Jamie Hagen is 'hellbent' on fuel economy, growth with his small fleet

While Jamie Hagen always knew he would be a truck driver (there was a brief flirtation with becoming an astronaut), he likely never thought of himself as a trucking fleet owner and social media star. 

Hagen, known on the Twitter/X platform as Mack Lovin, is among trucking's most well-known social media influencers, and has been since before many ever knew what an influencer was.

Jamie Hagen has spent nearly his entire life behind the wheel of a truck, but lately finds himself more often behind the wheel of his growing trucking company.Hagen grew up on farm in South Dakota, and his father had a straight truck he used on the property. He eventually hired his 16-year-old son to drive a Class 8 truck (South Dakota didn’t require a CDL until 1992) and help keep the business's financial books in order. Five years later, with CDL in-hand, Jamie bought his own truck -- a metallic blue 1992 Freightliner FLD he leased to Smithway Motor Xpress – and set off on his ownership quest. 

Today, after a variety of twists and turns in his career, Hagen and his wife, Hillary, own and operate Hell Bent Xpress, a mostly dry van-pulling small fleet that experienced eight-fold growth between 2020 and 2023 from one to eight trucks running under the company's authority, with another leased to a different carrier. Growth for Hell Bent has continued in 2024 to 10 trucks under their authority, even amid pervasive trucking challenges.

For these and many other reasons, Hell Bent Xpress is a semi-finalist for Overdrive's 2024 Small Fleet Champ award in the 3-10-truck division.  

Fuel is a four-letter word

Hagen's social media followers know well his passion for fuel economy, and that's not just lip service for views. As a young small business owner, Hagen saw firsthand where his profits were going. The place he hated spending money the most was in the fuel tank.

This is one of several Small Fleet Champ semi-finalist profiles that will air throughout this month. (Access all of the published profiles via this link.) Two finalists in each category (3-10 trucks, 11-30 trucks) will be announced in October."Fuel economy became my thing as a kid because I was broke as a joke," he said. "I had a little four-cylinder car, so I was able to maximize my dollar. That's where it began. And then when I bought my very first truck, I borrowed money to borrow money. I went to a payday loan place to get the down payment so I could borrow the money, and I just figured the biggest expense was going to be fuel."

He did the math. He knew what his fixed costs would be. "Insurance is definite," he said. "It doesn't fluctuate. The truck payment doesn't fluctuate."

With fuel costs/maintenance expense, however, he stood a chance of impacting with maximum efficiency. "Right out of the gate," he said, "that's the only way I was able to survive the first three years that I was in business."

Today, Hagen says he personally averages 10 mpg, and he's generous with tips and specs for better fuel economy, regularly sharing them on his social media channels. Rather than let his would-be competitors run themselves out of business with poor fuel economy, Hagen said he hopes his advice helps owners struggling to survive financially. Those struggling owners are often the ones willing to accept bad rates, helping keep rates industry-wide low for everyone else, he noted. 

"The weird part about trucking is anybody can go get a truck," Hagen said, noting relatively low barriers to entry. "So when people are uneducated about their costs, they tend to make foolish decisions and do things that would ultimately hurt me, because they don't know enough about their business to be profitable,."

Owners without a keen sense for costs too often are "willing to run for a lesser dollar amount," he said. "It's really about education. Some people understood, 'Hey, you can't run that for this, because I know you're used to making 50 cents as a driver.' You really need to be thinking of your bottom line. That's where it came from; more so in an effort that they would understand they need to bid loads at a certain dollar amount and work to achieve things."

As a young company driver, Hagen's CB handle was Hell Bent Hagen, a nickname he'd earned, he said, from a steadfast determination to get the job done and done right. So when he leased on with food grade liquid hauler Cliff Viessman -- a partnership that's lasted now more than 25 years -- there was no doubt what his corporate name would be when it got its start officially in 2017. Every day since, Hagen has been determined to achieve something at all costs, the Oxford definition of hellbent. 

"For us," he said, "Hell Bent isn’t a curse word; it’s a commitment."

By 2017, Hagen's now two truck operation, both leased on with Viessman, started slowly adding trucks. In 2021, the company doubled in size, growing from four trucks and trailers to eight. Hell Bent Xpress now has 12 trucks in total, all Mack Anthems. 

One of those trucks (pictured) remains leased to Viessman, a partnership with the food grade liquid haulers that's lasted more than 25 years.

Save the truck leased to Viessman (pictured above), all the tractors move freight exclusively for Hagen's for-hire company, Hell Bent Xpress.

"What we really got ourselves into is doing is a lot of stuff from Bobcat," he said, "hauling parts to their facilities and then hauling the finished machines out." Much of that freight, Hagen noted, is overflow from Ruan that Hell Bent Xpress picks up.

Much of Hell Bent's freight moves in dry vans, yet this step deck load shows some of the company's diverse capabilities.

