Overdrive Radio

Take a look back on 2018 and, viewed through the lenses of time and the myriad of conversations and voices heard on the Overdrive Radio podcast, 2018 might well be dubbed the year of ticky-tack and more serious issues related to the implementation of, what else, the electronic logging device mandate. Owner-operators’ adjustments in light of that rule, which started being enforced in a significant way on April 1 of 2018, ride over almost the entirety of the top 10 most-listened to episodes here, including some mailbag rounds of callers’ messages on related issues that very nearly made the top 10 themselves. Excerpts here from all 10, in bottom to top order. Also a repeated theme: Focus shifting to or continuing on for many independents in the audience to the occasionally fraught, and often challenging, relationship with freight partner brokers. A big part of that is contractual games brokers have played for years, occupying No. 3 and No. 2 slots.

This edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast features Overdrive Senior Editor James Jaillet, who penned the piece we suspect many of you noticed in the last couple weeks at OverdriveOnline.com, or in the December print magazine, about new enforcement heat on emissions regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency when it comes to post-2006 heavy duty diesel engines. The story was spurred on by a particular case that caught everybody’s attention way back in June, when a shop in Pennsylvania was hit with fines for performing essentially emissions-defeating work for a two-truck fleet. It’s not the only action EPA, in this case in concert with DOT, has taken against shops doing this kind of work, but what was remarkable about this one was it also hit the owner-operator getting the work done, to a certain degree. From that point up until we put the December issue to bed last month, Jaillet’s been working the area toward the "Engine tinkerers, beware” feature recently released, and his reporting led him into a variety of areas, including how ECM-retune-device providers have responded to the modern-emissions era of equipment, how engine manufacturers are viewing the various engine modifications that are possible, risks owner-operators face and more, given the sword EPA’s increasingly willing to wield around heavy-duty emissions work. While it's sharper when it comes to the shops doing the work, at the same time, fines possible for individual truck owners, as the June case showed, are nothing to sniff at themselves. Also in the podcast: A related conversation with owner-operator Dean DeSantis some of you may have heard in prior coverage of his 2018 Peterbilt 389 at OverdriveOnline.com. DeSantis is bullish on durability and functionality of emissions systems in the last two model years of trucks and believes they will only continue to get better.

This edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast features Overdrive Senior Editor James Jaillet, who penned the piece we suspect many of you noticed in the last couple weeks at OverdriveOnline.com, or in the December print magazine, about new enforcement heat on emissions regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency when it comes to post-2006 heavy duty diesel engines. The story was spurred on by a particular case that caught everybody’s attention way back in June, when a shop in Pennsylvania was hit with fines for performing essentially emissions-defeating work for a two-truck fleet. It’s not the only action EPA, in this case in concert with DOT, has taken against shops doing this kind of work, but what was remarkable about this one was it also hit the owner-operator getting the work done, to a certain degree. From that point up until we put the December issue to bed last month, Jaillet’s been working the area toward the "Engine tinkerers, beware” feature recently released, and his reporting led him into a variety of areas, including how ECM-retune-device providers have responded to the modern-emissions era of equipment, how engine manufacturers are viewing the various engine modifications that are possible, risks owner-operators face and more, given the sword EPA’s increasingly willing to wield around heavy-duty emissions work. While it's sharper when it comes to the shops doing the work, at the same time, fines possible for individual truck owners, as the June case showed, are nothing to sniff at themselves. Also in the podcast: A related conversation with owner-operator Dean DeSantis some of you may have heard in prior coverage of his 2018 Peterbilt 389 at OverdriveOnline.com. DeSantis is bullish on durability and functionality of emissions systems in the last two model years of trucks and believes they will only continue to get better.

Owner-operator Scott Hampton pulled hoppers before transitioning to the operation he's in today, which he describes as his "flower gravy train" doing multi-drop distribution runs for shipper Dallas Johnson Greenhouse in Council Bluffs, Iowa, south to a variety of stores this time of year. When we talked for what is the latest edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast a couple weeks back, he'd hopped around the Oklahoma City area making deliveries with poinsettias in a reefer, a typical run for this time of year, often loading empty carts back to their origin. If he was correct in his assessment then, this week might see the last of such seasonal loads, but not the end of the line for Hampton's relationship with the shipper, to which he's been more or less dedicated going on a couple years. Also in the podcast, hear more from Hampton about his remarkable 2000 Peterbilt 379, which I wrote a good bit about early last week, and his participation in "That's a Big 10-4 on D.C." in October, where we met for the first time. Hampton was the tail truck rolling in the convoy out of D.C. at the end of the event, but by the end of the convoy he tailed no more, as the now somewhat infamous picture we shared from another convoy participant at the time shows Hampton's Pete on the right shoulder of I-95 in the far left of the frame, as convoy participants stopped in a line across all lanes.

