Overdrive Radio

As Georgia-headquartered owner-operator Raeshawn Lucas has it, higher earning potential as an owner-operator is certainly a prime motivating factor for the decision to strike out on one's own as a business in trucking. Yet that's certainly not all when it comes bedrock goals.

Respect, freedom of choice in so many aspects of how you do business... Truth is, owner-operators go into business for themselves for all sorts of reasons, and that was well evident in the discussion we had at the Mid-America Trucking Show with owner-operator Lucas, leased under a longtime friend and associate's authority; Landstar-leased David Nihart, who's worn a variety of trucking hats over a long career so far; and Pete Anderson of Georgetown, Texas, a vocational fleet manager with plans to move into over-the-road as a small fleet owner.

That conversation followed Overdrive’s Partners in Business seminar at MATS with ATBS Vice President Mike Hosted and Overdrive’s own Gary Buchs, both of whom you'll also hear in today's Overdrive Radio episode, in addition to the three owners. If you missed the PIB session, find a full video of it here: https://www.overdriveonline.com/partners-in-business/video/15290282/record-owneroperator-income-could-be-longerterm-trucking-trend

Sit in on the first part of a wide-ranging discussion for insights on:

**The benefits and tradeoffs of filing taxes as an S Corp.

**Why independents' quality-of-life goals can explain an outsize drop in miles for year 2021.

**The value of a large leasing partner in a high-fuel-cost environment.

**Fuel-purchasing strategy to make sure you're getting the best price (minus state taxes).

And more. Part 2 of the conversation will follow in the next Overdrive Radio edition.

If you haven't as yet, you can download the Partners in Business manual, coproduced with ATBS, via this link: https://register.overdriveonline.com/pib-manual/

It's been quite a while since the Overdrive Radio podcast has attempted to capture the vast dynamism of a trucking show quite like the one that took place for the first time in three years in Kentucky last week -- that's the Mid-America Trucking Show, MATS for short, of course. It'll be quite some time before we convey the full breadth of everything encountered there, but for today on this April Fool's Day edition of the Overdrive Radio we'll get to two aspects: first with the voice of a brand-new podcast, none other than a longtime operator now operating a custom trucking video company, James "Tex" Crowley, out now with the intro episode of 'The Big Road' you can hear in full in today's edition. The show is inspired in part by his career behind the wheel, and a real passion for trucking, generally, as you'll hear.

Before we get there, though, a look at one among scads of new Transportation Management Systems geared toward the smallest of carriers popping up around the trucking technology landscape: the Lynks TMS is targeted not only to small carriers but to shippers and brokers as well as a way to grease the skids for dispatch management, invoicing for collections, management of supporting documents out on the road for drivers utilizing the associated Lynks app, and more. It's live commercially as of today, April 1, and it joins a growing subset of the big TMS software market, including the recent Command system from the Trucker Path company, among many others that are geared toward speeding up the digital handoff between carriers and their customers, and operators in the field.

There’s utility there, as Lynks' George Thellman explains, for one-truck independents, and particularly those who want to set themselves up with back-office tools as they grow beyond that one truck.

The Lynks TMS: https://lynks2go.com/

James Crowley's Texas Media Foundry website: https://www.thetexasmediafoundry.com/

While we're busy covering the various comings and goings at the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Kentucky, this week, find in this week's podcast a window on the big awards banquet out in Las Vegas earlier in the week with the Truckload 2022 conference of the Truckload Carriers Association.

There, Prime-leased Glen Horack took home the Owner-Operator of the Year award, making good on his fourth time as an award finalist.

Robert Howell, driver for Doug Andrus Distributing, took home the Company Driver of the Year award.

You can find plenty more in terms of scenes from the event via the Wednesday report at https://www.overdriveonline.com/owner-operator-of-the-year/article/15290016/owneroperator-takes-home-25k-with-top-honor

But for this edition of Overdrive Radio, sit back and take it all in as we run through the stories of six finalists, three each in owner-operator and company driver categories. How it works is, after an introduction by new TCA president Jim Ward, the candidates’ stories are told in brief, followed by a video interview conducted in Las Vegas with each finalist that was broadcast on two massive screens flanking the stage.

The Owner-Operator and Company Driver of the Year programs are sponsored by Cummins, Inc., and Love's Travel Stops.

