Podcast
Overdrive Radio
Hosted by Overdrive Radio · EN
The Overdrive Radio podcast is produced by Overdrive magazine, the Voice of the American Trucker for 60-plus years. Host Todd Dills -- with a supporting cast among Overdrive editors, contributors and others -- presents owner-operator business leading lights, interviews with extraordinary independent truckers and small fleet owners, and plenty in the way of trucking business and regulatory news and views. Access an archive of all episodes of Overdrive Radio going back more than a decade via this link: http://overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio
43episodes
Episodes
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Plan for better business, take two: Kevin Rutherford/NASTC's ROTC for one-truck owner-ops
Jan 1200:47:36Tap to summarizeOff the top of this week's Overdrive Radio, Kevin Rutherford recalls his first time on a stage speaking to a roomful of owner-operators, back in 1999 at the Mid-America Trucking Show as part of Overdrive's Partners in Business seminar series at the time. The first question he asked the room was for a show of hands among those who had ready access to a detailed accounting of their business performance, such a profit and loss statement or weekly/monthly load-by-load accounting of costs, revenues and profits. Essentially: Who here knows their numbers? He asked the same question back in October to small fleet owners and owner-operators, near 30 years later, and results were similar. "About five to 10 percent of the room" raised their hands in 2025, just as in 1999, he noted. "I set a goal in 1999 ... that every time I asked that I wanted more hands to go up, and I have failed miserably. I haven't even moved the needle" on it. Yet still, as he contends in this podcast excerpting parts of his talk at the annual conference of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies in October, "if I can give you one thing that's going to turn your business around, it's that you have to have those numbers," he said. "It's more and more important all the time." Rutherford at NASTC took attendees through what’s been his principal goal for more than two decades now -- helping one-truck businesses optimize every single aspect of their work toward the profit goal. As noted, he’s failed to capture the full attention of most owners, yet there’s evidence among those he’s reached his message is resonating, and it's working for many. In the midst of the last few years' storm of difficulties for trucking businesses of all sizes, it's easy to find news of this or that trucking company’s recent bankruptcy, of course. Yet "while we're watching carriers drop like flies, I'm watching carriers I've worked with for years set records," he said. In this "crazy freight recession everybody's talking about, I'm seeing single-truck owner-operators put out records, revenue and profit records, that I've never seen before, that I didn't think would be possible." Achieving such isn’t something that’s accomplished overnight, and certainly isn’t what you would describe as "easy." Yet Rutherford hopes more owner-operators might resolve this new year to take one area of focus – and he talks about plenty in what follows here – and take that area and really resolve to improve execution. Start with one, then move to the next one, and the next one. For the business owner with one truck, when it comes to controlling costs and really beating the competition, Rutherford feels the competitive advantage is real. "Single best model in the industry -- a single-truck owner-operator with really good relationships with good small brokers," he said, "serving customers better than anybody else can." Along the way through his talk, he delivers three points of emphasis for owners who using load boards -- they shouldn't be 100% satisfying freight needs, but rather serving as a strong educational window on the market, and a path to those strong broker relationships on specialized lanes that might carry independents forward toward being that truly Remarkable One Truck Company, or ROTC for short. That's the name he and NASTC have given their partnership to help deliver business insight and education to both Rutherford's network and NASTC members. Kevin Rutherford's network: https://letstrucktribe.com NASTC: https://nastc.com Find Overdrive's own Partners in Business start-to-finish playbook for an owner-operator career, informed by both Rutherford and NASTC's work through the years, via https://overdriveonline.com/pib
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Bye-bye 2025: Hope and headwinds for freight, costs, regs in focus in Overdrive Radio
