Scott Smithler has done just about every kind of trucking you can do in the U.S., and also a fair amount of hauling in active war zones during his time in the Army.
As such, few people alive today know just how important it is to get from A to B, and Smithler's become known for his famous sign off, which also serves as the name of his small fleet: "Mission Complete."
Smithler's Mission Complete Transport consists of himself; his star driver, Tony; his son Matthew; and a newer driver, with his wife, Marty, handling the books. The five-truck fleet hauls mostly heavy equipment for several rental businesses near his home base in Evansville, Indiana, pulling lowboys and hydratail trailers, primarily. Yet those aren't the only options in the stable.
Smithler seems clearly on a mission to own the backyard, so to speak, because he's certainly a presence in Southern Indiana and the surrounding states, where he generally keeps to a 250-mile radius for Mission Complete's runs.
Busler Enterprises, a big fuel stop and lubricants vendor, sells Smithler all his fuel, uses his trucking services, and counts him as a friend and community supporter.
"He came here and needed a place to park his vehicles and wanted to buy all his fuel and products from us," said Charlie Wolfinger, who runs Busler. "That’s how we established a relationship. I would say he goes the extra mile in all he does for his business and as a friend."
Wolfinger's company isn't just a seller to Smithler and Mission Complete. "We have a lot of opportunities at our company," Wolfinger noted. "We service the tri-state [Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois] with all lubrication needs, and then a fueling stop in Evansville."
Smithler took to those opportunities like he was charging the front lines. "In the warehouse in the back" of the truck stop, "we needed a transport to haul our products for us and we were gonna buy a couple vehicles" said Wolfinger. But after mentioning that problem casually to Smithler, it turned out Wolfinger and Busler wouldn't need to buy any trucks at all.
"I'll never forget one Friday evening when [Smithler was] getting fuel, I said to him, 'If you locate a tanker and a box truck, we’re interested in buying.'" Smithler "asked four questions, and the next thing I knew, he had a tanker and a box truck ready to haul for us" two or three times a month.
"If you need anything, he's your guy," Wolfinger added.
Mission Complete Transport is a semi-finalist for Overdrive's 2025 Small Fleet Champ award.
Military roots of the mission
Born in Watertown, New York, Scott Smithler graduated high school in 1981 and headed straight for the Army, where he served in military police. "Fort Benning, West Point, and two tours in Germany" took him across the country and the world, he said. Upon his exit from the service in 1990, he joined the Alabama National Guard, and that's where his trucking story begins.
"I drove flatbed, a logging truck, a gravel truck," he said, getting "all kinds of experience in Alabama."
When his parents left New York for Indiana, Smithler followed, and so did his love for trucking. "I decided I was going to be an outlaw coal bucket driver," he said, "so I did that for about five years."
This is one of several Small Fleet Champ semi-finalist profiles that will air throughout this month. (Access all of the published stories via this link.) Two finalists in each category (3-10 trucks, 11-30 trucks) will be announced in October.
That's right, trucking for the U.S. Army during the full-scale land invasion of Iraq. "I did my year, came back, and then I guess I was back about a year and a half," he said, until he re-deployed during "the surge" between 2006-'07. "We hauled from Kuwait," where military ships brought in supplies to go "all over Iraq -- Baghdad, Mosul. The first tour we didn’t even have any armor and would travel during daytime. The second tour we got some armor and would travel at night."
Smithler hauled "engineer equipment, dump trucks, water, MREs, tanks," all with the Army's Heavy Equipment Transport System, or HETS. "We own the night," his platoon came to say about their operations, and he would eventually lead the team in an interim capacity.
Later, he deployed to Afghanistan, too, plying his trucking trade again in a foreign landscape riddled with improvised explosive devices. You may find the trucking environment in the U.S. hostile in 2025 with freight fraud rampant, predatory towing always a background threat, but imagine hauling an M1A1 Abrams tank across Iraq or Afghanistan in the heat of battle.
"It was more of a military job than a trucking job," said Smithler. "You’re driving a truck because you’re trying to stay alive, basically -- you got security and everything, but you don’t ever know. They'd put IEDs in dead animals and cars or trash abandoned at the side of the road."
Even with a security patrol and "ways to defeat cell-phone signals with jammers and stuff like that" Smithler still never really knew if his rig would hit a bomb, he said. To this day, when he drives his truck past some pile of trash on the highway, he gets a little "twitch" of muscle memory from his military days.
