'Be the best': Lofty goals successfully executed define owner-op John Treadway's trucking career

"Be on-time, put out the extra effort. ... No matter what you're going to be in life, be the best." --Owner-operator John Treadway on his motivation through the years.

Raised to strive to “be the best” at whatever he did, owner-operator John Treadway works hard to achieve that lofty goal with his one-truck business. Call it a two-truck business, actually, with Treadway trucking with his own authority mostly in a stunningly beautiful 1998 Peterbilt 379 he calls "Teal Appeal" but with a 2006-model Pete kept as a spare to run in winter -- and as failsafe to serve his central customer. Treadway was Overdrive's Trucker of the Month for September, featured in this story by Senior Editor Matt Cole, whose talk with Treadway makes up the bulk of this week's Overdrive Radio podcast.

Treadway hauls flowers year-round for a greenhouse operation near his base in Kokomo, Indiana, with his Tway (prounced TEE-Way) Rose Transport, with authority for going on a decade now after some decades more leased to others. His story stretches back to his start trucking with the 1990 purchase of a 1985 Kenworth Liberty Edition cabover he used to haul grain with his older brother, eventually moving on to pull flatbeds and other trailers. It’s reefer work these days for the flower operation, and since Cole caught Treadway and his tractor at the Mid-America Trucking Show early this year he’s put work into a 2017 Great Dane reefer to match the lines and colors of the "Teal Appeal" 1998 Pete, as you’ll hear in the podcast today.

Overdrive Radio's sponsor is So much of Treadway’s approach to trucking he traces to the time before he ever even held a steering wheel, his life built in the business on top of those be-the-best values instilled at an early age, along with admiration of truck owners whose names he may have never known but from whom he garnered shining examples to which to aspire. Along with business brass tacks he keeps early lessons learned at the front his mind -- what it takes to build success as a one-truck owner and to have a little fun along the way, too.

"One of my good friends told me a long, long time ago, 'To be an owner-operator, that's a 364-day-a year job,'" Treadway said. "You're driving through the day, you're hauling the loads, but it doesn't stop. The weekend comes, and you've got repairs to do, and then on top of that if you want to add a piece of chrome or something, you have to try to fit all that in. There's just a grind to it. You've just gotta keep grinding, and keep moving forward."

Read about all of our 2025 Truckers of the Month, contenders for the