In this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, Trucker Nation's Andrea Marks voices what she says might be "unpopular" opinions about some operators' views around the new Entry Level Driver Training regulations, in effect since early February. Marks, also involved in the small fleet operations of her parents' and husband’s small trucking companies pulling livestock from a Colorado home base, calls herself a "huge proponent" of the new training regs, and though much of the trucking world, including owner-operators, was with her there. Yet there’s at once a strong undercurrent of antipathy to the regs among some drivers and owner-operators –- of a couple of different flavors.

One argument says the training regs don’t go far enough. They don’t mandate on trainers and trainees a specific amount of behind the wheel instruction in the form of a number of hours to meet, for instance. Rather, the regs base assessment on proficiency, on a trainee’s ability to perform the tasks required. The regs do mandate that behind the wheel training be a part of any trainer/trainee’s curriculum, though the time required can vary by program or, necessarily, by student.

The second argument is something of the opposite -- that the new regs put too much formalization on a process that has traditionally been a more informal, learn-on-the-job apprenticeship type of training, particularly for many in the small-trucking community across the nation. Those who criticize the Entry Level training regimen this way worry that apprenticeships are on their way out the door, though regular listeners will recall the Overdrive Radio interview with Harry Smith of Ralph Smith Company of Utah, several weeks ago: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15287916/training-regs-might-miss-the-mark-but-some-are-doing-it-right

That small fleet fully intends to continue its own private, in-house apprenticeship training effort, very much of the sort of old-school variety, with new procedures in place to button up efforts to conform with the new rules.

At the same time, with a couple trainees in progress as of late January, the folks at Ralph Smith Co. were moving rather quickly with hopes of getting those trainees through the entire process before the early-February training rule deadline, after which the company would have to comply with numerous new reporting and documentation requirements, per the rule.

Avoiding added processes and paperwork is certainly understandable, but it also feels like a bit of acknowledgement that, hey, there are some aspects of the old-school apprenticeship training model that just don’t fit the new rule, at least not exactly, anyway.

In the push and pull over regulatory influence, Marks emphasizes, more engagement in regulatory processes, including comment-period participation, is needed to best to ensure influence on the evolution of trucking -- the training rule provides a case in point.

Read more on the rules via these links: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/15287602/fmcsas-entry-level-driver-training-rule-is-here-for-new-truckers

Every owner-op out there has an origin story for his or her entry into the trucking business, whether simple or windingly complicated ... or embellished for effect, as it were. That's no less true of this year's Owner-Operator of the Year award finalists, one of whom will take home $25,000 as this year's winner after the March 22 awards banquet at the Truckload Carriers Association's Truckload 2022 conference in Las Vegas.

In this edition of Overdrive Radio, we’ll hear such tales and much more from all three of the competing nominees, including award finalist five-timer Glen Horack, leased to Prime: https://www.overdriveonline.com/owner-operator-of-the-year/article/15288620/teamwork-helps-drive-owneroperator-glen-horacks-success

Iowa-based owner-operator Gene Houchin, leased to Midwest Express: https://www.overdriveonline.com/owner-operator-of-the-year/article/15289162/owneroperator-award-finalist-gene-houchin

And National Carriers-leased, West Virginia-based Allen and Sandy Smith: https://www.overdriveonline.com/owner-operator-of-the-year/article/15288873/ownerop-award-finalist-team-builds-success-with-smart-business

Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole spoke with all of the finalists for the profiles linked above, but hear their stories in their own words here.

Good luck to all three on March 22 in Vegas!

The “People’s Convoy” continues to roll toward the area of the nation’s capital, at upward of 100 trucks as of yesterday, with multiple hundreds more personal vehicles as of Thursday, March 3, on a route to Ohio before a final trip into the D.C. area planned for Saturday this weekend.

The convoy, as we’ve noted at Overdrive, has a stated aim of ending the national emergency footing on which the U.S. government has found itself the last two years as it relates to COVID: https://www.overdriveonline.com/life/article/15288864/us-convoy-aims-to-end-national-emergency-covid-declaration

Those kinds of emergency declarations bring with them new discretionary funding opportunities for federal agencies to direct to states, the ability to impose restrictions in some instances -– in the U.S. that’s primary been seen at the local and state levels when comes to restrictions on travel and gatherings, particularly early on in the pandemic but continuing in some measures today. At the federal level, we’ve got the cross-border vaccination requirement for non-U.S. citizens coming in, and Canada has imposed that measure for border crossings on U.S. haulers, too.

