Overdrive Radio

Chart-topping songs about trucking have been around for decades. But what was the first one to become a big hit? It was “Truck Driver’s Blues,” performed by the Texas Wanderers and sung by piano player Moon Mullican and at other times by Cliff Bruner, said Todd Uhlman. Uhlman's an assistant professor who’s specialized in U.S. socio-cultural history and has published a lengthy article about trucking music’s place in that history. The song was written by Louisianan Ted Daffan after he visited honky-tonks frequented by truckers. “Truck Driver’s Blues” was one of 1939’s biggest hits, Uhlman says in this special edition of Overdrive Radio attendant to Overdrive's coverage of trucking history in this its 60th-anniversary year.

Find more history coverage, including part 1 in the "Songs of the Highway" special series, via http://overdriveonline.com/trucking-history

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Owner-operator Mike Crawford in this week's Overdrive Radio expands on some of the themes showcased earlier this week in our special-edition podcast in part about the ongoing safety utility, and the decreased cultural importance, of the CB in trucking.

If you missed that 60th-anniversary podcast earlier this week and attendant coverage, visit http://OverdriveOnline.com/trucking-history access it.

We wanted to bring Crawford back in here because what you heard for him via that special edition was just a very sliver of our longer conversation – the talk was centered on the CB and his history, how he went from being the Lucky Turkey to the Maverick for a time to what he's known pretty much universally as today. Listen on ...

Crawford's an independent with his authority now for many years but running mostly with a single broker – Prime’s logistics group, after having leased there for many years. He was Trucker of the Year back in 2010 in the Overdrive program of that time.

Read more about Crawford via this link to past coverage: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4381542

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This special edition Overdrive Radio is part of our celebration 60 years since the magazine's founding in 1961 -- as such, every Monday we’re looking back on various elements of the trucking business and culture as they’ve existed in the past and evolved on up through today via http://overdriveonline.com/trucking-history

For this episode, we’re looking at the CB radio, both in the context of safety and trucking culture. First, we run back through the first in my Channel One Nine series of mini-episodes produced in collaboration with PRX’s Radiotopia last year – that episode was devoted to CB handles and the history of the CB in trucking in brief.

Following that is a variety of reader views from 2017, after a disastrous late-night winter pileup on I-80 in Pennsylvania, around the importance of using the CB in dangerous conditions to avoid such events -– this time of year, as is particularly in evidence this year, such sentiment is, as they say, timeless.

Hear more from the Radiotopia podcast network, including Over the Road, via http://radiotopia.fm

Subscribe to Overdrive's newsletter for daily updates five days a week: http://overdriveonline.com

In today's edition of Overdrive Radio, we’ll hear from Captain Jon Olsen of Minnesota State Patrol's truck enforcement unit, one of many sources for Overdrive's reporting about the federal DataQs system that went live earlier this week: https://www.overdriveonline.com/regulations/article/15063803/criticism-of-dataqs-review-system-continues-to-rise

Overdrive Editorial Director Max Heine and Senior Editor Todd Dills dug into the FMCSA's data around the DataQs system, doing scads of interviews over the last several months as well, and Olsen's state of Minnesota was one of two states that emerged as a model for a potential national reform effort in early stages as we speak.

When a DataQs challenge cannot be resolved to the satisfaction of the carrier, Minnesota offers the chance for an appeal to a review panel that includes not only supervisory staff from the State Patrol itself but also outside representatives from industry, introducing a measure of fairness that has been uncommon for DataQs routed back to the issuing state jurisdiction. In this podcast, Olsen describes the state's full process as well as offers more general advice to motor carriers on succeeding in their DataQs challenge efforts.

Also in the podcast: Save the Date -- February 25, 3 p.m. Central time, we’ll be hosting a live discussion with former Kansas Highway Patrol Captain Chris Turner, who’s now with the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, and former owner-operator Christopher Haney, who’s now safety and human resources director for 130-truck end dump puller Payne Trucking, out of Fredericksburg, Virginia. Both men are fountains of knowledge around DataQs – Chris Haney’s got a so-far unblemished record in his DataQs efforts, for instance, and both he and Turner will offer plenty in the way of helpful tips on succeeding in DataQs challenges.

You’ll have an opportunity to ask questions of them, too. And you can help us prep for the talk by sending those questions in advance directly. Reach out via our podcast message line at 530-408-6423 and let us know your question about violation or other challenges in DataQs. We'll be sure to get some answers.

Follow this link to register for the live discussion to find out just where it will take place online: https://www.overdriveonline.com/page/dataqwebcast

In today's edition of Overdrive Radio, another in the run through our eight-episode Over the Road podcast series, coproduced for 2020 with PRX's Radiotopia podcast network. "Back home" featured our own Long Haul Paul Marhoefer, host of the show, and Over the Road contributing producer Lacy Roberts on a haul back through Lacy’s childhood as a daughter of a trucking family growing up in Montana. The tale, among the most-listened-to within the trucking community (the podcast was broadcast out to a general listening audience as well), offered a moving portrait of the sacrifices over-the-road drivers make balancing work and family life -- and the sacrifices, too, those back home endure.

Before we get there, though, Captain Jon Olsen of the Minnesota State Patrol offers some food for thought on the COVID-19 emergency declaration's exemption to the hours of service, still in place at least through the end of the month. He and colleagues note there seems to be a disconnect between those along the food supply chain as to just what loads qualify as "emergency restocking" and what loads don't. Also: dogs aren’t livestock, maybe. That should make sense momentarily.

