Overdrive Radio

When Florida-based small fleet owner Chris Porricelli started his CAP Trucking company as a one-truck business, he was still in his 20s, and struggled for the first six months. But 11 years into it today, the five-truck fleet has excelled in North-South LTL reefer lanes with mostly direct customers for produce headed north from Florida and South Georgia, and a bevy of commodities headed south.

In this edition of Overdrive Radio, hear Porricelli's story in his own words, with part of our conversation with the owner attendant to his company’s semi-finalist recognition in Overdrive’s 2022 Small Fleet Championship: https://www.overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ/article/15296127/cap-trucking-refocuses-asset-business-in-ltl-reefer

CAP Trucking is one of five semi-finalists in the 3-10-truck category for the program this year, with five more contenders also in the 11-30-truck category.

Last week, Overdrive started running stories about all 10 of the fleets (with four live so far) and will continue that through the end of the month. Finalists will be announced in early October, with the winner named in a ceremony at the annual conference of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies October 20-22 in Nashville, Tennessee. (NASTC is the Small Fleet Champ awards' principal sponsor): http://overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ

Whether or not you missed the story earlier this week about CAP Trucking, you'll hear in this week's podcast a man in clear control of his business. He's got a real acumen for all the planning and thinking that goes into consolidation of LTL loads, with his family’s lineage extending back four generations in the wholesale produce business at Hunts Point Market in New York City. There, Porricelli cut his teeth as a night receiving foreman before venturing into over-the-road trucking on his own in the early part of the last decade.

Getting to where he is today was in no way an easy path for the young man, though. Recent years presented a trifecta of difficulties with a stolen truck, an expensive brush with scam artists, and no shortage of self-reflection after taking on a little too much. It all led him to stark choices that have allowed the business to re-emerge all the better for it.

Also in the podcast:

Porricelli explains his rationale for moving the business, now in its 12th year, into a S Corp structure for the tax savings and simplification enjoyed there. If you're unfamiliar with the structure, generally it makes sense for an owner-operator when net income exceeds a certain level (the $70,000 annual net figure is often offered as a rule of thumb). Read much more about it in this how-to coverings the questions of why, when and how to make the switch: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15282000/how-to-set-up-an-owneroperator-llc-to-file-as-an-s-corp

Hear also about how the owner's refocusing moves in recent years have allowed him to reduce debt loads considerably, and much more.

In this Part 2 edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast featuring conversations with Owner-Operator of the Year Glen Horack, the Missouri-based hauler elaborates on themes of preparation broached in Part 1 last week. Asked for his most salient advice for any new or aspiring owner in this day and age, he made reference to the grand cyclical nature of the economy -- and trucking specifically of course. What goes up must come down.

The owner-operator, leased with his 2022 Peterbilt 579 to Springfield, Missouri-headquartered Prime Inc., was speaking in June and noted market dynamics then evident that suggested to him the turn was either at hand or right around the corner.

Through Prime's driver app, "They send us a message every day ... as to what fuel's going to do at midnight," he said, advance notice of pending price changes for effective foresight for purchase decisions. At that time in June when we talked, he noted diesel had been occasionally going "down for one or two days. Then it'll go up the next five days or so in a row. And it'll go up much quicker than it'll go down."

With that he laughed at the end of it, one of those kinds of chuckles you might have to let fly to keep from crying.

Get ready, build your cash reserves, however you do it -- and before you get in business, he emphasized for those new to trucking. "Don't try to operate on a shoestring," Horack said.

Sooner or later, he added, with a big downturn typical for freight markets about every 10 years, if not more frequently, you're definitely going to need that nest egg.

Also in the podcast:

Owner-operator Horack today teams with his wife, Karla, whose acumen for cooking on the truck has enabled the pair run a lean operation, not just in the financial sense. Karla’s cooking methods and recipes are diverse, yet her in-cab cooking equipment is just a single, quite versatile piece.

