Off the top of this week's Overdrive Radio, longtime owner-op business coach Kevin Rutherford recalls his first time on a stage speaking to a roomful of owner-operators, back in 1999 at the Mid-America Trucking Show as part of Overdrive's Partners in Business seminar series at the time.
To assess the audience, among initial questions he put to the room was to ask for a show of hands among those with ready access to a detailed accounting of business performance -- say, a profit and loss statement or weekly/monthly load-by-load accounting of costs, revenues, profits. Essentially: Who here knows their numbers?
He asked the same question nearly 30 years later in October at the annual National Association of Small Trucking Companies conference, and results were similar. "About five to 10 percent of the room" raised their hands in 2025, just as in 1999, he noted. That's despite his own long efforts. "I set a goal in 1999 ... that every time I asked that I wanted more hands to go up, and I have failed miserably. I haven't even moved the needle" on it.
Yet as he contends in this week's podcast, excerpting parts of his talk at the NASTC conference, "if I can give you one thing that's going to turn your business around, it's that you have to have those numbers," he said. "It's more and more important all the time."
Rutherford at NASTC took attendees through what’s been his principal goal for more than two decades -- helping one-truck businesses optimize every single aspect of their work toward the profit goal. As noted, he’s failed to capture the full attention of most owners, yet there’s evidence among those he’s reached his message resonates and is working for many.
[Related: A plan for better business: Why do you want to be an owner-operator?]
During the last few years' storm of difficulties for trucking businesses of all sizes, it's been easy to find news of this or that trucking company’s recent bankruptcy. Yet "while we're watching carriers drop like flies, I'm watching carriers I've worked with for years set records," he said.
In this "crazy freight recession everybody's talking about, I'm seeing single-truck owner-operators put out records, revenue and profit records, that I've never seen before, that I didn't think would be possible," he added.
[Related: Profit and loss statements: Tracking, analyzing progress to effectively compete]
Achieving such won't happen overnight, and certainly isn’t what you would describe as "easy." But Rutherford hopes more owner-operators resolve this new year to take one area of focus and improve execution -- he talks about plenty in the podcast. Start there, then move to the next one, and the next one. ...
For the business owner with one truck, when it comes to controlling costs and really beating the competition, Rutherford truly feels the competitive advantage over other, more distracted fleet owners is real.
"Single best model in the industry -- a single-truck owner-operator with really good relationships with good small brokers," he said, "serving customers better than anybody else can."
Howes sponsors Overdrive Radio. The longtime trusted provider of fuel treatments like its Howes Diesel Defender all-weather mileage booster and winter Diesel Treat anti-gel / Lifeline rescue treatments to get you through the coldest temps. Find more information about all of Howes' products at the company website.
Yes, that's ROTC for short. It's the name Rutherford and NASTC have given their partnership to help deliver business insight and education to both Rutherford's network and NASTC members.
Much more on that score in the podcast:
As mentioned in the audio:
- Kevin Rutherford's "Let's Truck Tribe" network
- The National Assocation of Small Trucking Companies website
- Overdrive's own Partners in Business start-to-finish playbook for an owner-operator career, informed by both Rutherford and NASTC's work through the years
[Related: How to build the 'Remarkable One Truck Company': Kevin Rutherford, NASTC partnering on new effort]
