Overdrive Radio
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
Episodes
October 27, 2025 • 28 mins
"Be on-time, put out the extra effort. ... No matter what you're going to be in life, be the best."
--Owner-operator John Treadway on his motivation through the years
Raised to “be the best” at whatever he did, owner-operator John Treadway is clearly working hard to achieve that lofty goal with his one-truck business. It's a two-truck business, actually, with Treadway trucking with his own authority mostly in a stunningly beautif...
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October 20, 2025 • 68 mins
This week's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast features the semi-annual ATBS owner-operator income benchmarking session delivered in late September by ATBS Vice President Mike Hosted. The audio contains the full presentation, but know that there's a video version accessible via the Youtube version at this link: https://youtu.be/CYxCHAb1RnY
To follow along with the audio here, download a bevy of detailed slides charting cost, r...
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October 13, 2025 • 23 mins
Off the top of this week's Overdrive Radio episode one thing's clear. Longtime Alaska-based truck driver Lisa Kelly is now a business owner. That's right, in the very long time since Overdrive editor Todd Dills last spoke to her (though not the last time you read about her in Overdrive), she bought a 2019 Peterbilt 389 and leased on with a company to work Alaska's Dalton Highway (the "Haul Road," as its known): https://www.overdriv...
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October 6, 2025 • 56 mins
No news has been bigger in trucking this year than the DOT’s announcement Friday, September 26, of changes to the rules around non-domiciled CDL issuance, effective now: https://www.overdriveonline.com/regulations/article/15767991/fmcsa-to-force-nearly-200k-nondomiciled-cdl-holders-out-of-trucking
New restrictions on issuance hold potential to limit foreign-domiciled CDL drivers' ability to work OTR in the U.S. The influx of asylu...
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September 26, 2025 • 19 mins
One of the trucking industry's biggest events, the biennial Guilty by Association Truck Show at 4 State Trucks in Joplin, Missouri, is officially under way at Exit 4 off I-44.
With hundreds of trucks in attendance (organizers expect 800+ to participate in the Saturday night convoy), the massive show sprawls across multiple businesses, including 4 State Trucks itself, the Joplin 44 Petro and Pilot truck stops across state highway 4...
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September 22, 2025 • 30 mins
How might truckers get back a measure of flexibility in the hours of service rules, such as that enjoyed by so many owner-operators of past generations? That is, the ability to split the 10-hour required rest period into two periods of any length they want. That’s the option favored by a whopping 88% of readers who responded to Overdrive polling around the subject this time last year, with results published earlier in the year show...
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September 15, 2025 • 30 mins
This week on the podcast, the voices of two semi-finalists for Overdrive's 2025 Small Fleet Champ award:
First, Robbie and Levi Turnage of Mississippi-headquartered tanker fleet Turnage and Sons, LLC. They're respectively fourth- and fifth-generation milk haulers who've made good on a business with a stable of dairymen in the region specializing in organic milk over two decades of so Robbie's grown the fleet from just a single tr...
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September 8, 2025 • 24 mins
"I want to honor my wife and her being the 'woman behind the man behind the wheel,' which is a high calling. Our first date ... was the day I bought that 1997 W9, so she didn't know what she was getting into." --August Trucker of the Month Jason Shelly
Jason Shelly starts this Part 2 of a series of Overdrive Radio episodes featuring the owner-operator with a tribute to Renita Shelly, who's been Shelly's "biggest fan," as she once...
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September 2, 2025 • 32 mins
"I spend a lot of time making deliveries around here, so I have my little spots I know I can park." --Owner-operator Jason Shelly, speaking to knowledge borne of more than two decades' experience serving customers in Amish markets on the East Coast
Those words were among the first owner-op Jason Shelly spoke when he talked to Overdrive Editor Todd Dills in early August attendant to reporting on his longtime one-truck business, ...
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August 22, 2025 • 30 mins
This week's Overdrive Radio podcast is a re-air for owner-operators and other truckers on the occasion of the 2025 Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance Brake Safety Week inspection blitz. Get over to OverdriveOnline.com for an updated list of our Top 10 toughest states for brakes violations, to get a bit of a clue into where you might expect inspectors’ scrutiny of braking systems to be most intense this coming week: https://www.over...
