With this Overdrive Radio edition, we’re releasing our brand-new Partners in Business start-to-finish playbook for owner-operator careers. For more than two decades, Overdrive's Partners in Business, coproduced with owner-op business services firm ATBS, has focused on training and continuing biz education for owner-operators. The 2025 reboot of PIB revamps the structure with today's professional truckers in mind -- you'll find at the new site a brand-new format for all of the content that last year made up the 100-plus-page book -- and plenty in the way of new updates.
We've taken it from a single-download format to more of an online content library, easily accessed on any smartphone, tablet or laptop or desktop computer.
Access the new PIB playbook at this link.
The reorganization maintains the PIB mission: to deliver valuable tactics and strategies for long-term profitability. It's organized in eight categories, charting the journey of owners from start-up all the way through to retirement:
- The “Starting Line” section details among a myriad of topics the choice of business structures, motivating factors for different individual owners, and plenty to think about in terms of business and goal planning, finding your freight niche, a motor carrier to lease to, and/or how and why to take another route altogether.
- The “Equipment and Maintenance” category pulls on Overdrive and ATBS resources along with the accumulated knowledge of so many of our industry-participant contributors over the decades to detail the ways to acquire the best equipment at the most-favorable terms, down and dirty PM and repair tactics, and much more.
- In "Business Management,” a wealth of insight on tracking costs, revenue and profits; building those profit and loss statements; and paying yourself for better business health analysis and load planning, among many other subjects germane to both beginners at the start of an ownership career and seasoned veterans in need of a business refresh.
The remaining five sections dig into more discrete areas of trucking business -- “Safety and Compliance” and “Trucking and other insurance” on to “Taxes,” “Independence and Growth” for those with authority and/or aspiring small fleet owners, and the “Finish Line” section, in part on retirement and how to save and invest early for yourself and the family.
All is aimed at a self-help assist for owners to better enjoy the fruits of long labor put into the business. That last bit's a nod to the title of Part 2 of Overdrive 2024 Trucker of the Year Alan Kitzhaber’s “Plan for better business” published right around the time we announced Kitzhaber’s big win in January.
[Related: Join us at MATS to honor Trucker of the Year Alan Kitzhaber]
He's looking ahead to being able to retire quite soon, actually, after more than three decades trucking, mostly as an owner-operator. He’ll be parking his truck amongst the rest of you at MATS this year, and I’m honored to be able to help host him at the show. If you won’t be there, keep tuned for much more from him and other longtime owners in our show coverage. Truth be told, all of us here at Overdrive lean on those of you who engage with us for ideas worth sharing, a lot of Partners in Business itself in fact made up of the accumulated wisdom of those in the readership who’ve shared their expertise over the decades. Here's huge appreciation for all of you.
Also in the podcast: MATS-preview retreads from three interviews from the last several weeks with Jamie Hagen, Hotels4Truckers.com proprietor Dan Fuller, and trucker-songwriter Tony Justice. You can keep tuned to all MATS coverage from the show and previews via this link.
Again, run through the new PIB at this link.
As mentioned in the podcast, here's the registration link for ATBS's live update scheduled for March 25 charting 2024 owner-op income performance.
