At the top of the podcast, crank it up with a rare breed of a Caterpillar diesel in an on-highway truck, the V8 3408 motor in livestock hauler Troy Bolin’s 1979 Peterbilt 359, a 302-inch-wheelbase unit we got a close look at out at the Crossroads Truck Meet early last month in Missouri: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15747179 Tap that link or listen on to hear its story here, too, with its 6/4 two-stick tranny and 66-inch Double Eagle custom sleeper put behind the original daycab-ordered Pete when it was brand-new by Huck Huckaby.

But the bulk of this week's podcast features another owner-operator brain trust in the Trucking Solutions Group, long a regular conference-call meet-up between a bevy of owners aimed at business improvement through sharing experience. The TSG has routinely for several years lent us all a window into their decades of combined experience at the Mid-America Trucking Show, where Landstar rep Bob Bailey moderated this panel discussion with TSG members focused on questionable choices and successes. They called it "Failing to Succeed," acknowledging there's a whole heck of a lot all of us learn from our own, and others', failures.

Owner-operator and TSG current Chairman Joel Boelman set up the discussion with a slide that showed a chart with two columns. On one side, a variety of "questionable choices" and on the other things various owners have done they'd do again and/or recommend to others.

"Questionable choices" discussed range from use of a factoring service for load payments, a change in carriers for leased owners, and working with a dispatch service to holding onto a wide variety of trailers too long and getting tied up with time in "overanalysis." The decision to change carriers was also on the "would do again" side of the ledger, along with purchase of an aerodynamic truck, the switch from company driver to owner-operator, and a variety of tried and true, and some novel, practices to recommend. Voices you’ll hear in the podcast include, in addition to owner-operator Boelman:

Independent owner-operator Mark Heggestad

Team owners Stephen Halsted and Sandra Goche.

Failure is an opportunity, ultimately, to learn from mistakes made, illustrated in so many ways throughout the TSG discussion.

As mentioned in the podcast:

**Small Fleet Owners of 3-30 trucks can enter to compete in Overdrive's Small Fleet Championship through July: https://overdriveonline.com/2025sfc

**Overdrive's own biz-improvement Partners in Business library: https://overdriveonline.com/pib

**Trucking Solutions Group's website: https://truckingsolutiongroup.com

Here's hoping the Memorial Day long weekend’s been a safe one for you. Today on the Overdrive Radio podcast, a special treat in the work of our own longtime Overdrive Extra contributor Long Haul Paul Marhoefer: https://overdriveonline.com/14865330

Marhoefer spent time at the Mid-America Trucking Show with a man who’s been well on his way toward a status of custom-truck royalty, you might say, these last several years.

His name is Tim Eacret, proprietor of Iowa-headquartered EZ Pete Interiors, a custom truck upholstery business whose legacy stretches back in history to the work of Eacret’s father, Daniel Laverne Eacret, and his own early and long auto-upholstery work.

Sadly, Daniel passed in 2023, and Eacret honors his memory in the conversation with Marhoefer that follows here, detailing the big custom build that really got the dedicated truck upholsterer's business going full bore dedicated to custom rigs. Find EZ Pete Interiors here: http://ezpete.com/

More, too, in Long Haul Paul's story about Tim and his wife and business partner, Tricia: https://overdriveonline.com/15746914

As mentioned in the podcast:

**T.J. Kounkel's project 2018 389: https://www.overdriveonline.com/pride-polish/article/14897010/2019-gats-best-of-show-limited-mileage-combo-the-joker-gets-last-laugh

**Marhoefer's story about the legacy of Scot Marone, longtime organizer of the Wheel Jam Truck Show coming up soon: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-extra/article/15745088/the-wheel-jam-truck-show-staying-alive-with-the-village

**Tales of two lease-purchases: https://www.overdriveonline.com/equipment/article/15738011/a-tale-of-two-leasepurchase-experiences-truck-ownership-exit

This week’s edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast features C.W. Express small fleet owner Steve Wilson, reigning Small Fleet Champ in the 11-30-truck division after a bit of a growth spurt for the fleet followed Wilson’s brush with death in 2022. The team he’d built around the dry van fleet sustained while he was in hospital for the better part of that entire year, and in the aftermath has only continued to not just sustain, but excel, on dedicated lanes for a central broker in Avenger Logistics.

