Overdrive Radio

With the Brake Safety Week upcoming August 23-29, tank doubles-pulling independent Martin Herman, based in Wyoming, is sure to be ready. In this edition of Overdrive Radio, we talk inspections, for sure, but more so his half-century-old 1970 Kenworth needlenose W925, quite an exceptional rig. Herman regular Overdrive readers may well recall as the owner-op who engineered replacement parts and even used a turbo from a Cummins N14 to retrofit to the Big Cam 3 that powered the KW. Since we last checked in with Herman, that motor is no more, as you’ll hear. ... Hear more in the podcast, and find pictures of the unit via http://overdriveonline.com/channel19

With the Brake Safety Week upcoming August 23-29, tank doubles-pulling independent Martin Herman, based in Wyoming, is sure to be ready. In this edition of Overdrive Radio, we talk inspections, for sure, but more so his half-century-old 1970 Kenworth needlenose W925, quite an exceptional rig. Herman regular Overdrive readers may well recall as the owner-op who engineered replacement parts and even used a turbo from a Cummins N14 to retrofit to the Big Cam 3 that powered the KW. Since we last checked in with Herman, that motor is no more, as you’ll hear. ... Hear more in the podcast, and find pictures of the unit via http://overdriveonline.com/channel19

With the Brake Safety Week upcoming August 23-29, tank doubles-pulling independent Martin Herman, based in Wyoming, is sure to be ready. In this edition of Overdrive Radio, we talk inspections, for sure, but more so his half-century-old 1970 Kenworth needlenose W925, quite an exceptional rig. Herman regular Overdrive readers may well recall as the owner-op who engineered replacement parts and even used a turbo from a Cummins N14 to retrofit to the Big Cam 3 that powered the KW. Since we last checked in with Herman, that motor is no more, as you’ll hear. ... Hear more in the podcast, and find pictures of the unit via http://overdriveonline.com/channel19

The complications that can be brought on by any overdimensional load’s permitted complexity are many, and extend to the routes those permits send you on, of course. The bigger or heavier the load gets, the more circuitous and lengthy the route, often enough. It can make for a cumbersome process when it comes to weighing whether the price of any load is worth the effort and cost put in. Owner-Operator of the Year Kevin Kocmich has mastered such deliberations over his decades in business. For more on his operation, listen to this podcast or find our May cover story on heavy specialized hauling via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/big-equipment-loads-pay-specialized-heavy-hauling/

The complications that can be brought on by any overdimensional load’s permitted complexity are many, and extend to the routes those permits send you on, of course. The bigger or heavier the load gets, the more circuitous and lengthy the route, often enough. It can make for a cumbersome process when it comes to weighing whether the price of any load is worth the effort and cost put in. Owner-Operator of the Year Kevin Kocmich has mastered such deliberations over his decades in business. For more on his operation, listen to this podcast or find our May cover story on heavy specialized hauling via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/big-equipment-loads-pay-specialized-heavy-hauling/

You read a little about this week's podcast subject last week, likely, with reporting around the Operation Safe Driver Week traffic-enforcement event (focused on motorists as well as professional operators) ongoing as we speak. Namely -- the Level 3 inspection and Kansas Highway Patrol trooper and Public Information Officer Nick Wright, whose advice related to how to prep for an inspection was delivered in this conversation from early March. He and I were talking in the context of the three-day Roadcheck inspection event, then scheduled for early May, where the full Level 1 driver and vehicle inspection is what often enough is the focus of the event. Before it was postponed, though, CVSA had named the theme of the annual event as driver-related violations, from medical certification status to ELDs and hours of service – the things hit on by those Level 3 inspections.

That just so happens to also be the inspection level most likely to accompany any roadside stop, which the Operation Safe Driver Week ongoing right now takes as its focus.

[related-post id="289339"/]So let’s go back in time to early March – the entire state of Kansas had just three confirmed cases of COVID-19, and, as KHP Nick Wright put it, as in my home base in Nashville, nary a bottle of hand sanitizer or roll of toilet paper could be found within a 100-mile radius of almost any city in America ... Along the way, Wright details answers to the following: 

**What are best practices for annotations of the log in an ELD when errors are made on the drive line, which can’t be edited in an ELD?

