movie narrative about the life and times of a trucker, framed by his last ride home, with the goal of improving the public image of trucking. At least that's among Bogard's principal goals for involvement.

This isn’t Bogard’s first such foray. Regular Overdrive readers may have caught a mention earlier in the week of his Semi-Aware book, designed for teens setting out to get their driver’s license for the first time. It's all about education and appreciation for the work trucking does, and even more specifically just how to maneuver around tractor-trailers on the road (more emphasis on which is sorely needed in driver’s ed programs around the nation): https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/14874190/con-way-truckload-driver-pens-semi-aware-book-for-teen-drivers

It had been quite a time since we'd spoken to Bogard, and a whole lot had happened to him in the interim, including the move north from his former home in East Tennessee, the tragic passing of a loved one, and a big re-evaluation of goals during his time off the road caring for two young daughters. Hear his story in today's podcast.

In this edition of Overdrive Radio on Veterans Day, we’re going to get a bit of look at how the nation, and the trucking business, remains a bulwark for opportunity no doubt in part attributable to servicemembers’ many sacrifices through the decades gone by.

We’ll hear from Slava Sobetki, co-owner of the Chicago-area-based Taurus Auto Group car-haul fleet, and who Overdrive profiled as well just yesterday as part of a package of stories that digs into a few relative newcomers to the Transportation Management System platform space: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15302588/tms-platforms-not-just-for-large-fleets

Specifically, such systems -- commonly known by the TMS acronym -- that are increasingly geared toward owner-operators and other small fleets. As the TMS market has matured through the years, such technology is no longer just the province of large motor carriers, as the stories make clear. They feature:

**One-truck TB Trucking and its owners Troy and Hather Baumgartner utilizing the Lynks TMS: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15302486/independent-owners-find-money-time-with-new-tms

**Three-truck Shipping Teleporters with the new Command system from Trucker Path: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15303003/smallfleet-owner-finds-organization-growth-with-tms

**And the Ship.Cars platform, where now almost 100-truck Taurus Auto Group has found greater back-office and in-the-field efficiency with the car-haul-specific, and free-to-use, Carrier TMS Ship.Cars offers: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15302575/taurus-auto-groups-experience-with-shipcars-tms

Taurus owner Slava Sobetki didn’t just hop right into trucking in the back office, though. He got his start in trucking like so many do -– behind the wheel. After a childhood in Moldova, he came to the United States on a student exchange program in the early part of the century. That experience led to a determination to stay, to join what he calls "the greatest country in the world."

Most of the trucks in the Taurus Auto Group fleet today are owner-operated, Sobetki noted, too, sending 10% of the load back to the company, he said. Likewise, most are hotshots, but some owners run stingers or other car-haul-capable trailers with larger trucks.

Hank Seaton, with the Seaton & Husk law firm, spoke at the National Association of Small Trucking Companies’ annual conference a couple weeks back about what he called Fraud Prevention and Supply Chain Protocol. He offered what he feels is a possible preventive fix to the crime of double brokering when misrepresentation is involved.

In today's edition of Overdrive Radio, drop into a long talk with Seaton about somewhat simple steps carriers, brokers and shippers working together can take to stop these schemes in their tracks, whether involving carrier and broker identity theft or the insidious and perhaps more widespread presence of authorized carriers and brokerages set up seemingly for the purpose of simply double-brokering loads: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/15302246/fmcsa-and-dot-prioritizing-doublebrokering-schemes

The honest players in trucking simply must work together both to prevent this kind of thing from ever happening, as he sees it, and elevate the issue. "I'd like to see this raised to the level of attention that, if the FMCSA doesn't have the manpower, that the Department's Inspector General just set up an enforcement group," he said. "Other regulated industries, like particularly the Federal Maritime Commission, they're much more proactive in terms of protecting business practices, ensuring fair play in business practices. Fraud is hardly fair play in business practices."