Jan 500:53:14Tap to summarizeYear 2025 is in the rear view, just back there behind the trailer. With any luck at all, owner-operators are making good time outrunning all that happened during what was some kind of a momentous year in and around trucking. As my colleague Alex Lockie put it in his year-in-review last week just ahead of New Year celebrations, 2025 may well go down as the year when the you-know-what truly "hit the fan" in trucking: https://overdriveonline.com/15774734 Among surprises, though, was real engagement from regulators in response to longtime asks of small trucking. That's even as owner-operators’ hopes for economic improvement at the beginning of 2025 with the second Trump administration went largely unrealized by the time the clock wound down on the year. Ongoing surveying of Overdrive readers shows a majority reporting income tracking along at levels either worse than or similar to those seen in the very-sluggish year 2024: https://overdriveonline.com/15774647 As of this writing, too, only just more than a third of readers are expecting 2026 to fare better on that score. Yet as this week's podcast makes clear, there are at least some reasons to be optimistic. The episode springs into 2026 with a look back at the 10 most-listened-to podcasts of 2025, near all providing trucking-market touchpoints in stories that continue to evolve, with impacts slowly developing. From the federal push for a non-domiciled CDL purge and boosted English-language proficiency enforcement to freight-rates impacts with negotiation tactics and interest-rate cuts and owners' increasingly sophisticated attention to business brass tacks, all could prove positive for owner-operator demand and bedrock income day-to-day, week-to-week as time marches on. Run back through the year with us in this week's episode, and find here a playlist featuring two honorable mentions for podcasts just outside the top 10, which start the playlist counting from No. 12 to the No. 1 most-listened-to episode of 2025. Happy New Year! Playlist link: https://soundcloud.com/overdriveradio/sets/countdown-to-kick-off-2026-the
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'Remember, honor, teach' re-air: Remembering owner-op's special vets-tribute FLD and Kentucky trailer
Dec 2700:17:20Tap to summarizeWe hope everyone had a Merry Christmas last week, and looks ahead with hope for improved conditions for the new year. To get in right frame of mind, what better than to drop back into this special edition around Christmastime 2022, when we drop in on quite an experience for Overdrive Executive Editor Alex Lockie out at the Danbury, Connecticut, stop on the Wreaths Across America convoy tour from Maine down to Arlington National Cemetery for the big central wreath-laying event. As with this year's Wreaths event, it was but one among thousands around the country at veterans’ cemeteries designed to pay respect to those who’ve served the nation. Lockie there in 2022 met Hampton Roads Moving and Storage owner-operator Steven Meyer and his 1998 Freightliner FLD, pulling a custom wrapped Kentucky trailer of his own design and dedicated to honoring distinct individuals. Together, through Meyer's narration their histories chart a story of achievement, of sacrifice, and ultimately of elemental things about human nature. For both men in the moment, the story delivers a measure of hope for the future of humanity. Read Lockie's 2022 reporting from the event via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/15304350/what-wreaths-across-america-means-to-trucking-and-all-of-us
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Hear the kitty-Cat purr! Rare 3408 in a '79 359 | What works, what doesn't: 4 owners break it down
Jun 2, 202501:03:26Tap to summarizeAt the top of the podcast, crank it up with a rare breed of a Caterpillar diesel in an on-highway truck, the V8 3408 motor in livestock hauler Troy Bolin’s 1979 Peterbilt 359, a 302-inch-wheelbase unit we got a close look at out at the Crossroads Truck Meet early last month in Missouri: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15747179 Tap that link or listen on to hear its story here, too, with its 6/4 two-stick tranny and 66-inch Double Eagle custom sleeper put behind the original daycab-ordered Pete when it was brand-new by Huck Huckaby. But the bulk of this week's podcast features another owner-operator brain trust in the Trucking Solutions Group, long a regular conference-call meet-up between a bevy of owners aimed at business improvement through sharing experience. The TSG has routinely for several years lent us all a window into their decades of combined experience at the Mid-America Trucking Show, where Landstar rep Bob Bailey moderated this panel discussion with TSG members focused on questionable choices and successes. They called it "Failing to Succeed," acknowledging there's a whole heck of a lot all of us learn from our own, and others', failures. Owner-operator and TSG current Chairman Joel Boelman set up the discussion with a slide that showed a chart