Overdrive Radio

Answers to that question in this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast from the four owners pictured here. The lightning round comes by way of truckers showing their equipment in the Walcott Truckers Jamboree's Super Truck Beauty Contest two weeks ago: Owner-operator Christopher Young, a one-truck livestock hauler several years into trucking with his own authority out of Shellsburg, Iowa. The veteran, Ashville, Alabama-based team of Michael and Jackie Wallace, hauling van freight yet working through some of the same challenges as the much younger livestock hauler.

We talk to Hallahan Transport small fleet owner Rob Hallahan, who's concerned about the prospects of regulatory change (the insurance hike being currently considered). He's also dealing with the difficulties that come with growth.

Finally: Minnesota-based Aaron Walters, A heavy-hauling owner-op who is second-generation in the family business. For him, growth limitations are top of mind -- if the business could just find more independents to contract with to haul under contract with their wind-energy and other customers.

What emerges are four distinct yet overlapping pictures of trucking at that Midwest mecca for the kind of camaraderie among owner-operators that's sometimes hard to come by out on the road. Yes, there was no shortage of that in Iowa, too.

So hang on tight.

Read more about Hallahan Transport via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ/article/14897911/small-fleet-champ-2020-semi-finalist-hallahan-transport

Follow these links for more coverage from the Walcott Truckers Jamboree itself:

https://www.overdriveonline.com/custom-rigs/article/15066507/the-big-winners-in-the-super-trucks-contest-in-iowa

https://www.overdriveonline.com/custom-rigs/video/15066453/video-super-trucks-light-up-the-night-at-walcott

https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/15066428/sunup-on-the-super-trucks-of-the-walcott-jamboree

The principal conundrum of advanced driver assist systems like collision mitigation, lane-keeping and more was summed up well by Nussbaum Transportation driver Clark Reed as part of the panel featured in this edition of Overdrive Radio: "The more we take the driver away from the driving experience ... [the greater the potential] they're going to become lackadaisical. ..." Put another way, we're talking about, in a word, "complacency" -– the strong temptation to let the equipment take the responsibility for the work of safe operation from the hands of those to whom it truly belongs.

That’s the operator, of course, and Reed would go on to say much more than that in the talk with longtime independent owner-operator Henry Albert, a former Overdrive Trucker of the Year, in a panel moderated by TCA chairman and D.M. Bowman chief Jim Ward.

In today’s podcast, that discussion is featured in more depth than we've covered at OverdriveOnline.com as yet: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15065920/how-to-think-about-advanced-assist-systems-as-an-owneroperator

It's invaluable for real-world perspective on the space where increasingly sophisticated driver-assist technologies meet the realities of the road.

We ran into both Reed and Albert last week at the Walcott Truckers Jamboree, as it just so happens, where both showed the next-generation Cascadias they pilot in efforts for the Freightliner Team Run Smart program. Both rigs are outfitted with every bell and whistle you can think of.

Also at the Walcott show was the exact opposite, of course, one example being the 1982 Peterbilt 359 of an owner-operator who's a contemporary example of where the truck owner-operator comes from in American history. W. Tim Miller has been in the business of trucking and farming for 40 years, mostly these days hauling his own product more than anything else, just as owner-operators of old. Miller farms around 300 acres of corn and beans, hauling exclusively with an early 1980s classic rig he told me about in what follows in the podcast.

Catch more views of Miller's rig via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15066572

Wisconsin-based owner-operator Jason Hurley, a former Schneider- leased owner-operator, made a move earlier this year to the young operation of CloudTrucks. The Texas-based company, with some operations in California, pitches to owner-operators as a "virtual carrier," operating less like a traditional asset-based carrier and more like a support company, basically. Cloud puts emphasis on its technology and systems in place to support otherwise independent businesses.

Yet they're no broker or dispatch service -- it's CloudTrucks’ motor carrier authority under which an owner leased there runs.

And though its model generally is tech-assisted self-dispatch for how owner-operators run there, it does field a functional support staff on the back end to smooth out the rough edges of any carrier-broker transaction. The brokered freight market comprises the large majority of its freight universe. Since founding within the last years, they’ve grown quickly. They were up to more than 70 owner-ops leased as of the company’s most-recent MCS-150 federal update earlier this year.

Hurley was attracted initially for a percentage contract for compensation much lower than is traditional for asset-based companies taking care of leased owners' liability insurance. CloudTrucks allots 5 points of its 15%-per-load fee to the owner-operator's liability insurance, Hurley said, leaving a 10 percent fee otherwise for access to the company's freight platform and support networks. What he's found so far there? Find out in this podcast.

Read about CloudTrucks' "Road to Independence" partnership with third-party leasing companies to offer a path to truck ownership for company drivers through fair lease-purchase programs: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15065768/alabama-truckers-fight-truckonly-toll-proposal-in-mobile

More from Overdrive Radio: http://overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio

Trucking’s music history has no shortage of light-hearted songs, such as Kay Adams’ “Little Pink Mack,” Charlie Walker’s “Truck Drivin’ Cat With Nine Wives” or The Legendary Shack Shakers’ “The CB Song.”