The years in the military shaped Smithler. He's a disciplined operator who gets the job done right the first time, just about every time.
[Related: Army vet Craid Daniels' 2022 Cascadia features 500 veterans' signatures]
The HETS Smithler drove for the U.S. Army.
Turning near disaster into triumph with Mission Complete
After leaving Afghanistan finally in 2011, Smithler trucked for a few years as an employee before, consulting with some customers, he founded Mission Complete. It followed what he calls an "eye-opening experience" surrounding the Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota. There, he crashed his motorcycle. "I'm not going to live forever," he said of the reckoning that followed.
Why not do what he loves?
With money from his crash settlement he bought a 1988 Peterbilt 379 flat top with a 63-inch bunk, and after three weeks of putting in a gallon of oil every day, the motor gave up.
Smithler turned to renting trucks, then buying a used former Penske rig, but found himself "driving day and night" to make ends meet, and in need of some relief, he said. Despite the truck issues, Smithler kept the wheels turning, building relationships for freight and various other needs.
[Related: Up from ashes: Small fleet Clifford C. Hay Inc. thrives 15 years after devastating fire]
Brittney Albee, who works at United Rentals, said she'd been "working pretty close with Scott for ten-ish years" at this point and that he's "always been the majority of our district’s first call" when moving rental equipment like skid steers or cranes.
"Literally in 10 years he's dropped the ball one time," said Albee. "I drop the ball way more than that."
Smithler's "fair weather driver," a 1992 Peterbilt cabover. He's only the second owner, and bought it in Arkansas with about 450,000 miles on the odometer.
Albee noted United mostly keeps Smithler busy hauling from "branch to branch." A typical run might go from Indiana to Louisville, Kentucky, though he's been as far as California.
Albee's friendly with Smithler's wife and son, too, she said, and Mission Complete keeps the family close and "at home just about every night of the week" with the short length of the various hauls. Smithler is "one of the few haulers that I know where every single branch trusts him enough to give him full access to our yards when I'm not there."
Though Smithler lives "around two hours away from the local branch" Albee worked at "forever," she said "we give him more business than the local haulers," some of whom have 20 or 30 trucks to Smithler's four or five. Those bigger fleets spent the majority of COVID chasing the highest-dollar freight while Smithler committed and completed mission after mission after mission for her.
The National Association of Small Trucking Companies sponsors the Small Fleet Championship. 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 winners will be announced in late October in Nashville, Tennessee. Find more about the association via their website.
"I don’t really fool with the load board," he said. "I used to have a subscription, but the rates are freaking horrible. I guess if you were going out somewhere and need a load coming back" it would make sense to hope and pray for $2/mile, but "I don’t see how anybody lives off a load board. It's just so cheap."
Instead, Smithler structures rates by the hour. He knows his lanes well and assigns them a value in hours. "For a semi that’s not overweight we get $150/hour there and back and wherever," he said. If he loses an hour in traffic, that's on him.
Yet for his drivers, they get from 24%-27% of the hourly rate. His best driver, Tony, did more than $130,000 last year. Smithler admits to giving Tony his best runs, but said he pays his son and wife as well.
In 2024, the fleet brought in six figures of pure profit.
"My drivers lose nothing on any breakdowns or tires or whatever," said Smithler. "I pay vacation -- Tony gets three weeks. I pay for all the holidays, all major holidays, all paid. I've worked enough different places, so I treat people how I would like to be treated. It's a pretty good model to live by."
Smithler's "only downfall," from his own perspective, is that he wishes he could afford to offer health insurance. But even without that in place, he's no stranger to giving back to the community.
Annually, the Busler Enterprises company puts on the Fueling Freedom event, Smithler notes. "They give 50 cents of every gallon purchased that day back to the local support group for veterans, so we fill up all our trucks that day" after running them low for a few days.
Busler's Charlie Wolfinger said Smithler is Fueling Freedom's biggest supporter not just in terms of fuel purchased, but in putting on a show of force, bringing military vehicles for display to help attract the crowds.
"Normally I have a Humvee parked out front for them with a flag," said Smithler. "It just kind of draws everyone in."
Not only that, but he donates fuel and time to roll decorated trucks and trailers down Evansville's main drag for the town's annual harvest festival. When Overdrive spoke to Smithler, he'd just come back from the American Legion National Convention in Tampa Bay, Florida.
Smithler's main ride, an '05 Pete 379x hauls hay at the Evansville parade.
[Related: Meet Overdrive's 2025 Small Fleet Champ semi-finalists]
