This edition of Overdrive Radio features a talk with Charlie Deull, third generation in the family behind longtime Broadway show hauler (among other touring acts) Clark Transfer, based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Today, the company is principal in touring work all around the nation hauled by owner-operators leased on to the company, in addition to a network of outside agents, including many owner-ops and small fleets with authority among them, too.

Deull we spoke to initially this Spring, and some since, about the company’s efforts to bounce back from the big hit the COVID-19 pandemic put on the business. Coming out of it in the last year or so as big touring acts have returned in earnest, the company’s changed up parts of its contractor compensation package in unique ways. Clark is among the very, very few carriers out there offering a minimum guaranteed revenue to owners who lease there, for one, and for two, guaranteeing their fuel surcharge as a backstop for the less-fuel-efficient amid rising prices.

Overdrive Editor and podcast host Todd Dills wrote a feature about the company that regular Overdrive readers among you may have seen last month, too, detailing some of the changes: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15294151/guaranteed-revenue-for-owneroperators-clark-transfer-commits

In the course of Dills' research for the story, Charlie Deull sent along a contact for owner-operator Jeff Seales, among the company’s longest-tenured contracting owner-operators at upward of three decades. This week, planning to revisit Deull's talk for the podcast audience, we learned that Seales had passed unexpectedly.

It’s been a tough week for everyone at Clark Transfer on account of it, as well as the reality that another owner, working with the company since 2018, also passed within days of Seales. His name was Mark Mills. In the tribute to owner-operator Mills posted earlier this week to Clark Transfer’s Facebook page, the company noted he leaves behind his wife, Kelly, and a young daughter, McKenna, among other family. His first run for Clark Transfer in 2018 was hauled between Harrisburg and York in Pennsylvania, the company noted -– a relatively short drive that ended up under difficult circumstances taking 12 long hours of blizzard-battling. But he got there. The show went on.

Mills had worked on a variety of productions, but had consistenly been with the band Chicago off and on since 2019. The Chicago crew set up a GiveSendGo page to help his family: http://givesendgo.com/morethanlifemark

Both owner-operators Mills and Seales, it’s certain, will be missed. Condolences to the families. Hear much more about both men, as well as Clark's lease program, in the podcast.