The Horacks are no doubt looking forward to enjoying some time at home with family and friends next weekend as the 9th Annual Sam Biggs Memorial Bike Show and Poker Run, a benefit to research into childhood cancers, is set for Sept. 10, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. at American Legion Post 639, 2660 S. Scenic Ave. in Springfield, Missouri. Glen is a cofounder of the event, with its brainchild owner-operator Thomas Miller. Miller's a fellow past Owner-Operator of the Year. (The event today, with a subsequent effort in Illinois, is more than just the two owner-operators’ baby, though. It’s a big-tent effort involving family, friends and the community at large.) Find more about it via this link: https://bikeweekevents.com/motorcycle-events/sam-biggs-memorial-bike-show-and-poker-run/

Read more about Glen Horack's history in business: https://www.overdriveonline.com/owner-operator-of-the-year/article/15294600/top-ownerop-in-good-shape-for-run-toward-the-finish-line

Read more about Thomas Miller: https://www.overdriveonline.com/owner-operator-of-the-year/article/14887997/prime-owner-operator-thomas-miller-named-overdrives-2014-owner-operator-of-the-year-wins-25k-cash

This edition of Overdrive Radio features Owner-Operator of the Year Glen Horack, based in Elkland, Missouri, and so named in Overdrive’s coproduction of the awards program with the Truckload Carriers Association at the TCA annual conference in March in Las Vegas. Horack teams with his wife, Karla, a hauling partnership whose in-cab portion at least started after the one year -- 'knock on wood," Horack said -- his one-truck business truly struggled, 2008. The depths of the Great Recession.

Running team in the aftermath, as you’ll hear in this part 1 of 2 featuring Overdrive Radio host Todd Dills' June 2022 conversations the Horacks, the pair came out from under debt taken on as freight fell off quickly. It's a testament to the owners’ ability to adjust their reefer-hauling operation alongside three-decade partners in Prime, Inc., out of Springfield, Missouri, where they're still leased.

Hear both speak to the business, the experience of training each other (of a fashion) when Karla got her CDL, and so much more about their partnership growth in-cab. You'll hear some of Glen’s history trucking alongside his family life; a a per-mile set-aside strategy developed over the years to guard against the potential for unforeseen repairs; white-out, white-knuckle blizzard conditions in Nebraska … And so much from their lives in business.

Read more about Glen and Karla in this feature profile published in early in August 2022: https://www.overdriveonline.com/owner-operator-of-the-year/article/15294600/top-ownerop-in-good-shape-for-run-toward-the-finish-line

Ahead of Brake Safety Week 2022, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance weeklong outreach and inspection initiative focused on braking systems and starting this Sunday, Aug. 21, we're listening back to the 2021 Overdrive Radio podcast talk with Pennsylvania-based former local-department officer and long-certified DOT inspector Andy Blair. Looking at the landscape for commercial truck inspections generally, Blair sees plenty missed opportunities when it comes to troopers helping truckers to understand out-of-service violations. All too frequently, violations that put an owner-op or other driver out of service simply aren't explained at the point of inspection. Too many trucking companies large and small don't invest in the CVSA out-of-service criteria handbook, the only place you'll find those criteria in all their minutiae, according to Blair.

The equipment category that takes up the largest number of pages therein? Brakes, of course, and specifically clamp-type drum brakes. In this edition of Overdrive Radio, Blair runs through the specifics of the "20% rule" when it comes to clamp-type brake adjustment, among the most common of brake violations. Fundamentally, as he outlined in a document that's excerpted here below, if 20% or greater percentage of a truck's brakes are defective, that unit is out of service. With the Brake Safety Week inspection blitz kicking off nationwide Sunday, listen back to my full discussion with Blair, and find distilled information from him via the post that houses the podcast: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15114023

In addition to Blair's considered thoughts, in the wake of the podcast's original airing in August of 2021, Kansas Highway Patrol Public Information Officer and trooper/inspector Nick Wright offered some points of clarity about roadside realities when it comes to out-of-service brake adjustment, with a real-world example to illustrate it, you can read via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/15114162/outofservice-adjustment-more-on-roadside-brake-violations

Today we hand it off again to "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer to walk us through the moving, sometimes hilarious, writing of trucker-songwriter Coby Langham & the Citizen Band, whose 2019 “Years on the Road” record made plenty waves around his native Kentucky and beyond. Langham drives for likewise Kentucky-headquartered Downey & Sons, a pallet supplier out of Springfield, and he’s a proud father of three.

Hear more of Langham's music via this link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3c5Vvtgk1sEhmGYgRxOaN0?si=FUHOKkIjRG-lBsnruRh4-g&nd=1

Also in the podcast, Overdrive Executive Editor Alex Lockie's interview of Arien Ruell around his beautiful 800-horsepower, 1993 vintage Peterbilt 379, with a spectacular 80s-built sleeper and custom stretch that hauls mostly overweight, sometimes oversize, loads out of Pennsylvania to points west and South. Lockie caught up with owner-operator Ruell at the GearJammer show two weeks back in New Hampshire. It's a special truck, for Ruell something of a monument to relationships forged through history in and around and under the machine. Catch more views of it in Lockie's story about it here: https://www.overdriveonline.com/custom-rigs/article/15295340/800horse-93-peterbilt-ten-dimes-with-ownerop-arien-ruell

As you'll hear in the episode, it turned out to be a special day for Ruell, too.

