Tag: truck driving

Channel 19

Modest proposal: Ban all motorized transport already!

Buddy Wenners’ December 2011 modest proposal for the Department of Transportation to dispense with all the rigmarole and “ban truck driving” — penned in response to news of the handheld cell ban and otherwise the blizzard of new regs coming down the pike — yesterday got some kudos from commenter Zach Bell. It’d be exciting, […]

June 21, 2012

Overdrive Extra

Lucky 13: Natural gas engines performing well in ready-mix

Chicago-based Ozinga Ready Mix drivers report plenty of power and responsive shifting from 13 Cummins-Westport natural gas-powered Kenworth mixer trucks now in operation, moving from its Chinatown Plant near downtown. “Since city officials are trying to reduce emissions from trucks that operate in downtown Chicago,” says Tim Ozinga, company communications director, “we thought placing all of […]

April 21, 2012

Channel 19

Owner-operators’ road trip guide from Atlas

Atlas Van Lines’ King of the Road operator survey, conducted earlier this year, garnered close to a couple hundred responses to questions running the gamut of operational details and preferences for various businesses delivering services to drivers the nation over. Favorite coffee? Dunkin Donuts. Best fast food? Subway. Biggest difficulty on the road? Eating right, […]

April 10, 2012

Channel 19

A salute to women truckers at MATS

Women in Trucking honored 67 women who had driven one million accident free miles, 36 who had reached two million safe driving miles, fifteen with three million mile records and seven women who had attained four million safe driving miles during their careers at MATS in 2012.

March 28, 2012

Channel 19

Evel Knievel’s driver and the 1973 Overdrive interview

Unearthing the history behind Evel Knievel’s 1970s touring operation with former driver Mike Draper. Bonus: Videos of the old Mack haul rig, currently undergoing restoration.

March 12, 2012

Channel 19

Southeastern Regional truck show one month hence

Mid-America had to start somewhere. –owner-operator Ted Bowers, president of the American Truck Historical Society’s Smoky Moutains chapter The show about which Bowers had those thoughts for me is a joint venture with his ATHS chapter and several others in the Southeast, and it’s coming up quick: April 13-14 in Knoxville. Bowers made his comparison […]

March 11, 2012

Channel 19

‘Roll On, Truck Driving Girl’: Introducing trucker-songwriter Lisa Godino

Harmony, N.J.-based Lisa Godino (pictured) is a self-proclaimed “folk artist just trying to make a little noise anywhere I can,” she says. It’s not always easy, as the kind of noise she’s talking about isn’t of the Class 8 diesel variety but music, and with “50 hours a week’s worth of trucking, it’s difficult to […]

March 8, 2012

Channel 19

World’s Toughest Trucker — premiering on Discovery Monday

Since I wrote briefly last Friday about this TV show, one in a long line of trucking shows to have debuted over the last year, I’ve garnered a little more info. Not least among it is the fact that Overdrive‘s own new blogging owner-operator, Landstar expediter Phil Madsen, was himself approached last year by the […]

February 10, 2012

Channel 19

‘Courtesy not necessarily contagious’: UPS driver after 50 accident-free years

Ohio resident and UPS driver Ron “Big Dog” Sowder (pictured) started his career with UPS in 1962 after serving in the Navy and answering an employment ad. On January 25, the driver marked 50 years hauling for the company — all of it without an accident. Sowder’s 4 million-plus safe miles have made him the […]

January 30, 2012

Channel 19

‘Monkey gouger’ Jimmy Ardis beats the odds to 4 million safe miles

Owner-operator Jimmy Ardis of Sumter, S.C., leased to Moultrie, Ga.-based Sapp Trucking, learned to drive “in a 1971 International 4070 cabover with a 250 Cummins in it,” he says, running to the West Coast and back. He’d driven farm tractors prior to that. “I pretty well had it mastered by the time I went over […]

January 26, 2012

Channel 19

FMCSA’s hours rule justification includes, well, guess who…

You can imagine my surprise yesterday when, just as I’m perusing portions of the new hours rule’s full text in preparation for a story or two I’m putting together for Truckers News and Overdrive, I get an email from a colleague making note of the fact that none other than my own reporting is sourced […]

December 29, 2011

Channel 19

Kicking the habit: Why a blanket cell-phone ban won’t work

As if hearing the plethora of truck drivers’ objections to the prohibitions on handheld cell use in-cab while driving, minus any similar prohibition for the motoring public and given the wide problem of motorist distraction on the highways, the National Transportation Safety Board formally recommended that all personal electronic devices be banned from use while […]

December 15, 2011