Wilson’s up to near 20 trucks and drivers today, and doesn’t have all his freight eggs in that single basket, as you’ll hear in today’s podcast, with customers in his area helping build lanes loaded both ways -- in one case out to Arkansas and back to the Louisville, Kentucky, area, where he’s headquartered in Sellersburg, Indiana.

The podcast amounts to a tour around C.W. Express headquarters on Avco Boulevard in Sellersburg, right off I-65 and purchased and moved into in 2023, marking a significant upgrade to the former location. Wilson, a wear-all-the-hats small fleet owner for decades, continues to build out support for C.W.’s trucks and drivers with deft delegation, too, particularly on the time-consuming maintenance side of the business. He's added an expert lead mechanic you’ll hear hear who oversees the operation and a younger diesel tech, Clayton Higdon, to provide an assist and a well for education and growth, no doubt.

Listen on for an update with reigning champ Wilson and C.W. Express.

"This year, if it goes like it has this past month, it'll be phenomenal." --George Kincaid

In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, an audio window on our feature story about flatbed-pulling owner-operator George Kincaid’s one-truck business, written attendant to the Quinwood, West Virginia-headquartered Kincaid getting the April Trucker of the Month nod from Overdrive: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15743659/trucker-of-the-month-george-kincaid-and-the-power-of-positivity

You can nominate your own trucking business -- or that of another deserving owner you admire -- via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/toptrucker

Kincaid’s deserving, for sure, with a sharp handle on maintenance with a decidedly do-it-yourself approach. What’s more, a whole lot can be said for doing something that you love, as he puts it, and a positive outlook on his life and work has been part and parcel of his success. Love of trucking has been with him since he was a kid when he and his younger brother both grew up with an eye toward exactly what they wanted to do when they were men. "It's pretty much what we always wanted to do growing up -- drive a truck," Kincaid said, and "have one with our own name on it."

Dive into Kincaid’s story, but also that of another owner, John Rissler, whose Horse and Buggy Express trucking business out of California, Missouri, morphed into the Horse and Buggy Accessories chrome shop he operates now out of the Crossroads Shopping Plaza at U.S. 50 and Missouri 87, home of the annual Crossroads Truck Meet show: https://overdriveonline.com/15745021

We spent the day out at the Crossroads May 3 for this year’s show, and sat down with Rissler to hear its history, stretching back four years now to the time he and another brother, Delton Rissler, decided to build a new headquarters there.

What’s it like to be the proprietor of a small fleet, a chrome shop with Missouri and Pennsylvania locations, and a truck show all at once? Well it never comes without a hitch, Rissler said. Soon as we sat down for the talk, his phone rang, as it would throughout our conversation. This call he had to take, though, from the man who was ferrying show attendees from the car parking area up to the show on a hay-ride-set-up flatbed trailer toted by an old farm tractor that had developed a pretty significant oil leak, as it turned out.

A hitch indeed, yet they would overcome. Hear more in the podcast.

In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, we’re looking back at the long run of the W900 model from the Kenworth Truck Company. The W900's coming sunset has been among the biggest equipment news of the year -- uncovered ahead of the Mid-America Trucking Show, where the company unveiled the launch of the W900 Legacy Edition special series to close out the model's run. Kenworth plans are to build a final 1,000 units of the W900 for customers through next year.

If you missed the video walkaround of the very first one built, find it at this link: https://overdriveonline.com/15742576

On the podcast this week we'll run through details of the Legacy Edition, likewise delving into the history surrounding the W900, with two Kenworth reps: Kyle Kimball, Kenworth director of marketing, and Jamin Swazo, company marketing communications director.

The model itself certainly has built a big legacy with untold numbers of truck owners through well more than a half-century run of production since its 1963 introduction. According to Jamin Swazo, the company’s not aware of any uninterrupted "longer runs out there in any automotive history for a single model," he said. Dive in with Kyle Kimball and Jamin Swazo in the podcast, answering the question on the mind of any prospective owner of one of the final production units of Kenworth Legacy Edition -- or a new standard W900, still available itself for order through … well, find the answer in the podcast.

