Trucking with authority, take two: Another run at independence for owner-operator Matthew Karr

Mathew Karr: Well, I was a little shocked. I don't feel like I deserve any of that. I mean, I'm just doing what I do, knowing what I've done for the last 25 years.

Todd Dills: A few words of modesty from our May Trucker of the Month, owner-operator Matthew Karr, there at the top. He was nominated in Overdrive's Trucker of the Year competition for 2023 by his wife Koren Karr, who surprised him with the nomination. The reason I asked him for his reaction to it. To my memory, all of our nominees have as yet this year come with the knowledge of the owner-operator involved when the nomination came from someone other than that owner, as it were. Owner-operator Karr is well deserving, no doubt. Coming off a banner year of pulling a fuel tanker in various areas of the country, least quality transportation out a Halltown, Missouri. I'm Todd Dills, and for this edition of Overdrive Radio for Friday, June 9th 2023, and dropping at the world famous OverdriveOnline.com this coming Monday. We're walking through Karr’s quarter-century trucking with him, in his own words.

It's a story full of the highs and lows you can expect from most of our lives and Karr's case, early mistakes delivered real value and learning experiences that continue to serve a healthy respect for the difficulty with his small business ownership. This year, the fuel hauler setting out on his second voyage towards successful authority. Still in his very early stages, though he is much better prepared this time around than he was the last. In launching in a time like the present, he's banking on the wisdom and a maxim he shared with others about trucking as an owner operator.

Mathew Karr: I told him, I said, if you want to buy a truck and you want to get started, do it when times are bad, because if you make it when times are bad, you're going to do it when times are good. If you buy them when times are good, you're not going to make it when times are bad.

Todd Dills: As for his wife, Koren, here's what she had to say about her nomination of Karr and his K-Mac Trucking business.

Koren Karr: I thought that this is something that he's had, that lifelong dream of doing, and I've watched him do all of this from the ground up, but I've been very impressed with his abilities on having the contacts that he has. He doesn't make any rash decisions. He thinks everything through obsessively before making decisions, which is really a great quality to have. But I've just been very proud of watching him grow through this whole process and learning about all of these. I mean, it's tough. There's so many permits and taxes and licenses and things to do, and it's just been really neat seeing him grow as a business owner and then having the authority for hazmat was his ultimate goal. So he finally made it.

Todd Dills: On the other side of a break then, we'll dive into owner-operator Karr's history, which stretches back into the 1990s in southwest Missouri, not far from where he's headquartered today.

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Mathew Karr: Missouri, little town called Summersville. About 550 people. My graduating class was 25 or 26 people. I hate to admit to it, but I've just always been fascinated by these stupid ass trucks. Now because I've been in them most of my adult life. When I was a kid, I loved them. As a kid my best friend's dad was in... He hauled cars for a living and I used to... But if they do something short, I could go ride with him every once in a while. And then my stepdad's... Well he was my neighbor. But my stepdad's cousin had an own [inaudible 00:04:50] over. He used to haul cattle. They used to haul their own cattle. They were pretty big outfits.

So I'd always go talk to him and he'd let me look around in the truck. I never could go with him. I don't cattle... I don't know what... He was always longer stuff. But I always [inaudible 00:05:07] my pot different things. So even as a kid, my sister and my brother used to... Every time we'd pass the track, I'd always say Peterbilt, Peterbilt. As a young man I was always fascinating with them. Stupid Peterbilts.

Todd Dills: If I'm not remembering right, you are the proud owner of, what is it, a 389?

Mathew Karr: Well, I've had several of them, yes. But yeah, it's a 389. I'm in a 21. I ordered it, I spec’d it out. 290 inch wheelbase. It's a legendary blue. It's a nice truck. I didn't do anything overboard with it because it's still a tool. A hammer's a hammer. It's still a tool. I wasn't even trying to make it a show truck. No point in that. I just wanted to make it nice for me.

Todd Dills: What's the sleeper on it?

Mathew Karr: It is 78, I believe. It's the bigger one that you could get from the factory, not the super sleeper.

Todd Dills: You're fascinated with trucks at a young age. You're riding along with your friend's father. When did you make moves to actually start working in trucking?

