Overdrive Radio
547 episodes - English - Latest episode: 8 days ago - ★★★★ - 18 ratingsThe 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
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Episodes
Could the COVID hours waiver be flexibility advocates' chance to further disentangle HOS rigidity?
September 16, 2021 20:35 - 39 minutes - 54.6 MBTrucker Nation Director of Communications Andrea Marks is our guest for this edition of Overdrive Radio. Marks is no stranger to the regulatory process -- or the ins and out of running a small trucking business. She has livestock haulers in her family’s small fleet. She's sharing here what she sees as a golden opportunity for hours of service flexibility advocates lying in plain view, in the form of the COVID-19 emergency declaration, waiving regs for emergency relief haulers of particular ...
Trucker Talent Search preview: Sheffield, Scripps, Archer square off September 16
September 02, 2021 17:20 - 36 minutes - 49.6 MBIn this edition of Overdrive Radio, hear the musical entries of, and interviews with, the three songwriters who are finalists in this year’s Overdrive Red Eye Radio Trucker Talent Search. It's something of a preview of the big finale, set for September 16, at 5 p.m. Eastern time, and streaming from OverdriveOnline.com. Find out just how to tune in live that date and sign up for email reminders just before the broadcast via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-talent-search/art...
Songs of the Highway, No. 9: 'Eastbound and down,' by Jerry Reed
August 30, 2021 18:28 - 7 minutes - 10.9 MBArguably the best-known and most-loved trucker movie is “Smokey and the Bandit,” and sharing that limelight is its signature song by Jerry Reed, “Eastbound and down.” The movie, released in 1977, came near the end of trucking’s pop-culture craze of the 1970s. It shared kinship with another movie about trucker rebellion: “Convoy.” That film was released in 1978, though the hit song of the same name that it was based on was released three years earlier. “Convoy,” even with its comedic moments...
Five owner-operators, five forecasts for business growth, maintenance, alt-powertrain adoption
August 27, 2021 16:29 - 19 minutes - 26.2 MBAt the 2021 Shell Rotella SuperRigs truck show in the Chicago area last month, Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole asked these five owners variations on a couple of central questions: 1. The first asked owners to look out into the future and forecast prospects and plans five years ahead, given the current market and business plans in place. 2. The other had all to do with technology –- alternative powertrains like the electric-drive trucks we’re seeing trickle into the short-haul market, natu...
Inside the 20% rule: Out of service brake adjustment, other violations -- and how to prevent
August 20, 2021 17:49 - 49 minutes - 67.4 MBLooking at the landscape for commercial truck inspections, Pennsylvania-based former local-department officer and long-certified DOT inspector Andy Blair sees plenty missed opportunities when it comes to troopers helping truckers when it comes to knowledge of out-of-service violations. All too frequently, violations that put an owner-op or other driver out of service simply aren't explained at the point of inspection. Too many trucking companies large and small, furthermore, he knows, don't i...
Owner-ops' big role out West as AB 5 wound toward this week's Supreme Court filing
August 13, 2021 17:23 - 41 minutes - 56.9 MBThe thumbnail image with today's podcast was the product of the 2019 groundswell of grassroots advocacy that rose leading into the ultimate passage of the AB 5 law in California, which codified a controversial court decision that applied the ABC contractor test in the state. That test, to say the least, is problematic for owner-operator lease arrangements with motor carriers as they've traditionally been drawn up -- and federally recognized now for decades in the Truth in Leasing regulations....
Songs of the Highway, No. 8: 'Little Pink Mack,' by Kay Adams
August 09, 2021 14:59 - 4 minutes - 5.89 MBIt’s been decades since the influx of women into truck driving was considered news, at least among trucking media. But look long enough in the rear-view and you’ll reach a time when it was truly a novelty. One of the first – if not the very first – entertainers to use music to highlight that change was Kay Adams, with “Little Pink Mack.” Released in 1966, the song was written by Chris Roberts, Jim Thornton and Scott Turner. It wasn’t a strident feminist statement bucking the establishment i...