Also there, hear Kimball and Swazo's answers to another pressing question I've heard from a few Kenworth fans among owner-operators -- whether they'd yet seen anyone add old-style can external breathers to a W990. Both also detailed their outlook for the W990 as a platform for custom-equipment builders and other owners, and efforts to showcase the successor model at the Mid-America Trucking Show. There, Kenworth showcased a vintage W900A and MHC Kenworth's Joplin, Missouri, dealer location's custom treatment of the W990 pictured at this link: https://overdriveonline.com/15744843

This week on Overdrive Radio we track back to the Mid-America Trucking Show and the big news for the trucking community from podcast sponsor Howes. The Howes Hall of Fame added its 12th member when it honored Mother Trucker Yoga proprietor and fitness and wellness coach Hope Zvara at the show.

You heard part of Zvara’s story when she was featured here on Overdrive Radio in conversation with Long Haul Paul Marhoefer a couple years back: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15448049/the-qualityoflife-benefits-of-movement-introducing-hope-zvara There, queried about the scourge of anxiety, depression and other mental health ailments throughout America, she asked a simple question -- "What's if it's not a mental health crisis? What if it's a movement crisis?"

In that podcast, and here, she detailed her step-by-step program for fitness through basic yoga techniques drivers can do in-cab, around the truck, at points throughout a day for an approachable journey toward better physical health. Mental health, too. Zvara well knows the connections between the two and isn’t shy of stressing them routinely with those she works with.

She’s combated mental stressors of various natures in her own life, using yoga practice toward that end. And she’s now worked with an untold number of individual truck drivers to help them achieve their own goals. We got a little tutorial in her brand of “no mat necessary" yoga at the start of the Trucking Solutions Group’s talk in the East Hall out at MATS on the final day. She led attendees through a series of stretches aimed simply at relieving the neck and upper-body tension so many of us face after a long day at the wheel or, in my case, typing away at the desk.

Today on the podcast, hear the audio of Zvara’s instruction on that mini-routine at the tail end, and otherwise buckle up for her story of helping truckers help themselves in health and wellness. And though Zvara’s program is designed for simplicity, she's also well aware it’s not exactly a simple matter for any of us.

Hear how yoga and general phyiscal well-being got her through her own crisis, and into the work for which she's now honored as the latest member the Howes Hall of Fame.

Nominate a deserving trucking industry participant for the Hall yourself, and browse all so honored todate, via https://howesproducts.com/hof

Find Hope Zvara's Mother Trucker Yoga effort at this link, where today you can download a free guide to 11 helpful stretches: https://mothertruckeryoga.com

In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, drop into our conversation with OOIDA Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh at the Mid-America Trucking Show. Pugh was fresh off a whirlwind round of a whole lot of other talking himself, including a MATS-opening breakfast panel discussion you heard here a couple weeks back, then prior to that on Wednesday the week of the truck show in the halls of Congress where he joined a panel of trucking and other industry reps to talk through significant issues ahead of the highway bill reauthorization due next year.

Pugh made headlines for his urging of federal reps to get a handle on the scope of so-called “non-domiciled CDLs” issued to residents of foreign countries by states here in the U.S. for work OTR or in other industries on a temporary basis. It’s an issue that’s risen to prominence this year as attention to it has increased. It’s but one of the issues Pugh addressed in Congressional testimony, likewise in what follows in the podcast, yet one we heard about also from trucker Teresa Brittain in the wake of MATS.

English proficiency violations used to be treated by the Comercial Vehicle Safety Alliance of inspectors and industry as an out of service violation, yet when CVSA removed that out of service violation about a decade ago now, FMCSA subsequently relaxed guidance on how to enforce the violation itself. Paired with some DOT changes for states around non-domiciled CDLs that happened later, it seems to have gotten simpler for foreign country residents to come into the country to work over the road with a CDL. How many such people are working in the U.S. today? Nobody can really answer that question, as has been evident from Overdrive’s Alex Lockie’s ongoing reporting around the issue: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15741322/

Brittain flagged the importance of the English language proficiency regs, though, particularly when it comes to roadside inspections. She noted a conversation at MATS she herself had with Kentucky state truck enforcement about the issue. “How does any state law enforcement officer do an inspection on the truck if the driver cannot follow instructions to inspect it?” she asked.

