Overdrive Radio

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.

What does East Coast Transport Vice President of Logistics Paul Berman think about all the talk around potentially new requirements for freight-transaction transparency, and the existing regs? That was, after all, partly the question Berman joined me for this two-part edition of Overdrive Radio to answer to begin with. The answer is complicated, and involves honest questioning of the utility of after-the-load rate transparency for any owner-operator and more. 

What's not so complicated is Berman's answer to the question of just how his own company handles right-to-review requests under 49 CFR 371.3, the current reg that requires brokers to make records, including the brokerage fees assessed to the shipper, available to carriers upon request. That regulation, and the potential for its enforcement outside of carrier, broker and shipper contracts, played a big part in May’s protest actions by truckers in D.C., of course. And the existence of contract language in some instances requiring carriers to sign away the right to review continues for many to feel like a huge red flag that, basically, brokers have something to hide.

Berman’s company’s contracts with carriers don’t utilize such language. It’s been explained by others as the way the broker chooses to deal with non-disclosure requirements handed down to them from their shipper customers. Berman and company deal with those shipper demands, too, he says. East Coast requires an in-person review for transparency rather than offering any electronic disclosure – OOIDA has asked Congress to include an automatic, electronic required disclosure to the carrier as a provision in the next COVID-19 economic relief bill that’s been in talks now for weeks. OOIDA also has suggested the in-person review required by many brokers is simply a way to put a barrier in front of a carrier that in effect makes transaction review that much more unlikely.

For Berman, though, there's more to the in-person review -- it's East Coast's way of maintaining some measure of control of that information in a good-faith effort not to violate their contracts with customers while also not violating federal regulations guaranteeing a carrier’s right to review the record. There's more to it, as always. What he's definitely certain about, though: In the past decade, he could count on one hand the number of times a carrier's actually requested review under 371.3. ...

What does East Coast Transport Vice President of Logistics Paul Berman think about all the talk around potentially new requirements for freight-transaction transparency, and the existing regs? That was, after all, partly the question Berman joined me for this two-part edition of Overdrive Radio to answer to begin with. The answer is complicated, and involves honest questioning of the utility of after-the-load rate transparency for any owner-operator and more. 

What's not so complicated is Berman's answer to the question of just how his own company handles right-to-review requests under 49 CFR 371.3, the current reg that requires brokers to make records, including the brokerage fees assessed to the shipper, available to carriers upon request. That regulation, and the potential for its enforcement outside of carrier, broker and shipper contracts, played a big part in May’s protest actions by truckers in D.C., of course. And the existence of contract language in some instances requiring carriers to sign away the right to review continues for many to feel like a huge red flag that, basically, brokers have something to hide.

Berman’s company’s contracts with carriers don’t utilize such language. It’s been explained by others as the way the broker chooses to deal with non-disclosure requirements handed down to them from their shipper customers. Berman and company deal with those shipper demands, too, he says. East Coast requires an in-person review for transparency rather than offering any electronic disclosure – OOIDA has asked Congress to include an automatic, electronic required disclosure to the carrier as a provision in the next COVID-19 economic relief bill that’s been in talks now for weeks. OOIDA also has suggested the in-person review required by many brokers is simply a way to put a barrier in front of a carrier that in effect makes transaction review that much more unlikely.

For Berman, though, there's more to the in-person review -- it's East Coast's way of maintaining some measure of control of that information in a good-faith effort not to violate their contracts with customers while also not violating federal regulations guaranteeing a carrier’s right to review the record. There's more to it, as always. What he's definitely certain about, though: In the past decade, he could count on one hand the number of times a carrier's actually requested review under 371.3. ...

View from the broker, Part 1. East Coast Transport's logistics VP Paul Berman has been around trucking, and particularly the food-freight side of things, since the 1970s and also happens to be a former owner-operator himself. He sat down with Overdrive Radio for an expansive talk on the history of brokerage in trucking and the evolution of the spot market into a sort of market-within-a-market, with plenty of downsides when pursued to the exclusion of tried-and-true strategies toward business relationships built on mutual trust, fairness and need. As the current crisis has done so much to expose bad actors among brokerages and spur a push for greater fairness, Berman emphasizes that there are plenty good guys out there among brokers, and owner-operators would do well to spend personal capital on setting up for the long haul. It's the regular partners who will sustain you through the next downturn, no doubt. In Part 2 next week, we'll talk with Berman about how current transparency regs have been exercised at East Coast and what he thinks about the push for more required transaction records disclosure, among other subjects.

View from the broker, Part 1. East Coast Transport's logistics VP Paul Berman has been around trucking, and particularly the food-freight side of things, since the 1970s and also happens to be a former owner-operator himself. He sat down with Overdrive Radio for an expansive talk on the history of brokerage in trucking and the evolution of the spot market into a sort of market-within-a-market, with plenty of downsides when pursued to the exclusion of tried-and-true strategies toward business relationships built on mutual trust, fairness and need. As the current crisis has done so much to expose bad actors among brokerages and spur a push for greater fairness, Berman emphasizes that there are plenty good guys out there among brokers, and owner-operators would do well to spend personal capital on setting up for the long haul. It's the regular partners who will sustain you through the next downturn, no doubt. In Part 2 next week, we'll talk with Berman about how current transparency regs have been exercised at East Coast and what he thinks about the push for more required transaction records disclosure, among other subjects.