Tony Justice and '18 Gears to Life' -- the trucking behind, inside the music
August 06, 2021 16:06 - 29 minutes - 40.9 MBFor longtime Overdrive Radio listeners he will need no introduction whatsoever, but for the rest of you, the artist you'll hear straight away in this edition of the podcast is none other than Tony Justice. The Everhart Transportation driver, singer, songwriter and performer's recent history reaches back more than a decade now to the date of his first solo trucking-themed record, called "On the Road." This year, he’s out with his fifth, "18 Gears to Life." While Justice was in Nashville recen...
SuperRigs show report -- and this small fleet owner's growth story, managing pains that come with it
July 30, 2021 17:57 - 30 minutes - 42.3 MBJust more than a decade ago, owner-operator Don Wood was prepping a recently purchased 2003 Peterbilt 379 former fleet sleeper truck as a custom daycab. He was about to go hauling local hoping to meet his then-young children's home needs after years over the road. That wouldn't last more than a couple years itself before, though, Wood was back out on his own and, as customers leaned on him for their transport needs and drivers he knew needed work, he began to buy other trucks. He knew he had...
What came before the CDL? 18 years old and hauling interstate in 1917
July 27, 2021 14:40 - 24 minutes - 34.3 MBThe context for the conversation you'll hear in today's 60th-anniversary special edition of Overdrive Radio, conducted at the Great American Trucking Show in 2019, was twofold, centered around both driver training and history. Over the course of the 20th century, as you'll hear, the licensing required for a driver to operate interstate tightened. In the early days of motorized transport, an 18-year-old had no problem being licensed for interstate operation of what passed for the big trucks ...
Insurance, big-ticket maintenance, time off to recharge... What's your biggest business challenge?
July 23, 2021 18:26 - 23 minutes - 31.8 MBAnswers to that question in this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast from the four owners pictured here. The lightning round comes by way of truckers showing their equipment in the Walcott Truckers Jamboree's Super Truck Beauty Contest two weeks ago: Owner-operator Christopher Young, a one-truck livestock hauler several years into trucking with his own authority out of Shellsburg, Iowa. The veteran, Ashville, Alabama-based team of Michael and Jackie Wallace, hauling van freight yet working...
'Routine, day's end, on the way home': Getting there, even with advanced assist tech
July 16, 2021 17:52 - 40 minutes - 56 MBThe principal conundrum of advanced driver assist systems like collision mitigation, lane-keeping and more was summed up well by Nussbaum Transportation driver Clark Reed as part of the panel featured in this edition of Overdrive Radio: "The more we take the driver away from the driving experience ... [the greater the potential] they're going to become lackadaisical. ..." Put another way, we're talking about, in a word, "complacency" -– the strong temptation to let the equipment take the resp...
Real success leased to a 'virtual' carrier: Owner-operator Jason Hurley and CloudTrucks
July 12, 2021 18:15 - 27 minutes - 38.5 MBWisconsin-based owner-operator Jason Hurley, a former Schneider- leased owner-operator, made a move earlier this year to the young operation of CloudTrucks. The Texas-based company, with some operations in California, pitches to owner-operators as a "virtual carrier," operating less like a traditional asset-based carrier and more like a support company, basically. Cloud puts emphasis on its technology and systems in place to support otherwise independent businesses. Yet they're no broker or ...
Songs of the Highway, No 7: 'Hello, I'm a truck,' by Red Simpson
July 04, 2021 20:04 - 6 minutes - 8.46 MBTrucking’s music history has no shortage of light-hearted songs, such as Kay Adams’ “Little Pink Mack,” Charlie Walker’s “Truck Drivin’ Cat With Nine Wives” or The Legendary Shack Shakers’ “The CB Song.” One of the most humorous, thanks to its sharp barbs aimed at truckers, is Joe Cecil “Red” Simpson’s “Hello, I’m a truck.” It hit No. 4 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart in January 1972, making it the biggest hit single in Simpson’s long music career. “This song takes a different an...