Trucking is a people business, and Hagen said the current rate environment -- low rates, high costs, dwindling margins -- has made the personal nature of customer service even more critical 

"We have focused on maintaining our relationship with customers and direct shippers, where we have more control over freight rates," he said, "as well as maintaining our relationships with brokers we have been super-serving for the past several years, in an effort to continue to the partnership as load volumes decrease."

[Related: Roads through the dark clouds of a very tough market: Owner-operator limitations, possibilities]

Family business, family-first principles: Hellbent on the future

Hagen's wife, Hillary, runs most of the day-to-day operation at Hell Bent Xpress, wearing many hats. A family-owned company founded by a driver who still drives -- Hagen said he splits time about 80/20 between a desk chair and driver's seat, but that was flipped as recently as June -- is bound to have driver-friendly human resources. 

Health insurance for all its employees and priority home time for its drivers is a reality at Hell Bent today.

Jamie's wife Hillary serves as the company's vice president of operations, "doing everything in the background," Jamie said. "she's the HR department, she's the safety department, she's the payroll department... all that stuff.""My philosophy from being a driver is you've got be flexible enough that when people need to be home, they need to be home," he said. "You've got to bend over backwards for that because they make the sacrifice to be on the road. They put their life on hold and sometimes you've got to put the business on hold for their life."

Hell Bent maintains a flexible approach to at-work and home time. "When a driver wants to go home," Hagen said, "we route them there. Period. No questions. We only ask that our drivers get a minimum of 9,000 miles a month, and most get well over."

Hell Bent Xpress pays its drivers by the mile: 51 cents per mile and a 9-cent-per-mile per diem. Of course, Hagen shares fuel-sipping savings with his drivers who average 8 mpg or higher over a 30-day period.  

"When they fuel, I have the drivers give me an odometer reading," he said. Those who average more than 8 mpg for a 30-day average get paid an extra "2 cents for every mile you drove that month.... If an average month is 11,000 miles, they would get $220 in their next paycheck." 

A priority on home time and a healthy per-mile rate keeps turnover low. Hagen estimated he replaces only about one driver annually, and one recent driver who left for local work returned to go back OTR with Hell Bent because he liked working for the company. 

[Related: 'It can't be all about the money': How to pay truck drivers in respect, not just cash]

The National Association of Small Trucking Companies is sponsoring this year's Small Fleet Championship program. Finalists receive a year's worth of membership in the association, with access to a myriad of benefits from NASTC's well-known fuel program to drug and alcohol testing services and much more. All will be recognized at the association's annual conference, where the winner will be announced in November in Nashville, Tennessee. Find more about the association via their website.Hagen's focus is future growth with every move he makes for his Aberdeen, South Dakota-based company. Debt on the books is tied up in one trailer and nine of his trucks, "but we're still in an equity position except for like the two newest" trucks, he said. "I always reinvested. I never put my money in the stock market. I put it back in the company. I just tried to buy down the debt. I knew, even as things got ugly," debt-free business was the long-term goal. 

While his days on the road are far from over, the amount of time he spends in the cab will almost certainly decline as Hagen seeks to make Hell Bent Xpress a household name. 

"I've driven my entire life, literally, so giving it up is kind of hard because it's something you're so used to doing every single day," he said, "and my wife's like, 'You know, you should be running the business. There's no one behind the wheel of the business.'" It's been a bit of learning curve for him in some respect. "That's been hard. But I guess, ultimately, if Hell Bent Xpress is going to expand or succeed, I probably will have to get out from behind the wheel and steer the business, not the truck."

His willingness to recognize the need get out of the truck and drive the business is part of what makes Jamie Hagen unique, according to SMJ Freight Solutions President, CEO and Owner Susie Whitney. "He's trying to see on all sides of the deck," she said. "Once you do that, then you can see where everybody is coming from." 

Whitney, a 40-year transportation business veteran who previously ran her own trucking company and served as a driver, has been brokering freight to Hell Bent Xpress for almost two years. Her company has a network of more than 6,500 carriers, "and Jamie's in the top 5. Easily in the top 5 ... because he cares. He cares about the product he hauls. He cares about how he's representing my company as much as he's representing his own company. He does everything in a timely manner. If he does not have a truck when I call with a load, he is going to work on getting his truck there because he is such a great carrier." 

The dictionary says the definition of hellbent is succeeding at all costs -- Whitney has witnessed that firsthand, even if the cost comes out of Hagen's own pocket. 

Whitney recalled a load that shifted en route. When the driver told Hagen of the problem, "Jamie hired a company to fix it. So when he showed up at the receiver, it was loaded properly. Most carriers would say, 'Not my problem.' They wouldn't go out of their way to fix it, and they would just hope the load didn't get refused." 

[Related: Small Fleet Champ Larry Limp and team take do-it-yourself maintenance to new levels]