with two columns. On one side, a variety of "questionable choices" and on the other things various owners have done they'd do again and/or recommend to others. "Questionable choices" discussed range from use of a factoring service for load payments, a change in carriers for leased owners, and working with a dispatch service to holding onto a wide variety of trailers too long and getting tied up with time in "overanalysis." The decision to change carriers was also on the "would do again" side of the ledger, along with purchase of an aerodynamic truck, the switch from company driver to owner-operator, and a variety of tried and true, and some novel, practices to recommend. Voices you’ll hear in the podcast include, in addition to owner-operator Boelman: Independent owner-operator Mark Heggestad Team owners Stephen Halsted and Sandra Goche. Failure is an opportunity, ultimately, to learn from mistakes made, illustrated in so many ways throughout the TSG discussion. As mentioned in the podcast: **Small Fleet Owners of 3-30 trucks can enter to compete in Overdrive's Small Fleet Championship through July: https://overdriveonline.com/2025sfc **Overdrive's own biz-improvement Partners in Business library: https://overdriveonline.com/pib **Trucking Solutions Group's website: https://truckingsolutiongroup.com
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Honoring a father's legacy: Tim Eacret of EZ Pete Interiors
May 26, 202500:21:03Tap to summarizeHere's hoping the Memorial Day long weekend’s been a safe one for you. Today on the Overdrive Radio podcast, a special treat in the work of our own longtime Overdrive Extra contributor Long Haul Paul Marhoefer: https://overdriveonline.com/14865330 Marhoefer spent time at the Mid-America Trucking Show with a man who’s been well on his way toward a status of custom-truck royalty, you might say, these last several years. His name is Tim Eacret, proprietor of Iowa-headquartered EZ Pete Interiors, a custom truck upholstery business whose legacy stretches back in history to the work of Eacret’s father, Daniel Laverne Eacret, and his own early and long auto-upholstery work. Sadly, Daniel passed in 2023, and Eacret honors his memory in the conversation with Marhoefer that follows here, detailing the big custom build that really got the dedicated truck upholsterer's business going full bore dedicated to custom rigs. Find EZ Pete Interiors here: http://ezpete.com/ More, too, in Long Haul Paul's story about Tim and his wife and business partner, Tricia: https://overdriveonline.com/15746914 As mentioned in the podcast: **T.J. Kounkel's project 2018 389: https://www.overdriveonline.com/pride-polish/article/14897010/2019-gats-best-of-show-limited-mileage-combo-the-joker-gets-last-laugh **Marhoefer's story about the legacy of Scot Marone, longtime organizer of the Wheel Jam Truck Show coming up soon: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-extra/article/15745088/the-wheel-jam-truck-show-staying-alive-with-the-village **Tales of two lease-purchases: https://www.overdriveonline.com/equipment/article/15738011/a-tale-of-two-leasepurchase-experiences-truck-ownership-exit
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Small Fleet Champ C.W. Express: Owner Steve Wilson, from new headquarters, assesses growing pains
May 19, 202500:24:47Tap to summarizeThis week’s edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast features C.W. Express small fleet owner Steve Wilson, reigning Small Fleet Champ in the 11-30-truck division after a bit of a growth spurt for the fleet followed Wilson’s brush with death in 2022. The team he’d built around the dry van fleet sustained while he was in hospital for the better part of that entire year, and in the aftermath has only continued to not just sustain, but excel, on dedicated lanes for a central broker in Avenger Logistics. Wilson’s up to near 20 trucks and drivers today, and doesn’t have all his freight eggs in that single basket, as you’ll hear in today’s podcast, with customers in his area helping build lanes loaded both ways -- in one case out to Arkansas and back to the Louisville, Kentucky, area, where he’s headquartered in Sellersburg, Indiana. The podcast amounts to a tour around C.W. Express headquarters on Avco Boulevard in Sellersburg, right off I-65 and purchased and moved into in 2023, marking a significant upgrade to the former location. Wilson, a wear-all-the-hats small fleet owner for decades, continues to build out support for C.W.’s trucks and drivers with deft delegation, too, particularly on the time-consuming maintenance side of the business. He's added an expert lead mechanic you’ll hear hear who oversees the operation and a younger diesel tech, Clayton Higdon, to provide an assist and a well for education and growth, no doubt. Listen on for an update with reigning champ Wilson and C.W. Express.
