Previously on Over the Road: Channel One-Nine Special from ‘Over the Road’ — Old home week
The Over the Road podcast, a co-production of Overdrive and PRX’s Radiotopia podcast network, finishes the 16-week run of its main series today with a final episode, “The Road Ahead,” in which Overdrive contributing writer and Moeller Trucking driver Paul Marhoefer documents a yogurt haul outbound from the Midwest to Texas and then to the 2019 Great American Trucking Show in Dallas, Texas. There, the OTR crew explores the implications for drivers of new technology in trucking — specifically, the march toward vehicles capable of more autonomous operation.
In a time of swift change for the business of trucking, too, it may come as no surprise that many of the stories told in earlier episodes of the podcast have not been sitting still. Marhoefer and crew check in with several drivers profiled in earlier episodes, including owner-operators Kenyette Godhigh-Bell, Jared Sidlo and Mike Landis, Binda Atwal, author Finn Murphy, and Genevieve Slusher from the 49er Fuel Center. Contributing producer Lacy Robert’s brother, Zane, too, who’s made his own tentative moves toward driving.
Marhoefer caps it all off by resuming the run started at the top of the episode, with a haul back toward home in Indiana whose receiver he can’t quite recall, ultimately. Increasingly, “I have a hard time remembering loads,” he says. “After a while, they really do all become a blur.”
If you missed early episodes, you can also search for “Over the Road” via your podcast app of choice, or visit OvertheRoad.fm to stream the episodes. The series of eight primary episodes, hosted by Marhoefer, began Feb. 20, 2020, and aired every two weeks thereafter. During off weeks, “Channel One Nine Special” quick takes answering listeners’ questions with interviews of professional truckers and callouts over the CB or the phone lines, was hosted by Overdrive Senior Editor Todd Dills, whose Overdrive work includes the Channel 19 blog. For those of you who heard them all, as Marhoefer says, thanks for sticking with us through the very end of the run …