Deckplate diner diaries: The ins and outs of this leased owner-operator's in-cab kitchen
June 30, 2021 17:57 - 18 minutes - 26.1 MB"The freedom to eat what I want, when I want, and how I want to make it." --Decker Truck Line-leased owner-operator Thomas Remington, on outfitting his 2020 Volvo VNL740 (auto transmission, mid-roof, spec'd for Decker's flatbed operation) for versatility in cooking on the road. In this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, a window on Remington's leased business as well as tips on inverter power electric cooking appliances, propane-powered tools for cooking on the deck, and so much more. ...
Little-known movie showcased Overdrive founder’s Hollywood, Nashville forays
June 21, 2021 11:42 - 9 minutes - 13.3 MBGo way back in Overdrive’s 60-year history and you’ll find more than a little dabbling in the bright lights of Hollywood and the country music scene of the ‘60s and ‘70s. It didn’t hurt that the Overdrive office was in the entertainment mecca of the Los Angeles area, but what really drove the connections was Overdrive’s founder and editor, former independent trucker Mike Parkhurst. Many of those associated with the magazine’s early years have passed on, including Parkhurst, who died in 2014....
Diesel emissions maintenance: Getting the right diagnosis, and repair, the first shop visit
June 18, 2021 16:44 - 55 minutes - 76 MBThere's good likelihood you know how the story goes. Code says a sensor is malfunctioning? Replace the sensor. Two weeks or two days later, same code, same sensor. Previous shop must have passed a bad part or otherwise messed up the install. Replace again, and "hey why don't we try" X or Y until, some weeks later, as happened in the story of owner-operator John Osinga, visual inspection reveals a mechanical issue. Turns out what seemed like a sensor malfunction wasn't really that at all: http...
Tales of three runaway trucks: Crises endured and averted, lessons learned
June 14, 2021 18:06 - 18 minutes - 24.9 MBToday, this special edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, part of our 60th-anniversary series, in part transports you back to a moment in time in the late 1970s, when owner-operator Gordon Alkire found himself in an old Astro 95 cabover with no brakes heading Southeast down the backside of Monteagle Mountain in Tennessee. It’s a situation that’s no exactly universal among truckers through the years, but not as uncommon as you might think. The occasion in 2019 when this part of my talk with ...
Truck parking, under-21 interstate drivers, more: A window on congressional trucking machinations
June 11, 2021 18:23 - 24 minutes - 34.2 MBIn this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, track through Truckload Carriers Association Government Affairs Vice President David Heller’s viewpoints on a variety of aspects of just what’s happening on Capitol Hill around funding infrastructure, including several of those trucking-business-specific initiatives tucked into the House highway bill Overdrive has reported on recently: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15065998/house-highway-funding-bill-keeps-2-million-insurance-...
Songs of the Highway, No. 6: 'Convoy,' by C.W. McCall
June 07, 2021 01:52 - 8 minutes - 12.2 MBTrucking’s rise in pop culture was well underway when “Convoy” was released in late 1975, capturing the hearts of not just truckers but many Americans. The song, heavily laden with CB slang and conversation, tells the story of a spontaneous truck convoy that clashes with authorities. It was by C.W. McCall, who was actually a character co-created and voiced by advertising executive Bill Fries. “It hit at a conjuncture of a lot of different things,” said Todd Uhlman, assistant professor of U...
Inside the divide between docs and Congress, trucking constituencies over sleep apnea
June 04, 2021 18:23 - 26 minutes - 36.1 MBAlso in this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast: Intro'ing a new dispatch provider in S2 Logistics, with hotshot hauler S2 Transport co-owner Scott Sabatini at its helm and stressing integrity in operations, a response to his own early difficulties. When the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Medical Review Board met May 20 in part to take up a revised sleep-apnea-related section of the FMCSA’s official handbook for the fine folks that perform DOT physicals all around the coun...
As the pandemic eases, owner-ops take stock of parking, biz pressures, more
May 28, 2021 18:38 - 27 minutes - 38 MB... and plenty more. At the East Coast Truckers Jamboree truck show early this month, Overdrive news editor Matt Cole spoke with these six owner-operators about a lot more than just the custom rigs they were showing (speaking of which, keep tuned to http://overdriveonline.com/custom-rigs for views on/videos of all mentioned here through the next weeks). A year following the depths of the early-pandemic downturn, it felt like a fine time to reflect on the experience of the past year. Here fi...