Owner-operator Scott Hampton pulled hoppers before transitioning to the operation he's in today, which he describes as his "flower gravy train" doing multi-drop distribution runs for shipper Dallas Johnson Greenhouse in Council Bluffs, Iowa, south to a variety of stores this time of year. When we talked for what is the latest edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast a couple weeks back, he'd hopped around the Oklahoma City area making deliveries with poinsettias in a reefer, a typical run for this time of year, often loading empty carts back to their origin. If he was correct in his assessment then, this week might see the last of such seasonal loads, but not the end of the line for Hampton's relationship with the shipper, to which he's been more or less dedicated going on a couple years. Also in the podcast, hear more from Hampton about his remarkable 2000 Peterbilt 379, which I wrote a good bit about early last week, and his participation in "That's a Big 10-4 on D.C." in October, where we met for the first time. Hampton was the tail truck rolling in the convoy out of D.C. at the end of the event, but by the end of the convoy he tailed no more, as the now somewhat infamous picture we shared from another convoy participant at the time shows Hampton's Pete on the right shoulder of I-95 in the far left of the frame, as convoy participants stopped in a line across all lanes.

Beware what you sign, owner-operators, when getting set up with a broker. So notes Transportation attorney Hank Seaton, in conversation about the curious case of a Florida-based three-truck fleet who reached out about what it saw as the strange treatment of two loads her company hauled earlier this year for Bennett International Group, both as yet unpaid. Seaton describes brokers' "right to offset" clauses in contract that should be avoided -- they give the broker the right to hold payments to offset cost of any claim, and such clauses he believes are intolerable given appropriate cargo insurance, and should be avoided like the plague. Also: Plenty more on Seaton's view of safety ratings and how they could be prioritized over the data-based scoring approach en vogue at present.

Beware what you sign, owner-operators, when getting set up with a broker. So notes Transportation attorney Hank Seaton, in conversation about the curious case of a Florida-based three-truck fleet who reached out about what it saw as the strange treatment of two loads her company hauled earlier this year for Bennett International Group, both as yet unpaid. Seaton describes brokers' "right to offset" clauses in contract that should be avoided -- they give the broker the right to hold payments to offset cost of any claim, and such clauses he believes are intolerable given appropriate cargo insurance, and should be avoided like the plague. Also: Plenty more on Seaton's view of safety ratings and how they could be prioritized over the data-based scoring approach en vogue at present.

In this edition Overdrive Radio, St. Louis mother Sarah Welsh details how the trucking community, particularly a variety of owner-operators among it, has helped foster her 12-year-old son Robbie's passion for so many things trucking -- and particularly: "meeting drivers to talk about their trucks." A young man of my own heart, as it were. Also in the podcast, we’ll hear from a man I bet young Robbie Welsh would love to meet himself. We’ll make it a tale of two Robbies, as it were, in this edition with more from owner-operator Robbie Harris, who hauls heavy in the 2004 Kenworth W9 that is an homage to the 1970s-era KW in the famous "Movin' On" TV series. I posted a video detailing the rig last week at the blog. What you don’t hear in that video, though, is Harris’s detail of a recent haul with a 17-foot-high, more than 130,000-lb. generator between Wisconsin and Washington State, with insights on costs when it comes to hiring pilot cars and obtaining, state by individual state of course, permits for such a heavy run.

In this edition Overdrive Radio, St. Louis mother Sarah Welsh details how the trucking community, particularly a variety of owner-operators among it, has helped foster her 12-year-old son Robbie's passion for so many things trucking -- and particularly: "meeting drivers to talk about their trucks." A young man of my own heart, as it were. Also in the podcast, we’ll hear from a man I bet young Robbie Welsh would love to meet himself. We’ll make it a tale of two Robbies, as it were, in this edition with more from owner-operator Robbie Harris, who hauls heavy in the 2004 Kenworth W9 that is an homage to the 1970s-era KW in the famous "Movin' On" TV series. I posted a video detailing the rig last week at the blog. What you don’t hear in that video, though, is Harris’s detail of a recent haul with a 17-foot-high, more than 130,000-lb. generator between Wisconsin and Washington State, with insights on costs when it comes to hiring pilot cars and obtaining, state by individual state of course, permits for such a heavy run.

So just how did Daniel and Phyllis Snow's 1996 Freightliner Classic XL get to be called 'The Goose'? Here in this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, the independent owner-operators tell that story, which involves their son's 1999 Classic 'The Duck', too. Also: A bit of stumping for the importance of small business in trucking from Ray Martinez, part of his address at the annual meeting of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies in Nashville November 1.