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Overdrive Radio

Overdrive Radio

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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-radioAll rights reserved Economía
Episodios
  • FMCSA fully engaged with owner-ops at MATS: OOIDA | DACA-recipient CDL holders have hope?

    FMCSA fully engaged with owner-ops at MATS: OOIDA | DACA-recipient CDL holders have hope?
    Mar 30 2026
    "If you're really concerned about safety numbers, we want zero fatalities, we want all these things to happen ... we have to train people, we have to pay people, and we have to give them a safe place to rest. That's the first three things we should be doing, and until we do that, we're never going to fix highway safety. It's never going to get better." --Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh The good news is that, according to Pugh, FMCSA and the Department of Transportation more broadly are finally listening to truckers and other small-business interests in their push toward safety improvement, leaving behind old notions of a driver shortage. Pugh contends the notion has for decades influenced the credentialing and training system such that drivers are in effect rushed into the business, with too often terrible outcomes. Nowhere was new federal attitudes toward small business truckers in evidence more than at this year’s Mid-America Trucking Show, where regulators spent a great deal of time and effort communicating with owner-ops in attendance: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15820771 Also in the podcast, find more emphasis on OOIDA priorities with respect to the administration, and a rundown with Pugh in light of the broader freight markets, particularly after the dramatic escalation of fuel prices of late with the Iran conflict. We all found a measure guarded optimism among owner-operators in attendance, yet plenty of hope the conflict draws down quickly. Plus: We check in with Jorge Rivera Lujan, featured on Overdrive Radio earlier in the year regarding his and other plaintiffs' legal challenge to FMCSA's rule effectively eliminating most non-domiciled CDL issuance for non-citizens. Lewie Pugh got the opportunity to meet the independent owner-operator at MATS, and well knows that if the rule remains intact Rivera Lujan will lose his CDL and the current status of his business late in the year when the CDL expires: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15816105 Rivera Lujan was brought the U.S. as a child, and with another Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipient was able to communicate his quandary at MATS to officials as high as Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. In some ways, there could be hope for folks like him, owner-operators adversely impacted by the non-domiciled CDL rule change in effect since March 16. Plaintiffs in the case against the non-domiciled CDL rule have filed for expedited review by the court as of about a week ago, and time will tell on that front. Meantime, owners like Rivera Lujan and others impacted explore other avenues for their futures, his experience at MATS being an eye-opening one in regard to opportunities all around trucking. Pugh stands by the non-domiciled rule change as written, generally, yet also hoped "this is unfortunately the reality we live in in our country. ... Whatever we do it seems like it goes too far one way or the other, and innocent people who are trying to do the right thing get caught up in it," Pugh said. "People smarter than me write these rules and regs, and they probably have reasons we don't understand. "It's almost impossible to write a catch-all law. It's a shame for [Rivera Lujan]. Hopefully they get something in there to change that or that could help." As for the show itself, Lewie Pugh saw a measure of hopeful positivity among owner-operators there quite in spite of dramatic fuel run-ups, with a glimmer of hope on offer in market conditions after the long drought of the last three and more years. Much more from MATS in this collection: https://overdriveonline.com/tag/mats Sign up for Overdrive's newsletter *https://bit.ly/overdrivesubscribe* for more reporting from all around small-business trucking.
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    39 m
  • Heavy/oversize permitting, 'unplugged': Will there ever be a national system?

