At the top of this week's podcast, crank it up again with bull hauler Troy Bolin's rare breed of a Caterpillar diesel in an on-highway truck, the V8 3408 motor in his 1979 Peterbilt 359. If you missed it last week, I got a close look at Bolin's 302-inch-wheelbase unit at the Crossroads Truck Meet early last month in Missouri. Tap that link or listen to this Overdrive Radio edition (above or below) to hear its story here, too.
But the bulk of this week's edition features another owner-operator brain trust in the Trucking Solutions Group, long a regular conference-call meet-up between a bevy of owners aimed at business improvement through sharing experience. For several years now, the TSG has routinely lent us all a window into their decades of combined experience at the Mid-America Trucking Show, where Landstar rep Bob Bailey moderated this panel discussion in March with TSG members focused on questionable choices and successes. They called it "Failing! ... to Succeed," acknowledging there's a whole heck of a lot all of us learn from our own, and others', failures.
Owner-operator and TSG current Chairman Joel Boelman set up the discussion with a slide that showed the following two-column chart.
"Questionable choices" discussed ranged from use of a factoring service for load payments, a change in carriers for leased owners, and working with a dispatch service to holding onto a wide variety of trailers too long and getting tied up with time in "overanalysis." The decision to change carriers was also on the "do it again" side of the ledger, along with purchase of an aerodynamic truck, the switch from company driver to owner-operator, and a variety of tried-and-true, and some novel, practices to recommend based on these owners' experiences.
Benefits that can accrue learning from a failure with a shift in a positive direction are perhaps best illustrated by owner-operator Boelman, who recounted a recent fuel-island conversation with an owner of an International LoneStar in the next fuel lane.
Boelman's Freightliner is outfitted with a variety of aero additions in many ways modeled after owner-operator Henry Albert's Team Run Smart tractor and trailer, though Boelman pulls open-deck freight. When the LoneStar owner saw how low Boelman's aero skirts sat, he remarked on a fairly significant tradeoff for this much investment in fuel economy improvement.
[Related: Triumphs and tradeoffs of freight specialization: Finding your niche haul]
"Kinda hard to get under there and grease it, isn't it," the owner-op joked with Boelman.
Overdrive Radio's sponsor is Howes, longtime provider of fuel treatments like its Howes Diesel Defender all-weather mileage booster and winter anti-gel treatments to get you through the coldest temps, the Howes Multipurpose penetrating oil, and other products.
The LoneStar owner asked him, "Well, what are you getting for fuel economy?"
Boelman had somewhat recently switched from a basic flatbed to an even more aero-ugly trailer set-up, he said. "With this new trailer I'm down to 7.5." Before, he'd been getting 8.25 mpg with the standard flat.
A little later on, both men now standing in line at the cashier for a sandwich, the LoneStar owner turned to Boelman. "Real quick in my head," he said, "I just figured out every year you're spending $10,000 less for fuel than I am."
"That could be," Boelman noted.
And then, the LoneStar owner: "Well, in 10 years that's a million dollars."
Math mistakes aside, $100,000 more saved is certainly a lot of money, testament to Boelman's decision to invest in aerodynamics, even while pulling an aero-ugly trailer, as it were. Hear much more from him as well as independent owner-operator Mark Heggestad and team expedited owners Stephen Halsted and Sandra Goche:
As mentioned in the podcast:
- Small Fleet owners of 3-30 trucks can enter to compete in Overdrive's Small Fleet Championship through July.
- Overdrive's own biz-improvement Partners in Business library.
- Trucking Solutions Group's website.
Find more business insight in the Overdrive/ATBS coproduction of the Partners in Business playbook, a comprehensive manual for owner-operator careers. The 2025 PIB edition is newly accessible in this dynamic online content library format.
