Behind the owner-operator: An exemplary business and life partner, buttoning up biz for success

This week on the Overdrive Radio podcast we’re featuring Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole’s talk with October Trucker of the Month John Schiltz, nominated for the Overdrive 2023 Trucker of the Year award by his wife and now fully-minted CDL holding business partner, Sarah Schiltz. The pair run a two-truck fleet together and pull alongside each other with their Kenworths (a 1999 W9 for John and a 2013 T660 Sarah upgraded to in recent memory, a tale Cole told in his feature last week).

The Schiltzes specialize is fresh vegetables from farm to canning operations in the Midwest during harvest season, flatbed and RGN platform freight much of the rest of the year. You can probably guess just what they’ve been up to in recent times out of their Wisconsin home base as vegetable harvests wrap up.

Overdrive Radio's sponsor is What emerges from this talk with both John and Sarah, though John officially gets the Trucker of the Month nod, is a spotlight on the teamwork it truly takes to run an owner-operator business. John’s quick to credit Sarah with a large part of his recent-years’ success, buttoning up the biz to where it is today. Sarah, meanwhile, relishes everything she's learned during her own voyage into trucking with John as her practical guide.

[Related: Hustle, never-quit attitude pay off for owner-operator John Schiltz]