Yet there’s more that can come along with an emergency declaration – we see it routinely in the event of a hurricane or other weather-related disaster for relief haulers. Namely, regulatory flexibility. The supply-chain challenges that have continued to shift and in some cases intensify since the beginning of the pandemic prompted the FMCSA to waive certain parts of the hours of service for haulers of a big list of commodities that were being moved in direct-assistance efforts. Those have included the emergency restocking of items as uncommon as emergency medical treatments or as common as basic groceries.

With the waiver’s extension earlier this week through the end of May, on today's edition of Overdrive Radio we talk with the Trucker Nation group’s regulatory affairs lead Andrea Marks about progress on her organization’s data-collection effort around independent carriers' use of the hours of service waiver. That collection effort is aimed at providing a base from which to study its connection to bedrock safety metrics.

That is, what’s the safety record, what’s the crash record say about all manner of haulers who’ve effectively been "self-regulating" lo these two years?

The end result might go some way toward further enhancing hours of service flexibility, a subject we take up again in more detail in today’s podcast. Listen back to this prior episode for more from Marks on the subject before her independent data-collection started: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15114806/how-the-covid-hours-waiver-could-disentangle-hos-rigidity

Further, with People's Convoy growing and the U.S. government in more ways than one signaling a slow return to normalcy as the latest COVID wave subsides, what's the likelihood of a further extension beyond May of parts of this waiver? Take a listen to find out.

As was noted in reporting last week, compliance consultants Jeff Davis (Fleet Safety Services) and Adam Wingfield (Innovative Logistics Group each pointed out that, despite the hopes of some, electronic logging devices have emphatically not delivered carriers from hours-related enforcement, particularly at the investigatory level when federal and state auditors come calling. A small fleet's own audits of drivers’ e-logs for unassigned miles and much, much more are still necessary tasks for the back office, even for one-truck independents with more direct on-highway control of their own e-logging destiny.

If you missed it last week, after you get through today’s edition of Overdrive Radio featuring a talk from Davis on this very subject, take a run through our report about carrier audit activity: https://www.overdriveonline.com/regulations/article/15288352/the-conditional-safety-rating-the-most-common-in-2021

With stats pulled early this month, it’s clear the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has not done what then-enforcement chief Joe DeLorenzo hoped for late in 2020 when he predicted a footing for enforcement getting back to some sense of normalcy after the pandemic emergency that year.

In plenty ways, an emergency continues, and the relative fall-off in audit activity obscures what plenty of carriers hope will not be some kind of new normal. That’s the reality that more than half of all safety ratings issued in 2021 were the adverse Conditional rating. While not exactly death sentence for a carrier, such a rating presents plenty issues, including difficulty with some shipper customers and brokers’ willingness to do business with you.

In today's podcast, hear Davis break down some of what he's seeing in remote audits, particularly as it relates to the man v. machine dynamics of ELD-enabled hours enforcement, and what you can do to head off the auditors and inspectors.

Hear another selection of Davis's talk detailing low-hanging fruit for small fleets to avoid drug/alcohol Clearinghouse-related violations during audits: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15281144/lowhanging-fruit-to-avoid-fmcsa-clearinghouse-violations

If you’ve been seeing news this week and last from North of the border and wondering just what’s happening there with the so-called “Freedom Convoy” protests, soon entering their third week in Canada, hear a long take on it all in today's edition of Overdrive Radio. Alberta, Canada-headquartered owner-operator Mike Murchison is not a direct participant in those protests but a clear-eyed watcher of what’s going on in Canadian trucking and society, generally speaking.

He narrates his hauls and so much more via the Road Warrior News publication, out of Toronto, and operates principally in the Western parts of both Canada and the United States, wholly dependent on cross-border freight for his business' success. Read some of his stories, and hear a song he wrote inspired by the early parts of the protests via this link: https://roadwarriornews.com/category/mike-murchison-rwn/

Much of today's podcast derives from a conversation with Murchison early this week on Tuesday, February 8, yet when we spoke briefly with Murchison this morning, he noted further efforts to attempt to end the protests by Canadian national and provincial governments. Ontario leadership had declared a state of emergency in part aimed at the shutdown of the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, by some estimates accounting for as much as 40% of all U.S.-Canada trade. The emergency declaration came with threats of fines, license suspensions and more for those impeding that bridge’s traffic, and out in Alberta similar ramp-ups in enforcement activity were under way, he said, at the blockaded Coutts border crossing.