This edition of Overdrive Radio features a talk with Charlie Deull, third generation in the family behind longtime Broadway show hauler (among other touring acts) Clark Transfer, based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Today, the company is principal in touring work all around the nation hauled by owner-operators leased on to the company, in addition to a network of outside agents, including many owner-ops and small fleets with authority among them, too.

Deull we spoke to initially this Spring, and some since, about the company’s efforts to bounce back from the big hit the COVID-19 pandemic put on the business. Coming out of it in the last year or so as big touring acts have returned in earnest, the company’s changed up parts of its contractor compensation package in unique ways. Clark is among the very, very few carriers out there offering a minimum guaranteed revenue to owners who lease there, for one, and for two, guaranteeing their fuel surcharge as a backstop for the less-fuel-efficient amid rising prices.

Overdrive Editor and podcast host Todd Dills wrote a feature about the company that regular Overdrive readers among you may have seen last month, too, detailing some of the changes: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15294151/guaranteed-revenue-for-owneroperators-clark-transfer-commits

In the course of Dills' research for the story, Charlie Deull sent along a contact for owner-operator Jeff Seales, among the company’s longest-tenured contracting owner-operators at upward of three decades. This week, planning to revisit Deull's talk for the podcast audience, we learned that Seales had passed unexpectedly.

It’s been a tough week for everyone at Clark Transfer on account of it, as well as the reality that another owner, working with the company since 2018, also passed within days of Seales. His name was Mark Mills. In the tribute to owner-operator Mills posted earlier this week to Clark Transfer’s Facebook page, the company noted he leaves behind his wife, Kelly, and a young daughter, McKenna, among other family. His first run for Clark Transfer in 2018 was hauled between Harrisburg and York in Pennsylvania, the company noted -– a relatively short drive that ended up under difficult circumstances taking 12 long hours of blizzard-battling. But he got there. The show went on.

Mills had worked on a variety of productions, but had consistenly been with the band Chicago off and on since 2019. The Chicago crew set up a GiveSendGo page to help his family: http://givesendgo.com/morethanlifemark

Both owner-operators Mills and Seales, it’s certain, will be missed. Condolences to the families. Hear much more about both men, as well as Clark's lease program, in the podcast.

In this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, we'll drop into an interview Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole conducted with Arrive Logistics Chief Strategy Officer J-Ann Tio, about the broker-3PL’s “We Deliver Flexibility” program. The trial run for the program is getting its footing as a connection engine between independent owner-operators and small fleets in Arrive’s network and larger private fleets the company also does business with.

The Arrive program, as Tio notes, hopes to alleviate issues on both sides of the coin, for owner-operators enduring the deflationary rates environment in the spot market and for private fleets needing safe and professional capacity. It could well be a way into new opportunities for owners both inside and out of Arrive’s network, as Tio describes it, in fact -- a chance to develop new contracts for freight with large clients that might typically not have much of an interest doing direct business with smaller fleets.

There’s more in today’s episode, though, too. If you've missed it as yet, hear our own "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer’s moving eulogy for Ken “Shoestring” Waugh, part of Overdrive's "Over the Road" collaboration with PRX’s Radiotopia podcast network.

And: Catch the latest from trucker-songwriter extraordinaire Tony Justice. Justice delivered a $33,000-plus check to the Susan G. Komen Foundation for breast cancer awareness and research this Monday in Nashville.

After that presentation out front of the Country Music Hall of Fame, we sat with Justice and his wife, Misty, to hear about the haul raised by the well more than 100 owner-operators, small fleet owners, show vendors and more who participated in the first-ever Large Cars and Guitars truck show in Kodak, Tennessee, back in May. And there’s a bonus in that conversation, too: Team Justice has big things planned for the new year, with a newly-custom-wrapped 2002 Prevost they've started using for their music work.

And, no, contrary to any road rumors you may have heard, Justice hasn't yet hung up the keys the rig he pilots for Everhart Transportation out of Greeneville, Tennessee.