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August 18, 2025 • 38 mins
This week on the podcast we’re diving into the trends uncovered in the July report authored by our own Alex Lockie documenting the rise of the so-called “non-domiciled CDL” in recent years in the U.S. It’s a kind of license that many states can and do issue to those in the States from other countries and with temporary work authorization. If you haven’t downloaded our report for yourself as of yet, it’s available via this link: htt...
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August 11, 2025 • 33 mins
This week on the Overdrive Radio podcast, another entry in our 2025 Trucker of the Year competition: https://overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year
You may have seen Matt Cole’s feature a couple weeks back now about longtime independent Ron Kelsey, who’s achieved something of an "owner-operator holy grail," as it were, trucking for decades now in a 1981 Peterbilt 359 and hauling direct freight for customers that date back three ...
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This week's edition of Overdrive Radio takes a deeper dive into Overdrive's relatively new Load Profit Analyzer tool: https://overdriveonline.com/load-analyzer
Go there and pull up the analyzer to follow along with this detailed walk-through with owner-operator business coach and longtime Overdrive contributor Gary Buchs. As regular readers will likely recall from when it was introduced late in 2024, the Analyzer was in part inspi...
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July 28, 2025 • 94 mins
Track back through last week’s big trucking-issues hearing convened in Senate Commerce's Subcommittee on Transportation, Freight, Pipelines and Safety to work through some of the pressing issues ahead of the next highway bill, due in 2026.
Featured trucking witnesses before the subcommittee and their full written testimonies:
**Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh: https://www.commerc...
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July 21, 2025 • 20 mins
"Hard to keep something nice if you're in the hopper world. There's dust, gravel, mud, farms, small driveways. ..." --Little Z Transport owner-operator Lucas Zach, Gilman, Wisconsin
Despite the difficulty, owner-operator Zach keeps his 2017 Peterbilt 389 and matching Timpte hopper pristine as can possibly be. He's put quite a lot of custom work into it with shop and fleet partners to cut a fine picture on those duty gravel roads i...
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July 15, 2025 • 35 mins
Overdrive's June Trucker of the Month Scott Smith, owner-operator of Sapphire Cartage out of Searcy, Arkansas, has a couple of secret weapons when it comes to bookkeeping, tax accounting and business analysis. The first is his wife, Stephanie, who after time in the health care field and then with Scott rearing four young children, found new work Scott Smith describes in this week's edition of Overdrive Radio. Stephanie's built acco...
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July 6, 2025 • 47 mins
"Remember to shake a stranger's hand. You might accidentally make a new friend." --Bill Weaver
It's been a heavy week amid the Independence Day goings-on, trucking news and all the rest, but start this Overdrive Radio episode with a song with a whole lot of joy, sure to get the spirits up, as it’s writer, singer and performer -- the great Bill Weaver -- told the tale of its origins in the always-headed-home aspects of work OTR, si...
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Today in Overdrive Radio, walk through Kevin Bruns’ purchase of a 2019 Cummins-powered International LoneStar after several years of local dump truck ownership and work around quarries and construction sites in the Nashville, Tennessee, region. That followed early experience with authority hauling cars a couple decades back, based outside Chicago where Bruns is from originally, then pneumatic tanker work as a company driver, all of...
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June 24, 2025 • 38 mins
Off the top of this week's Overdrive Radio podcast is the voice of photojournalist James Year, commenting on an issue he feels holds potential to create alliances where few have existed in American culture and commentary. "In every market you can think there's a lot of disruptions starting to happen," Year said. "and it's one of those cases of strange bedfellows. ... Turns out truckers and actors and all the people that are general...
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"If you're not going to do it right the first time, don't do it at all. That's what I tell everybody in here." --2024 Small Fleet Champ Paul Rissler
In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, listen in for a tour around the headquarters of Paul Rissler Transportation, current Overdrive Small Fleet Champ, on the old home place for the big Rissler trucking family. Overdrive Editor Todd Dills was there in early May just ahead of Paul...
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