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Flatbed owner-op George Kincaid looks out at prospects of 'phenomenal' year ahead
May 12, 202500:46:21Tap to summarize"This year, if it goes like it has this past month, it'll be phenomenal." --George Kincaid In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, an audio window on our feature story about flatbed-pulling owner-operator George Kincaid’s one-truck business, written attendant to the Quinwood, West Virginia-headquartered Kincaid getting the April Trucker of the Month nod from Overdrive: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15743659/trucker-of-the-month-george-kincaid-and-the-power-of-positivity You can nominate your own trucking business -- or that of another deserving owner you admire -- via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/toptrucker Kincaid’s deserving, for sure, with a sharp handle on maintenance with a decidedly do-it-yourself approach. What’s more, a whole lot can be said for doing something that you love, as he puts it, and a positive outlook on his life and work has been part and parcel of his success. Love of trucking has been with him since he was a kid when he and his younger brother both grew up with an eye toward exactly what they wanted to do when they were men. "It's pretty much what we always wanted to do growing up -- drive a truck," Kincaid said, and "have one with our own name on it." Dive into Kincaid’s story, but also that of another owner, John Rissler, whose Horse and Buggy Express trucking business out of California, Missouri, morphed into the Horse and Buggy Accessories chrome shop he operates now out of the Crossroads Shopping Plaza at U.S. 50 and Missouri 87, home of the annual Crossroads Truck Meet show: https://overdriveonline.com/15745021 We spent the day out at the Crossroads May 3 for this year’s show, and sat down with Rissler to hear its history, stretching back four years now to the time he and another brother, Delton Rissler, decided to build a new headquarters there. What’s it like to be the proprietor of a small fleet, a chrome shop with Missouri and Pennsylvania locations, and a truck show all at once? Well it never comes without a hitch, Rissler said. Soon as we sat down for the talk, his phone rang, as it would throughout our conversation. This call he had to take, though, from the man who was ferrying show attendees from the car parking area up to the show on a hay-ride-set-up flatbed trailer toted by an old farm tractor that had developed a pretty significant oil leak, as it turned out. A hitch indeed, yet they would overcome. Hear more in the podcast.
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Kenworth W900: History, legacy, availability through 2026, and what's in store for the W990
May 5, 202500:27:09Tap to summarizeIn this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, we’re looking back at the long run of the W900 model from the Kenworth Truck Company. The W900's coming sunset has been among the biggest equipment news of the year -- uncovered ahead of the Mid-America Trucking Show, where the company unveiled the launch of the W900 Legacy Edition special series to close out the model's run. Kenworth plans are to build a final 1,000 units of the W900 for customers through next year. If you missed the video walkaround of the very first one built, find it at this link: https://overdriveonline.com/15742576 On the podcast this week we'll run through details of the Legacy Edition, likewise delving into the history surrounding the W900, with two Kenworth reps: Kyle Kimball, Kenworth director of marketing, and Jamin Swazo, company marketing communications director. The model itself certainly has built a big legacy with untold numbers of truck owners through well more than a half-century run of production since its 1963 introduction. According to Jamin Swazo, the company’s not aware of any uninterrupted "longer runs out there in any automotive history for a single model," he said. Dive in with Kyle Kimball and Jamin Swazo in the podcast, answering the question on the mind of any prospective owner of one of the final production units of Kenworth Legacy Edition -- or a new standard W900, still available itself for order through … well, find the answer in the podcast. Also there, hear Kimball and Swazo's answers to another pressing question I've heard from a few Kenworth fans among owner-operators -- whether they'd yet seen anyone add old-style can external breathers to a W990. Both also detailed their outlook for the W990 as a platform for custom-equipment builders and other owners, and efforts to showcase the successor model at the Mid-America Trucking Show. There, Kenworth showcased a vintage W900A and MHC Kenworth's Joplin, Missouri, dealer location's custom treatment of the W990 pictured at this link: https://overdriveonline.com/15744843
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One small step, after step, hundreds of truckers improve life with Mother Trucker Yoga
