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

Overdrive Radio is a business podcast hosted by Overdrive, with 500 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Overdrive hosts Overdrive Radio, a business show with 500 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

• 

  Overdrive Radio

  Take control of diesel quality: New study reveals huge fuel performance variance across U.S.

  Sep 29, 202629 min

  "You've got to do something for your own fuel, or accept the consequences of not." --Howes lead chemist Jed Talbot How do you know that what you’re getting from your neighborhood No. 2 diesel pump is quality fuel? The $6-and-more-per-gallon price isn’t going to tell you much, that’s for sure, and chemist Jed Talbot is on a mission to make sure it’s abundantly clear. For this week’s Overdrive Radio podcast, we're dropping in with Talbot and Howes Products marketing lead Rich Guida for plenty detail about a brand-new diesel study showing wide variance in performance characteristics across the United States. Early this year during the winter period, Howes sent three members of the company's long-running trucking-living-legend Hall of Fame out across the country -- Canada, too -- to collect diesel fuel samples straight from the pump: **Trucker-songwriter Tony Justice, well-known for longtime Overdrive Radio listeners: https://overdriveonline.com/15832127 **Owner-operator Kate Whiting, known for her 1970s pristine W900 "Cherry Pie": https://overdriveonline.com/15542803 **"Trucker Josh" Giesbrecht, likewise an owner-operator with a huge Youtube following himself: https://overdriveonline.com/15670149 Back at the lab, Talbot and team then tested each sample for a variety of characteristics -- cloud point and cold filter plugging point, lubricity, biodesel and water content, flash point. Measurements varied widely. Full results via https://howesproducts.com/blog/article/diesel-fuel-test-what-15-diesel-pump-samples-revealed All samples were labeled No. 2 diesel, yet some should have said something different, according to Talbot. One of the samples had a whopping 6% of biodiesel in it, and should have been labeled B5, for instance, and in terms of water content results weren’t much better, with big implications for wear parts in the fuel system. Fuel filters, too. "Water in fuel, particularly in very tight tolerances," said Talbot, is "like molecular sandpaper. It's not good. It's really abrasive, particularly under pressure," also contributing to microbial growt. "So microbes don't grow in diesel. It won't support them. But if you've got a lot of suspended water now you've got a place for microbes to live all fat and happy." What can you do about it? Listen on for ways to establish a baseline with treatments, in use by a majority of owner-operators in Overdrive’s audience year-round, according our research. "When you think about the journey of fuel from the refinery to when you're pulling the handle," Rich Guida said, "it's on railcars. It's stored in places for a little while. Maybe it sits in warm temperature and then gets gets to a cold temperature and then it's in a truck traveling overland. So there's tons of ways water" and other contaminants could be introduced. Various in lubricity measures, too, while none were truly out-of-spec with an HFRR wear scar above the standard, the variation was huge. In that case, the lower the better. Treatment can help reduce that measure, offering potential for extended life for injectors, fuel pumps, cylinder heads all. "So it really boils down to this," Guida said. "It's kind of a crapshoot with what you're getting. And the best way to avoid that is to, to treat consistently and get into a routine."

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Overdrive Radio

  Lujan v. FMCSA: The non-domiciled CDL ban in court, full oral arguments

  Sep 21, 20261h 40m

  Arbritrary. Capricious. Those two words are a principal basis for owner-operator Jorge Rivera Lujan and fellow petitioners’ challenge to FMCSA’s non-domiciled CDL rule. The rule itself is strongly supported by most Overdrive readers, and the petitioners’ challenge saw significant action in the D.C. federal appeals court last week Tuesday, September 15. Tip of the hat to Overdrive’s own Alex Lockie for this early coverage of the discussions, laying out the reasoning plaintiffs' attorneys utilized to argue the arbritrary and capricious nature of the rule in efforts to knock it down entirely: https://overdriveonline.com/15834913 He's done a voluminous amount of work around the non-domiciled CDL phenomenon since the full extent of those licenses for foreign non-immigrant visitors to the United States became known last year. He did the research, offering this first attempt at a comprehensive public accounting of active non-domiciled lincenses last year: https://overdriveonline.com/15750917 And since then, with FMCSA’s moves to restrict eligibility last Fall, Lockie’s covered in-depth the legal ramifications as challenges emerged from non-domiciled operators themselves, including the named plaintiff on this case in Jorge Rivera Lujan. Regular Overdrive Radio listeners here have heard from Lujan directly, including this past Spring at the Mid-America Trucking Show. The owner-operator is a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipient, and he’s been in the U.S. since he was a child, yet remains a non-citizen. Today on the podcast, sit in on the discussion amongst who argued last Thursday on his behalf, and in defense of FMCSA, before a three-judge panel in the D.C. federal appeals court. We learned a good bit from FMCSA’s attorney from the Justice Department, Simon Jerome, about the history of the non-domiciled CDL rules for non-citizens. Jerome noted the "safety gap" in foreign driving records the agency lived with until last year, when they sought the change after a series of crashes by non-domiciled drivers. Fundamentally, as suggested above, the case hinges on what FMCSA did or didn’t do to adequately justify the rule that strips an estimated 194,000 non-citizen drivers from CDL eligibility. In the podcast, hear the crosstalk in full. It makes for a fascinating window on legal proceedings at work, with the fate of FMCSA’s rule change hanging in the balance. As mentioned in the podcast, a timeline of events that led to the court proceeding last week: https://www.overdriveonline.com/15833346