One of the most humorous, thanks to its sharp barbs aimed at truckers, is Joe Cecil “Red” Simpson’s “Hello, I’m a truck.” It hit No. 4 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart in January 1972, making it the biggest hit single in Simpson’s long music career.

“This song takes a different angle on the trucking experience,” says Todd Uhlman in this specia Songs of the Highway edition of Overdrive Radio. Uhlman's a specialist in American culture at the University of Dayton in Ohio. “It’s not about the trucker. It’s about the truck.”

At the same time, the truck isn’t shy about criticizing truckers. The truck-narrator notes how drivers love to share “tales of daring” and “the girls they've left behind.”

The truck criticizes its own driver, too, and, as Simpson often does, references other trucking songs: “Look at him sipping coffee and flirtin' with that waitress. And where do you think he left me? That's right, next to a cattle truck. Why couldn't we have put me next to that little pink Mack sitting over there?”

Hear more about the truck's place in trucking-music history in this edition, and find so much more in Overdrive's 2021 60th-anniversary series covering trucking history and more via http://overdriveonline.com/trucking-history

"The freedom to eat what I want, when I want, and how I want to make it." --Decker Truck Line-leased owner-operator Thomas Remington, on outfitting his 2020 Volvo VNL740 (auto transmission, mid-roof, spec'd for Decker's flatbed operation) for versatility in cooking on the road.

In this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, a window on Remington's leased business as well as tips on inverter power electric cooking appliances, propane-powered tools for cooking on the deck, and so much more.

Also in this edition, on a bittersweet day for Overdrive staff as longtime editor Max Heine officially retires as of the first of July, a special message from host Todd Dills going out to Heine, fundamentally an editor with guts, with integrity, and a real sense of care when it comes to telling the story straight, whatever it is.

We'll do our best, Max, to keep it pro out here.

For the video with Remington mentioned in the podcast, follow this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/15066100/a-parkinglot-lunch-with-ownerop-and-incab-chef-thomas-remington

Access Thomas Remington's original "Recipes for the Road" via https://www.overdriveonline.com/authors/contact/15064418/thomas-remington

Go way back in Overdrive’s 60-year history and you’ll find more than a little dabbling in the bright lights of Hollywood and the country music scene of the ‘60s and ‘70s. It didn’t hurt that the Overdrive office was in the entertainment mecca of the Los Angeles area, but what really drove the connections was Overdrive’s founder and editor, former independent trucker Mike Parkhurst.

Many of those associated with the magazine’s early years have passed on, including Parkhurst, who died in 2014. One of the key players during about half of Parkhurst’s 25-year ownership of Overdrive was Roger Galloway. Now 77, Galloway is communications director for Mohave County, Arizona.

“My Overdrive days were from 1970-'86, with the exception of 1979-'81, when I produced national TV specials,” said Galloway. Some of them focused on country music stars, such as “Great Ladies of Country” and “Tribute to Kitty Wells.” They were not tied to Overdrive, though Galloway’s first TV special, “Truckin’ in Nashville,” was produced in 1979 outside a Nashville, Tennessee, truck stop. Galloway was also involved the in the late 1960s/early 1970s off-and-on-again filming of Parkhurst's own "Moonfire" feature-length film, which you can also read more about via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15066080

Hear more in this Overdrive Radio special edition, part our 60th-anniversary series of lookbacks on trucking, and Overdrive's own, history: http://overdriveonline.com/trucking-history

There's good likelihood you know how the story goes. Code says a sensor is malfunctioning? Replace the sensor. Two weeks or two days later, same code, same sensor. Previous shop must have passed a bad part or otherwise messed up the install. Replace again, and "hey why don't we try" X or Y until, some weeks later, as happened in the story of owner-operator John Osinga, visual inspection reveals a mechanical issue. Turns out what seemed like a sensor malfunction wasn't really that at all: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-extra/article/15064088/detecting-the-diesel-exhaust-aftertreatment-demons

Hundreds or thousands of dollars later, eureka moments like these are cold comfort, and owner-operators who've experienced these problems always look back and wonder what they could have done differently to spur enterprising (or not so enterprising) mechanics toward an accurate diagnosis and repair, the first time around. There's a lot to be said for picking your maintenance partners wisely, but there's more to it, too.

In this edition of Overdrive Radio, a wide-ranging discussion is intended in part to pick the brains of two diesel pros on these issues -- Bruce Mallinson of Pittsburgh Power and Gray's Garage owner Jeff Gray, both men with a wide breadth of experience that spans the evolution from purely mechanical diesel engines through electronic controls and, now, increasingly complicated emissions controls. Much of the discussion is a re-air for the podcast audience of our live online broadcast Q&A held May 20, hosted by Overdrive Senior Editor Todd Dills and contributor Gary Buchs. Subjects range from the basic importance of fuel-filter changes to Pittsburgh Power's Max Mileage Fuel Borne Catalyst fuel treatment to ways to mitigate condensation in the exhaust system, exhaust leaks, phantom codes and so much more.

Fine the archived webcast of the original discussion via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/equipment/article/15065467/bring-your-emissions-systems-questions-to-this-live-qa-may-20

Subscribe to Overdrive's daily newsletter for owner-operator business news, views and more: https://randallreilly.dragonforms.com/loading.do?omedasite=ov_subscriptions

Today, this special edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, part of our 60th-anniversary series, in part transports you back to a moment in time in the late 1970s, when owner-operator Gordon Alkire found himself in an old Astro 95 cabover with no brakes heading Southeast down the backside of Monteagle Mountain in Tennessee. It’s a situation that’s no exactly universal among truckers through the years, but not as uncommon as you might think. The occasion in 2019 when this part of my talk with Alkire originally ran was the fiery Lakewood, Colorado, crash of Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos, who lost control of his truck on a downhill grade and, ultimately, crashed, killing multiple people and sending multiple others to the hospital.

In the wake of the tragedy for all involved, including the driver, charged with vehicular homicide among other counts, the recriminations were quick in coming for him from fellow truckers, with no small amount of finger-pointing to this or that cause.

Alkire, retired owner-operator of Riley, Kansas, at the time reached out with a considered piece about such finger-pointing that you can read in full via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/14896300/in-wake-of-colo-crash-reserve-judgment-says-gordon-alkire-recounting-a-70s-monteagle-brake-failure

He ultimately asked his fellow drivers to check their condemnation and take a close look at themselves. “Ask yourself if that could have been you,” he wrote. “A downgrade, a loaded trailer, no brakes. Confusion, fear, and panic.” He's been there, and he tells that story here.

Also: Shortly after airing Alkire’s tale in the Spring of 2019, we heard from South Carolina-based owner-operator Lee Epling about his own, more recent no-brakes run. You'll hear that one here, too, and find the original editions of Overdrive Radio featuring these stories in the post that houses this podcast at OverdriveOnline.com: http://overdriveonline.com/14896300

Today, this special edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, part of our 60th-anniversary series, in part transports you back to a moment in time in the late 1970s, when owner-operator Gordon Alkire found himself in an old Astro 95 cabover with no brakes heading Southeast down the backside of Monteagle Mountain in Tennessee. It’s a situation that’s no exactly universal among truckers through the years, but not as uncommon as you might think. The occasion in 2019 when this part of my talk with Alkire originally ran was the fiery Lakewood, Colorado, crash of Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos, who lost control of his truck on a downhill grade and, ultimately, crashed, killing multiple people and sending multiple others to the hospital.

In the wake of the tragedy for all involved, including the driver, charged with vehicular homicide among other counts, the recriminations were quick in coming for him from fellow truckers, with no small amount of finger-pointing to this or that cause.

Alkire, retired owner-operator of Riley, Kansas, at the time reached out with a considered piece about such finger-pointing that you can read in full via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/14896300/in-wake-of-colo-crash-reserve-judgment-says-gordon-alkire-recounting-a-70s-monteagle-brake-failure

He ultimately asked his fellow drivers to check their condemnation and take a close look at themselves. “Ask yourself if that could have been you,” he wrote. “A downgrade, a loaded trailer, no brakes. Confusion, fear, and panic.” He's been there, and he tells that story here.

Also: Shortly after airing Alkire’s tale in the Spring of 2019, we heard from South Carolina-based owner-operator Lee Epling about his own, more recent no-brakes run. You'll hear that one here, too, and find the original editions of Overdrive Radio featuring these stories in the post that houses this podcast at OverdriveOnline.com: http://overdriveonline.com/14896300

In this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, track through Truckload Carriers Association Government Affairs Vice President David Heller’s viewpoints on a variety of aspects of just what’s happening on Capitol Hill around funding infrastructure, including several of those trucking-business-specific initiatives tucked into the House highway bill Overdrive has reported on recently: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15065998/house-highway-funding-bill-keeps-2-million-insurance-hike

Heller spoke at the TCA Safety & Security Division annual meeting earlier in the week in a talk hosted by trucking broadcasting great Dave Nemo and fellow host Jimmy Mac. Along the way, Heller dove into the subject of driver training and the notion of allowing under-21 interstate drivers with extra training, one he and much of Overdrive's audience are well at odds on.

The Drive Safe Act, introduced earlier this year, would establish an apprenticeship-type training program that, with assistive technology, might allow 18-20-year-old CDL holders to haul interstate, within some other program limits. Heller and TCA broadly speaking are in favor. When we surveyed Overdrive’s audience in March on allowing an interstate option for under-21 drivers. A majority of readers showed no favor for it, with 63% saying it shouldn’t be allowed, full stop; 15% had unqualified support; and about 18 percent supported the idea with either a robust apprenticeship program in place or a mileage-range limitation.

You’ll hear a contrasting view in this episode from Heller and TCA, yet know that Heller has a refined sense for the political process. His thoughts are invaluable on where Congress could head on potential highway reauthorization, or not if Democrats decide to go it alone on Biden’s American Jobs Plan, pitched as infrastructure investment.