Read more about claiming the emergency exemption via this link to early coverage of it: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/14897583/emergency-hos-exemption-guidance-for-owner-operators

Hear more from the Radiotopia podcast network, including Over the Road, via http://radiotopia.fm

Subscribe to Overdrive's newsletter for daily updates five days a week: http://overdriveonline.com

In this edition of Overdrive Radio, take a tour down I-75 in Kentucky in search of an answer to the age-old question: Who has the best nanner pudding among the truck stops along that route, and which one of them was the first to advertise it on the CB?

This week, we run back through some trucking micro-history with our own "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer via another edition in the Over the Road podcast series, originally produced by PRX’s Radiotopia in collaboration with us here at Overdrive. It’s a veritable caper of a episode, so hang on tight.

Also in the podcast: A fairly moderate amount of snow in and around Evanston, Wyoming, this season has put a bit of a damper on business for the Dustbusters provider of road de-icers and stabilizers for dusty gravel roads. It hasn't, however, stopped work in the shop on a beauty of a daycab 1980 Kenworth W900A owner-operator Martin Herman has put in with this crew -- Dustbusters owner Craig Prete, shop foreman Cole Potter, mechanic Kipp Knight and Austin Oliver. Regular readers may well recall Herman’s own 1970 model W900A from our detail of it back last summer: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/14898050/ownerop-talks-roadside-inspections-and-rig-restoration

In the podcast, Herman details a good bit of the work put into Prete's 1980 after it had been more or less idle for many years. The daycab features a rolloff body Dustbusters will most likely use simply as a flatbed for hauling bagged product. (The tow companies in the area are keeping an eye out for stiff competition, nonetheless, Herman joked.)

Near the end of this week's episode, too, a brand-new song from Marhoefer, in part inspired by the stories told here, in what was originally Over the Road episode 4, airing early last year. You can here the song in full via the following link, and keep tuned for more releases from Marhoefer from this session with cellist Michael Ronstadt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQuVqTy_4jU

Subscribe to Overdrive's newsletter for daily updates five days a week: overdriveonline.com

In April 2019. Kenyette Godhigh-Bell was a company driver at Grand Island Express. Our own "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer met her for the first time at the company headquarters in Nebraska when researching and recording for what would become the Over the Road podcast. If you’re a regular Overdrive Radio listener, you heard that episode and met Godhigh-Bell from that time. Part of the episodes featured the sound of a class intended for drivers at the company who were considering the decision to buy a truck themselves.

It was no accident that Kenyette was in that class. About a year to the day later, she took the keys to a 2017 Freightliner Cascadia and leased on with small fleet B-F Trucking out of Plainfield, Ill.. Today, she's in what she calls a bit of a “honeymoon period” with her authority active since the beginning of the year, running short-haul loads from Amazon facility to Amazon facility in and around Atlanta, where she lived as a young woman and attended school -- though her business is based out of Florida.

Here's the thing, though, as she's working her way into the independent business, she's got an eye toward the future, and laying the groundwork with partnerships she'll need as she moves to purchase other trucks, hire drivers and so much more.

Also in the podcast, our own James Jaillet and I mull over recent spot freight dynamics, illustrated in his story about a potential return to seasonal patterns this year, among other things: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/14972990/as-a-spot-rates-sag-might-loom-truckers-would-be-wise-to-seek-alternatives

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For today’s episode of the Overdrive Radio podcast, brace for a long run through the history of trucking with former household-goods-hauling owner-operator Finn Murphy, also a well-versed student of that history. Murphy is interviewed and much of the story is narrated by Overdrive contributing writer and reefer hauler "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer. This brief history of trucking in America tracks the rise of the business from the 1920s up through today -– and the owner-operator's central role in it all. It was originally part of the Over the Road podcast series, Overdrive's 2020 coproduction with PRX's Radiotopia

We’ll hear form a past wildcatter about, among other thing, the Allis Chalmers "Purple People Eater" engine in one of his trucks; from Murphy about his post-deregulation career, made possible in part by the 1980 Motor Carrier Act’s removal of barriers to entry that kept many new ventures out of non-agricultural freight markets; and about the rise of the Teamsters in regulated markets from the 1930s on.

If you missed the original airing -- it'd be unsurprising, as it aired originally smack dab in the center of the initial surge of COVID-19 cases late last March that kept the entire nation on edge -- you're in for a treat.

Also in the podcast, another special piece of history in Ohio-based Fred Bowerman's preservation of this 1978 Peterbilt 352, pictured during "That's a Big 10-4 on D.C." on the National Mall this past year, an event Bowerman's helped to organize three years running.

Find a distillation of owner-operator via this link to Overdrive Radio host Todd Dills' "Breaking Free" history, written attendant to Overdrive's 2011 50th anniversary: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/14876086/breaking-free-owner-operator-history-upon-overdrives-50th-anniversary

A special series highlighting elements of Overdrive's and trucking's history attendant to our ongoing 60th-anniversay year is available via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4406897

Hear more from the Over the Road podcast editions: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4405867

Subscribe to Overdrive's newsletter for daily updates five days a week: http://overdriveonline.com

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

Subscribe to Overdrive's newsletter for daily updates five days a week: http://overdriveonline.com

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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