A&E’s new ‘Shipping Wars’ series trailer vid — and the operators featured

There’s a new reality-TV series coming January 10, with back-to-back episodes at 9 and 9:30 p.m., EST and PST, to the A&E network. You may have heard a little about it already here in Overdrive. The trailer vid for the Shipping Wars show is embedded below, and I thought I’d take a moment to introduce the hotshot haulers (and one Class 8 driver) involved.

The show springs from producers’ involvement with the folks behind the uShip.com online freight marketplace, which if you’re not familiar with it allows for owner-operators to bid on freight in real time via an eBay-like system. It’s an appropriately competitive arena, given the earnings-contest nature of the show, following on other A&E programs about various businesses, from Parking Wars (about Philadelphia tow-truck operators) to Storage Wars (about the storage auction business).

Among the operators competing for the most earnings on the show is Class 8 hauler Marc Springer (pictured), in business for just under a year. The remainder:

**Jennifer Brennan (also pictured), a rookie hauler who began hauling livestock and has expanded into more exotic hauls, such as a water buffalo and a million-dollar Ferrari.

**Jarrett Joyce, in business for several months.

New

Overdrive's Load Profit Analyzer

Know your costs, owner-operators? Compute the potential profit in any truckload, access per-day and per-mile breakouts, and compare brokers' offers on multiple loads. Enter your trucking business's fixed and variable costs, and load information, to get started. Need help? Access this video to walk through examples with Overdrive’s own Gary Buchs, whose work assessing numbers in his own business for decades inspired the Analyzer to begin with.

Try it out!

**Roy Garber, a two-year owner-operator and one of the top earners among the contestants going into the competition.

**Veteran husband-wife team Scott and Suzanne Bawcom of Dream Time Transportation. Scott is a former bomb squad specialist in Iraq turned trucker, with Suzanne working the back office and occasionally jumping in a second truck in the business.

Keep an eye out for the Jan. 10 premiere. And for now, here’s that trailer.

[youtube yV6CTqduv-I nolink]