Mathew Karr: Well, I moved up to Southwest Missouri when I was probably 18, 19, somewhere around there. And how I got started is my brother's neighbor is... I'd go see my brother and they lived out in a little town called Freistatt. Well, their neighbor was a dairy farmer and the dairy farmer, his kids had trucks. His daughter and her husband had trucks. Well, their daughter, which happened to be my first wife, ended up getting involved with them. And I honestly owe my career to that man. That's my ex father-in-law who it is. And he's the one that taught me how to drive. And he'd been... Well that was 25 years ago and he'd been for 20 years. So I don't come from the new breed of truckers. I come from that old school, get your hand smacked if you've missed a gear mentality. And I literally get your hand smacked if you missed a gear mentality. Didn't have automatics back then.

Todd Dills: A friend of mine, another old school driver for sure, he called it the... Referenced the same thing. He said that... What is it? The yard stick method of driver training. Guys sitting back in the sleeper, if you miss, you're going to get the yard stick.

Mathew Karr: Pretty much. He passed away a few years ago.

Todd Dills: What was his name?

Mathew Karr: Andy Morgan. He taught me. He just taught me everything. And one of the best advice he ever gave me was, you never know as much as you think you know and don't ever try to out drive yourself. And that's the best advice he ever gave me. Don't go beyond your limitations.

Todd Dills: Yeah, be aware of your own limitations.

Mathew Karr: Yeah, that's what... Yeah, be aware of your own limitations.

Todd Dills: And it sounds like that served you well. I mean, I think Koren told me you haven't had any significant accidents over the course of your career.

Mathew Karr: No, I haul fuel, I help petroleum products, so you always have to be on the defense.

Todd Dills: What were your former in-laws... What kind of work were they in again, when you were first getting trained?

Mathew Karr: Oh, it was reefer. That was the easiest thing to get into back in the day. Well, it still is I think, anybody can do that.

Todd Dills: Yeah. And it's one of the things that is a little bit less impacted by some of the cycles of economic activity, I guess. We all got to eat. We all want our food and beverage, right?

Mathew Karr: Absolutely. I think I was 22 when I actually got my license and a lot of people wouldn't really hire me until I was 23. Back then everybody jumped jobs. But I believe I was working for CTI, I think I was working for CTI, Central Transport... Or Central Tracking... What do they call there name? Anyway, they're out in Indiana and they have big terminal in Springfield. And I was going out... I was in early 20s, 22, 23, barely 23. I was going out west one day and I think I was in Wyoming and I ran into a tanker driver and he pulled up... I mean he passed me and I went to the truck stop. I pulled up to get fuel, and he was sitting there in a lawn chair just kicking back, unloading. So I started talking to him a little bit about it and we talked about different things and he was telling me about how fast-paced it is.

You get to relax a little bit. Like he was unloading, sitting there in a lawn chair because you want to be where your shutoffs are. And about how many loads he does a day and just different things. And I thought I might be interested in that. Well, me and being young and ignorant, I ended up... I quit that job, went to work for another job because the trucks weren't fast enough for me. Young, stupid. And I worked for Starport Leasing out of Springfield, Missouri. And actually he didn't lease trucks yet, so I worked for him as a company driver and somebody talked to him, ended up doing lease purchase on his trucks and he ended up doing that. And I did real well for a while. I did real good for a while and I ended up getting hooked up with some of them old timers and like, oh, you don't need to do that.

And so it was stupid stuff. I mean, literally we drove idiots and fuel was going up and I wasn't making any... 82 cents a mile as an owner operator, what I thought to be an owner-operatorthat wasn't... I didn't know squat back then and got too many speeding tickets is what happened. And actually got my license suspended for 30 or 90 days. I don't remember. For too many tickets, too many points. Anyway, ended up letting him have that truck back, like I said, it was a lease purchase. He expected... They all expect lease purchases to go back.

Todd Dills: Yeah, that's too bad.

Mathew Karr: Anyway, I had to work BS jobs. Ended up getting custody of my daughters, had to drive a dump truck, got my license, straightened out, drive a dump truck for several years, never forgot about the gas business, never forgot about it, and then got an opportunity to work for an outfit.

