Overdrive’s Todd Dills wins prominent business journalism honors

Dills’ multi-month series examining states’ truck enforcement strategies and an analysis of enforcement patterns across the country — and their impact on owner-operators’ CSA scores — won the Best Series award.

Overdrive and Senior Editor Todd Dills have won two prestigious Jesse H. Neal Awards for business journalism excellence, issued annually by Connectiv (formerly known as American Business Media).

Also, Dills was selected as Connectiv’s 2017 McAllister Editorial Fellow. He will work with business journalism students this year as a guest instructor at the prestigious Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

Todd Dills

Dills received the recognition for his continued examination of the U.S. DOT’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability program and for his overall body of work. The awards, recognizing work published in 2016, were announced March 31 in New York City.

“Todd continues to set a high standard with his high-quality, prolific output that has broadened as the publishing world has evolved into a diverse mix of print and digital media,” said Max Heine, Overdrive editorial director. “His interviews, his use of social media and his blog have enabled him to cultivate a wide range of owner-operator sources. With the help of proprietary data from Overdrive’s sister subsidiary at Randall-Reilly, EDA, Todd’s data-based reporting continues to provide the industry’s most penetrating analysis of CSA.”

Dills’ CSA coverage earned a Neal in the Best Series category, the third year in the last four that Dills has won in the category. The 2016 series built on Dills’ previous years of coverage examining the carrier scoring program and its flaws and inconsistencies, especially for small business truckers. It turned a spotlight on individual states’ truck-enforcement departments and offered analyses of enforcement patterns in regions around the country.

In its first year, the series won the Grand Neal award, which recognizes the year’s best overall entry into the awards program. This year it was named first runner-up in the Grand Neal competition.

Dills also won the Best Range of Work category, which recognized the variety and quality of his news and in-depth features, his Channel 19 blog, the Overdrive Radio podcast series and videos.