Indeed part of U.S. transportation policy as outlined in U.S. code is in part to ensure "fair competition." Those interested in joining with Seaton to help build a coalition around these issues can find him via the website of his firm: http://www.transportationlaw.net/

His preventive ideas in some ways double down on previous practices that have gone by the wayside for a variety of reasons, most having to do with the speed at which spot market transactions have to occur these days in the rush to compete, to book, to deliver. Brokers, carriers, shippers all have become "sloppy," in his view, in the rush to get freight moved.

You might think of his message as a re-emphasis of what Michigan-based broker Jon Asiala shared in this editorial just yesterday: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-extra/article/15302460/know-your-brokercarrier-to-axe-doublebrokering-schemes

Asiala detailed his own experience of a double-brokered load that ultimately cost him when the real carrier didn’t get paid. Asiala’s message: Get back those old ways, as much as is humanly possible in this day and age, and take the time to know definitively who you’re dealing with, whether broker or carrier.

Also in the podcast: Meet Dominic Gonzalez of his family's now-28=truck Antonio and Sons Trucking fleet, and a very sharp custom 2016 Peterbilt 579 we saw out at the A.J. Soza Memorial Truck Show in June 2022. Run through some of the fleet's history, likewise that of this particular rig, in the podcast. Find views on the rig via https://www.overdriveonline.com/custom-rigs/video/15302676/small-fleets-firstever-aero-rig-a-beauty-of-a-2016-pete-579

In this Overdrive Radio edition, dive into parts of the awards ceremony for Overdrive's Small Fleet Championship, held Thursday, November 20. From a tribute to the great boxing and wrestling ring announcer Michael Buffer to announcement of the competition's winners, the podcast drops most importantly into a roundtable discussion with all four competition finalists.

Overdrive Radio host Todd Dills teed it up with a question: What's been your biggest business challenge of the past year or two, and what have you done to combat it/mitigate effects?

We hear here from:

**11-30-truck division Small Fleet Champ John McGee Trucking, hauling mostly out of the oilfield regionally in Simsboro, Lousiana

**11-30-truck division final round contender Holtkamp Transportation, pulling dry vans coast to coast out of West Point, Iowa.

**3-10-truck division Small Fleet Champ CAP Trucking, hauling LTL reefer out of Sanford, Florida -- regular listeners have heard owner Chris Porricelli before: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15296432/stolen-truck-freight-scam-lead-big-reevaluation-for-small-fleet

**3-10-truck division final round contender Creech Trucking, serving dairy farmers with belt trailers regionally around the Comanche, Texas home base

From equipment procurement issues to managing trade cycles and warranty work, insurance rating (including captive models), diesel prices, fuel surcharge management and more, these excellent business owners lend the benefit of their experience here.

The Small Fleet Championship recognizes excellence in small fleet businesses who’ve exhibited growth and stability after getting the start as so many fleets do, as one truck and an owner-operator with a plan for success.

As last year, the program was sponsored by the National Association of Small Trucking Companies: http://nastc.com

Congrats to all the finalists. Read more about them and 6 other semi-finalists in individual profiles of each business via http://overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ

With customary Overdrive Radio host Todd Dills out at the conference of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies' annual conference today in Nashville, he turns the mic over to contributor, trucker and songwriter Long Haul Paul Marhoefer, who will introduce a trucking-radio personality you may or may not have heard of before who Paul feels is bringing something of a sense of wonder back to trucking radio

That’d be none other than Jimmy Mac, host of Dave Nemo Weekends on the Sirius XM Road Dog channel 146. If you’ve never heard Mac, his show aims to truck drivers in the manner of, as Marhoefer put it, talk radio of say "the mid-20th century," long before the "rock-throwing contest began," as it were. "WGN's Milt Rosenberg from Chicago comes to mind, or maybe Barry Farber of WOR, in New York."

Jimmy Mac, for Long Haul Paul tuning in from the truck operator's seat from a highway somewhere, "was was speaking with us, and he was speaking as if we were actual adults."