The trucking spirit within 'Cumberland Bones,' the new record from Stephen Flatt
May 21, 2021 17:48 - 32 minutes - 44 MBThis week's special edition of Overdrive Radio features the words and music of singer-songwriter Stephen Flatt, native of White County, Tennessee, and current Nashville resident. Flatt's first record as a solo artist, "Cumberland Bones," came out last month and features the "Hold You Tonight" single that in part takes the point of view of a long-distance hauler on his way home to the family. As you might well have guessed, Flatt’s no stranger to trucking, having worked for years in shipping ...
Songs of the Highway, No. 5: 'Six Days on the Road,' by Dave Dudley
May 17, 2021 14:59 - 6 minutes - 9.48 MBWhere does the loveable-outlaw image of the professional trucker first come into play in a big way in American culture? Perhaps the earliest notable instance came with Dave Dudley’s hit, “Six Days on the Road.” American culture expert Todd Uhlman makes that association in this ongoing "Overdrive’s Songs of the Highway" series, part of Overdrive's ongoing 60th anniversary celebration with coverage of trucking history: http://overdriveonline.com/trucking-history “Six Days” remains in contempor...
'What extortion looks like': Owner-operator Glenn Keller v. Parking Pirates, round 2
May 14, 2021 16:56 - 30 minutes - 41.3 MBIn late 2019 going into 2020 the state of Colorado became what's believed to be the first to ban statewide the practice of booting an occupied vehicle, just what you’re about to hear in this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, with audio courtesy of the 911 call April 21 from Louisiana-based owner-operator Glenn Keller to dispatch in Gaston County, North Carolina, due west of Charlotte. Regular Overdrive readers may well be familiar with Keller from past coverage of his leased operation, ...
Rising oil prices -- for dry bulk hauler Sisu Energy, there's far less fear than opportunity
May 05, 2021 18:21 - 24 minutes - 33.6 MBThe fears among many in the diesel-powered owner-operator community of late are real when it comes to rising oil prices with constraints on production and promotion of alternative sources of energy, as we've reported. All of it seems to mean little more than added costs for those fearful, but for the man whose voice is featured in this edition of Overdrive Radio, it all feels less like a problem than an opportunity. That’s Jim Grundy, headquartered in Texas and owner of Sisu Energy LLC, an ...
The first Mother's Day Make-a-Wish convoy in Pennsylvania, remembered with George Ruelens
April 26, 2021 15:16 - 19 minutes - 26.5 MBThis special edition of Overdrive Radio is part of our weekly 60th-anniversary series of stories with a significant historical aspect, as it's got no doubt in spades. It features the voice of former trucker George Ruelens, telling his tale in a 2019 interview about what’s become a veritable institution out of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania -- the annual Mother’s Day truck convoy benefiting the Make-a-Wish foundation. In 2019, the convoy featured 650 trucks in its 30th year, a huge amount of g...
CSA's Achilles' Heel: The pubic nature of carrier data
April 23, 2021 18:18 - 1 hour - 87.9 MBFrom the advent of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s CSA Safety Measurement System in 2010, its shortcomings were well-evident to carriers and baked into its structure. At that time, carriers were laser-focused on equities in scoring, particularly when comparing the way a small carrier's scores moved wildly with very little data input versus the slow climbs and falls with more data on the large-carrier side. As the years have gone by there's been refinement of a sense among cr...
Songs of the Highway, No. 4: 'Woman Behind the Man Behind the Wheel,' by Red Sovine
April 19, 2021 15:18 - 7 minutes - 10.2 MBHe’s best-known for his trucking hits “Giddyup Go,” “Teddy Bear” and “Phantom 309.” But another single by Red Sovine, a master of the sentimental trucker song, spoke poignantly to the difficult family dynamic of over-the-road haulers and their kin back home. That’s “Woman Behind the Man Behind the Wheel.” It’s a tribute to truckers’ wives, as the lyrics say, a "special breed of woman" that has to "share a love affair with that long stretch of highway on his mind." The theme, however, is mo...