Inspectors told her essentially they can’t inspect such an operator’s truck, she said, “for their own safety. They told me they give 15 minutes after the initial request for the driver to contact their company and provide driver's license and required paperwork, then just let them go if the paperwork is compliant.”

No inspection for the truck.

Considering such dynamics, Terea Brittain then quipped, “Next inspection, I’m speaking Martian!”

OOIDA along with some from the law enforcement community petitioned CVSA to return English proficiency to the out of service criteria, and CVSA’s spring Workshop event is but one week away. Pugh noted owner-operators might stay tuned for any news on that front in the coming couple of weeks.

Also in the podcast: RaceTrac Travel Centers Marketing Manager Nick LaFalce details growth in his company’s mostly Southeast regional network of truck stops in what was once mainly just a fuel-stop network for automobile drivers. Since 2018, the RaceTrac company’s been expanding high-flow diesel options and acquiring land to even add parking options within the network.

As mentioned in the podcast:

**Recent coverage of the parking issue: https://overdriveonline.com/15742614

**Detail from recent Congressional hearing: https://overdriveonline.com/15741287

**More from MATS: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4372607

This week's edition of Overdrive Radio is another in our series highlighting contenders for 2025 Trucker of the Year, with Overdrive Senior Editor Matt Cole’s talk with Virginia-headquartered two-truck straight dump owner-operator business Dice Mayhem’s Trucking, headed up by owner-operator Hunter Hubbard and her husband, Tim.

Hunter’s just about six years into truck ownership herself, her husband a good bit longer, yet clearly she’s harnessed a quality that current reigning Trucker of the Year Alan Kitzhaber sees in all successful people when it comes to business. As he put earlier this year in his “Plan for better business,” authored for our Overdrive Extra blog, “99.9% of success is desire.” That is, those who have a clear case of the want-tos, ultimately, probably will do whatever it is they set out to accomplish: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15712314

Cue Hunter Hubbard’s own advice for any aspiring truck owner when it comes to success in business for themselves. "If you have your mind set to do it, go for it. Nothing's stopping you but yourself, and the worst thing you can do is fail. But at the end of the day, nobody wants to fail. You're going to figure it out one way or another." Some days will be awful, but "you'll sit back a month down the road, two months down the road, and be like, 'that was rough, but hey we're still here.' You just gotta keep digging on it."

As she well acknowledges, challenges will present themselves day-in, day-out, but those who keep digging will get through to the other side. Clearly, Hubbard herself has been one of those sorts these last years in business. "I might be a little stubborn sometimes," she said.

She and Tim have built a steady base of customers for their two-truck straight dump business in and around their Virginia home base, weathering an array of their own customer challenges in recent years when a buyout of one of their main customers and integration of the two business left their own trucking company in an uncertain position for hauling work, given the company's small size.

Last year, she pivoted to a certain extent, with purchase of an older Peterbilt tractor, utilizing mechanical prowess with a new shop, too, to get it in working order and standing up a new, one-truck business for livestock hauling regionally: Dice Logistics. Yet dump work remains the Hubbards’ bread and butter, and the seasonality of both businesses continues to inspire the occasional second-guessing of their commitment to niche specialization. They could be hauling food, which always has to run, Hubbard notes, telling her story to Cole in this episode. They could be, that is, but "I didn't really choose that route. Everything's seasonal, everything depends on the weather," she said. "You just wait it out."

They’re doing more than just waiting, that’s sure.

As also mentioned in the podcast:

**Matt Cole's two-part feature on ways to save on insurance at renewal: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15740305

**Learn how you can put your own or another owner-operator business in the running for the 2025 Trucker of the Year honor, with a chance to win a new seat from sponsor Bostrom Seating and Commercial Vehicle Group: https://overdriveonline.com/toptrucker

In 2024, finally, as regular Overdrive readers will know, owner-operator income was up on a year-over-year basis. ATBS Vice President Mike Hosted makes that abundantly clear in this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, featuring the business services firm's March 25 update offering an economic outlook for the year ahead as well as lessons within the benchmarking data ATBS dervies from its tens of thousands of owner-operator clients' performance. If you missed our report from the session as MATS got under way, find it via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/15741374

The small boost in average income is certainly a first in what’s been an exceedingly tough three and more years now as freight demand’s declined, revenues and income falling for many owner-operators as costs just rose through much of the period. The 2024 income gain also comes despite even further rates and revenue declines last year, a sure sign that successful owners are tightening the operation, increasing fuel efficiency to reduce costs as much as possible.