That’s a pretty good description of the kind of truly engrossing, entertaining and enlightening talk Jimmy Mac’s doing. Listeners are sure to get something out of Long Haul Paul’s talk with Mac here. Consider it part of Marhoefer’s Faces of the Road series of oral histories he’s been chronicling now for years, featuring individual truck owners and drivers, personalities associated with trucking in music and much more. Find all Faces of the Road installments via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4404196

Also in the podcast. Here's a big congrats to the final four among Overdrive's Small Fleet Champ contenders who competed last night in two categories. Coming out on top were, in the 11-30-truck division, 19-truck Louisiana-headquartered John McGee Trucking, hauling mostly tankers and serving oilfield customers in the wide oil-rich region around the home base: https://www.overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ/article/15295593/john-mcgee-trucking-embraces-golden-rule-toward-steady-growth

Then in the 3-10 truck category, hailing from Sanford, Florida, was 5-truck CAP Trucking, the small fleet of LTL Reefer specialist Chris Porricelli, who brought home the title belt there: https://www.overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ/article/15296127/cap-trucking-refocuses-asset-business-in-ltl-reefer

In this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, we drop back two weeks in time to the site of the Mayberry Truck Show in Mt. Airy, North Carolina, where despite rain threatening from remnants of Hurricane Ian, scads of owners and operators showed out in force for the second annual event at the home location of Bottomley Enterprises.

Our own video editor Lawson Rudisill was out at the show, and, given fairly recent news of negative GDP growth in both the first and second quarters -- one favored rule of thumb for some when it comes to declaring a recession -- and a stock market on a wild ride, mostly down, Rudisill surveyed a variety of owners he caught up with on what they were seeing in their operations.

Answers to the question of just whether owners and operators were seeing indicators in their businesses of a bona fide recession at that moment in time ran the gamut from definitive "yes" to more positive outlooks, based on individual experiences.

One common theme: For those staked in trucking for the long-term who can keep close rein on costs, hang on tight and, whatever happens in the wider economy, odds are the tight grip will sustain you.

Operator Austin Kiser, who hauls with a pristine 2018 Peterbilt 389 glider for his father's Rosedale, Virginia-based Greg Kiser Trucking, emphasized a have/have-not dynamic for freight lately, trucking along well in his bulk business, still commanding higher rates given the rise in the cost of operations.

Stay tuned for an update on Kiser's rig – there’s been quite a lot of work put in, particularly on the 6nz Cat, since we last saw in in spring of 2021 at the East Coast Truckers Jamboree at Kenly 95 in North Carolina: https://www.overdriveonline.com/custom-rigs/article/15065658/austin-kisers-2018-peterbilt-389-at-kenly-95-east-coast-jamboree

For others, noted Kiser, rates were just not keeping up with rising costs, and he worried that if the wider economy continues to generally slow or falls off a cliff, equipment/parts costs stood a good chance of overwhelming those who've gotten into the business buying equipment during recent-years price highs. "I wouldn't really call it a recession," he said of the current environment, but considering inflationary pressures, "when it does go down, it's not going to be good."

Said Massey Motor Freight fleet owner Troy Massey, also showing at Mayberry, about those inflationary pressures: "Times are about as tough as what you can get right now in trucking" when it comes to costs for fuel, insurance, equipment, and more. Yet: "I may be wrong because I'm optimistic," but "I don't think it's going to get any worse." Here's hoping he's right.

Also featured in the podcast: Owner-operators Mel Williams, John Highley and Brent Hall, like operators Brandon Burroughs and John Rooney.

Former CVSA president Steve Vaughn, currently vice president of field operations for PrePass, stressed asking the tough questions about technology and all the infrastructure put in place to support it when it comes to roadside inspections and over-the-air communication from the truck to law enforcement. Getting answers to those questions, some of which he details in today's edition of Overdrive Radio, will be absolutely key to making any possible rulemakings around electronic ID something industry and enforcement can agree on and benefit from where the rubber meets the road. And hopefully without the unintended consequences that often arise in the rush toward federal implementation of new programs.

Overdrive's Alex Lockie wrote about the electronic-ID comment period currently open in this story from Thursday, October 6, 2022: https://www.overdriveonline.com/regulations/article/15301028/electronic-ids-for-trucks-fact-vs-fiction

PrePass' Vaughn was speaking long before the FMCSA's current request for comment on the topic, but drew connecting lines between electronic ID (sometimes referred to as "UID") and the agency's long pursuit of so-called "Wireless Roadside Inspections," or WRI, a program to automate both vehicle and driver inspections with communications technology. That's now become a more limited version of what the old WRI program envisioned, in the form of CVSA's Level 8 electronic inspection standard.

