What was the first recorded trucking song? According to Todd Uhlman, an assistant professor at the University of Dayton in Ohio, “Wreck on the Mountain Road,” recorded by the Red Fox Chasers in 1928, may well have set the stage for many such songs to come. Such trivia is only a small part of what Uhlman academic specialty has uncovered -- he places trucking songs in the context of U.S. socio-cultural history, explaining how each song reflects something of the trucking industry and culture at the time of its release.

This year, as Overdrive shares pieces of trucking history in weekly installments attendant to our 60th anniversary celebration, we’ll hear more from Uhlman in this new "Songs of the Highway" podcast series of shorts from Overdrive Radio, about a variety of important trucking songs -- some familiar, some not.

The Chasers’ song “tells the real-life story of a trucker named Lonnie Brown who died in an accident on Bent Mountain in Southwest Virginia,” Uhlman wrote in the journal. The song followed a similar one about a newsmaking 1903 train wreck at Stillhouse Trestle in Virginia.

Listen to learn more about the historic “Wreck on the Mountain Road,” including a few clips from it, and thoughts about truckers’ interest in the prospects of dying on the job.

Find links to the entire song, likewise the Chasers' record “I'm Going Down to North Carolina: The Complete Recordings of the Red Fox Chasers (1928-1931)" via this link to our coverage at Overdrive: http://overdriveonline.com/14898500

Follow this link for more in our weekly 60th-anniversary series probing the history of Overdrive and trucking: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4406897

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In this week's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Chief Patrol Agent for the Laredo, Texas, sector Matthew Hudak has a message for the trucking community about what he’s seeing in the numbers since October 2020 when it comes to busted human smuggling operations. There's been a dramatic uptick in instances of drivers moving strange cargo in their dry van or reefer trailers -- actual human beings. In some cases, the drivers involved may have been initially hookwinked into participation in the schemes, though the red flags are what they are, and should be easy to spot for anyone recruited by a smuggling ring for the purpose.

For the entirety of fiscal year 2020, ending September 30, Chief Hudak said 1,400 people were caught being smuggled in tractor-trailers. Since October, in just a short three and a half months, 51 separate busts involved more than 1,600 people, a sizable increase in real numbers, in just a fourth of the time.

The image associated with this week's episode is from the border patrol’s X-Ray imaging technology, which helped discover a bust that led to a driver’s arrest just as the new year turned a couple weeks ago. The motivating factor in that case? Well, the driver told police he was to be paid $10,000 for the load, which had planned to move from Laredo to San Antonio. If you’re not from or familiar with South Texas, that’s about a 150-mile trip. Yet the price this driver will pay is going to be no doubt steeper than that windfall. The man may never haul again, as you’ll hear through the course of this talk with the chief.

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A note for Overdrive Radio subscribers using some podcasting apps: We’ve got a new, redesigned website coming at http://OverdriveOnline.com – if you regularly listen via a podcasting app other than those offered by Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, or Apple or Google podcasts, we’re transitioning to a different principle RSS feed for Overdrive Radio. If you need to in your app, you can update the settings with this feed URL and be certain to get all of the episodes going forward: https://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:63998864/sounds.rss

In today's edition, we’re taking a run back through another episode of the Over the Road podcast series -- hopefully engrossing listening to take you through a long run and perhaps a little diversion from the political rancor of our chaotic time. This is episode 2 in the OTR series -- originally titled “Why We Drive.” Regular readers will know we produced Over the Road in collaboration with PRX’s Radiotopia podcast network, and it was hosted by our own "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer. In the episode, Marhoefer and producer Lacy Roberts spent time with two operators in Grand Island, Neb., owner-operator Jared Sidlo as well as Kenyette Godhigh-Bell, based out of Florida. In April 2019 when the interview was conducted, Godhigh-Bell was right at one year in trucking, pulling a reefer as a company driver with Grand Island Express. The visit with her featured in the podcast also included some time in an owner-operator training course of sorts at Grand Island headquarters -- no matter of chance, as it were.

Less than two years since we talked with her on the anniversary of maiden voyage with Grand Island Express, she's now out trucking with her own authority in a 2017 Freightliner Cascadia near identical to the company truck Marhoefer describes in the episode, minus as yet the "Lady K" insignia on the door. She’s power only at the moment with her authority active for just a couple of months – part of the wave of new authorities since mid-summer host Todd Dills wrote about in this story a month or so ago: https://www.overdriveonline.com/volatile-year-growing-pains-in-app-freight-pricing-value-of-negotiation/

As you listen to this OTR episode, keep Godhigh-Bell’s present in mind as she speaks from the past –- wonderful, simply put, isn't it, to see a plan come to fruition.

Find the Radiotopia podcast network via http://Radiotopia.fm

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Happy New Year! For this final 2020 edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, Daniel and Phyllis Snow are here, as is Rico Muhammad and Joe DeLorenzo and Jim Mullen and all the owner-ops and government administrators and brokers and drivers and others we talked to this year. We’re going to hear from a lot of them as we tour back through this oh-so-chaotic and pivotal of years trucking in America. We’ll be counting down the top 10 podcasts of the year along the way, and hearing from some other editions besides, from chaos of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic to the hours of service changes, the Biden election and more.

Find a playlist of 14 shows, including that top 10 and a four-way tie for the 11th spot, in the Channel 19 blog post that houses this podcast: http://overdriveonline.com/channel19

There, you can hear in full any of the editions.

