With 2023's end fast-approaching, the time has come to unveil three finalists in Overdrive's Trucker of the Year competition, from which one will emerge the winner with bragging rights for the year. All have shown resilence in the face of topsy-turvy freight markets, with a close eye on controlling costs and maintenance of customer relationships for revenue. Judges focused on both of those bedrock business concerns, but also kept in mind longevity in the business, willingness to change for improvement and their impact on local and/or broader trucking communities.
The separation between these three and seven other contending businesses, ultimately, was as narrow as the trickiest mountain highway or off-road path you've experience in the truck, for sure. Here's a big congrats to those seven, too, about whom you can read and glean plenty in the way of examples of owner-operators doing it right via the list below as well as the Trucker of the Year home page on Overdrive here.
Without further ado, your three finalists:
Owner-operator Schiltz was nominated by his wife, Sarah (also pictured), after a decade trucking as an owner-operator and experience behind the wheel and in the shop from a young age. Schiltz brings his mechanic experience from long service in the U.S. Army to bear in the business, now teaching Sarah, too, plenty about how to turn those wrenches to get the jobs done themselves and save. No better way to advance a skillset than to teach it, as an old notion goes, and owner-operator Schiltz makes good on that now daily with Sarah also behind the wheel of her own rig (pictured, top right) as the pair run together working Midwest harvests, then pulling RGN and other platform freight in the off-season.
Jay Hosty has four decades in trucking, all as an owner-operator, in his rear-view with a great deal of that long career leased to Landstar, who remains his principal customer today. Yet he carries forward the myriad lessons learned with a natural frugality for a lean and mean operation -- his 2006 Western Star long-paid-for and running in tip-top shape, Hosty's business showed the lowest operating ratio (expenses/revenue) of all this year's contenders. He pays it forward not only with engagement in trucking but with numerous disaster-response volunteer efforts, and by fostering children in need with his wife, Katt.
Sitting at three trucks at the end of 2022, Tim and Shelley Pulli's Pulli Express business thrives on a close relationship with a direct customer, where they're dedicated pulling food-grade tankers each in separate rigs -- and maintaining a big family all the while. Investment in spare trucks and trailers paid off not only in growth for the small fleet, now at four rigs with a second owner-operator leased on in recent months, but in value to the customer and increased uptime. Even with the investments, profits have remained substantial for the business with robust expense management by virtue of Tim's long local and OTR experience and Shelley's close back-office accounting, even as she's routinely now behind the wheel herself.
After further deliberation among judges, Overdrive will announce the winner in the coming weeks.