Building a small fleet as destination for the best: Alabama-based Brian Lindley's LB3
April 16, 2021 17:42 - 41 minutes - 57.4 MBYou probably think you know Wedowee, Alabama-based Brian Lindley. Not afraid to work, grew up on a farm, grew up 'round trucks – all are familiar aspects of many a story in the trucking business. But as with so many of the millions of stories out there, there’s plenty of twists and turns in the details when it comes to the tale Lindley has for you in today's edition of Overdrive Radio. Having started out hauling chicken litter from poultry operations with this Mack daycab -- which had a tras...
Owner-ops are not company drivers for a reason -- ABC test in practice, more data from ATBS
April 09, 2021 17:51 - 55 minutes - 75.8 MBToday’s special edition of the podcast is a re-air of ATBS President Todd Amen’s semi-annual conference call with clients of the business services firm and other owner-operators that offers the opportunity for listeners to benchmark their own income performance against the averages of their peers that ATBS computes. Near the call’s beginning, though, Amen detailed the pressures that the Biden administration and Congress have renewed against the independent contractor model writ large. Fleets ...
Flailing toward an 'automated future'? Over the Road reality, more in final episode
April 02, 2021 15:08 - 52 minutes - 71.4 MBThe Over the Road podcast, a co-production of Overdrive and PRX’s Radiotopia podcast network, finished its run of eight main episodes last year with this final episode, titled “The Road Ahead,” in which Overdrive contributing writer and Moeller Trucking driver Paul Marhoefer documented a yogurt haul outbound from the Midwest to Texas and then to the 2019 Great American Trucking Show in Dallas, Texas. There, the OTR crew explored the implications for drivers of new technology in trucking — spe...
Songs of the Highway, No. 3: 'I've Been Everywhere'
March 29, 2021 18:27 - 7 minutes - 10 MBJohnny Cash isn’t the only singer who’s taken on the challenge of sprinting through the long, rhyming lists of cities in “I’ve Been Everywhere.” As some older readers might recall, the song was a big hit in 1962 for Hank Snow. Its success helped vault trucking songs further into the mainstream of an expanding country music radio scene, says Todd Uhlman, an assistant professor at the University of Dayton in Ohio who’s specialized in socio-cultural history, in this special edition of Overdrive ...
Roadcheck preps, with the state where inspections were up in 2020, not down like everywhere else
March 26, 2021 18:28 - 27 minutes - 38.1 MBIn the COVID-19 pandemic year of 2020, there were but two states in the entire nation where truck inspections numbers in the aggregate rose from 2019 levels. Every other state saw fall-offs ranging from just a few percentage points to more than a third in some places. Alabama's mostly mobile enforcement crew posted higher number, in part a result the state's investment in an expansion of the department. In this episode of Overdrive Radio, Captain Brent McElvaine of Alabama explains further re...
Indelible trucking portrait -- Long Haul Paul's 'Long Haul of Fame' through highs, lows of history
March 19, 2021 16:36 - 1 hour - 85.9 MBAnother edition here drops in Overdrive Radio's re-air of the Over the Road podcast series, coproduced by Overdrive and PRX's Radiotopia podcast network and hosted by 'Long Haul Paul' Marhoefer. Here, the host's "Long Haul of Fame” tells the stories of five of Marhoefer’s personal heroes -- longtime professional driver Idella Marie Hansen; owner-operator Big Jim Selkirk; trucker Ken “Shoestring” Waugh; overnight radio D.J. Marcia Campbell; and, finally, a tribute to one of those heroes who’s ...
Trucking team turns to rocking country with new record, 'If Wishes Were Horses'
March 12, 2021 19:15 - 27 minutes - 37.7 MBIn today's edition of Overdrive Radio, we hear selections from the new 'If Wishes Were Horses' long player out from Rylan Brooks, the songwriting duo of Chris Brooks (Philadelphia) and Nate Rylan (Nashville). Brooks is a former independent owner-operator trucking with authority and now one half of this songwriting duo truly doing great work here with their second record, a follow-up to 2018's 'Half Wild.' Rylan and Brooks’ history as a band -- with a particularly hard-driving brand of what yo...
