It's that time of year again. A hint of Fall is in the air, and we're rolling toward that new season -- it's also championship season for the small fleet owners in Overdrive's audience. Since we closed out the initial entry period for the 2025 Small Fleet Championship, over the last month Overdrive editors have continued to gather information on a bevy of fleets who stood out for growth, for long-term commitment and stability, for profits and the likelihood of continued success.
Today, meet the semi-finalists, eight fleets that will be narrowed to four -- two in each size category -- to compete in the final round for the Small Fleet Champ title belt.
Sponsored for the fifth year running by the National Association of Small Trucking Companies, the Small Fleet Championship will conclude at NASTC's annual conference October 23-25 in Nashville, Tennessee.
The Small Fleet Championship's long-running sponsor is the National Association of Small Trucking Companies. Find more about the myriad benefits of association membership via the NASTC website.
Without further ado, meet the semi-finalists:
Clifford C. Hay, Inc., Cobleskill, New York
Clifford Hay II's first foray in business ownership came almost three decades ago when he bought the family business, Clifford C. Hay Inc., from his father. At the time, it was but a one-truck, one-trailer outfit. Today, Hay owns six trucks and 30 trailers, hauling hay, lumber and dry van freight, mostly operating in the Northeast and up into Canada out of his New York home base. Hay will be no stranger to Overdrive readers -- his personal 2007 Peterbilt 379 Legacy last year was crowned Overdrive’s Pride & Polish Limited Mileage champ. His is a comeback story, given in 2010 his garage caught fire and the building, tools, and rolling equipment was wiped out. Yet the setback wouldn't define the owner through the next 15 years. The business remains strong.
Derrick Wolfe Trucking, LLC, Bloomfield, New York
Also out New York, second-generation trucker Derrick Wolfe has spent the last eight years building a pretty sweet business for himself in the Finger Lakes region. He's grown the food-grade tank business hauling liquid sweeteners from being the sole operator at its founding to a roll call of 21 company drivers, seven owner-operators, and 10 non-driving employees. Wolfe's passion for trucks shines in what he describes as a "jellybean" fleet. Company drivers spec the Kenworth or Peterbilt rigs they drive when they come up for trade-in every 5 years or 500,000 miles. Wolfe specs the powertrain himself -- all Cummins power (565 hp and 2,050 lb.-ft. of torque) wrapped in Paccar everything else. Wolfe keeps his personal maroon truck on the road for a few reasons. "I try my best to stay relevant," he said. "While I am trying to grow the company ... I'm also the person that's in a truck doing the same job" day-in, day-out, he said, a key element of team building.
Hallahan Transport, La Crosse, Wisconsin
It's been a wild ride for Rob Hallahan since he was a finalist for the Small Fleet Champ award in 2021. Back then, the 10-truck fleet was predominantly pulling dry vans. By the next year, when Hallahan’s custom 2021 Peterbilt 389 “Joke’s on You” won a Working Combo award in Overdrive’s Pride & Polish, Hallahan had begun a pivot into the reefer business at the height of fuel prices and the beginning of a post-COVID rates lull. Since, diversification in freight has been the name of the game -- the fleet even hauled livestock for a time, and today runs a mix of step deck freight, milk in tankers and dry and reefer freight. Hallahan is known among regular customers for his top-shelf equipment. Before the post-COVID freight market doldrums hit in earnest, Hallahan traded equipment on a two-year cycle, particularly his Peterbilt 389 and Kenworth W900 units. With both of those models being discontinued, he said he’ll likely hold onto those but continue trading his Kenworth T680s on a regular basis. Said one customer: "They have some of the nicest looking and best maintained equipment that I have seen from any company.”
Mission Complete Transport, Evansville, Indiana
Mission Complete owner-operator Scott Smithler has done just about every kind of hauling, including a fair amount in active war zones during his time in the Army. Today, Smithler's small fleet consists of himself, his star driver Tony, his son Matthew, a newer driver and his wife, Marty, handling the books. The fleet hauls heavy equipment for a few rental businesses based near his headquarters. Born in Watertown, New York, Smithler graduated high school in 1981 and headed straight for the Army. "Fort Benning, West Point, and two tours in Germany" took him across the country and the world. His trucking story begins with time in the Alabama National Guard, where down South he pulled flatbeds, drove a logging truck, and a gravel truck. Mission Complete was born in 2011 after his last tour in Afghanistan and a motorcycle wreck that left him reflecting on how little time we have in this world. Why not do what he loved? That's trucking. His slow and steady growth over the last decade and a half shows a clear willingness to experiment and find what works. It's resulted in a stable customer base right in his backyard and a mission of building community, family and serving his country and friends. It's never really over, but at the conclusion of every load, he shoots a text out that his customers and friends have come to cherish: Mission complete.