**What’s the best inspection-preparation advice he could give a driver beyond what’s obvious?

**Do states actually run out of those CVSA clean-inspection stickers?

And much more besides.

You read a little about this week's podcast subject last week, likely, with reporting around the Operation Safe Driver Week traffic-enforcement event (focused on motorists as well as professional operators) ongoing as we speak. Namely -- the Level 3 inspection and Kansas Highway Patrol trooper and Public Information Officer Nick Wright, whose advice related to how to prep for an inspection was delivered in this conversation from early March. He and I were talking in the context of the three-day Roadcheck inspection event, then scheduled for early May, where the full Level 1 driver and vehicle inspection is what often enough is the focus of the event. Before it was postponed, though, CVSA had named the theme of the annual event as driver-related violations, from medical certification status to ELDs and hours of service – the things hit on by those Level 3 inspections.

That just so happens to also be the inspection level most likely to accompany any roadside stop, which the Operation Safe Driver Week ongoing right now takes as its focus.

[related-post id="289339"/]So let’s go back in time to early March – the entire state of Kansas had just three confirmed cases of COVID-19, and, as KHP Nick Wright put it, as in my home base in Nashville, nary a bottle of hand sanitizer or roll of toilet paper could be found within a 100-mile radius of almost any city in America ... Along the way, Wright details answers to the following: 

**What are best practices for annotations of the log in an ELD when errors are made on the drive line, which can’t be edited in an ELD?

**What’s the best inspection-preparation advice he could give a driver beyond what’s obvious?

**Do states actually run out of those CVSA clean-inspection stickers?

And much more besides.

In the first part of this two-part podcast, owner-operator and Rates & Lanes Podcast cohost Rico Muhammad detailed his views on policing issues and his personal experiences with unjustified actions throughout his life. In part 2, a discussion of opportunity barriers that exist for many in African-American communities where, as Muhammad says, kids are often counseled they must be "twice as good" as white counterparts to achieve the same level of success. Cynical though the adage may be, the truth of the matter is closer to the notion that there's work left to be done by all of us in living up to the everyone's-created-equal ideal enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, when it comes to opportunity. Find Part 1 of this series via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/difficult-conversations-race-in-trucking-u-s-culture-owner-op-rico-muhammad/

In the first part of this two-part podcast, owner-operator and Rates & Lanes Podcast cohost Rico Muhammad detailed his views on policing issues and his personal experiences with unjustified actions throughout his life. In part 2, a discussion of opportunity barriers that exist for many in African-American communities where, as Muhammad says, kids are often counseled they must be "twice as good" as white counterparts to achieve the same level of success. Cynical though the adage may be, the truth of the matter is closer to the notion that there's work left to be done by all of us in living up to the everyone's-created-equal ideal enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, when it comes to opportunity. Find Part 1 of this series via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/difficult-conversations-race-in-trucking-u-s-culture-owner-op-rico-muhammad/

Atlanta-based Rico Muhammad regulat listeners may well recall from past Overdrive Radio editions covering a variety of issues, from electronic logging device choices ahead of the mandate back in 2017 to a variety of other business topics. Muhammad's also the host of a weekly audio program in the Rate & Lanes podcast available via http://BlogTalkRadio.com/rates.

In this week's Overdrive Radio, Muhammad speaks to the movement that's gathered steam nationally in response to killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, in addition to a rash of deaths of African-American citizens in the hands of police around the nation, among other atrocities.

He details some of his own experiences as an African-American when it comes to police interactions -- from the first but not only time he had a gun pulled on him by an officer, when he was just a boy in his early teens, to today's much more smooth though not always pleasant routine interactions at scale houses that all operators deal with in varying degrees.

Along the way, Muhammad -- who named his Crescent Carriers business after what he says is seen as a symbol of progress toward equality in his religion of Islam -- offers perspective on the movement toward righting historical and continuing systemic wrongs, and practical advice and viewpoint relative to the increased likelihood of highway encounters with demonstrating crowds. He's borne witness to both from relative distance, though still close to home for him in Atlanta in the past few weeks.