Overdrive Radio

An unfortunate reality in the 2018 year-end income averages from ATBS showed independent owner-operators with their authority earning on average less than some leased owner-op segments. In Kevin Rutherford's view, that just shouldn’t be the case for any full-time independent given the old greater risk equals greater reward truism. If you’re not beating the leased averages and are working full-time or more, something is terribly wrong. Find more on the numbers that explains those averages via OverdriveOnline.com, search ATBS.

Today on Overdrive Radio, much of a conversation I had with former owner-operator Scott Grenerth, with whom regular listeners will be familiar from his moderation of our parking-issues-related panel at the Great American Trucking Show in August 2018. Grenerth’s currently with the Truck Specialized Parking Services company and is a former regulatory affairs director with OOIDA. At Mid-America last week, his company introduced a new parking-related resource in RigRest.com, a mobile-optimized search tool -- and more – for parking around the country. Most importantly, perhaps, Grenerth and company are working in a variety of ways to optimize and in some cases make newly available excess parking capacity for truckers of all stripes in partnership with fleet operators with available space, dedicated sites around warehouses under development, and others. Now to a certain extent, and hopefully more in future, Grenerth says RigRest.com will be an info and parking-reservation hub for truckers not only looking to park in chain truck stops but in a variety of nontraditional locations and independent stops all around the country. Also in the podcast: When the lights went out on FMCSA at MATS, and Grenerth's continuing work with the National Coalition on Truck Parking and around metro and county zoning and planning issues, advocacy and more.

Today on Overdrive Radio, much of a conversation I had with former owner-operator Scott Grenerth, with whom regular listeners will be familiar from his moderation of our parking-issues-related panel at the Great American Trucking Show in August 2018. Grenerth’s currently with the Truck Specialized Parking Services company and is a former regulatory affairs director with OOIDA. At Mid-America last week, his company introduced a new parking-related resource in RigRest.com, a mobile-optimized search tool -- and more – for parking around the country. Most importantly, perhaps, Grenerth and company are working in a variety of ways to optimize and in some cases make newly available excess parking capacity for truckers of all stripes in partnership with fleet operators with available space, dedicated sites around warehouses under development, and others. Now to a certain extent, and hopefully more in future, Grenerth says RigRest.com will be an info and parking-reservation hub for truckers not only looking to park in chain truck stops but in a variety of nontraditional locations and independent stops all around the country. Also in the podcast: When the lights went out on FMCSA at MATS, and Grenerth's continuing work with the National Coalition on Truck Parking and around metro and county zoning and planning issues, advocacy and more.

This edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast comes as the Mid-America Trucking Show continues in Louisville, Ky. In this edition, a couple of my conversations with two owner-ops with some commonality between them in a willingness to be the contrarian in this loud age, on a variety of things. That’d be Lexington, Kentucky-based owner-op Chad Boblett, running with one truck and using brokers. Likewise the operator you'll hear at the podcast's top, Henry Albert, who moves truck parts between Laredo and points in the Southeast when he’s hauling and not working with dealer reps or other operators to train them on new technology as part of Freightliner’s longstanding Team Run Smart initiative. Albert’s been demonstrating lately in his own operation the effect of speed increases on fuel mileage, an attempt to investigate the benefits of time saved versus the sacrifices made in increased fuel costs. In the podcas, he describes the 70-75 mph speeds he’s been pushing along his lanes, and the benefits accrued in, for him, added time off, by eliminating a 10-hour break on a roundtrip. Also: Chad Boblett on the 3 o'clock hustle, the waiting game one can play to take full advantage of all available negotiating leverage, and the ELD mandate's damper on its usefulness, given broker and carrier adjustments to concerns with time efficiency.

This edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast comes as the Mid-America Trucking Show continues in Louisville, Ky. In this edition, a couple of my conversations with two owner-ops with some commonality between them in a willingness to be the contrarian in this loud age, on a variety of things. That’d be Lexington, Kentucky-based owner-op Chad Boblett, running with one truck and using brokers. Likewise the operator you'll hear at the podcast's top, Henry Albert, who moves truck parts between Laredo and points in the Southeast when he’s hauling and not working with dealer reps or other operators to train them on new technology as part of Freightliner’s longstanding Team Run Smart initiative. Albert’s been demonstrating lately in his own operation the effect of speed increases on fuel mileage, an attempt to investigate the benefits of time saved versus the sacrifices made in increased fuel costs. In the podcas, he describes the 70-75 mph speeds he’s been pushing along his lanes, and the benefits accrued in, for him, added time off, by eliminating a 10-hour break on a roundtrip. Also: Chad Boblett on the 3 o'clock hustle, the waiting game one can play to take full advantage of all available negotiating leverage, and the ELD mandate's damper on its usefulness, given broker and carrier adjustments to concerns with time efficiency.