Apr 28, 202500:26:15Tap to summarizeThis week on Overdrive Radio we track back to the Mid-America Trucking Show and the big news for the trucking community from podcast sponsor Howes. The Howes Hall of Fame added its 12th member when it honored Mother Trucker Yoga proprietor and fitness and wellness coach Hope Zvara at the show. You heard part of Zvara’s story when she was featured here on Overdrive Radio in conversation with Long Haul Paul Marhoefer a couple years back: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15448049/the-qualityoflife-benefits-of-movement-introducing-hope-zvara There, queried about the scourge of anxiety, depression and other mental health ailments throughout America, she asked a simple question -- "What's if it's not a mental health crisis? What if it's a movement crisis?" In that podcast, and here, she detailed her step-by-step program for fitness through basic yoga techniques drivers can do in-cab, around the truck, at points throughout a day for an approachable journey toward better physical health. Mental health, too. Zvara well knows the connections between the two and isn’t shy of stressing them routinely with those she works with. She’s combated mental stressors of various natures in her own life, using yoga practice toward that end. And she’s now worked with an untold number of individual truck drivers to help them achieve their own goals. We got a little tutorial in her brand of “no mat necessary" yoga at the start of the Trucking Solutions Group’s talk in the East Hall out at MATS on the final day. She led attendees through a series of stretches aimed simply at relieving the neck and upper-body tension so many of us face after a long day at the wheel or, in my case, typing away at the desk. Today on the podcast, hear the audio of Zvara’s instruction on that mini-routine at the tail end, and otherwise buckle up for her story of helping truckers help themselves in health and wellness. And though Zvara’s program is designed for simplicity, she's also well aware it’s not exactly a simple matter for any of us. Hear how yoga and general phyiscal well-being got her through her own crisis, and into the work for which she's now honored as the latest member the Howes Hall of Fame. Nominate a deserving trucking industry participant for the Hall yourself, and browse all so honored todate, via https://howesproducts.com/hof Find Hope Zvara's Mother Trucker Yoga effort at this link, where today you can download a free guide to 11 helpful stretches: https://mothertruckeryoga.com
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Truck drivers' English-language proficiency and the inspection problem, other issues
Apr 21, 202500:36:48Tap to summarizeIn this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, drop into our conversation with OOIDA Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh at the Mid-America Trucking Show. Pugh was fresh off a whirlwind round of a whole lot of other talking himself, including a MATS-opening breakfast panel discussion you heard here a couple weeks back, then prior to that on Wednesday the week of the truck show in the halls of Congress where he joined a panel of trucking and other industry reps to talk through significant issues ahead of the highway bill reauthorization due next year. Pugh made headlines for his urging of federal reps to get a handle on the scope of so-called “non-domiciled CDLs” issued to residents of foreign countries by states here in the U.S. for work OTR or in other industries on a temporary basis. It’s an issue that’s risen to prominence this year as attention to it has increased. It’s but one of the issues Pugh addressed in Congressional testimony, likewise in what follows in the podcast, yet one we heard about also from trucker Teresa Brittain in the wake of MATS. English proficiency violations used to be treated by the Comercial Vehicle Safety Alliance of inspectors and industry as an out of service violation, yet when CVSA removed that out of service violation about a decade ago now, FMCSA subsequently relaxed guidance on how to enforce the violation itself. Paired with some DOT changes for states around non-domiciled CDLs that happened later, it seems to have gotten simpler for foreign country residents to come into the country to work over the road with a CDL. How many such people are working in the U.S. today? Nobody can really answer that question, as has been evident from Overdrive’s Alex Lockie’s ongoing reporting around the issue: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15741322/ Brittain flagged the importance of the English language proficiency regs, though, particularly when it comes to roadside inspections. She noted a conversation at MATS she herself had with Kentucky state truck enforcement about the issue. “How does any state law enforcement officer do an inspection on the truck if the driver cannot follow instructions to inspect it?” she asked. Inspectors told her essentially they can’t inspect such an operator’s truck, she said, “for their own safety. They told me they give 15 minutes after the initial request for the driver to contact their company and provide driver's license and required paperwork, then just let them go if the paperwork is compliant.” No inspection for the truck. Considering such dynamics, Terea Brittain then quipped, “Next inspection, I’m speaking Martian!” OOIDA along with some from the law enforcement community petitioned CVSA to return English proficiency to the out of service criteria, and CVSA’s spring Workshop event is but one week away. Pugh noted owner-operators might stay tuned for any news on that front in the coming couple of weeks. Also in the podcast: RaceTrac Travel Centers Marketing Manager Nick LaFalce details growth in his company’s mostly Southeast regional network of truck stops in what was once mainly just a fuel-stop network for automobile drivers. Since 2018, the RaceTrac company’s been expanding high-flow diesel options and acquiring land to even add parking options within the network. As mentioned in the podcast: **Recent coverage of the parking issue: https://overdriveonline.com/15742614 **Detail from recent Congressional hearing: https://overdriveonline.com/15741287 **More from MATS: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4372607
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