The podcast touches on much more, though, tracing the protests' roots back to a U.S./Canadian cross-border vaccination requirements for essential travelers, implemented last month; the outsize importance of being able to cross that border to Canadian owner-operators and drivers; and the more sweeping and enforced pandemic-related restrictions in Canada, compared to what those of us in the U.S. have seen.

Read Long Haul Paul Marhoefer's "Faces of the Road" series installment about Murchison, his owner-operator business, and his music: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-extra/article/15286651/truckersongwriter-mike-murchison-faces-of-the-road

Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Ann Alexander in today's edition of Overdrive Radio talks about her Little Rock office's push this week in hopes of gathering leads into the 2006 murder of 19-year-old Tracy Owana Jones, who disappeared in November that year from a Little Rock area truck stop where she’d been a somewhat regular at the time attempting to collect magazine subscriptions.

Jones was last seen on November 15, 2006, a Wednesday, at the Pilot Travel Center at the Galloway exit off I-40 east of Little Rock. Her body was found more than a week later on Sunday, November 26, in a field off I-40 in Memphis, Tennessee.

Alexander and others in the FBI team indicate here just how you might be able to help if details of the case jog your memory of her from that time. There’s a new $25,000 dollar reward for information that leads to a conviction. Those with tips can contact Ann Alexander via the FBI Little Rock field office at 501-221-9100 or dial 800-CALL-FBI.

Find more information and a download of the information-wanted poster via this link: https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/seeking-info/tracy-owana-jones

Also in today's edition: A conversation with Overdrive’s intrepid reporter Matt Cole about his story from earlier this week with a look at the trucking associations’ engagement with the first bit of detail we’ve seen on FMCSA’s plans to implement the Congressional requirement of a pilot program for under-21 interstate drivers. There’s a lot to it, including significant required training, a proposal to require any pilot program participants to work within the Department of Labor’s registered apprenticeship program, and more.

Read more about the program and reaction to it via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/regulations/article/15288076/trucking-groups-disagree-on-under21-apprenticeship-pilot-program

By the end, we might also just get closer to an answer to an age-old question: Is it right to call 18, 19 and 20-year-old adults “teens”? Take a listen here.

Pre-CDL prospective truck drivers as of February 7 will have to use either a private or for-hire training provider registered in FMCSA's new Training Provider Registry to receive likewise newly required training before taking the skills test to get their CDL. The implementation of the so-called Entry Level Driver Training regs follows nearly a decade of development, following rulemaking by committee years ago now with a wide array of trucking and training stakeholders with a seat at the table. Conversations then were often skeptical of old apprenticeship-training ways truly surviving implementation, yet companies like Bountiful, Utah-based small fleet Ralph Smith Co. have prepped for the new reg by putting themselves into the nearly-ready-to-go-live Provider Registry in order to fit their longstanding programs with the new rules.

Longtime hauler Harry Smith, now in operations and training at Ralph Smith Co., is this Overdrive Radio episode's guest. The company hauls sand and gravel as well as a variety of other materials in dumps, heavy equipment and other oversize loads on RGNs, and more. The organization was founded by his grandfather, and taken over by his father and mother decades ago. Harry, now 33 years old, has made great strides and gained notoriety in recent years as the kind of old-school, hands-on apprenticeship trainer that was once the holy grail of any young and unschooled prospective owner-operator.

Many is the story of the young man now fully formed and on his own in business as a truck owner who started just that way –- by finding a more-seasoned hand to take him or her along for the ride to really learn not just the basics of operating a truck but all aspects of the business.

Overdrive editor Todd Dills talked with Smith on the occasion of the upcoming implementation date for the training regs. Smith's confident his own extensive training efforts will survive the regs implementation, even with new reporting and documentation requirements put on any training provider, including so-called private, not-for-hire apprenticeship trainers like his company. Yet he’s also skeptical that it’s exactly the right way to go, more broadly speaking, as you'll hear.

Read more about the regs' implementation, and Ralph Smith Co., in this January 20 report: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/15287602/fmcsas-entry-level-driver-training-rule-is-here-for-new-truckers

Harry Smith's father, owner-operator Doug Smith, is a member of the FMCSA's fairly new driver-advisory subcommittee of the influential MCSAC. Read more about him via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15113673/is-it-overtime-for-companytruck-driver-overtime-pay