Owner-operator Kelvin Schmidt, Trucker of the Month for January in Overdrive's 2023 Trucker of the Year program, didn't come to a formula for enduring success without a tour through the proverbial school of hard knocks, as it were. In today's edition of Overdrive Radio, hear his own account of his start as a flatbed-pulling hotshotter in a one-ton dually, his stumbles through other trucks and growing "as bad as an accountant" focus on costs, revenue and profit per-trip to keep a guiding hand on the business.

"You've got to know what your costs are, and I do that for absolutely every trip I do," he said. "Every trip." Diligence in tracking costs enabled some of the big early shifts in his approach to equipment. After bad experiences with a variety of used trucks -- then with a newer yet no-less-problematic glider, he changed tack and began purchasing new, realizing full well the costs not just of repairs of accompanying downtime.

His end-of-year profit-and-loss statement for 2022 showed the above-average results of all of it, even with massive cost inflation and an ungodly-looking fuel bill for year.

In this podcast, he tells his trucking story, which follows a childhood and decades as an adult in Canada. His move to U.S. citizenship set him on the course he's charting today trucking, likewise as a proud father of six young children with their mother and his wife, Jennifer.

As January Trucker of the Month, Kelvin Schmidt in the running as a semifinalist for the Trucker of the Year award. If you, too, have thrived even through the tough conditions of the last year, or if you know of a deserving owner-operator who fits that description, get over to our nomination page for the Trucker of the Year award and get in the running. It’s open to owner-operators leased or with authority, operating up to a maximum of three trucks as part of the business: https://www.overdriveonline.com/page/toptrucker

Read more about Kelvin Schmidt's journey via our January in-depth profile of his one-truck business, today pulling power-only for T Bros. Logistics out of Sioux Falls, South Dakota: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15306211/how-this-owner-built-a-trucking-business-to-deliver-consistently