In this Overdrive Radio edition, big news: We’re releasing today our brand-new Partners in Business playbook for owner-operator business, start to finish. The 2025 reboot of the PIB program is a total revamp designed with the decidedly mobile professional trucker in mind. You can access it today at https://overdriveonline.com/pib

For more than two decades, Overdrive's Partners in Business, coproduced with owner-op business services firm ATBS, has focused on training and continuing biz education. Today, you'll find a brand-new format for all of the content that last year made up the 100-plus-page manual -- and plenty in the way of new updates. For this year's release, PIB goes from a single-download format to a much more dynamic online content library, easily accessed on any smartphone, tablet or laptop or desktop computer.

The reorganization collects valuable tactics and strategies for long-term profitability in eight categories, charting the journey of owners from start-up all the way through to retirement:

1. The “Starting Line” section details the choice of business structures, motivating factors for different individual owners, and plenty to think about in terms of business and goal planning, choosing a freight niche, a motor carrier to lease to, and/or how and why to take another route altogether.

2. The “Equipment and Maintenance” category pulls on Overdrive and ATBS resources along with the accumulated knowledge of so many of our industry-participant contributors over the decades to detail the ways to acquire the best equipment at the most-favorable terms, down and dirty PM and repair tactics, and much more.

3. The third, “Business Management” section offers a wealth of insight on tracking costs, revenue and profits; building those profit and loss statements; and paying yourself for better business health analysis and load planning, among many other subjects germane to both beginners at the start of an ownership career and seasoned veterans in need of a business refresh.

These three sections contain more individual parts than the remaining five, and there’s a reason for that. They represent the bedrock foundation on which owners throughout history have built their success.

The remaining five sections in large part will be pretty self-explanatory when you see their titles, and all is aimed at a self-help assist for owners to, long-term, better enjoy the fruits of long labor put into the business. That last bit's a nod to the title of Part 2 of Overdrive Trucker of the Year Alan Kitzhaber’s “plan for better business” authored for Overdrive and published right around the time we announced Kitzhaber’s big win in January. He's looking ahead to being able to retire quite soon, actually, after more than three decades trucking, mostly as an owner-operator. He’ll be parking his truck amongst the rest of you at MATS this year, and I’m honored to be able to help host him at the show. If you won’t be there, keep tuned for much more from him and other longtime owners in our show coverage. Truth be told, all of us here at Overdrive lean on those among you who engage with us for ideas worth sharing, a lot of Partners in Business itself in fact made up of the accumulated wisdom of those in the readership who’ve shared their expertise with us over the decades. Here's huge appreciation for all of you.

Run through the new PIB at https://overdriveonline.com/pib

As mentioned in the podcast, here's the registration link for ATBS's live update scheduled for March 25 charting 2024 owner-op income performance: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/3349075480558501214

And keep tuned for our MATS coverage later this week and certainly in the weeks to come here: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4372607

Also in the podcast: MATS-preview retreads from three interviews from the last several weeks with Jamie Hagen, Hotels4Truckers.com proprietor Dan Fuller, and trucker-songwriter Tony Justice.