They're still around, but I didn't know much about them. Hauling ethanol, started with that and then ended up going to work for a company called Solar. They're out in Des Moines, Iowa, and it was a good company. It still is a good company and they're still around. The pay back then wasn't the greatest. And I thought, well, I could do better. So I went to work for another guy by the name of John Autry, pulling tanker. This was probably 15, 17 years ago, I'm thinking. John Autry wasn't that long ago, but went to work for a guy by the name of John Autry and he owner operator, he's had several trucks through the years and he kind of mentored me on owning and I listened to what he did. I paid attention because I knew times were changing. He had to do things different.

And gas was a whole different beast, whole different monster of how you operate your business. I learned a lot from him. And so I tell everybody he's my mentor because when it comes to trucking business, he knows his stuff. And so I just learned from him. Most people don't think about this, especially big fleets. But one of the simplest things that he has taught me is a little bit... Spend a little bit now will save you a lot of money later. And doing maintenance on these trucks, simple things, that's not that expensive will save you a lot of money. And something else that he taught me is, you're not always going to be able to pay yourself, but you always got to make sure your drivers come first and your company comes first. Even if you have bad times, you can't pay yourself.

We went through some rough times. There was times we only had a hundred bucks in our business account, but we made it through. We always made it through. But one of the things I took from his page, yes, minor things, believe it or not, shocks all right. Especially with what we do with gas, shocks are only going to last you about a year on the tractor, especially drive shocks. Everybody's like, well, when they start leaking, you have to change them. No, no. When you start feeling them...

One of my mechanics that I use, he's like, I don't know how you know when them shocks are going bad. I said, I just feel it. But think about it, shocks are a hundred bucks a piece. Tires are $700 a piece, six, $700 a piece. Bad shocks, makes your tires go bad. Stuff like that. Change your rear end fluid properly. Just stuff like that. I mean, just simple things like that. A little bit of maintenance, pre-maintenance goes a long ways.

Todd Dills: You mentioned the tough times. I think maybe we might be jumping ahead a little bit. Tell me though, when did you really go out and buy the first truck? When was it? Was that six years ago?

Mathew Karr: The first actual truck that I bought, one that wasn't a lease deal, when I [inaudible 00:15:29] once. And the reason it took so long is I was raising my daughters. But I'll tell you this, having custody of my kids, I didn't want to commit to something that I knew I would have to commit to 100%. So after I got custody... Until my daughters got grown is before I bought my first truck, which part of that is my wife now that has supported me and helped me get through the bad times. I'm going to tell you, she's a hell of a lot smarter than I am. But anyway, so six years ago I bought my first truck. I started out leasing to a few companies here and there. Didn't care for it. I wanted to go back. I only did it for about a year, went back to gas. I was leased onto a guy couple different times, quality transportation at Halltown named Dave Bomb. I got to give him kudos, he's a good man, he's a great man.

Hauling gas, leased onto him probably five years ago. We would've been six years, seven years.

Koren Karr: Almost seven years.

Mathew Karr: Almost seven years. So I've been leased onto him off and on. There was a short spot in between there that I got my own authority and went out on my own. Well, I made the mistake of not listening to a lot of these guys. Don't grow too fast. I tried to buy too much, insurance got high. Luckily when I bought the market was down and I got to sell everything when the market was on the uptick. So diverted that disaster. But anyway, leased on to him for several years and then last couple years I've done pretty well for myself money-wise and I don't have any depreciation left, so I decided to buy a trailer and go back out on my own again.

Todd Dills: He's well prepped for this as we'll hear, having learned from his past mistakes, operating a small fleet and with quality transportation, I mentioned earlier, taking a lead role on various emergency services projects for them through the years, including recent times.

Mathew Karr: Probably January, February, March out in Colorado I was bidding on work, getting the work and then dispatching probably about five of his trucks while I was out Colorado, which was great that he allowed me to do that because my rates bidding that stuff were a lot higher than what he would've bid it for because he would've just...