    Heavy/oversize permitting, 'unplugged': Will there ever be a national system?
    Mar 23 2026
    The answers to the question in the title here came rapid-fire, and with certainty, from reps of six different state agencies with oversize and overweight permits responsibilities, amid much laughter from the assembled at the Specialized Carriers & Rigging Association's transport symposium last month. To tally the answers up: four definitive 'No's, one 'Absolutely not,' and just one 'Doubtful.' Offering one of the nos was Alex Jensen, in permits with the Iowa Department of Transportation, who expanded on his and others' reasoning. Just as no two overdimensional loads are much alike, different states have different priorities, rules and infrastructures, as Overdrive's reporting around your Highway Report Card state road-maintenance assessments have also made clear in recent months. "All of our bridges are built to different standards, different ages. We have different engineers, different pavement," Jensen said. "Even the characteristitcs ... the geography, the road conditions, bridge conditions, it's all different." Unless the federal government were to mandate some unforeseen, next-to-impossible on-size-fits-all system, he added the 50-state-by-state permitting regime is probably here to stay. "I know it sucks, but it's just the way it is, unfortunately," Jensen said. Quipped Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles' Brandi Thorpe, "Unless we can get Jeff Bezos to AmazonPrime us a new structure," truckers and state permits officials are stuck with what they've got. The six officials were in conversation with ATS's Joanna Jungels (serving as moderator) at the SC&RA symposium, with plenty in the way of audience Q&A, too, where the back-and-forth really heated up with actionable intelligence. The full panel is featured in this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, offering insights and intelligence from these four additional state reps from an alphabet soup of agencies in addition to DMVs and DOTs: **Wyoming -- Port of Entry Operations Manager Troy McAlpine with the Wyoming Highway Patrol **Louisiana -- Permit Office Manager Julie Gautreau with the state DOT **Oklahoma -- Deputy General Counsel Mitch Surrett, also with his state's DOT **Indiana -- Judy Williams with Indiana's Department of Revenue You’ll hear a lot about increasingly super-complicated moves of superloads, still requiring lots of manual route planning, yet also how technology has enabled effective auto-issue in most states today at a very high rate. Learn, too, each state's approach to punitive actions for bridge strikers or construction-zone scofflaws. An audience member asked whether the states had a three-strikes or other cut-and-dried rule that might get a carrier banned from permit-issuance in the state. Most approached such on a case-by-case basis, with cutting off auto-issue access a common first step. Yet, noted Jensen, "hit a bridge, running without permits, kill a construction worker ... we'll go through the administrative suspension procedures if we need to, but I can count on one hand the number of times it's ever gotten that serious." More often, steps precede it, including more law enforcement escorts required on otherwise non-escort-necessary loads, if you needed other incentive to avoid drastic mistakes. "They do a full Level 2 inspection before you get moving, and they might find things you don't necessarily want them to find," Jensen noted. Catch Overdrive's most-recent "Niche Hauls" series installment on the heavy-oversize niche (from 2025) via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/tag/niche-hauls
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    1 h y 2 m
  • Extreme cost, revenue volatility: Small fleet 'gun-shy' about future trucking investment

    Extreme cost, revenue volatility: Small fleet 'gun-shy' about future trucking investment
    Mar 16 2026
    It’s been some kind of a year and more for Hell Bent Xpress owner Jamie Hagen. The South Dakota and Michigan-headquartered fleet he’s built from one truck over many years is back to 10 all-Mack power units after some reduction in the last, difficult year. Hagen was among Overdrive’s Small Fleet Championship finalists a couple years back. Along with past Small Fleet Champ Jason Cowan of Silver Creek Transportation in Kentucky, last year Hagen was tapped for the opening panel discussion at the big Mid-America Trucking Show: https://overdriveonline.com/15741773 The pair of champs will run it back in that panel to set the stage for small-business issues at the big show again this year. It's on the MATS schedule for early the morning of March 26 to kick things off, and for this week's edition of Overdrive Radio Hagen delivers a bit of a preview of what we’re likely to hear there: https://truckingshow.com/schedule/ Safe to say you can expect discussion of fuel economy and purchasing, given the last couple weeks. It’s so bad on the fuel front there’s evidence of owners just parking their trucks to wait it out. (A friend of mine here in Nashville took a car to the airport this past week. His driver: an owner-operator in just such a situation, who noted he was going to wait it out and just do the Uber-driving thing meantime. Gasoline, at least, is still a good dollar/gal. and more below diesel, even near $2 less in some cases.) Hell Bent Jamie Hagen’s got a not-so-secret weapon in his fuel arsenal in one of the first Mack Pioneers to roll off the assembly line last year. He's got a driver in it at the moment as he himself focuses with his wife and business partner, Hillary, on office duties. "He's been getting after it," Hagen noted of the truck's operator, who's "really good at fuel economy." The Pioneer, spec'd for max efficiency pulling a van, averaged 9.8 mpg for the last month. While that's a whole lot better than 5.8, Hagen noted, the Iran war and the diesel run-up since just wasn't "on the bingo card" looking out at prospects when planning for 2026. Even with excellent efficiency, the fuel-price hike of the last two weeks virtually erased gains in brokered rates he'd seen since the Fall. It's all made him "gun-shy," to an extent, about future investments, given Hell Bent's push to ever-more-efficient equipment with five more Pioneers acquired last year to replace older units. As he put it, "you just never know when the bottom's going to fall out" with cost and revenue volatility as bad as it's been. With good direct freight and rates coming out of the Dakotas, a project this year will be to identity customers for the return trips to further cut the reliance on brokers, Hagen notes in this week's episode, where we touch on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's broker transparency and other regulatory efforts, and much more. More upcoming at MATS in this collection: https://overdriveonline.com/tag/mats
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    31 m
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