'Our Punjabi brothers' -- portrait of a protest, a trucking community, and changed hearts and minds
March 05, 2021 17:31 - 38 minutes - 52.8 MBIn this week's Overdrive Radio podcast episode, we drop into October of 2017, a key moment in trucking regulatory history over the last several years, given demonstrations on both coasts and some points in between against the electronic logging device mandate. Generally, out east, those demonstrations were comparatively small, but you can tie a direct line between them and the next year’s pursuit by FMCSA of hours of service changes designed to enhance drivers’ scheduling options around the c...
Songs of the Highway, No. 2: 'Truck Driver's Blues,' by the Texas Wanderers
March 01, 2021 18:16 - 8 minutes - 11.2 MBChart-topping songs about trucking have been around for decades. But what was the first one to become a big hit? It was “Truck Driver’s Blues,” performed by the Texas Wanderers and sung by piano player Moon Mullican and at other times by Cliff Bruner, said Todd Uhlman. Uhlman's an assistant professor who’s specialized in U.S. socio-cultural history and has published a lengthy article about trucking music’s place in that history. The song was written by Louisianan Ted Daffan after he visited h...
The long tail of the CB's social utility, or: How the Lucky Turkey became the Maverick became ...
February 26, 2021 17:46 - 32 minutes - 45.1 MBOwner-operator Mike Crawford in this week's Overdrive Radio expands on some of the themes showcased earlier this week in our special-edition podcast in part about the ongoing safety utility, and the decreased cultural importance, of the CB in trucking. If you missed that 60th-anniversary podcast earlier this week and attendant coverage, visit http://OverdriveOnline.com/trucking-history access it. We wanted to bring Crawford back in here because what you heard for him via that special edit...
60th-anniversary special: CB radio's safety, cultural importance, past to present
February 22, 2021 16:27 - 14 minutes - 19.4 MBThis special edition Overdrive Radio is part of our celebration 60 years since the magazine's founding in 1961 -- as such, every Monday we’re looking back on various elements of the trucking business and culture as they’ve existed in the past and evolved on up through today via http://overdriveonline.com/trucking-history For this episode, we’re looking at the CB radio, both in the context of safety and trucking culture. First, we run back through the first in my Channel One Nine series of mi...
DataQs for violations, crashes: Minn.'s appeals process, reform efforts, and how to work the system
February 19, 2021 17:45 - 30 minutes - 41.5 MBIn today's edition of Overdrive Radio, we’ll hear from Captain Jon Olsen of Minnesota State Patrol's truck enforcement unit, one of many sources for Overdrive's reporting about the federal DataQs system that went live earlier this week: https://www.overdriveonline.com/regulations/article/15063803/criticism-of-dataqs-review-system-continues-to-rise Overdrive Editorial Director Max Heine and Senior Editor Todd Dills dug into the FMCSA's data around the DataQs system, doing scads of interviews...
COVID hours exemption not valid 'just because you're hauling food'; OTR's 'Back home'
February 12, 2021 19:54 - 56 minutes - 78 MBIn today's edition of Overdrive Radio, another in the run through our eight-episode Over the Road podcast series, coproduced for 2020 with PRX's Radiotopia podcast network. "Back home" featured our own Long Haul Paul Marhoefer, host of the show, and Over the Road contributing producer Lacy Roberts on a haul back through Lacy’s childhood as a daughter of a trucking family growing up in Montana. The tale, among the most-listened-to within the trucking community (the podcast was broadcast out to...
The best nanner pudding on I-75 -- and the custom restoration of this 1980 Kenworth W900A
February 05, 2021 17:50 - 53 minutes - 74.1 MBIn this edition of Overdrive Radio, take a tour down I-75 in Kentucky in search of an answer to the age-old question: Who has the best nanner pudding among the truck stops along that route, and which one of them was the first to advertise it on the CB? This week, we run back through some trucking micro-history with our own "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer via another edition in the Over the Road podcast series, originally produced by PRX’s Radiotopia in collaboration with us here at Overdrive. It’...