When it comes to emergency stuff, he lets some of his owner operators just bid on it and go on with it, just handle it. Well, he's more focused, which by all rights he needs to be, he's more focused on his daily customers, which is good. That's what you should do. That's how you stay in business. Then one-offs that make you a lot of money in the short term don't necessarily keep you in business.

Todd Dills: Now are you about to go bet your business on those one-offs?

Mathew Karr: No.

Koren Karr: Sometimes.

Mathew Karr: Sometimes.

Koren Karr: If there's a disaster.

Mathew Karr: Yeah, it's like emergency leave, hurricanes. Back in February, Suncor out in Colorado went down for a while. Half the gas trucks in the country were out there hauling fuel.

Todd Dills: So you recently purchased a trailer?

Mathew Karr: Yeah, it was a 2023 Polar gas trailer, four hole, 9500 gallon capacity. We don't haul that much, it's just what the capacity is. Four different compartments. You could load four different products on there technically.

Todd Dills: Is that a common scenario? Different products on the same trailer?

Mathew Karr: Oh yeah. That's done every day. I mean every day that's how most loads are built. Let's just say you'll have 6000 regular unleaded. You may have 1000 premium and 1000 diesel on there, or 65 101 or something similar to that scenario.

Todd Dills: And when you're doing these deliveries, you're picking up where and delivering to where? What are some of the different scenarios that you're in?

Mathew Karr: You have your terminals where the pipeline, your storage terminals, where they pipeline from the refineries go to and then they have big ground tanks. Then you will go to the pipeline terminals to load and then you'll deliver to gas stations or whatever. And I have to tell you, you've probably seen some of these gas stations. It's not the easiest thing to do. 290 inch wheel based truck, which mine's stupid long. When I ordered it, I wasn't planning on coming back to gas, but I did. But I manage with it, it does fine.

Most people don't realize we're getting truck and trailer transport, truck transports. You've seen how long gas trailers are and trucks in the gas stations... Most people get nervous about pulling a fifth wheel camper into or comprehensive camper. And we're having to maneuver that. And that's what people don't understand When they see us, a gas truck's going into somewhere a certain way, there's a reason we're doing that because our storage is in one spot and we have to be creative of how we get in and out and calculating on how we get in and out some of these places.

Todd Dills: I made reference to a tiny station on Porter Road, my Nashville neighborhood, where I've often seen combination tankers parked for delivery, in spots and at angles that are no doubt a testament to those operators understanding of geometry and skill maneuvering the rigs. Karr has been there generally time and again as noted and here in Nashville too, more particularly.

Mathew Karr: Oh, I've hauled down there a lot. A couple of years ago the Kroger's were having a dispute with their carrier I guess, or whatever the contract is at. So I was down here hauling the Kroger's stores. You've seen that? You've seen how tight some of them are?

Todd Dills: Oh yeah. That's one I was thinking of too. It's not the particular one that I was thinking of when I was talking to you, but there is Kroger on... This is in my neighborhood. This is Eastland and Gallatin Avenue. I don't know if you know that one at all, but it's on the east side of town here. And anyway, it's pretty tight.

Mathew Karr: I hauled all over the place out there, all in Kroger.

Todd Dills: What happened to you guys around COVID and the kind of... Sounds like you just basically got a little bit overextended with purchases and trying to grow too fast. How big did you get up to in terms of the number of folks that you had running onto your authority and what happened? Tell me that story.

Mathew Karr: Well, we made it through COVID pretty good. I wasn't over extending on money. I was over extending on it... It was hard to get drivers.

Koren Karr: And then we lost two of them at the same time.

Mathew Karr: We lost two drivers at the same time. And insurance for three trucks. I had four trailers. Two were reefers, one was a tanker and the other one was a hopper bottom. And the insurance for that, because it was new authority, was $77,000 a year just for that. So everything was fine. We had enough money in the bank to float us through, but when I wasn't having revenue coming in because my guys would quit or things would get slower, this or that, or the other. I still had them bills to pay, especially that insurance.