MRL Transport, York, South Carolina
MRL Transport owner Mark Ledford today is running five total trucks with four drivers, in addition to himself on occasion. He's got nearly three times as many leased dry vans staged at customer facilities in his area. Operators haul direct customer freight outbound, often bringing brokered freight back if nothing else is available. Some outbound customer loads do come with a direct roundtrip built in, he said. "All my outbound freight is preloaded," Ledford said, whether glass in racks, foam cartons, rolls of fiber, store shelving or another commodity. Ledford's well connected in the area, having spent his entire life and career there. MRL, six years into its existence, isn't his first trucking-company rodeo, either -- and represents something of an aim to really right-size a business for an owner who can do it all. For much of the first two decades of this century, Ledford launched and ran the show at Red Baron Transportation, growing above 30 trucks at one time before he sold to another business, then worked briefly in freight sales for another company before feeling the itch to own again. Launched in 2019, MRL gets its drivers home every weekend and Ledford maintains relationships with long-term customers with long expertise built. "I don’t have a reason to get any bigger," he said, and feels he's hit something of a size sweet spot.
Oberman Logistics, Huntingdon, Tennessee
Oberman Logistics also got its start officially in October of 2019 after careful planning by its owner-operator Wes Oberman and his business partner and wife, Laura. It started with just single truck OTR. Yet from the get-go the Obermans had a plan in place to expand, to build a small fleet with a stake in the success of other owner-operators. "I felt there was a gap in the industry for good, honest companies that wouldn’t gouge you" as an owner leased on with fees in excess of what's really necessary, he said. Fundamentally, Oberman wants to demonstrate to any leased owner he works with that he's truly invested in what they do. Not as a profit center for his business, but as real support for the long haul. He ran alone for a year or two, then started advertising via the Oberman Logistics website a 15% fee for a leased owner and options for assisted or self dispatch, with a quite low, flat and transparent per-week additional charge covering insurance, load board subscription and a variety of other support. A NASTC member company, Oberman's grown to a total 11 owners leased today, including his own 10-mpg T680 (pictured), all benefiting from the NASTC fuel-discount program, IFTA administration handled by the company, and increasingly expert negotiation provided by Laura to those who want or need it.
Thomasville Furniture Xpress, Thomasville, North Carolina
Scott Denmark (above, right) and Scott Cruthis, owners of Thomasville Furniture Xpress, specialize in the finished product in the fleet's name. The near-30-truck TFX gets it close to its final destination, whether a furniture store or warehouse, almost all of the work LTL. The pair of owners have known each going back decades when both drove trucks as owner-operators. Denmark's been off the road for 25 years now, and was operations manager for close to 18 years at Shelba Johnson Trucking (since bought by another company) before founding TFX not long after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Both Denmark and Cruthis came to the business with name recognition among furniture shippers and stores, and after early gains with equipment purchased from another business, word of mouth built the customer base somewhat organically. Word traveled fast when TFX's speed of service became clear during the COVID capacity crunch. Growth's come quick, yet hasn't felt overwhelming to either owner as they've really taken to the partnership. Barely four years into its history, with Denmark's operational expertise and Cruthis' oversight in the shop, they're getting close to 30 units running, with 17 full-time employee drivers and eight other operators either leased or (in the case of two) with authority but dedicated to TFX's customers.
Turnage and Sons, LLC, Tylertown, Mississippi
Father and son duo Robbie and Levi Turnage are fourth- and fifth-generation truckers, respectively. Robbie’s great-grandfather hauled milk in cans back in the day, then his grandfather did the same thing and then became the first person in the Tylertown, Mississippi, area to get a tractor-trailer tanker combination to haul milk. Robbie started the Turnage and Sons business almost two decades ago, which happened to coincide with many dairymen, some of whom he'd grown up knowing as more or less part of the family, going to certified organic product. In November 2006, he started hauling organic milk for three producers, and that number has since grown to 33. Much of the work takes Turnage drivers outbound from Mississippi and Louisiana to the Publix warehouse in Dacula, Georgia, with some going out to Dallas, Texas, and Lakeland, Florida. It's a 24/7 effort, Robbie said, and he strives to be the go-to service provider, often enough putting out 2 a.m. fires, so to speak, for customers in one bind or another. The fleet's grown in ebbs and flows through the years, once reaching 40 trucks before the fleet owner dialed it back in his own right-sizing effort to where it sits today, just under 30 power units, leaving time for the older Turnage to continue to school that fifth generation in small fleet ownership.
--Matt Cole, Alex Lockie, Jason Cannon all contributed reporting.
Read about last year's Small Fleet Champs via the stories linked below:
**Louisville, Kentucky-area C.W. Express and owner Steve Wilson
**Missouri-headquartered Paul Rissler Transportation