Explore the Arrive Logistics "We Deliver Flexibility" effort via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15294095/new-program-connecting-ownerops-private-fleets

Hear more from past episodes in the Over the Road podcast series: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4405867

Dayton, Ohio-based Airgas tank-truck operator Guy Archer has come out of his big win in 2021's Overdrive-Red Eye Radio Trucker Talent Search with renewed energy around his songwriting efforts -- he’s been much more than tinkering around the edges of those efforts with some recording activity this year we’ll hear him detail in this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, dropping in on Archer’s tour of a variety of songwriter stages at the Mid-America Trucking Show this past March.

There, Archer delighted crowds who showed out to see our own "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer, among others, and Archer enjoyed a featured performance at the big Red Eye Radio stage in the main lobby, where he opened with, what else, his Talent Search-winning "Heavy Load" original.

The tour around MATS followed an invite to the RoadPro Brands dinner there, which spurred him to make the decision to trek to Louisville for his first time at the show in more than 20 years.

In the podcast, hear a talk with him through his recent recordings of originals "The Long Way Around" and "In the Dust," as well as his four-song effort on the Red Eye stage at MATS. Hope you enjoy.

Hear more from his Nashville recording session last year, part of the prize for his Talent-Search win: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15286237/trucker-talent-search-winner-guy-archer-live-from-studio-session

At Archer's Youtube channel you can hear ongoing recording efforts: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvYtaTEfE-wcfgHYNm2nj7A

Gary Buchs -- longtime Overdrive contributor, former owner-operator now turned business coach for a myriad of both new and more experienced owners -- knows well of what he speaks with regard to the notion that first-time small business owners are like as not to fail that first time out. There's a reason he's where he is today after a successful owner-operator career, after all -- his first foray as a young man in agriculture didn't go quite so well.

Initial failure doesn't mean, of course, that the drive to success stops in its tracks, and what he’s finding this week in that regard on-site at the Walcott Truckers Jamboree in Iowa is the principal subject for this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast.

"In this country, I don't see us ever losing that drive to become that small owner of a business," Buchs said. "It's our culture."

Buchs spoke to several recently former owners who'd "gotten a truck, had an accident" or other mishap that put them out of business "because of the hardship." But there they were, back out at the truck show, "with the personal instinct and drive to pursue that path again, acknowledging the mistakes they made."

Going to annual gatherings all around the nation just like the long-running Walcott Truckers Jamboree at the Iowa 80 Truck Stop, Buchs added, can "give you the motivation to get better, and we learn so much."

The subject of retirement is always a hot topic among owner-ops -- the diligence it requires to set yourself up well to leave the road is such that it's not exactly easily achievable. Yet this well-matched pair of owner-operators -- Bruce and Kellie Cone of Redding, California -- have set themselves up well as they start to run out their last half-decade in business. That's the long-range plan, anyway, for the proud of owners of a pristine pair of Peterbilt 389s you'll hear all about in this edition of Overdrive Radio.

It jumps off with the sound of the antique train bell that’s mounted under the deck of owner-operator Kellie Cone’s 2022 Peterbilt 389. The bell’s activated by the in-cab switch that formerly controlled the sliding fifth wheel – which slides no longer, as you’ll hear her tell. Kellie comes from an education background career-wise, originally, but several years back met Bruce and took to trucking in an outsize way originally on ridealong trips in-cab with the third-generation owner-operator. Bruce has hauled longtime for direct customers in California and Oregon, today mostly home every night after a 30-year career that took him all over the Western States and occasionally farther afield.

Bruce and Kellie aren’t team operators, though. Bruce’s own 2020 389 replaced a 2010 that Kellie got her start in as an owner-operator before upgrading to the 2022. Both rigs we caught a close look at out at the A.J. Soza Memorial Truck Show two weeks ago in Merced, in "sunny" California, as they say. The old adage didn’t disappoint -- there wasn’t a drop of rain in sight for the show, and temps rose in the afternoon above 100 on the mercury. The heat, the then-specter of the AB 5 contractor law coming into play, $7-plus diesel and everything else the state has thrown at the trucking world in recent memory didn’t tamp down the spirits of the owner-ops we’ll hear from today.

Also in the podcast: we’ll hear from another owner, one in his very early days trucking – Tony Gonzalez. Like the Cones, it's clear Gonzalez has the bull by the horns, so to speak. Get a closer look at Gonzalez' rig, leased to his father's San Miguel Transportation under-10-truck small fleet, via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/custom-rigs/video/15293971/owneroperator-tony-gonzalez-and-his-2015-peterbilt-379