So I finally decided I'm done. I'm done with this stuff. So I'll give it a couple of years to watch what the economy's doing and maybe start fresh and not over grow... Not too fast again. And I'm not going [inaudible 00:23:54] to you. I don't plan on doing anything more than myself. Just one truck, one trailer for many, many years. I mean we had some slow times in COVID, because I had two reefer trailers, that's why. Like I said, anybody would get reefer and hopper bottom and all three of... My tanker sat for almost a year before I sold it. But with all three of them it was food grade products. So we stayed... started going pretty good.

Todd Dills: Now, you just got the tanker at the moment. I wonder, I was just going to ask if you had any of those trailers left at all, those other trailers?

Mathew Karr: Sold all of them. I got everything... Sold all my trucks, all my trailers, and I got lucky. Lucky that the market was starting to come back up. Starting to go down now.

Koren Karr: You kept your truck [inaudible 00:24:51].

Mathew Karr: Well, I kept my truck. Yes, absolutely. I kept my truck. But there's a friend of mine that was wanting to buy a truck. Oh, was it last year when the market was going crazy high and going stupid. I told him not to do it and luckily he listened to me. He's like, oh... And he's an older guy. Oh Matthew, I swear, I'm glad I listened to you. I said, Robert, I've been through these ups and downs and swings for 25 years and a lot of guys don't realize... It baffles their mind that I'm at the age that I am, which is younger than them.

And I've been driving longer than a lot of them. But I've literally been doing it my entire adult career. But I told him, I said, if you want to buy a truck and you want to get started, do it when times are bad. Because if you make it when times are bad, you're going to do it when times are good. If you buy them when times are good, you're not going to make it when times are bad. I'm glad he listened to me and that's why things have slowed down a little bit. The economy's not doing great. Interest rates are going up, which I've luckily got pretty good interest rates on my trailer. If you can make it through the slow times, you can flourish in the good, but a lot of these guys do it backwards, in my opinion.

Todd Dills: Matthew Karr's hopeful that serves him well with his new run at trucking with authority. Fortunately he's in equipment at what he considers reasonable prices. That new trailer he mentioned, but also his 2021 Peak 389. He's about half through the note there. Fortunately purchased prior to the big run on equipment amid the pandemic and inspired shortages.

Mathew Karr: I've ordered mine brand new, ordered it and inspected it out the way I want it. I gave a hundred... With everything I had done it was like $174,000 for it. A year later I had people offer me 250 for it on a used truck, 225, 250. I'm like, what am I going to replace it with? So I kept it.

Todd Dills: Probably a good decision.

Mathew Karr: Yeah, because the new ones are if you can even get one or they're what? 250 now I think.

Todd Dills: When you get approved, where are you going to be? Is this local work that you're doing or is this... Are you going to be centered on a particular locale or is this something where you will go to a certain place and spend a lot of time there servicing stations and then come back to a different place? How are you planning to approach it?

Mathew Karr: It's a little bit of both is how that works. Some of the suppliers that I've set up with, they like the idea to have someone that will travel for them, which is good because you can charge a premium freight rate on that and go into a location where they may have... A bunch of people have the flu or something, or too many people on vacation. You can go into an area like let's say Nashville, contracts might be is having issues or pipeline might be down. That pad may be down or something. So if you're willing to travel, that's why I have a sleeper in my truck. Another reason, if you're willing to travel, you can have a premium price, but most of the time though, you just run around local and that's why you see a lot of gas trucks with sleepers on them.

The big guys is... Or the smaller outfits is because the ones that are willing to travel is the ones that can capitalize on them. You remember, was it last year, last November? Old Tucker Carlson said that we only had 30 days fuel supply left. So that's not incorrect. That's normal. That's all we really have. That's really all we have is if all the refineries stop working, period, then we'll have in the national reserves, we'll have 30 days left. But what happens is that all goes for the government. That's strategic reserves. That's what it's for. Well everybody on the East Coast panicked. So we were...

Todd Dills: Let's just say here it was a good time to be a fuel hauler last year. Karr did very well and he's learned a lot about the fuel movement business over the years.

