This week on Overdrive Radio, we reintroduce June’s Trucker of the Month, Debbie Desiderato, in conversation with our own Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole. Cole’s story about Desiderato’s long trucking career is live as of earlier this week at the website: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15541324/independent-debbie-desideratos-keys-to-trucking-success

Today, we’ll hear parts of that in Desiderato’s own words. She’s built considerable value with the do-it-yourself approach to business throughout her well more than two decades as an independent owner-operator. If Debbie’s name sounds familiar, that’s because she’s been here on the podcast before – likewise in our coproduction with PRX’s Radiotopia network of the Over the Road series, which originally aired in 2020: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4405867

Active with the Make a Wish foundation’s Mother’s Day convoy events, the Real Women in Trucking advocacy group and other organizations, too, she’s made a name for herself as an independent not afraid to tell it like it is -- nor to give back in the form of advice for those coming up. Tools and business processes she’s built for herself through the years she readily shares with others as a familiar face at truck shows around the nation, online and elsewhere.

Her designation as Trucker of the Month for June, though, is as much a testament to her perseverance through the tumult of the last two decades as an independent with authority -- she attributes a lot of her success to that do-it-yourself spirit, particularly in the mechanical realm. Her growth as owner hasn’t always been easy, though, as she described the early years learning by trial and error that, depending on the destination, sometimes you’ve got to take your backhaul with you in the headhaul rate, as it were, among many other things of course. Through it all, you really get the sense that there's another title in Debbie Desiderato’s future. Listen on to drop right in with owner-operator, mechanic, salesperson, app developer, Overdrive June Trucker of the Month and veritable author Debbie Desiderato, writing the book on trucking as an independent.

As mentioned in the podcast, the story of Debbie Desiderato’s return to car hauling, of a fashion, in 2020 in a hotshot as pandemic refuge: http://overdriveonline.com/14897956

Her 2017 Western Star interior's custom reno as part of the Tranfix digital brokerage’s Transfix My Rig sweepstakes in 2021, conducted by "Secret Celebrity Renovations" star Jason Cameron: http://overdriveonline.com/15115013

Nominations remain open for Overdrive's 2023 Trucker of the Year award, open to owner-operators with up to three trucks via the form at this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/page/toptrucker