Today in the podcast, we essentially let the tape roll on Hosted’s presentation. You can follow along by downloading Mike Hosted’s slides via this link, or watch the Youtube version up top or on Overdrive's Youtube channel to listen along with the presentation of the slides.

Download all the slides from Hosted's presentation via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15741380

Yet another bit of positivity to emerge from the ATBS session had to do with the spot market, particularly for flatbed freight, in year 2025 so far. The moves up and down in the spot indices Hosted sees as particularly valuable as near-term indicators of demand in the market. Though the positivity there is tempered by a big degree of uncertainty made even bigger by the President’s tariff announcements this past week, if the surge in flatbed freight and demand seen so far this year doesn’t just prove to be a result of a kind of importers’ pre-buy to beat a variety of tariffs on goods coming across U.S. borders, we could be headed in a longer-term positive direction.

Recent trucking market performance recalls Gary Buchs’ advice around freight, around customer identification and the time to strike, likewise when some measure of a kickstart might truly arise. It came back in late September 2024, before elections’ outcomes were known, and following the fed’s moves to begin to ease off the cost of borrowing with interest rate cuts.

Buchs advised to set a calendar reminder for 4-6 months out from the time of the fed's cuts. “Odds are,” he said, “that is about the time business will change, as it takes time for companies to have confidence" to place orders, others to respond to those orders with their own confidence, "and the cards begin to fall and make things move....”

Here we are, four-to-six months on. Looking at the stock market since the Trump tariff announcement last week we can’t say business confidence is 100% the rule. Yet flatbed freight’s been moving up, as noted, and a couple weeks back dry and reefer rates and volumes finally joined in. Maybe Buchs was right on the timing. And maybe in the freight economy, things are in fact changing for the better.

ATBS is coproducer with Overdrive of the comprehensive Partners in Business playbook for owner-operator careers, start to finish, now in a new online content library format. Browse the new playbook: https://overdriveonline.com/pib

Back from the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Kentucky, this Overdrive Radio edition kicks off continuing coverage as all of us here at Overdrive spent the show fanning out across convention center grounds to cover just as much as possible. The fruits of that labor you’ve seen just a small sampling of to date, the lot of it collected with the MATS tag at OverdriveOnline.com: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4372607

Today we drop back to the very beginning of the show for an 8 a.m. Thursday, March 27, panel discussion that set the issues stage for the remainder of the event. It was moderated by Brent Hutto, longtime Chief Relationship Officer at Truckstop and now a senior advisor for the load board as he’s joined the staff of the Truck Parking Club company.

You’ll hear a variety of voices in the panel discussion, touching on freight market dynamics, small business struggles and ways to overcome, predatory towing, parking, fraud in the brokered-freight marketplace, cargo and payment theft and so much more. Panelists included:

**Jason Cowan, leader of 45-truck Silver Creek Transportation, as Overdrive’s Small Fleet Champ in 2021, since which plans for growth have come to fruition.

**Hell Bent Xpress owner Jamie Hagen, whose all-Mack fleet operates out of a South Dakota headquarters and which was one of two finalists in the 3-10-truck division of the Small Fleet Championship last year.

**Jessica Dotson, co-owner-operator of Dotson Transportation with her husband

**Tyler Johnston, Mercer Transportation's director of operations

**Lewie Pugh, Owner-Operator Independent Driver's Association executive vice president

As mentioned in the podcast:

**Overdrive's recent insurance renewal-related feature: https://overdriveonline.com/15740305

**Post-crash litigation series: https://overdriveonline.com/15287415

**Tow companies dominate DOT listening session: https://overdriveonline.com/15678174

**Overdrive's revamped Partners in Business start-to-finish playbook for owner-operator careers: https://overdriveonline.com/pib