Study and technology development around WRI go back to at least 2006, when the agency was provided funding for a four-year study that morphed into at least nine years of funded research. "Congress in 2018 told them you’re no longer to spend money on it," Vaughn said, speaking in March at the Truckload 2022 conference in Las Vegas. "You’ve been looking at it for 10 years, that’s enough."

Around that same time, though, he added, "we saw it move over to CVSA in the form of a Level 8 inspection." Though the new standard for electronic inspections has been official in CVSA's inspection program since June 2017, "not a single Level 8 inspection [has been] conducted to date," Vaughn said in March.

FMCSA's September ANPRM around electronic IDs did note that the agency has been testing Level 8 inspections as a means essentially to do what CVSA Executive Director Collin Mooney described in Alex Lockie's story yesterday, assess basic safety at highway speeds and thus target only trucks, operators and carriers that truly need it.

The Level 8 electronic inspection standard itself, as Vaughn noted in his March talk, requires the capture of where the truck is via "GPS coordinates, information about the driver. ... Are they licensed to drive the class of vehicle they’re in, do they have their medical? Hours of service information -- are they current, is it up to date? Skill Performance Evaluation Certificate -- does it meet the requirements? On the vehicle -- DOT number, registration. UCR: is it current? What is the operating authority, and does [the carrier] currently have federal out of service violations?"

Vaughn noted an established electronic ID/UID system he viewed as a stepping stone to get there, and the Level 8 as another step toward what CVSA adopted at its most recent meeting, reported on just two days ago, a standard for inspections of automated vehicles.

Citing his past with the California Highway Patrol and with CVSA, Vaughn noted that during his 40 years of experience around trucking and government, he's seen the tendency particularly for governments to want to "get a program forward so quickly that they don’t properly vet it all the way through."

**Where to comment on FMCSA's electronic-ID ANPRM: https://www.regulations.gov/document/FMCSA-2022-0062-0008

**A tutorial around challenging preventable crashes in FMCSA's fairly new program conducted through the DataQs system: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/14897753/how-to-dataq-a-crash-in-new-fmcsa-preventability-program

With some of the signs flashing red, as it were, on the prospects of bona fide economic recession, the indicators remained mixed for owner-operator business performance as of a couple weeks ago, the time of ATBS Vice President Mike Hosted's year benchmarking presentation Overdrive originally reported on at this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/partners-in-business/article/15296973/ownerop-revenue-up-big-this-year-but-completely-offset-by-fuel

Hosted will be familiar to regular readers from his earlier-year presentation with Overdrive and our own Gary Buchs at the Mid-America Trucking Show, part of our Partners in Business program: http://overdriveonline.com/partners-in-business

This edition of Overdrive Radio dives in with Hosted for the bulk of his recent distillation of what ATBS has seen throughout year since. Listeners can glean plenty from this audio-only version, but know that a video version is available that includes most of the charts and graphs illustrating year-over-year comparisons of average revenue, costs and bedrock income that Hosted shared throughout. Find it via this link to Overdrive's Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/Tl6AzI8aJo4

Hosted's insights include plenty in the way broader economic and freight trends data. As rates on the spot markets for freight have continued to slide, ATBS, he said, is starting to see a shift for many owners who went out and got authority during the last couple of spot market boom years -- a move back to leasing as a refuge from declining rates and rising costs.

Thanks to our friends at Overdrive sister publication CCJ, we can quantify that anecdotal trend to an extent.

Every year, CCJ compiles the Top 250, ranking the most sizable freight carrying trucking fleets in the nation. The rankings are the result in part of surveying those carriers directly, with the survey running typically in the June and July months of the year. This year, 97 out of the top 250 carriers reported numbers of leased-on independent contractors among operators working with them. Comparing that group for this year to what was reported in 2021, there’s been a rise in leased-on independents -- in spite of political and regulatory pressures like California's AB 5 contractor making some carriers skittish about leasing, particularly out West.

