4 million miles, ever greater efficiency for owner-op Alan Kitzhaber and his 1995 Kenworth T600

"Some guys customize their truck via paint, chrome, lights, and things like that. I customize my truck to make it a more comfortable place to be, a more profitable truck, a more efficient truck." --Owner-operator Alan Kitzhaber

May 2024 was a big month for owner-operator Alan Kitzhaber, running with his authority as Oakridge Transport out of a home base in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, now for getting on a decade and a half. That month, he celebrated with family the graduation of one of his brothers with a Master’s degree in counseling, that brother’s son’s completion of a PhD in chemistry, and graduation of the brother’s daughter from high school.

Owner-operator Kitzhaber himself, treated for prostate cancer earlier in the year, was celebrating an undetectable blood test marking his freedom from that condition. He put a light blue ribbon in the icing on a brownie cake he made as they all got together at his brother’s house to celebrate.

Just what else Kitzhaber put on that cake, which you can see in the cover image for this Overdrive Radio edition, is the reason you're hearing Alan today. Also in May, Alan Kitzhaber completed a remarkable feat in his 1995 Kenworth T600, Cat 3406E-powered. He crossed the 4-million-mile mark in that single truck alone, every one of the miles logged under his expert piloting.

Kitzhaber's not the first owner Overdrive Radio listeners have heard who's done similar -- "Mustang" Mike Crawford crossed 4 million in his 1994 Freightliner (12.7 Detroit-powered) back in 2022: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/15291488/mike-mustang-crawfords-1994-freightliner-4-million-safe-miles

(Incidentally, Overdrive editor Todd Dills spoke with Crawford July 1 as he hitting the Prime yard in Springfield at the end of his final run before retirement with a grand total of 4,159,910 miles in the rear view of the Freightliner. More on Crawford’s final run in a future podcast.)

Owner-operator Alan Kitzhaber’s career stretches back to 1990, his time as owner-operator some years on with Millis Transfer, where he first took the reins of the then-brand-new 1995 Kenworth T600 as a company driver. He bought the truck from the company itself, then, a few years later.

Since then, he's been laser-focused on turning that truck into a profit-making machine, and meticulous with record-keeping in no small way. As suggested by the quote at the top, too, plenty modifications through the years have allowed him to excel to the point of achieving well more than 8 mpg for a fuel mileage average several years running this past decade.

There’s a lot to those modifications he’s made, for certain, detailed in today’s episode. And 4 million miles is a very long way. More than 8 times to the moon and back. At roughly 60 miles per hour it’d take you well past the hard end of the 14-hour clock to do it at 66,666 hours. We’ll track back through Kitzhaber’s history a little more quickly than that today on the podcast, along the way learning plenty about just how the owner-operator kept that Cat-powered T600 humming efficiently for so very long.

As mentioned in the podcast, Caterpillar's interview with Kitzhaber for its Million Mile Club when he crossed 3 million: https://www.cat.com/en_US/articles/cat-truck-engine-articles/million-miler-alan-kitzhaber.html

Gordon Alkire's closed greasing system: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/14877182/csa-proofing-part-two-closed-greasing-system