Mathew Karr: We charged by the gallon. So you have so much per gallon per mile is what you charge, like zero to 15 is maybe 3 cents a gallon is what you're charging. But the market... The cost on the freight's usually fixed pretty much, unless... Then you got fuel surcharge and stuff on top of that. But the price when you're buying it is up and down, constantly up and down. So they're playing the market, just like the stock market, market is playing the market. So if they can... When the price changes at certain time, if the price is going way up, then they load as much as they can before that time.

But sometimes it catches them too because it may be going up 10 cents one day and then they buy it for, let's just say make it easy numbers because this is not their actual price, but let's just say it's a dollar a gallon to buy it at [inaudible 00:30:22] and then it goes up 10 or 15 cents at time X. Well then the next day it ends up going down. And they load a full load of gas and go put it in the ground. The next day it fricking stuff drops 25 cents, then they lost money. So it's all a game they play. Keeps you on your toes, keeps you from getting bored, I suppose.

Todd Dills: [inaudible 00:30:52] benefits of this kind of work. This last year has been pretty crazy one for you guys, I'm sure, doing that kind of work.

Mathew Karr: Oh yeah. When I first started, fuel... [inaudible 00:31:08] and I moved it penny at one way up or down it. I mean it may stayed the same. If it moved 2 cents, everybody was in a panic mode. Now it may have 10, 20 cents swings. Oh, it was after the new administration got in, things started going crazy. There was 90 cents swings on diesel fuel at the [inaudible 00:31:31]... It's crazy. That's huge. 90 cents a gallon swings.

Todd Dills: What's the insurance kind of looking like here?

Mathew Karr: Not bad. It's not bad. No, because Great West, they have a program for one truck, one trailer, small operators like that. They're pretty fair. One of the reasons my insurance was the high before is because a lot of these cotton picking brokers or whoever you hauled for wanted you to have 300,000 to half a million dollars worth of cargo liability, while their stuff you're hauling isn't even worth a $100,000 or even $20,000. They want you to have that cargo on there.

Where with fuel, my cargo is really low. What is high is my liability portion and because it's fuel and hazardous material and I have an umbrella policy too. But I'll some of these outfits think their stuff's worth more than what it really is. Now I get it if it's really is worth that. But a lot of these places wanted you to have that you hauled for 250 to half a million dollars worth of cargo. And that's where my insurance went up and it wasn't worth it. Trust me, it wasn't, the freight wasn't worth what they wanted you to carry as far as... It didn't pay worth what they wanted you to have insurance.

Todd Dills: This time out with his motor carrier authority, the owner-operator moves forward with the full support of his partner at home of course. Here's Koren Karr describing how the two met while working with Solar Transport to take us through to the end.

Koren Karr: We met in the gas industry. So we both worked at Solar together, Solar Transport, and we met through that and we immediately clicked. We were really good friends from the very beginning. I don't think it was even that we had a lot in common necessarily. We had the same sense of humor and the same industry experience. So then we were just friends for years.

Mathew Karr: We leaned on each other when the other one was going through a divorce.

Koren Karr: We both went through divorces not too far apart from each other.

Mathew Karr: Not because of each other.

Koren Karr: It's very, very important to mention.

Yeah, so then we leaned on each other and we dated other people after our divorces and then somehow we just... Well, he asked if I wanted to go to dinner one night after work and I said, yeah, just like for a din, just to meet after work. And then he came and picked me up and he had flowers and I knew that that was actually.

Mathew Karr: You had a bad day.

Koren Karr: I had a really bad day. And he picked me up with flowers and I realized it was actually a date and we've been together ever since.

Mathew Karr: I didn't even realize it was a date either at that time.

Koren Karr: It was a date. So we met through the fuel industry and then we can't get out of trucking. I've tried. I went back to school to get a degree in criminology and ended up right back in trucking at Solar after I finished my degree.

Todd Dills: A big thanks here to both the Karr's for their time and congrats to Matthew for the nod for Overdrive's Trucker of the Year award, for sure. You can enter your own one to three truck business or put forward an exceptional owner-operatoryou know who's well deserving through the nomination form at OverdriveOnline.com. I'll put a link to it in show notes wherever you're listening. And if you haven't, leave Overdrive Radio a rating or review there. No doubt it helps interested owners find the podcast.