It's not a big number -- yet. Considered in the aggregate, those 97 major fleets were contracting with 2% more independents in 2022, at the height of the fuel-price shock in those early summer months, than in 2021. Whatever your situation, there's plenty to glean in this week's episode, as Hosted compares the performance of leased dry van, reefer and flatbed owners, likewise independents with motor carrier authority, among ATBS clientele.

it’s been a tough few weeks for small fleet owner Bryon Stoll of New London, Wisconsin. In today's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, Stoll recounts the myriad things that went just right on his evening trip to the hospital for what turned out to be emergency surgery to clear a near total blockage of a coronary artery, the reason for the heart attack the 48-year-old longtime truck owner and operator was experiencing.

Stoll, with his wife, Holly, heads up reefer carrier Surprise Trucking, who we reported on at length earlier this week attendant to Suprise's semifinalist recognition as part of Overdrive 2022 Small Fleet Championship: https://www.overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ/article/15115044/suprise-truckings-long-road-to-resurrection

It’s a more dead-serious topic that dominates Stoll’s story today, though. If you don’t have your life, of course, the day-to-day concerns of a trucking business are but a luxury you’ll never afford.

The Stolls know that in a very intimate way after Bryon's experience. A lot went wrong the fateful evening of his heart attack, as he tells it. (His past time as a firefighter and emergency medical technician himself led him to recognize a breakdown in communication between initial emergency dispatch and the ambulance crew that showed up at his home after his wife’s call, for instance.)

Yet for everything that went wrong, there was something else that came off just perfectly -- the team of EMTs that did arrive knew just what they were dealing with, and went the extra mile for his life. The Stolls are thankful on that score, no doubt, as are we. Bryon told his story as something of a cautionary tale for any of us listening, particularly those with heart attack risk factors, including a family history of heart ailments.

Wade Bontrager, CEO of National Truck Protection, came to the now more than four-decade provider of used-truck warranties to owner-operators and small fleets owners around the time of NTP's 2018 purchase of Premium 2000, a fellow used-warranty provider. The following years have seen a systematic improvement process for the company, which still offers both NTP and Premium 2000 warranty brands but with a close focus on transparent contracts and more customer-beneficial practices that Bontrager lays out in this podcast.

We dig in here, too, with some of the themes unearthed by Overdrive’s own News Editor Matt Cole in a three-part feature about the evolution of the used-truck warranty market. That feature wrapped up yesterday, September 15, at OverdriveOnline.com: https://www.overdriveonline.com/equipment/article/15296811/usedtruck-warranty-dynamics-on-the-move-in-response-to-criticism

We hear a lot more from Wade Bontrager, too. His arrival at National Truck Protection in 2018 ushered in a variety of changes in the company’s product offerings that have improved owner-operators’ experience of their used-truck warranties. The changes responded to criticisms that were pretty common among the owner-operator community when it comes to used warranties. Michigan-based small fleet owner Bud Davenport summed up the very bedrock of some of those points of view when he noted that, before he in some ways lucked into used-warranty coverage, his basic thought about any such purchased protection was that it wasn't worth the cost.

Yet after he leased a 2016 Cascadia that came with an NTP warranty already on the truck, it proved valuable when he quickly encountered emissions-system issues, an experience echoed by other owner-operators.

Since the lease of that Cascadia, small fleet owner-operator Davenport’s been a regular customer of NTP’s with a bevy of purchased used trucks.

In short, the evolution of the used-truck warranty market has been generally toward better service, toward more complete coverage of so-called “progressive damages” and, as you’ll hear in this podcast, easier to understand, transparent contracts. Given the high cost of labor and parts in today’s world, not to mention the high cost of used equipment as well, such warranties have taken on new value for used buyers in other ways, too.

Read more about the used-truck warranty market in Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole's three-part series on it starting here: https://www.overdriveonline.com/equipment/article/15295619/with-market-strain-owners-find-value-in-usedtruck-warranties