Mandi Jo Pinheiro, the winner of the 2018 Trucker Talent Search, and her father and fellow guitarist, Urban Roger Brown, were kind enough to sit down with Overdrive in Nashville earlier this week. They'd come all the way from Idaho Tuesday for an all-day Wednesday recording session at Jay’s Place, a studio long operated by Jay Vernali on Music Row. Conveniently, Vernali also offers up the apartment above the studio to travelers, and it was there that Pinheiro and Brown ran through a couple of the tracks the pair planned to put to tape, so to speak. the next day, and independent owner-operator Pinheiro (in a team with her husband, William) also offered up a tour through her history in trucking. That follows time in a cargo van working for a medical courier company in the Pacific Northwest, and a long-held dream of over-the-road work realized after she met and married William. Today, the pair run out of a home base of Twin Falls, Idaho, hauling step deck freight behind a 2005 Peterbilt 379. Hop on and run through it all with us in this edition of Overdrive Radio.

Mandi Jo Pinheiro, the winner of the 2018 Trucker Talent Search, and her father and fellow guitarist, Urban Roger Brown, were kind enough to sit down with Overdrive in Nashville earlier this week. They'd come all the way from Idaho Tuesday for an all-day Wednesday recording session at Jay’s Place, a studio long operated by Jay Vernali on Music Row. Conveniently, Vernali also offers up the apartment above the studio to travelers, and it was there that Pinheiro and Brown ran through a couple of the tracks the pair planned to put to tape, so to speak. the next day, and independent owner-operator Pinheiro (in a team with her husband, William) also offered up a tour through her history in trucking. That follows time in a cargo van working for a medical courier company in the Pacific Northwest, and a long-held dream of over-the-road work realized after she met and married William. Today, the pair run out of a home base of Twin Falls, Idaho, hauling step deck freight behind a 2005 Peterbilt 379. Hop on and run through it all with us in this edition of Overdrive Radio.

In this week's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, following last week's talk with Load One's John Elliott about significant challenges in the cargo-van-powered segment of the expedited trucking niche, owner-operator Darren Ayres details his own place within it hauling in a Mercedes Sprinter Van. He and his co-owner-op wife, Trish, run leased to Landstar and with (as suggested by the podcast's title) a sizable sleeper area as an on-the-road living quarters in the mostly military-freight-specific operation. Working with Fastlane Products of Oak Ridge, Tenn., after they took delivery of the base van, the pair planned the sleeper with double bunks along the driver side, leaving extra space for more amenities, including a sink and storage spaces, that Darren details in the podcast. The sleeper addition and overall upfit with auxiliary roof air, an inverter and more in 2017 came at an additional roughly $20K investment over the sticker (around $45K) on the diesel-powered Sprinter. The approximately 8 feet of cargo space the sleeper takes up leaves enough for two pallets in the cargo area, plenty for often very small loads the pair hauls to military installations.

In this week's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, following last week's talk with Load One's John Elliott about significant challenges in the cargo-van-powered segment of the expedited trucking niche, owner-operator Darren Ayres details his own place within it hauling in a Mercedes Sprinter Van. He and his co-owner-op wife, Trish, run leased to Landstar and with (as suggested by the podcast's title) a sizable sleeper area as an on-the-road living quarters in the mostly military-freight-specific operation. Working with Fastlane Products of Oak Ridge, Tenn., after they took delivery of the base van, the pair planned the sleeper with double bunks along the driver side, leaving extra space for more amenities, including a sink and storage spaces, that Darren details in the podcast. The sleeper addition and overall upfit with auxiliary roof air, an inverter and more in 2017 came at an additional roughly $20K investment over the sticker (around $45K) on the diesel-powered Sprinter. The approximately 8 feet of cargo space the sleeper takes up leaves enough for two pallets in the cargo area, plenty for often very small loads the pair hauls to military installations.

In this edition of Overdrive Radio find Max Heine's talk with owner-operator John Strong, recently off the road, about his involvement in the 1970s and beyond in advocacy efforts with Overdrive founder Mike Parkhurst, memories of the Mass 10 truck stop, and much more. Todd Dills' talk with Load One head John Elliott continues here, too, about the cargo van niche, which would seem to check the boxes as a solution to a lot of the headaches -- hours of service, scales, parking -- Class 8 tractor-trailer owner-ops deal with, as long as they’re not hauling a placardable hazmat load, in which case cargo vans are regulated more or less just like bigger trucks. And that’s not to mention lower cost barriers to entry into the market as well, with much lower new-vehicle purchase prices. At once, though, challenges abound, and Elliott describes the multitude of those in detail from his perspective. Find a previous podcast with Elliott via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/a-closer-look-at-the-freight-demand-and-planning-app-for-owner-ops-with-load-one/