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So begins a run through high-quality road listening with Overdrive's podcast coproduction with PRX’s Radiotopia network. The Over the Road podcast ran originally Feb.-June 2020, and the principal eight-episode series was hosted by our own "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer. Bonus: Restore of Soeth's vintage cabover.

With this edition of the podcast, just two days out from Christmas, we’re starting a run back through a little high-quality road listening with Overdrive's podcast coproduction with PRX’s Radiotopia network. The Over the Road podcast ran originally between February and June 2020, and the principal eight-episode series was hosted by our own "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer. Therein, we hoped to give mainstream, general-public listeners an intimate portrait of the wide array of voices and issues emanating out of and hotly debated within the owner-operator community, also with clear portraits of the men and women doing the work of trucking.

And while Over the Road was broadcast for a general listening audience, we did the best we could to accommodate the perspectives and needs of those who, like you, are on the inside of trucking. What emerged was an uncommon sort of end result -– less an explainer of trucking to the outsider than an exploration of the present through stories of the past, in a lot of different ways. Mistakes made, redeemed, careers launched and ruined and relaunched, and so much more. Herein, find a replay of Episode 1 from the 2019 Mid-America Trucking Show, when so many were hopeful for hours of service change (which has since occurred) and the stainless was polished, the camaraderie had. Think of it as a trip down memory lane, to a time when four people could talk for hours within the stagnant air of a tractor’s cab in lieu of a recording studio, without much worry of just who was infecting who, and with just what. We hope you enjoy.

Also in the podcast: A taste of an interview I did with owner-operator Germann Soeth out of Frederick, Maryland, with mostly dump work and principally in a 1998 Kenworth W900 that was featured in past at OverdriveOnline.com When we caught back up with owner-operator Soeth in October, though, he was showing a 1976 vintage Kenworth cabover. He was, interestingly enough, getting ready to put it into service hauling loads after a long retirement, given a significant breakdown with his 1990s conventional. Find out how he took the rig from scrap yard to working order over the course of a few years here.

Find more podcasts in Radiotopia's podcast network, including "Over the Road," via http://radiotopia.fm

See Germann Soeth's 1998 Kenworth W900B conventional via https://www.overdriveonline.com/the-trucking-history-of-independent-germann-soeth-and-his-long-running-1998-kenworth-w900b/

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When an annotation might save you a 14-hour-rule violation erroneously written, and much more from FMCSA's hours of service Q&A yesterday relative to the new split sleeper, short-haul/adverse exceptions, and 30-minute break.

Today's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast runs through the variety of hours of service issues addressed yesterday in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's third Q&A relative to the changes put in place as of Sept. 29. One particular question addressed a subject we've taken up before -- namely what happens if you need the 14-hour-clock pause value of a berth period to avoid a violation and you're inspected before you can pair that period with another berth period to complete the split.

FMCSA Enforcement Director Joe DeLorenzo noted, and he has also said in the past, that officers are trained to the assumption that a second split will be completed, yet are assumptions enough to go on? You can always verbally make clear to an inspector your intentions to split, yet a contemporaneous annotation of any off-duty period you intend to begin a split pair could further underly those intentions, in my view. If you’re inspected prior to the next qualifying pair, it would give the officer something other than just your word and his own assumptions to go on.

Hear much more about particular situations pertaining the short-haul and adverse conditions exceptions' expansion, the 30-minute break, and the new sleeper splits in this edition.

Download the presentation FMCSA used -- including some logbook examples among other detail -- via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2020/12/HOS_QA_Webinar_12.17.20-2020-12-18-11-33.pdf

More hours of service resources are available via http://OverdriveOnline.com/tag/hours-of-service

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The trucker-songwriter's record explores the emotion of personal history and will strike a chord for anyone struggling with managing the risks of the road with a family back home – such struggles got more than a few added wrinkles this year. Listen here.

The 11 tracks on Long Haul Paul Marhoefer's new "Songs from a Truck" album -- available now via the streaming platforms and on a CD you can order via http://longhaulpaulmusic.com/merch -- cap what’s been quite a year for Marhoefer, as most of you will know pretty well. He was the voice of the Overdrive/Radiotopia coproduction of the Over the Road podcast earlier this year, which reached millions of listeners both inside and out of trucking. His stories of hauling in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, too, turned no small number of your ears early on in the national panic that ensued -- and lately, too -- via his contributions to the Overdrive Extra blog, and Overdrive Radio.

For me, though, this record, released with little promotional fanfare a couple months back, might be the crowning achievement. It follows the stellar “You Were a Good Hand” from a year ago, and comes at a time where its explorations of personal history and emotion will strike a chord for anyone struggling with how to manage the pressures and risks of the road with a family back home – such a struggle got more than a few added wrinkles this year, no doubt. Hear a variety of the tracks within, and the stories behind those songs, in this Overdrive Radio edition. 

The title of "Songs from a Truck" can be taken quite literally, too -- the entirety was recorded in the cab of the Moeller Trucking Peterbilt Marhoefer pulls a reefer in today, in the lot of a Ft. Worth, Texas, warehouse. Marhoefer's wife of 40 years, Denise, was on-hand for recording and, along with well-known videographer James “Tex” Crowley (who engineered the in-cab recording), became something of a character throughout the course of the album's stories told, songs sung, jokes told.

Hear more Marhoefer via the Over the Road podcast production of PRX's Radiotopia and Overdrive: http://overdriveonline.com/tag/over-the-road-podcast

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