Small Fleet Champ Silver Creek Transportation’s leader Jason Cowan speaks earlier on in this edition of Overdrive Radio to what he sees as an essential challenge in the highly competitive trucking industry for small fleet owners looking to lead by example and balance that competition with a rising-tide-floats-all-boats kind of mentality.

Trucking companies can do more, he said, do embrace cooperation amongst their kind, where it makes sense, to get the job done without hampering future opportunities for all around trucking.

In a nutshell: "I'd rather have your friendship than have your freight," he said, though such a spirit of 'co-opetition' is of course more complicated than that. Cowan and his wife and business partner, Penny, were joined for this roundtable discussion around owner-op and small fleet issues by fellow Small Fleet Champ finalists Robert and Karen Hallahan of Hallahan Transport and Nick Hewitt of Professional Transportation Services, Inc. All spelled out examples -- resistance to rate undercutting, referrals to carriers better equipped to haul certain products than your own -- that can pay off long-term when it comes to customer management, and growing the business.

The roundtable discussion took places earlier in November at the annual meeting of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies in Nashville, Tennessee. It touched on a variety of trucking business best practices and challenges -- from the rise technological complication with ELDs and more to changes in the brokerage world all three of these finalists have spent efforts grappling with over the last decade and more.

As noted, direct customer relations is a substantial part of it -- among the biggest areas of education any one-truck owner-op is likely to benefit from before jumping into the game with a second truck. Key in the long-term future benefit is avoiding self-inflicted wounds all panelists identified.

Hear more in the podcast, and read about each of the finalists in profiles you can find at the following links.

Silver Creek Transportation: https://www.overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ/article/15115043/diversification-silver-creek-transportations-growth-secret

Hallahan Transport: https://www.overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ/article/15280238/hallahan-transport-thriving-on-lessons-learned-from-the-past

PTSI: https://www.overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ/article/15280537/trucking-legacy-of-nick-hewitt-and-platform-hauler-ptsi

Hear the announcement of the Small Fleet Champ winner at the NASTC even via this podcast from earlier in November 2021: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15281144/lowhanging-fruit-to-avoid-fmcsa-clearinghouse-violations