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Overdrive Radio

  Reliability, service over 6M-plus miles: Owner-operator Dee Zeeman, Trucker of the Month

  Sep 14, 202626 min

  Off the top of the podcast, the voice of Overdrive’s August Trucker of the Month Dee Zeeman, in a business partnership with wife, Bev, in the back office and hauling for now close to a decade now with authority as White Pine Transport. The name’s a combination of a couple different horse farms he remembers from his youth growing up in Utah, and as he tells up top, a name that just worked. Yet for this installment of our Trucker of theYearr contenders’ series of podcasts, we’ll emphasize, of course, that’s there’s much more to a one-truck business than the name. The Zeemans have made real strides as independents in this their second such tour through business following their first in the 1990s. They truly follow through on promises made, doing the hard work and doing it right, in spite of all the challenges the business and life itself throw at them. "We've developed a reputation, and we really try to get stuff there when it's supposed to be there," Bev noted. If there is ever a problem, "we're old-school," Dee said. "We believe in commuinication" early and often. Challenges have been real over what’s been a roughly 6M-mile, 40-plus-year career behind the wheel for Dee since he got his chauffer’s license in the early 1980s. Roughly six years ago, he suffered what would ultimately be a mild stroke, in fact, and attributes a quick recovery, back on the horse in just several days, to more than the fact that Bev got him to the hospital near immediately. "Intestinal fortitude," he said. "I wasn't going to let it get me down. To put it simply, I cowboy'd up and fought through it." It wasn't the first time the pair have worked together through a big life change,as you’ll hear in their story. The Zeemans were named Overdrive's August Truckers of the Month, the recognition putting them in running for the 2026 Overdrive Trucker of the Year award. Read our first feature story about them via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/15833020 Get your own business in the running through the end of this month: https://overdriveonline.com/toptrucker

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Overdrive Radio

  Fraud and cargo theft info sharing, White House task force: Freight crime in spotlight

  Sep 6, 202643 min

  Off the top of this Overdrive Radio edition, the voice of Atlantic Logistics CEO Rob Hooper talking about trust, responding specifically to a question about whether all the shipper, broker and carrier friction in today’s freight markets is driving wedges between the relationships. Regular listeners well know what we're talking about -- cyber fraud and identity verificaitons pingpongig back and forth between the parties, slowing freight bookings as the opposite, distrust, breeds all around. Our big broker-and-carrier-vetting survey this year saw 66% of owner-operators name principally negative impacts after the rise in carrier vetting platforms specifically. Among them was roughly 1 in every 10 survey respondent owner-operators who called out as principal impact the wedge of distrust increased scrutiny continued to drive between them and brokerage partners. Access the full survey results here: https://overdriveonline.com/15829986 In this week's Labor Day edition of the podcast, a look into the FTR Transportation Intelligence conference, an annual affair last week where late in the day Tuesday a rep from the National Motor Frieght Traffic Association, Joe Ohr, and the one and only Dale Prax, FreightValidate founder and now a strategic advisor to Truckstop.com, joined Hooper for this talk through issues of revenue fraud like double-brokering, increasingly sophisticated cargo theft rings, and what was on everybody’s mind Tuesday that first day of September after Departments of Transportation and Homeland Security announced the new White House fraud task force. Prax gives some background on it from his perspective, and you can read a whole lot more about it from Overdrive's own Alex Lockie’s in follow-on reports: **Initial announcement of CDL school sweeps, and task force: https://overdriveonline.com/15833705 **Targeted schools respond: https://overdriveonline.com/15834186 Prax calls back to 2023 when Vice President J.D. Vance was part of a group of Senators pushing for the idea of a fraud task force as a kind of “cop on the block” to police double-brokering and ID-theft-enabled revenue fraud, cargo theft by fraud, and the many other forms these interstate freight crimes take. Some credit can go to longtime transport attorney Hank Seaton for proferring the very idea of a task force years earlier, and for the current administration for advancing it in the current form: https://overdriveonline.com/15539812 Of course, as Prax also acknowledges, much of the meat of the announcement and subsequent press attention has been angled straight on policing CDL schools and immigration through English requirements and the like. Prax seems to read it as a way to garner more attention to the Dalilah’s Law legislation stalled in Congress and that would codify the FMCSA’s almost total ban of non-domiciled CDLs for non-citizens. The challenge against that rule is set for oral arguments in federal court just more than a week away at this point. Whether it will remain stading hangs in the balance. Yet given Vance’s lead involvement on the task force, and the demonstrated concern expressed by the Senator in past over longstanding cargo-theft and revenue-fraud issues, here's hope we can expect at least more intense prosecutorial footing on those fronts in the coming years. There’s plenty all truckers and other parties in legit freight transactions can do actively, too, as you’ll hear from Joe Ohr in particular in the panel. NMFTA has new threat-reporting and information sharing tools available that are free to participate in, detailed here. **New NMFTA portal: https://nmfta.org/standards/cybersecurity/cybersecurity-resources/nmfta-threat-report-portal/ **Overdrive's guide to cargo theft prevention: https://overdriveonline.com/15769312