A longer talk here with Maryland-headquartered Ed Miller, now retired from trucking and the author of a memoir called “A Trucker’s Tale: Wit, Wisdom and True Stories from 60 Years on the Road.” It’s an intimate portrait of a life lived in trucking, from a kid in Western North Carolina changing tires for his father and grandfather’s trucking company, to the driver’s seat himself stateside and in Vietnam as a Navy Seabee, to managing shipper relationships and/or operation back in this or that trucking-company office or terminal. First, though, at the top, a few more readers’ responses to the hours of service final rule that FMCSA announced not quite two weeks ago. Caller look on changes to the split sleeper rules as advantageous to safety, given the ability now of the shorter period in the split to stop the 14-hour clock as long as it’s at least two hours long, according to the text of the rule itself. Miller, ultimately, hopes new changes might bring about more ability to restore a little of that Knights of Highway public profile once enjoyed by today's drivers forebears -- more might stop to help out a broken-down four-wheeler, at least, as his book suggests ...

A longer talk here with Maryland-headquartered Ed Miller, now retired from trucking and the author of a memoir called “A Trucker’s Tale: Wit, Wisdom and True Stories from 60 Years on the Road.” It’s an intimate portrait of a life lived in trucking, from a kid in Western North Carolina changing tires for his father and grandfather’s trucking company, to the driver’s seat himself stateside and in Vietnam as a Navy Seabee, to managing shipper relationships and/or operation back in this or that trucking-company office or terminal. First, though, at the top, a few more readers’ responses to the hours of service final rule that FMCSA announced not quite two weeks ago. Caller look on changes to the split sleeper rules as advantageous to safety, given the ability now of the shorter period in the split to stop the 14-hour clock as long as it’s at least two hours long, according to the text of the rule itself. Miller, ultimately, hopes new changes might bring about more ability to restore a little of that Knights of Highway public profile once enjoyed by today's drivers forebears -- more might stop to help out a broken-down four-wheeler, at least, as his book suggests ...

This edition features a talk with Generations Express independent owner-operator Bryan Hutchens, and we’ll get to how he feels about the hours of service changes released just yesterday and set to go into effect es early as September. Regular listeners and Overdrive readers may well remember Hutchens from an organizing role he assumed with others around last year’s That’s a Big 10-4 on D.C. outreach effort on the National Mall in October. The last couple of months, he’s seen business slow down a good bit, as have so many, and sold the business’s second truck, a 2007 model, early in the pandemic period, reducing costs. His insurance renewal came up, too, and his agent was able to shop coverage around and found insurers rather aggressively competing with each other – he got a substantial reduction, so maybe, just maybe there’s a bright spot in all this. The owner-operator spent parts of Tuesday and Wednesday this week in D.C. with his 1996 Peterbilt 379 and 53-foot step deck parked with the assembled, he guesses, more than 100 trucks and probably double that of drivers and, in some cases, their families. Wednesday, notably, after Hutchens departed to pick up a load to take him back to his home base in Oklahoma, the group in D.C. was paid a visit by former North Carolina congressman Mark Meadows, President Trump’s Chief of Staff, and his security detail. As we reported yesterday at OverdriveOnline.com, Meadows pledged dialogue to continue, and insisted they had the administration’s attention on rates and transparency issues – though he stressed the reality, that, well, the entire country is hurting right now.

This edition features a talk with Generations Express independent owner-operator Bryan Hutchens, and we’ll get to how he feels about the hours of service changes released just yesterday and set to go into effect es early as September. Regular listeners and Overdrive readers may well remember Hutchens from an organizing role he assumed with others around last year’s That’s a Big 10-4 on D.C. outreach effort on the National Mall in October. The last couple of months, he’s seen business slow down a good bit, as have so many, and sold the business’s second truck, a 2007 model, early in the pandemic period, reducing costs. His insurance renewal came up, too, and his agent was able to shop coverage around and found insurers rather aggressively competing with each other – he got a substantial reduction, so maybe, just maybe there’s a bright spot in all this. The owner-operator spent parts of Tuesday and Wednesday this week in D.C. with his 1996 Peterbilt 379 and 53-foot step deck parked with the assembled, he guesses, more than 100 trucks and probably double that of drivers and, in some cases, their families. Wednesday, notably, after Hutchens departed to pick up a load to take him back to his home base in Oklahoma, the group in D.C. was paid a visit by former North Carolina congressman Mark Meadows, President Trump’s Chief of Staff, and his security detail. As we reported yesterday at OverdriveOnline.com, Meadows pledged dialogue to continue, and insisted they had the administration’s attention on rates and transparency issues – though he stressed the reality, that, well, the entire country is hurting right now.

Owner-operators Daniel and Phyllis Snow have been off the road refusing to run at a loss for going on a month now as rates and available freight volumes have fallen. The crisis spurred by the COVID-19 coronavirus' spread, though, comes after a rough year of its own. To put everything in context, Daniel says, on the same miles run in 2019, the Snows were able to gross only around 60 percent of revenue they brought in 2013. Market deterioration has been the rule the past year, and they're not the only independent owner-op carriers who feel like the spot market is just broken. The pair have been in spend-reduction mode as they try to hold on for some return.