Fuel's up, rates down, and this owner-op's growth determination in authority's 'honeymoon'
January 29, 2021 17:05 - 40 minutes - 55.4 MBIn April 2019. Kenyette Godhigh-Bell was a company driver at Grand Island Express. Our own "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer met her for the first time at the company headquarters in Nebraska when researching and recording for what would become the Over the Road podcast. If you’re a regular Overdrive Radio listener, you heard that episode and met Godhigh-Bell from that time. Part of the episodes featured the sound of a class intended for drivers at the company who were considering the decision to bu...
The OTR 'Brief history of trucking in America' -- and this preserved 1978 Pete 352
January 22, 2021 17:06 - 57 minutes - 78.7 MBFor today’s episode of the Overdrive Radio podcast, brace for a long run through the history of trucking with former household-goods-hauling owner-operator Finn Murphy, also a well-versed student of that history. Murphy is interviewed and much of the story is narrated by Overdrive contributing writer and reefer hauler "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer. This brief history of trucking in America tracks the rise of the business from the 1920s up through today -– and the owner-operator's central role in...
Songs Of The Highway, No. 1: 'Wreck on the Mountain Road,' by the Red Fox Chasers
January 18, 2021 14:26 - 6 minutes - 8.75 MBWhat was the first recorded trucking song? According to Todd Uhlman, an assistant professor at the University of Dayton in Ohio, “Wreck on the Mountain Road,” recorded by the Red Fox Chasers in 1928, may well have set the stage for many such songs to come. Such trivia is only a small part of what Uhlman academic specialty has uncovered -- he places trucking songs in the context of U.S. socio-cultural history, explaining how each song reflects something of the trucking industry and culture at ...
Inside an uptick in human smuggling via truck: Avoid unwitting participation, keep attention high
January 15, 2021 18:09 - 26 minutes - 36.5 MBIn this week's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Chief Patrol Agent for the Laredo, Texas, sector Matthew Hudak has a message for the trucking community about what he’s seeing in the numbers since October 2020 when it comes to busted human smuggling operations. There's been a dramatic uptick in instances of drivers moving strange cargo in their dry van or reefer trailers -- actual human beings. In some cases, the drivers involved may have been initia...
Trucking with authority and other reasons 'Why we drive' -- OTR rewind No. 2
January 07, 2021 17:17 - 42 minutes - 57.7 MBA note for Overdrive Radio subscribers using some podcasting apps: We’ve got a new, redesigned website coming at http://OverdriveOnline.com – if you regularly listen via a podcasting app other than those offered by Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, or Apple or Google podcasts, we’re transitioning to a different principle RSS feed for Overdrive Radio. If you need to in your app, you can update the settings with this feed URL and be certain to get all of the episodes going forward: https://feeds.s...
Brass tacks, bad brokers, big loads to count down the hours with a long run into 2021
December 31, 2020 20:44 - 1 hour - 91.4 MBHappy New Year! For this final 2020 edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, Daniel and Phyllis Snow are here, as is Rico Muhammad and Joe DeLorenzo and Jim Mullen and all the owner-ops and government administrators and brokers and drivers and others we talked to this year. We’re going to hear from a lot of them as we tour back through this oh-so-chaotic and pivotal of years trucking in America. We’ll be counting down the top 10 podcasts of the year along the way, and hearing from some other e...
Back to the ‘Biggest Tailgate in Trucking’ — and Germann Soeth’s 1976 KW K100
December 23, 2020 15:32 - 75.5 MBSo begins a run through high-quality road listening with Overdrive's podcast coproduction with PRX’s Radiotopia network. The Over the Road podcast ran originally Feb.-June 2020, and the principal eight-episode series was hosted by our own "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer. Bonus: Restore of Soeth's vintage cabover. The post Back to the 'Biggest Tailgate in Trucking' -- and Germann Soeth's 1976 KW K100 first appeared on Overdrive.