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Overdrive Radio

  Predatory parking-lot-trap truck tows back in headlines: Turn state/local rules to your favor

  Aug 24, 202644 min

  A tip of the hat off the top of this week’s Overdrive Radio edition to our social media coordinator Jazzmin Campbell, who shared yet another towing mishap occurring in the city of Charlotte, North Carolina. It bears all the hallmarks of a parking-lot trap, the driver reporting a bill for upward of $9,000 in fees after he said he exceeded a time limit at the lot on Sunset Road by about a half hour -- mind you, during the big winter storm that hit the city with record snowfall back at the tail end of January. Judging by the reporting from the Charlotte TV station that had the story first, it’s unclear where exactly on Sunset Road in North Charlotte the lot in question was, but it’s certainly not the first time we’ve picked up on towing and botting shenanigans in that city and surrounding areas: WSOC-TV's report: https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/charlotte-trucker-hit-with-9000-bill-after-exceeding-parking-limit-by-30-minutes/7IFIEUXET5GLXFZMQCTK4T7DY4/ Tow companies in nearby Gastonia, N.C., to the west and south of Charlotte may well have originated the region’s parking-lot-trap dynamics, where in past booting was quite common: https://www.overdriveonline.com/14894396 Just last year, the state of North Carolina explicitly banned the booting of commercial vehicles, regular readers will remember, yet private-tow tactics for parking enforcement clearly remain available to towing companies: https://overdriveonline.com/15749716 2025 Small Fleet Champ semi-finalist Mark Ledford’s small fleet early this year experienced a similar incident in Charlotte he and his driver were able to work their way out of utilizing the very terms of Charlotte’s towing ordinance: https://www.charlottenc.gov/cmpd/Community-Involvement/Local-Ordinances If the lot or the tow company in question violates signage and other regs there, that could be a very simple way out of an incident with involvement of the authorities -- if the truck hasn't already been towed, of course. And listen on for small fleet owner Robbie Turnage’s story of a tow gone bad -- and how he was able to, similarly, turn state law in Pennsylvania to his favor. Turnage’s tale is part of the roundtable conversation we conducted just prior to the 2025 Small Fleet Champ awards presentation at the National Association of Small Trucking Companies annual conference last year. We’re right in the middle of the 2025 entries research and judging round -- with announcements coming soon of the full slate of semi-finalist small fleets, certainly an exemplary, diverse group of owners this year. For now, dig into this conversation with Turnage and his Turnage & Sons milk-tanker fleet, Scott Denmark and Scott Cruthis of Thomasville Funiture Xpress, Wes Oberman of Oberman Logistics, and the small fleet named for and owned by Clifford Hay. As mentioned in the podcast: **Overdrive’s guide to beating back outrageous tow invoices: https://overdriveonline.com/15737212 **Our Small Fleet Champ updates with all of the owners featured in the re-air portion of the podcast from November 2025: https://overdriveonline.com/small-fleet-champ

  ListenShow Notes

Recent guests on Overdrive Radio. Study who booked and why before you pitch.

Based on semantic analysis of episode topics and host coverage, this show is a strong guest fit for executives in:

Industry fit is computed by PitchCentric using vector embeddings of the show's episode catalog.