COVID hours exemption not valid 'just because you're hauling food' – and going 'Back home' with a trucking family

In today's edition of Overdrive Radio, another in the run through our eight-episode Over the Road podcast series, coproduced for 2020 with PRX's Radiotopia podcast network. "Back home" featured our own Long Haul Paul Marhoefer, host of the show, and Over the Road contributing producer Lacy Roberts on a haul back through Lacy’s childhood as a daughter of a trucking family growing up in Montana. The tale, among the most-listened-to within the trucking community (the podcast was broadcast out to a general listening audience as well), offered a moving portrait of the sacrifices over-the-road drivers make balancing work and family life – and the sacrifices, too, those back home endure.

Don't miss an episode: Subscribe to the Overdrive Radio podcast via listening apps like Stitcher, Spotify and Apple, Google podcasts. If you get your podcasts via RSS directly into a listening app, follow this link for our primary feed.Before we get there, though, Captain Jon Olsen of the Minnesota State Patrol offers some food for thought on the COVID-19 emergency declaration's exemption to the hours of service, still in place at least through the end of the month. He and colleagues note there seems to be a disconnect between those along the food supply chain as to just what loads qualify as "emergency restocking" and what loads don't. Also: dogs aren’t livestock, maybe. That should make sense momentarily. Take a listen: