The video above features part of a roundtable talk recorded at the 2025 Mid-America Trucking Show, with Red Eye Radio host Eric Harley leading discussion with ATBS Vice President Mike Hosted, Overdrive Editor Todd Dills and Overdrive contributor and business coach Gary Buchs.
This excerpt from the talk touched on the lingering impacts of a multiyear freight recession, and how smart owner-operators weathered it in 2024 with cost control and other adjustments. Many owners finally, after two years' worth of declines, actually improved income in '24 despite the rough revenue and freight-rates picture.
At least that was the experience of ATBS clients considered overall, as Hosted shared with his firm's March 2025 deep dive into prior-year data owner-operators can benchmark their own operations against.
In the MATS conversation with Harley, Hosted shared insights from ATBS clients who stayed plenty profitable in 2024, despite rates and revenues continuing to fall. Key to survival? Solid planning.
[Related: Creating your financial map: The basics of owner-operator business planning]
By budgeting for downturns with routine emergency savings, tracking costs per day and per mile, and making disciplined decisions about fuel efficiency and load choice, planners have not only stayed in business. Many increased take-home income year-over-year, even in the freight-rates famine that was 2024.
As for those new to the business that entered the trucking marketplace during what Hosted called the "feast," the high-rates 2020-early-2022 period, many started up without the plans in place.
"They came in with expensive equipment and high expectations," Hosted said, and a whole lot of them haven't survived the three-year slog since. "Those that were in it, and have been through up and down cycles, and do have that plan, they have their maintenance savings" and other resources to tap in a cash-flow crunch. Likewise: "They've adjusted, and pivoted and started looking at nickels and dimes and making sure those stay in their pockets."
Slowing down to save fuel, looking for extra-load opportunities in any given week when fixed costs are met, enhancing take-home income.
[Related: What's an extra 1 mpg worth worth at today's freight rates? An extra 3 mpg?]
Owner-operators in ATBS's client base, Hosted said, "actually made more money than the year prior," 2023. "When they sustain that and we come out of the down market, they're going to be in the best shape of their careers."
Also in the video, Overdrive Editor Dills highlights the story of 2024 Trucker of the Year Alan Kitzhaber. Hauling with a 1995 Kenworth T600 then with a Caterpillar engine and 4.1 million miles on the odometer and with higher-than-average maintenance costs, Kitzhaber's attention to detail around cost control and fuel-saving modifications helped him retire well, finally, shortly after MATS.
From understanding your break-even to building in flexibility for the next crisis, the lesson is clear: feast or famine, planning is everything.
The MATS discussion expanded on the myriad pieces of owner-operator business instructional content found in the Partners in Business playbook, a collaboration between Overdrive and ATBS offering small fleet and owner-op strategies for long-term success, now in a mobile-friendly format.
Browse the PIB playbook via this link, and find more excerpts from the Red Eye Radio roundtable from this and prior years' MATS via the playlist below:
